Air was the first disc I watched from the small stack from Netflix DVD. It's a 2015 movie about a couple of guys, Norman Reedus and Dijmon Hounsou, who are the maintenance men of a missile silo filled with frozen humans after the world fell apart and the atmosphere became unbreathable. There are supposed to be other silos and the maintenance men contact a network. Norman and Dijmon wake up every 6 months, do the activities on the print out, and pop back into hibernation. When the movie opens the guys have just popped out of their hibernation beds, things start to go wrong pretty quickly. It's a good reminder that important jobs should have more staff. This waking period is the one where the two guys go nuts. It doesn't go well for either of them. At least the hibernating people survived. It's barely average. I wouldn't need to see it again.
I watched Space Mutiny today, it's a 1988 film that I got from Netflix. It wasn't on my watched movie list but after watching a few minutes it was familiar. I'd seen it on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and never wrote down the title. I watched the whole thing anyway and kind of missed the crew from the Satellite of Love keeping me company. It's not that great a movie, that's for sure. It could use lots of nudity, better action scenes, a few jokes, some decent dialog, really anything to sass it up a bit. It scores a 2.1 on the IMDb so it could need a lot of help. The script is filled with stupid stuff, the acting is fair at best, often it's stinky, the effects and production values aren't there. That's a lot to help with, huh. Oh, well, another one that I wouldn't need to add to my collection then. I'll watch the MST3K version.
I watched ZPG and I was pretty sure I hadn't seen it before. It's got a screenplay by Max Ehrlich and Frank De Felitta with Michael Campus directing. It came out in 1972 and it was filmed in Copenhagen Denmark. Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chapman are the main leads. It's a pretty bleak future, the world is crowded with people, the air is bad, there are food rations, the government is oppressive. The countries of the world decide to put a stop to breeding for a 30 year period to slow down the population growth. The penalty for breeding is death. Geraldine has a kid with Oliver, they try to hide it and things go bad from there. They have trouble with their couple swapping friends, they want a baby even worse than Geraldine and Oliver, and then they don't get the child they rat the parents out. Still, even after they've been sealed in the execution chamber there's a possible positive ending for our couple. Sadly it's a bit of a slog to get there.
One interesting thing, at least to me, was that the robot babies and children were created by Derek Meddings. He worked for Gerry Anderson from the Torchy The Battery Boy days through the live action shows like UFO. He did effects on some James Bond and Superman films. I picked this movie up on a whim during the Kino Lorber DVD sale. Not the best pick that's for sure. I might never watch it again but I'll keep it anyway. There's a commentary with Steve Ryfle that was jammed with facts but rather dry. Steve is the author, with Ed Godziszewski, of the recent book on Ishiro Honda. I'm currently reading that and finding it to be highly entertaining.
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