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Reviews
Special Bulletin (1983)
Goodly bad
An interesting insight into nuclear paranoia in the early 1980s, focused not on the Soviet cold war threat but on the possibility of home-grown American nuclear terrorism. This TV movie's fictional 'breaking news story' (War of the Worlds) format has been copied time and again on TV in the years since.
The film hasn't aged well but viewers should remember that this production predated The Day After, Threads, and the special effects technology we take for granted today.
It's also important to note that even when this was first aired, it was very bad TV. Kathryn Walker's performance as the overly emotional female news anchor was truly embarrassing, even in its day, and even the more skilled actors in the cast simply couldn't overcome the poor script and direction. As bad as TV was in the early 80s, it was rarely *this* bad.
Which makes this movie all the more interesting to watch at three in the morning with your drunk on. It's an antidote for nostalgia and a counter-example not only to the many other movies that did a better job with this subject, but most the television content we take for granted today.
11 Somerset (2004)
Make-work project for Quebec television industry
Very amateur, low-quality effort that ended up playing Saturday mornings at 8 am on SPACE, right after the Buck a Day MGD infomercials. It has the feel of a student production, and features justifiably unknown actors who butcher the English language in the English version of this supposedly bilingual series (which filmed both English and French versions of the same scripts).
Unfortunately, the fact that the series has been created for a young audience seems to have given the producers, writers and actors license to be satisfied with cheap and sloppy production values, performances and scripts. The result is a product that is probably just as unsatisfying for children as it is for adults.
11 Somerset is another in a long series of productions, such as PSI Factor, Starhunter, Eureka and Lexx, that buck the Stargate/Xfiles effect to demonstrate that Canadian television is uniquely inept when it comes to creating quality science fiction.
Eureka (2006)
Blah
Not terrible, but has the faint stench of a made-in-a-basement government-subsidized Quebecois production (aka the 11 Somerset series). Poor production values, muddy audio, inappropriate use of music, flat acting and generally unengaging scripts. I was shocked to discover it's shot out west. It really looks and sounds like a made-in-PQ product.
Surprising is the presence of recognizable U.S. actors who have obviously seen better days. Debrah Farentino. Joe Morton. And on the Canadian site, a slumming Matt Frewer. Starring in Eureka must be similar to dropping out the bottom of the porn industry.
On the plus side, the concept itself is interesting, despite the poor writing and execution. This may be a series that can evolve into something more competent and engaging. A couple of decades from now when someone remakes it from scratch.
The 51st State (2001)
So bad it causes cancer
It isn't the worst movie I've seen. In fact, it deserves no distinction at all.
This weak imitation of a hundred other movies in the Lock, Stock and Two Barrels tradition has Samuel L. Jackson trampling around Liverpool in a kilt (inexplicably, perhaps because the producers mistakenly thought Liverpool was in Scotland). Jackson's character spends his days smashing, shooting and mocking everything in his path. The premise, that he's an expert chemist who's come up with a designer drug and wants to make one big score seems interesting for about the first two minutes. It descends into mediocrity and cheap opportunities for violence, the script obviously pulled out of someone's butt in the minutes before filming.
It's a shame because the talent in the movie is capable of so much more. This is another in a string of pay-the-rent movie roles for Jackson, who perhaps doesn't even try because he's got nothing to work with and has simply given up on his career. Robert Carlyle is completely underused, and may have been chosen for this role solely because of his accent and his ability to look street worn. The intriguing Emily Mortimer is wasted, reduced to a gun-toting inflatable sex prop.
The movie relies too much on improbable, gag-like plot twists that include Jackson's character dosing a gang of skinheads with something that makes them soil themselves in seconds, and then later dosing Meatloaf with something that makes him quite literally explode, Monty Python Meaning of Life style.
To director Ronny Yu, I say, thanks for phoning it in.
Lexx (1996)
So bad it's surreal, but not surreal enough to be anything but bad
I've watched Lexx grudgingly, trusting others' advice that it would eventually prove worthwhile. It hasn't.
This is some of the worst sci-fi I've ever seen. The writing is poor, the cast is miscast, the plots are muddled (and apparently written by people with serious psychosexual issues), the effects are cheap and desktop-PC like, and the music is heavy handed. There's nothing worth saving here.
I'm not even sure I'd call this science fiction. I'd call it fantasy, perhaps, because there's virtually no scientific credibility to anything in this show. The technology is a poorly executed prop in a universe that makes no sense. They've failed to explore any themes or ideas that relate to the future, to science, or to society, and their presentation of a futuristic dystopia is confused and obviously poorly thought out. Its Jules Verne sensibilities would be more appropriate to a program for small children (though its sadomasochistic undertones rule that out, obviously).
Some shows are bad in a good way. This isn't one of them, and I'm guessing it's ended a few careers. I just hope it isn't getting any play outside Canada, as it's a national embarrassment. I'd put it in the What the #*?# Were You Thinking bucket of failed television.
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Flawed but haunting
When I first watched this in 85, two things really pulled me in: the first portion of the movie when Zac discovered he was completely alone and began exploring an empty world, and the idea that he was living in a universe where very basic things (like the charge of an electron) were starting to change. It seemed to open up all sorts of possibilities. Spoiling the purity of that concept, Zac's descent into madness seemed predictable and grimly uninteresting. The arrival of another survivor, and the disappointingly unconvincing human dynamic that followed, seemed like a cheap diversion, and I wondered if a studio or rewrite had forced a change in the movie's core concept. (I've never been able to track down a copy of the book on which this movie was based, so I don't know how much the movie branched away from that book.) A number of things didn't ring true. The proposition that the moment of death was the key to survival. The convoluted, poorly explained concept of a 'high tech' military power distribution project and the idea that it could somehow have changed the universe. The hackneyed statements about patriarchy and militarism, combined with painful stereotypes about male rivalry. There were a lot of unexplored ideas too, like what happens to a world suddenly abandoned by humankind (industrial pollution and fire would be rampant), or stripped of animal life.
Explanations for the 'effect' were murky and unsatisfying, too. The last seconds of the movie confirm what the earlier portions suggest -- and strangely, what never occurs to Zac as he struggles to explain the mystery -- that the world had not in fact changed, but that Zac (and the other survivors) were simply in a nearly parallel existence. Perhaps the world was intact and undamaged, but no longer accessible. Perhaps Zac actually did die in the original universe, leaving the entire storyline in ambiguity. Is it purgatory, a dream, or some quantum multiverse? The movie's end keeps all these possibilities open. Do Joanne and Api survive? You're left with the sense that they do, trapped alone together in the second universe. Zac finds himself in a third universe that is beautiful and unrecognizable. The last scene is breathtaking but lonely, as Zac stares in awe at the landscape, and then at his now useless tape recorder. Wherever Zac is, you know he's completely alone.
This is one of my favourite movies, despite its many flaws. The questions it raises stay with you long after the irritating inconsistencies fade. In it you will see the seeds of what might have been a great, lasting film.
The Terminal Man (1974)
Time capsule of 70s science
Although this movie is weak as a 'thriller', its real power is its evocative sense of place and the emotional texture of science as it was seen in the 1970s -- sombre and dystopian, yet strangely attractive.
The plot centres on a group of scientists and doctors who are pushing the frontiers of neuroscience by implanting a computerized chip in the brain of a man (George Segal) afflicted with terrible seizures. The chip is programmed to shock the patient's brain each time a seizure is about to happen. The effort is prestigious, the technology flawless, and the doctors, scientists and technicians react to the initial success of the project with a certain conceited arrogance. Only when the the chip malfunctions, and the patient breaks out of the hospital and starts killing people, does the veneer of omnipotence and professionalism fall away, revealing in the scientists ambition, uncertainty, and humanity.
Segal does a good job of portraying the wildly changing emotions of a man who's mind is under the control of a computer. At the push of a button he can be made to laugh, cry, scream, babble like a child, or even become aroused, as the computer chip in his brain explores his mental map. It's a study that would be interesting to fans of Oliver Sacks.
The most interesting moments of the movie are the early ones, where the patient interacts with his dispassionate doctors in the sterile, streamlined chromium world of the hospital. The doctors and scientists seem like mechanical, perfected reflections of the technologies that surround them. The messy humanity of the patient, demonstrated through humour, fear, weakness and anger, stands in contrast to his surroundings, and it is not surprising to the audience when he disappears from his hospital room.
Scenes of the doctors in tuxedos and evening gowns at a dinner party while a shiny computer console monitors their ailing patient lend the robotic professionals a strange, formal humanity, at the same moment in the movie when their own fallibility begins to be revealed. Both technology and technologists promise perfection, and in the end both are revealed as imperfect and unable to overcome the challenges of the human condition - sickness, insanity, violence and death.
Once the patient leaves the hospital, the movie shifts to a more conventional 'crazed murderer' theme, and things become less interesting. It is this shift that cripples Terminal Man and prevents it from being the science fiction classic it might have been. The movie closes with a disappointing, clichéd 'Big Brother' riff on mind control and the future.
This is still a movie worth watching, however, if only to get a glimpse of how the 1970s saw the near future. There are endless details for the technophile, from absurdly technological architecture to atomic batteries to ancient video terminals to mainframe computers to futuristic touchtone telephones. The technological landscape is presented with a glistening newness that evokes movies like The Anderson Tapes, Coma, Westworld, and The Andromeda Strain (the last three of which, like Terminal Man, were written by Michael Crichton). The set design and the soundtrack (mostly Bach, No. 25 in the Goldberg Variations) create an inviting, peaceful sense of space that stands at odds with the tension of the plot. The clean, elegant world of Terminal Man is one in which you would want to live.
Watch Terminal Man for the sets, for the music, and for its nostalgic sense of a forgotten future. Back in the 70s, this was the future everyone was expecting, if not hoping to find right around the corner. Like Andromeda Strain, Coma and the Anderson Tapes, Terminal Man is less a thriller and more a cultural time capsule. Get comfortable in your beanbag chair, turn on the lava lamp, and enjoy.