Author: Michael W Jackson

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of run time, rated 5.7 by 470 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Bland leading the bland.  

The chic fashions of Eastern Europe1972 abound, whence space flight is routine as far out as the Third Ring.  (I took that to be a reference to Asteroids, but I’ll never know.) Then a number of space ships bound for a space station disappear.  (The actors say ‘acht‘ but the subtitles say ‘ten.’) No distress calls, no nothing.  Well, a lot of nothing. Then the space station itself goes dark.

Back on Earth high command ponders in a plenary session where Asians and Africans are conspicuously numbered among the socialist siblings. On the one side is Belle who wants to stop all flights and send a rescue mission.  On the other is Tubby who prefers to continue as usual and wait and see.  She prevails. Stress that: the head of operations is a woman and in 1972 she prevails against a male colleague.  

The rescue mission sets off with Belle on board.  By luck en route they encounter one the missing ships and try to board it, but it rockets off; apparently it is not a ghost ship.  They continue on to the vast space station, part refinery, part parking garage, part YM/WSA (Young Men’s/Women’s Socialist Association), part science lab.  It is about the size of the IKEA store in Tempe, vast and largely uncharted. 

They find only starving laboratory animals, but then half of the station is sealed off, that is, the parking garage.  Belle and the rescue crew show no interest in what is behind that green door.  

There occurs a comic interlude with a tin man that is completely superfluous and annoying.  

There has been a sidebar with a bored space miner on asteroid who misses Belle.  (Who wouldn’t.). Many flashback to the good old days on Earth.  Many.  Too many.

Among the flash backs are some with Tubby who muses about Eolomena, which is the name acolytes have given to a point of light that appears every twenty-four years in the starry night sky.  Is it a signal? He wishfully thinks so for no discernible reason. Why that name and rather than, say, Light in Sky was not explained within my attention span.  

Now back to the space station for the denouement replete with SPOILERS.  Tubby has by unknown means convinced the ten missing space ship crews and all the space station personnel to take one-way tickets to Eolomea. They have been sanding the wheels on their space ship wagons in the garage getting ready to blast off, while their ostensible rescuers wander about in Space Station IKEA. When the bored miner is offered a one-way ticket, he forsakes Belle and goes along. (‘What an idijit,’ cried the fraternity brothers! ). So the numerous, lengthy flashbacks to their courtship come to naught. End.

It is mercifully free of any AgitProp, beyond that implied by the composition of the plenary session where the Third World members sit quietly waiting for the assistant director’s cue to vote for Belle. 

Points of interest…are two. In 1972 it portrays two things unusual for the time. First and foremost is that Belle is in charge and stays that way. There are no demeaning asides from the chaps as there were in innumerable 1972 films. Nor is she riven by self doubts – scientist versus woman – that mar so much Hollywood and Pinewood tosh from the day. Full Ost Marks for that.  

Second, asteroid mining is dreary, dull, and boring blue collar work.  There is no glamour in space.  When Ridley Scott made space flight industrial in Alien (1979) he hailed himself a genius, but it was old news.  

But overall, there is zero tension in Eolomea. There are no equipment failures, but then there were probably no low-bid contractors in the script, to generate some tension.  Meteors seem to have taken the day off because there are none of them either. The debate between Belle and Tubby is oh-hum. That Tubby has suborned all those people into a one-way mission is taken as Red without explanation. Bland is the word.

IMDb meta-data is six episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.2 by 2459 cinematizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Leaden.  

Bucharest in Romania 1983 that most communist of the satellite states, where Red is best.  A typical cop show with an imagination-deprived screenplay saturated by tropes seen scores of times before.  Our unkempt and odiferous hero is a man’s man and has the snarl to prove it.  He and his partner set out against orders to make a big bust, spouting Communist slogans as they go. They will be worker-heroes, again. Parody, I know, but — news flash! — that does not make it funny. 

Yes, the Fraternity Brothers anticipated it.  

This time Macho and macho are the fall guys and his partner — aka as ‘Little Macho’ — is murdered before his very eyes, though strangely both the CIA drugs imported to sap the Red Will of the people and the American dollar payoff Monopoly money are left behind.  Even stranger the villain wears a Ronald Reagan mask and ascended from two stories out of a window by means unknown, but not before he leaves a hand written message which must have been prepared in advance for his hirsute hipster pursuer.  Sure.

Aside, in effecting escape this Reagan neatly and gratuitously shot dead an old babuška in an apartment he ran through but no one gives this victim a second thought. It is all about the partner.  

Needless to say Snarly feels guilty about the partner, not the babuška, and takes it out on his new partner with whom first has a macho fistfight and then he promptly engages in an unsanctioned investigation into the murder of dead Old What’s Name. Psst, Little Macho was his name. 

Time to reveal the obvious.  It was made in 2017 as though it were a cop show made in 1983. Hence the rich array of clichés, like the unity of the fist.  Fists were much used in Romanian law enforcement it would seem.  Few things change. 

In 1983 Romania was the front line of the Cold War!  Not even the Soviets can be trusted with the Red Grail. There is no crime and corruption in Bucharest except that fomented by AMERICAN agents who, there among the dust bunnies, are to be seen under every bed. The film makers add their own prejudice by making the US Ambassador a drawling and drooling southerner who seems to have the run of the city for no other reason than to annoy our Heroes.  Yet they do not notice the diplomatic-plated limousine when parked a few meters from a crime scene in a direct line of camera sight. Macho get an eye test from the Red health service!  

The parody is supposed to be intriguing and funny I guess but the hand is so heavy even the fraternity brothers pined for the finesse of Rambo.  To cite one of many examples.  Our Heroes investigate the murder of their colleague by going to the American Embassy often where they yell anti-capitalist slogans. Take that! A police procedural it is not.  On each visit in the lobby of the Embassy are two obese men (one wearing a baseball hat) wolfing down an enormous pile of hamburgers. See what I mean about subtle?  See what I mean about writer’s own prejudices?

There are non sequitur David Lynch touches as when first meeting the Ambassador they see an elderly woman drinking tea, who does not thereafter figure in the actions. What is it with these babuškas?  

It was filmed on location with Romanian actors in some of the roles, and it does offer some travelogue of Bucharest. The slogans on the crumbling walls celebrate the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime — amid the grime, ruin, disappearances, and poverty — for saving the people from clean water, sanitation, and other fiendish Western plots.  Why do I think of Comrade Numero Uno in Cuba?  

Somewhere I saw discussion questions for parents with children.  I guess they could discuss why ‘f***’ is pretty much every fourth word.  

Romania’s current efforts to look to the west are many, and this film is probably one example.  It pokes fun at Romania’s Red Past, while today earning Euros.  

We saw a Rick Steves travelogue about Bucharest the other night that made it seem nice.  But the EU doubts the commitment to the rule of law, rather than fists, by the quasi-fascist regime.  That did not deter the film makers.  

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 28 minutes, rated 6.9 by 2455 cinematizens. 

Genre: ODH (Old Dark House)

Verdict: Curate’s egg. 

An heiress is reunited with her long lost father, accompanied by her friend, Joan ‘Firecracker’ Blondell, who steals the show, as usual.  Roland Young is her hapless victim. Don McBride plays the hopeless Plod, again for the hundredth time.  

Death is only the beginning for Joan, returning as a ghost.  Firecracker saves the day when she clobbers the villain.  She recruits Roland to help.  Eddie (Rochester) Anderson plays the black stereotype, pining for Mr Benny; nonetheless, he has the best line in the film – ‘every hair on my (fur) coat is standing up.’

Daddy’s house is replete with suspicious stereotypes starting with that master of menace, that doctor of dread George Zucco, a grim house keeper, an icy butler, and more.  They all skulk around looking for the plot with no success. Later there are trap doors, sliding panels, and hidden passages.  

The villain goes around in an invisible man get-up with a cape. This is a look that will catch on Newtown.  It has quite a twist at the end which remains my little secret.  

Much, too much, is played for slapstick. The heiress is the luminous Carol Landis. Her duties include posing, fainting, and screaming. She had 49 credits. The best in my book is It Happened in Flatbush (1942).  At 29 she committed suicide with an overdose of drugs after five failed marriages, the first at 15, recurrent but unspecified health problems, depression, and a stalled career.  Tant pis.

What Topper has to do with it is anyone’s guess.  Anyone?  

It was released on 21 March 1941. At the time Australian troops participated in the Siege of Giarabub in Libya.  

Genre: Mystery

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 2 minutes, rated 6.1 by 102 cinematizens.

Verdict:  S l o w.

Philo needs vitamins to perk up.  He is slow as molasses in this outing. stopping in front of every mirror to check his pencil mo, or so it seemed.  I have never warmed to Mr Vance.  Maybe it is that first name: Philo. If ‘Phil’ was good enough for Marlow why isn’t for Vance? Mail your answers to someone else as soon as possible. 

Jewel thieves double cross each other, and Philo sorts them out with a very little help from Plod.  

Dan Seymour is always a good heavy but he is murdered in the first act, well…after that not much is left.  

The body count is high.  There are so amusing touches with the butler’s tweenager niece that single this screenplay out.  But not much else.

Released on 12 April 1947, the month that Jack Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball in a one-man Iliad.