Yes, I’ve finally starting the Alan Clarke box set: Dissent & Disruption. It’s, like, the biggest BFI box set ever or something.
Like most of the world, I’ve not seen many (or any) of Clarke’s pieces, because he almost only worked for the ITV and BBC (with one exception when they refused to show his work). So I’m totes excited.
This is way before its time — it’s from 1967 but looks like a 1977 TV thing.
Wow, this is some extreme TV. I can’t even imagine what the poor people in the UK were thinking when they were subjected to this.
This start straight off of the previous movie — and kinda undoes the climax from that movie. But I guessed they were gonna do that, so…
The first movie was all about getting the Scooby Gang together, so perhaps in this movie they’ll do some attacking.
The bokeh! I guess it’s CGI?
I’m over half an hour in, and basically nothing has happened yet? We got a flashback telling us what we already knew, but not even in a fun way…
And these people that are… er… supplying the empire with a huge amount of grain? Are using scythes. Sure, sure.
This thing has the same problem that many space operas have — it’s supposed to be all Huge and stuff, being an empire of innumerable worlds etc etc, but then all the writers can come up with is having a couple dozen people in a field cropping wheat as a pivotal action… It’s supposed to be Huge, but then it’s picayune.
Yes, they’re even threshing the wheat by hand. That’s just silly. They have space ships but not threshing machines (invented in the 16th century).
OK, up to one hour now, and we’ve gotten the backstories from all the Scooby Gang members. Which I appreciate, in a way, but it’s not exactly thrilling.
Man, they saved a lot of money on CGI when they realised that they could just pretend that it’s all out of focus. In the olden days they used to try to render it all…
Yes, the grain is so important… the grain that these dozen people… carry into the village… that the empire will… OK, I give up. This is just wilfully stupid. Perhaps it’s meant to make people surrender to the stupidity of it all and just let the movie wash over them?
Razor tech is trailing, too.
“Remember everybody… don’t shoot their dozens of sacks of grain, because we need porridge tomorrow.”
They forgot to install their catalytic converters for their coal-burning intergalactic space ships.
So much smoke.
Still so evil!
OK, is the movie finally starting now?
It’s nice that they have light sabers.
OK, is the battle on the Planet of the Village of Several Dozens of People of Wheat going to be the rest of the movie or is it going to move on at some point?
I mean, I liked the first movie. It was fun! It was all “establish eeevil person and then kill eeevil person”, and that’s entertaining. But this is just a slog.
It reminds me of that Avengers movie that ended with them all fighting an alien invasion on the roof a building, as if that would make any difference.
Oh yeah, I was making fun about these coal-power intergalactic space ships, but I forgot that that’s what they actually are… here’s people shovelling coal or something into the furnaces. Looks like these are max energy efficient.
OK, then. No porridge tomorrow.
I do really like these futuristic space army uniforms.
Such eeevil bangs!
No collar gap!
I don’t know what happened. The first movie was a classic Run Around The Universe To Collect A Scooby Gang. It was fun. Sure, it was kinda stupid, but not more so than these things usually are.
This, on the other hand, is just unbelievably moronic. I don’t mind stupid as long as it’s fun, but when every other scene is “er wha” it’s hard not to turn into that comics nerd guy from The Simpsons. And that’s not a fun place to be! I’d rather have fun with some entertaining sci fi thing! But I can’t! Because it’s just too stupid! It’s like the writers just gave up but they started filming anyway!
I think a slight reframing could have helped slightly? If they’d like done a “if you do this insurrection successfully then we’ll help you”, but instead the entire movie was about fighting in a sandy village of about 100 people, and then the people who could have decided the fight (the robot or the rebels) were swooping in after the action was kinda done.
This is a really good review, and it’s even more down on the movie than I am. I found the movie to be ugly, boring and stupid, but not really offensive. Despite everything, I’d be interested in watching Rebel Moon Part Three and Four.
I saw this movie back in the 80s, but… probably on VHS? I don’t recall seeing it in a movie theatre.
Columbo!
Heh, Tuxedomoon on the soundtrack. This really is the coolest movie of the 80s.
This 4K restoration really looks amazing — probably better than it looked in the theatres originally.
Commodore 64!
And now there’s Nick Cave.
I’m really enjoying (re-)watching this. It’s serious and portentous to the max, but really owning that; leaning into that.
There’s the “Oscar bait” term — movies that are designed to appeal to a typical Oscar voter (i.e., a famous actor playing a disabled person or something). This is kinda that, but for a different audience: It’s Cinematheque/film festival bait! It’s perfect: Mostly black and white, it’s all about life and death and all those serious subjects, it’s slow, it’s got Allan Falk, it’s about Germany and the war, and there’s even a film within the film! You couldn’t engineer a more perfect movie for that market if you try.
And I’m totally riveted.
Crime and the City Solution?
I love this movie — probably more now than I did back then. At the time, it seemed like just another European art movie, but now it seems like probably the last one of its kind: It’s a movie in the tradition of Bergman and De Sica — a serious movie done in a playful way. It’s an anachronism, really.
