Movie Reviews
Howard and I have indulged in what I’ll call “retro-sci-fi” movies over the last week. We watched Soylent Green and then Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.
As a movie Soylent Green was bad. 90% of the movie was watching actors appreciate things which we take for granted, like soap and water. The concept of the movie could have been done better in a 30 minute twilight zone episode. What I found fascinating was what the movie told me about societal values in the 70’s when the movie was made. It was obvious that the civil rights movements of the 60s had taken hold. The hero was Charleton Heston (a white man), the slimy villains were white, every other male character with a speaking part was black. The women in the movie came in two categories “destitute extra” and “furniture”. And by “furniture” the movie meant just that. You rent a furnished apartment it comes complete with a beautiful girl as part of the furniture. (Apparently women never rent their own apartments.) There were about a dozen of these women who simply were there to provide the camera with anatomy to focus on. Only two of the women had speaking parts and all of the lines were either flirting with men-in-power or screaming because the men hit them. Had the movie been made recently it would have offended everyone. It makes me wonder what modern movies are going to tell people thirty years from now about our values.
Sky Captain was beautiful. I enjoyed watching it with Howard in our own home where I was free to make fun of the ridiculous stuff in it. Some serious scenes made me laugh out loud, supposed-to-be-funny scenes fell flat. We declined to watch any deleted scenes because I decided that I didn’t want to watch anything that had been removed from the film on purpose. And the supposed love interest between the two main characters? Completely disfunctional. It’s a movie to watch with a group of friends for an MST 3K party. I’m not sorry I watched it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again.