Lima

It has its weaker moments (the entire final half-hour is such a clichéd Hollywood construct, completely different in mood from the previous realistic action), but otherwise it's far from Geostorm and similar recent bullshit. It's a believable look at human behaviour in extreme situations, when a planetary catastrophe brings to the surface their egotism and low instincts. The special effects are sparse, but the ominous sights of the changing sky has an unsettling charm and visually it really looks good and believable. But I expected it, Ric Roman Waugh is a smart guy, he's done it a few times already, and his latest film so far certainly doesn't deserve to be in the blue.

Poster tagline: THE INCREDIBLE BECOMES REAL!!!! THE IMPOSSIBLE BECOMES FACT!!! WHAT IS HARD TO BELIEVE BECOMES THE TRUTH!!! I'm not at all surprised at the BAFTA award for Best Screenplay, because this disaster sci-fi is on another level than the genre-related films of the time. The synopsis is that as a result of massive nuclear weapons tests by both the Russians and the Americans, the Earth's axis will change, with climate disasters around the world as a tragic consequence. The idea may sound silly, but it's presented brilliantly, in a completely serious and realistic way, without being awkward, and the serious tone is balanced by a pleasantly original love line between the two main characters, which is full of sharp, sarcastic dialogue. The story is viewed through the lens of print journalists, and in order to create the most authentic atmosphere, director Val Guest (already a whizz since Quatermass) had the film shot in the Daily Express editorial offices, with the editor-in-chief even playing himself. At first you may not be able to quite follow the rapid-fire dialogue and journalist banter, but it's all excellent acting (which wasn't exactly standard in low-budget sci-fi films of the time) and a joy to watch and listen to. After half an hour, the effects come into play – an unannounced and unexpected lunar eclipse, fog over London as a result of the ocean overheating, the Thames drying up, violent and destructive storms in the streets of London, but the absolute stamp of my satisfaction was the believable demonstration of human behaviour in extreme circumstances: social unrest, queues for communal showers in Hyde Park, people buying water on the black market, and towards the end, when the final planetary destruction is imminent, the anarchy of armed citizens making a mess, who, in the face of Armageddon, have nothing left to lose and so enjoy themselves, even if someone dies violently because of it. The special effects shots, whose "believability" is simply due to the lower budget, are integrally cut into footage of real disasters, but the clever editing makes you think they just fit in perfectly and belong there. Plain and simple, great sci-fi, where I even considered a five-star rating (which I give sparsely). Yeah, and thanks for the open ending.

This film is still fresh. Told in a brisk, modern way, I appreciate the idea that the main character is actually the rifle, which is here in the position of a kind of harbringer of bad luck to its owner, but I’m already somewhere else thanks to the trends of recent decades. I prefer the modern approach to westerns, first started by Peckinpah, but then mainly by Costner and Eastwood, who demythicize the Wild West, turn its age-old clichés on their heads, and don't treat the Indians as dumb Neanderthals with pigtails. Winchester 73 is still fresh in its modern filmmaking, but it’s also a surviving relic from the days of John Wayne and John Ford.

Poster tagline: RACE FROM SPACE TO SEVEN MILES UNDER THE SEA, WITH AMAZING AQUANAUTS OF THE DEEP, BOARD A FABULOUS ATOMIC SUPER-SUB MAKING ITS THROUGH A SEA OF CRASHING  ICEBERGS!!!!!! You would expect a Verne-esque story, with the rich fauna of the underwater world, and what you get is something completely different. For the first 50 minutes or so, it's more like a chatty stage play, where characters are introduced, a threat to the world is implied, which is supposed to be a newly discovered phenomenon of the science of the time, the so-called Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth, which is being attacked by a meteoric swarm and threatens to fry the planet with rising temperatures, and the stern Admiral Nelson has a last-minute meeting with the scientific establishment in New York. Then, after almost an hour of runtime, we get to see some underwater excursions. I'm sure you'll be amused by a scene that in later decades would look like it was cut from a parody: the crew of a submarine can't radio the US president because of the high temperature in the air, so they devise a plan where somewhere at the bottom of the sea off the Canary Islands they tap into a phone cable to call him :o) It kind of goes a bit wrong because the divers have to fight an unfriendly octopus (one of two in the whole movie) and including this one, the entire movie has 4 action scenes, almost all in the second half if you can get through the chatty first half. There's a duel with an enemy submarine, an incomprehensible scene of ice floes sinking to the bottom and threatening the vessel (the cork effect probably didn't mean anything to the filmmakers), and a voyage through an agonizing tangle of minefields left behind during World War II. The most absurd part of the story is its twist: simply by firing a nuclear warhead from the Mariana Trench at an impending meteor shower in the Van Allen Belt, the sky will clear and everything will be rosy again, with colourful unicorns in the sky farting fragrant rainbows. OK, I'm exaggerating, but the twist is really so dodgy that even the experienced Walter Pidgeon can't sell it as an actor. The highlight of everything here, however, is the legendary Peter Lorre – that’s what I call the most useless role in the history of cinema, he's there just to hold a dummy shark in a pool and occasionally utter a crappy line. I considered 2* for a while, but the fact that the film looks nice, the production values are not to be dismissed and the 35mm Panavision format is beautiful to look at deserved the higher rating.

This is such a nice, naive but positive little treat for smothered housewives who still have 15 kg of laundry to iron, and thanks to this feel-good hour an a half, it will fly away beautifully. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised that it's not completely cloying with sentimentality, it's a kind of lemonade that tastes fine and doesn't spoil your teeth. Cameron Crowe tried something similar five years ago with Aloha, and even though he had a much better ensemble, it turned out much worse. Even film lemonades require skill, and sometimes fairytales like this are needed. And I give that third star as a thank you to the combined American, Australian and Japanese air forces for the care they have selflessly provided to the nearly 6 million square kilometers of Micronesia since the 1950s. I can’t imagine the invasive Chinese and the Russians doing something like this. They would have dropped a couple of boxes of fancy gowns and asked for payment in advance.

Judy Garland's genes are simply undeniable. Liza Minnelli was, in my humble opinion, an even better singer and actress than her famous mother; she was so interestingly, unassumingly beautiful (Slasher, you're an idiot) and she had massive talent. The film, shot mostly in studios, beautifully lit so the eyes popped, was unfortunately one of Scorsese's biggest flops, as a tsunami called Star Wars swept through the cinemas at the time, and audiences preferred an uncomplicated fairytale to a nostalgic, psychologically complex trip to the post-war era when jazz still ruled. My eyes and ears perked up too, the only problem I could see is De Niro's character, who is too much of a boor for my taste (and especially in the first half hour he makes it clear he deserves to be hit with a baseball bat) and then the runtime, which just doesn't justify the rather thin plot, cut it by half an hour and it would be perfect.

Poster tagline: YOU ARE THERE... ON MAN’S MOST EXCITING, MOST INCREDIBLE JOURNEY!!! I’ve seen the abridged U.S. version, so I can only talk about that one, and I’m perfectly fine with it. One immediately notices the generous budget, which was more lavish than that of quite a few Hollywood-produced films in the genre at the time. After all, it was a matter of prestige for the Eastern Bloc to shoot a substantial sci-fi with lavish cinematography that would stand up to comparison with the “evil imperialists”. The U.S. version has no plenary sessions, no signs of internationalization, no holding hands in the closing scenes. In the context of its time, the spaceship appears plausible (and betrays the creators’ heavy borrowings from the foundational sci-fi flick Destination Moon); we even get some zero gravity and dialogue that doesn’t grate on the ear. Venus itself is rather impressive; the makers worked to get the most out of the set – the planetary environment is shrouded in fog, the sky is lit with polar lights, and the Venusians’ architecture is beautifully bizarre with all those spired towers with dozens of windows, spiraling skyward like huge corkscrews, encompassed by crawling living jelly. This is all very nice to look at. What an immense pity it is that only a really poor copy has survived, as if one threw a VHS tape into the washing machine and ran a hot-wash cycle :o). There’s even an environmental message in the form of the final twist, seemingly lifted from Rocketship X-M (1950), which also makes it clear that the Venusians destroyed their own planet through hubris and mismanagement.

In the 1980s, the spirit of Paul Kersey soared above all of American cinematography, a fact to which this film is testimony, even if it is less well known (on the other hand, the renowned Arrow Films includes it among its collector’s edition). Unlike some other reviewers, I don’t want to exaggerate when it comes to the film’s depiction of violence – from today’s perspective, it is all a bit silly. The gunfights and fistfights in this film are quite naive and sometimes look like boys playing soldiers. Paul Koslo hilariously overacts in the role of the villain, and the only one who delivers some charismatic acting is Christopher Stone in the role of the leader of a gang of self-appointed followers, whereas the other characters are rather forgettable. This isn’t a well-shot movie, but it moves along at a nice pace, is over before you get bored, and is a nice kind of guilty (very guilty, I should say) pleasure.

Millie’s awesome in this one. I truly mean that. The only virtues of this spectacle are the spontaneity of her acting together with Henry Cavill’s pleasantly subdued, charming Sherlock  and the cinematography, which is unusually lavish for a Netflix production. As for the rest of it, however, stay away from this in-your-face politically correct fable which tries hard to be woke. I certainly don’t have any qualms about the feminist movement, but this is too much “out of joint”; I always find it rather daft and removed from contemporary reality whenever female characters set in the 19th century fight like men or want to fight like men. The net result is merely a political statement by today’s Hollywood studios, of the kind that has become fashionable these days.

The eighties never died, and Ralph and Zabka are still as likeable as ever. There’s is currently no other TV series that works as tastefully and intelligently with NOSTALGIA as Cobra Kai (particularly the first season).  But even without this aspect, this would still be an extremely well-told, firmly grounded story, which is partly an unabashed celebration of 1980s B-movies and partly a depressing (yet somehow funny) self-reflection of two middle-aged guys. To me, this is the most pleasant surprise among the TV series of recent years and I am glad I persevered in watching it.