The Inhabited Island (2008) Russian-made all-out science-fantasy spectacle. Some movies I have to turn my brain off to enjoy, but this one turned my brain off for me in about one minute. I was continuously boggled by one outrageous spectacle after another. Somebody dropped a dumptruck full of rubles on this thing and it looks expensive every second. It's a hero's journey into the land of shadows to save the world, but it hooked me right away. It helps a lot that the hero, played by Valery Stepanov is absolutely gorgeous, a blue-eyed blonde god, and that the detailing and design is so very intense throughout. Two hours of astonishment, and it's only part one of two. I guess this really woke up my inner teen-ager, because I really liked it. But what is it
like, you may ask? Okay, it's probably a guy thing - the few women are secondary characters. What if Star Wars had a heart of Soviet steel? What if Battlefield Earth wasn't utterly atrocious? Hero Maxim's squid ship is hit by an asteroid while he's talking to his gramma on the space phone and he crash lands on a planet under a permanent pall of cloud, crushed under warring materialist-fascist governments' mind control radiation machines. There is no other world to come from because they live on the inside of the sphere. He must apply his super-spaceman knowledge and skills. But the huge road-train, the vast grim city, his alien memories recorded to make a television spectacle, being sent as a rebel mutant to the re-education camp where they must comb the woods to find and destroy the autonomous death machines left over from the last war, the lush detail of it all is what sold it to me. All the wow moments of The Fifth Element and Blade Runner, all jammed together and thrown at you every five minutes. I even liked the fight scene and that is rare. 9/10
It may have helped that I prepared myself by watching:
Nude on the Moon (1961) Two men go to the moon and find it looks just like Florida except for the topless moon people who communicate through twisty wire antennae on their heads. An amazingly primitive excuse for showing women with their shirts off. So badly acted that even the simplest actions are performed unconvincingly, so cheap and crude that they stand there talking about what a spectacular sight their spaceship is and THEY DON'T SHOW IT. Lots of shots of two guys wearing dime store kids' pilot helmets and colored tights, jotting notes and taking photos with an old shadowbox reflex camera. The irony is that the only real nude on the moon is a male infant - everyone else is wearing shorts. Fun in a stupid boring way. Any movie with that many breasts in it rates at least 5/10 no matter what.
