cskocik Reviews

Nightflyers (1987)

Great book, crummy movie

[13 August 2004]

When I enter Nightflyers as my keyword in Google, all I get is references to this movie. That's a shame, since the George R. R. Martin novel, novella, whatever, is a wonderful, intriguing, scary, intelligent mystery story, whereas the movie is the palest ghost of the book's greatness. Martin's book predated Alien by about five years, and I wonder if Ron Shusett or Dan O'Bannon might have gotten some inspiration from it.

The movie is a typical '80s gore-fest, complete with misty, foggy sets, ridiculous dialogue and caricatures, and an explosive climax that totally ruins of the book's thoughtful ending. I like the actors who play Royd Eris and Professor D'Branin, and I admit I enjoyed Michael Des Barres's performance as the whacked-out telepath. But most of the acting was subpar. I thought Catherine Mary Stewart did what she could, but the script stripped away all the complexity of her character, who was much more richly drawn in the book. The movie also completely misses the book's subtle sense of humor. The book is closer in tone to John Carpenter's movie Dark Star, plus a great sense of mystery and spookiness. The movie spills the beans on Royd's backstory far too early and off-handedly, as opposed to the book's climactic revelation.

So don't let this movie turn you off of Nightflyers -- read the book. By all means, read it!

A Night to Remember (1958)

This movie is staggering

[30 June 2004]

I am nothing short of amazed by what the filmmakers pulled off. Before I saw this movie, I tried to write a script that would encompass the whole story of the Titanic. I had stacks of Titanic books scattered around me, a huge map of the Titanic spread out in front of me, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of anecdotes and facts and technical details and contradictions in survivors' accounts. Reconstructing the event seemed impossible, and finally I abandoned the project by the time I got to about 1:30. Then I saw A Night to Remember, and wouldn't you know, it was exactly what I was trying to do! Kenneth More's portrayal of Lightoller is perfect. Laurence Naismith is heartbreaking as Captain Smith. The factual, historical, and technical detail is so thorough that this may be the most meticulous historical movie ever made -- certainly that I have ever seen. Somehow the stark black-and-white cinematrography is more realistically convincing than James Cameron's full-color treatment, in which things are inexplicably blue. The thing that disappointed me the most about Cameron's film was the lack of reverence for the historical characters. Lightoller, my personal hero, came off as an cowardly twit, Captain Smith as an incompetent fool, Ismay as the force of all evil in the universe, and Benjamin Guggenheim's change into evening ware as an excuse to get drunk! A Night to Remember had that reverence that was so sorely lacking in Cameron's film. Lightoller is portrayed as the hero that he was. Captain Smith is a fine captain who is understandably ovewhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy facing him. Ismay is irritating, but tries to help out and be a responsible president -- and when he jumps into the lifeboat, well, would any of us do different? And Guggenheim's final stand brings tears to the eyes. The drama of the Carpathia is as exciting as any fictional Hollywood action film. This is the only Titanic movie that addresses the problem of the Californian, and though Lordites will object to the rather anti-Lord portrayal of the events, the facts speak for themselves. If you want to be picky, you can complain that the movie doesn't go into the politics behind building the Olympic and Titanic, or the near-collision with the New York, or lots of the little personal stories, but let's be fair: the movie has two hours to tell the story of, as Walter Lord put it, "the death of a small town." It's simply not possible for a movie, or even a really thick book, to cover everything. I don't think it's possible for a better movie to be made about the Titanic than A Night to Remember.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The ONLY true science fiction movie

[10/10 · 17 June 2004]

2001 is most emphatically NOT for Star Wars fans. It's the antithesis of all the Hollywood nonsense that have turned people away from science fiction and convinced people that sci-fi is no different from fantasy or improbable action movies. 2001 is about REAL space travel. It's about what it would REALLY be like if we found out there was intelligent life off the earth. It's about what Artificial Intelligence might REALLY be like. The fact that the year 2001 has come and gone and the movie didn't happen is irrelevant; everything in the movie is still plausible, and we could have the world it portrays in another twenty or thirty years. Computers are becoming more sophisticated and intelligent, we have the VASIMR engine, which is remarkably similar to the Discovery's plasma drive in the movie, and the Bush space initiative will have a base on the moon which may well be similar to the movie's Clavius Base. So many of Arthur C. Clarke's visions of the future have come to pass, and many of 2001's speculations have been matched by reality. The fact that a movie made in 1968 can still look so authentic and believable is the true litmus test of a good science fiction movie. Unlike most sci-fi movies, 2001 shows space travel as it really is -- no streamlined space fighters banking and zooming as if in the atmosphere or making whooshing noises in the vacuum of space. Space is realistically silent, spaceships cruise on predetermined orbits with their engines dark and silent except when delta vee is required, the hardware was developed in consultation with the aerospace industry, computer experts, and industrial firms, and actual JPL engineers designed the amazing spaceship Discovery and other vehicles. The subject matter is approached with the serious, sober attitude that it deserves. I don't think I've ever seen another science fiction movie that treated space travel with such immediacy. The dangers faced by the crew of the Discovery are the things real astronauts will -- and do -- have to deal with. The nervous breakdown of the infamous HAL-9000 computer has become legendary, but it's not the kind of cheesy mad computer stuff you find in scores of 70s movies. HAL has a glitch, and like every desktop computer, the glitch gets progressively worse as it goes undiagnosed and the computer remains operational. You can also look at HAL psychologically; subconscious feelings of guilt produce hypochondria and paranoia. Is HAL a character or a computer with a corrupt program? These are questions we will inevitably have to face someday. When Dave Bowman disconnects HAL, is he diverting the ship's control from an unreliable system, or is he murdering a shipmate? The whole storyline is done the way events would probably unfold; no laser battles, no explosions, no buff hero with sleeves cut off marching through smoky corridors with a ludicrous laser pulse weapon -- just a space suited astronaut, realistically weightless, armed with a screwdriver. Nothing in the movie is over-the-top or beyond what could really happen. Sometimes it's easy to forget that you're watching a movie; it seems more like C-SPAN footage of a real space mission.

At the same time, though, it's so marvelously poetic and musically divine, no other sci-fi movie has ever conveyed so eloquently the wonder and beauty of space travel. The special effects still look utterly authentic today; when Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov saw the movie, he said, "Now I feel like I've been in space twice." Many people have been baffled by the ending, but I think most people appreciate the movie much more on subsequent viewings. I never had trouble "understanding" the movie, but that may be because I read the novel first. This movie is not about munching popcorn and wheedling away two hours; it's about serious contemplation of our future, about space travel, about the immensity of space and time, and about the possibilities that lie out there. It's more about real life than the world of movies -- which I guess is why we fans of the movie get so defensive when non fans attack it. It's the Citizen Kane of science fiction; the definitive thoughtful examination of its subject matter.

Troy (2004)

There's nothing wrong with this movie.

[15 June 2004]

Troy is not an epic masterpiece, but it doesn't try to be. It's thoroughly enjoyable, well-acted, well-directed, and an utter pleasure. Yes, I did a double-take when Agamemnon's fate, uh, contradicted what I read in high school, and the ten-year Trojan War was wrapped up in about a month, but a good story is a good story. I would say the movie is a bit closer to the way it really happened than Homer's version -- do any of us really believe the Greeks and Trojans were mere pawns in a war of the gods? In other words, the story is adapted for a modern audience -- the same way the oral tradition of Homer's time adapted the story for their audience. To those who hated the movie: I understand, you make good points. To those who say the movie is the greatest movie ever made: well, you're jumping the gun a bit, but yes, it's quite satisfying -- flawless in terms of what it tries to accomplish.

S.O.S. Titanic (1979 TV Movie)

Why did they make this movie?

[11 June 2004]

I have mixed feelings about S.O.S. Titanic. On the one hand, I remember seeing it when I was about nine years old and being stunned. On the other, I watch it now and wonder why they bothered to make the movie. First of all, I have the shortened version, which I understand is far less effective than the full three-hour version, so my comments might not apply to the full version. But it seems to me A Night to Remember is the definitive movie about the Titanic, and this one seems like a brief and half-hearted recap of that much better movie. We see only the most cursory glimpses of various characters and how they came to abandon ship. I think the entire sinking ends up taking half an hour of screen time, even less than the Barbara Stanwyk movie. The attention to detail is impressive, but it seems to me you'd have to already know a lot about the Titanic in order to pick up on it -- for example, Lightoller jumping into the wave as it overtakes the boat deck. I agree with whoever said that the characters were not well-researched, with the notable exceptions of Lawrence Beesley, Thomas Andrews, and J. Bruce Ismay (the casting of Ian Holm was a stroke of genius!), and I simply can't accept Harry Andrews as the soft-spoken Captain Smith, or Cloris Leachman as Molly Brown, or David Janssen in a compelling but inaccurate performance as J.J. Astor. Still, all told, I'd take this movie over James Cameron's bloated epic. The music, as someone else pointed out, is outstanding, really underscoring the magnitude of the tragedy and somehow making it feel like you're drowning as you listen to it. Philip Stone is almost as good as Anthony Bushell as Captain Rostron. The stories are real, for the most part, even if some of them are clumped together into composite stories. The characters really existed. The script treats the story with the appropriate reverence, as opposed to Cameron's action movie treatment and offensive ridiculing of some of the heroes of that night. But still, I don't see any real value in this movie, when you can get everything it offers, and much more, from A Night to Remember.