Stuff

Here’s a good one, 2004’s “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow”.

If you have seen this film you will either love it or hate it. We love it. Mostly.

Let’s get a quick plot summary out of the way first: in an alternative reality New York City, around 1940, an invasion of giant robots takes over the city. Sky Captain (Joe Sullivan) has to save the world from a fiendish plot by mad scientist Dr Totenkopf. Polly Perkins, ace reporter, drags herself along for the ride, hiding evidence and generally getting in the way.

There’s an incredible cast. Jude Law is the captain, Gwyneth Paltrow is Polly the reporter, Michael Gambon her boss, Giovanni Ribisi as Dex the ace mechanic, and Angelina Jolie as Franky, ex-girlfriend and naval commander. And, oh yes, Dr Totenkopf is played by Sir Laurence Olivier.

The beginning of the film is quite wonderful. Originally, director Kerry Conran had created a short as a kind of demo/trailer for the idea of the film using a home computer. If you can catch this, do. The invasion of the robots looks good even on a home tv, and the scene set to “The Wizard Of Oz” works wonderfully. And we always wanted to be like Dex.

As the movie itself progresses, and it’s not massively long, it loses its way a bit. The ending is fine though. Jude Law plays the Biggles type character well.

I first saw it at the cinema. What comes over more than any other film I think is the sense of scale. The invading robots are big, Sky Captain’s hanger has the most enormous doors. The whole film has a wonderful subdued colour to it that we know many find annoying. No cliche is left unturned, deliberately.

Almost the entire film is cgi. If you can pick up this film on physical media, watch the extras.

It’s a much underrated film and most enjoyable, except… Gwenyth Paltrow is annoying beyond belief. Enough said…

“Galaxy Quest” (1999) does something that we think no other film has managed to do. If we are wrong, do correct us. It takes a genre, actually it specifically takes Star Trek, spoofs it, gently, pokes some fun but at the same time is affectionate, a good tale and is funny.

The story is as follows (no spoilers): we begin with a reminder of the tv show Galaxy Quest on its mission into space. In current times, the actors are typecast and spend their time doing personal appearances, and they hate it. However, a real alien civilisation has seen the tv broadcasts and believes them to be real. They come to Earth and approach the cast of the tv show to help them save their civilisation.

There’s a tremendous cast, including Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell. Oh, and Tim Allen as Jason Nesmith as Captain Peter Quincy Taggart.

It’s a film to be seen at the cinema. It has fun with the aspect ratio, being ‘square’ at the start, then 1.85:1 for the scenes on Earth, moving to 2.35:1 for space. It manages to create a sense of genuine wonder.

A lot of typical ideas/clichés from the original Star Trek series are included. Allen as Nesmith is boorish, lewd and arrogant. Weaver, as Gwen DeMarco, has one job, say what the computer says.

If you watch it through on dvd you are then allowed to watch it all again in the language Thermian.

What’s fun is that the deck of the spaceship was contructed to actually move, so the actors really are being thrown about.

A much underrated film. Sadly, a sequel has been scrapped after the death of Mr Rickman.

There are many films with hardcore sex scenes included. I don’t mean porn films, I mean genuine mainstream theatrical releases with hardcore explicit sex scenes in. I am sure that somewhere on the web there is a complete list – I’ll leave that for you to find.

I know I have a couple in my dvd collection.