I still say that this looks like a fun movie. It’s directed by Jon Favreau and stars a lot of pretty big names, among others the aforementioned mr Craig as well as Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell and Clancy Brown. I think it could be a good, somewhat whacky movie. Fingers crossed!

Plus, it’s an independent production from outside the Hollywood-circus, and it needs to be mentioned. Plus, it also shows how incredibly stale Hollywood has become in much of it’s productions, only going into safe and cute territory.

Cargo follows a young woman in her 20s named Laura Portmann. In an unspecified future where Earth has been deemed incapable of sustaining life and where humanity subsides on enormous space-stations in orbit around the supposedly lifeless earth, she enrolls as medical officer aboard a freighter. She needs money in order to visit her sister on Rhea, an earth-like planet in another solar system. Rhea is heavily restricted and you need to pay your way to it. Lauras sister was lucky and won her passage in a lottery, and in video-messages sent between the two Laura long to join her sister.

On the cargo-ship most of the skeleton crew takes turns doing 8-month completely solitary watches while the others spend their time in cryosleep on the four-year journey to Station 42. Supposedly the ship carries equipment for Station 42, but when strange occurences start happening on the ship it’s revealed that things might not be as clear-cut as Laura first thought when she signed on…

Yeah, I know. My writeup here sounds like the setting for a bad space-horror type film that heavily rips off Alien. The movie in fact is nothing like it. It’s a slow-moving and thoughtful piece which borrows heavily from classics such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” as well as adding a few turns of it’s own.

Overall it was a bit strange watching a scifi-flick where everyone speaks german, but after a while you tend to forget it. Visually the film is very impressive, and even though it borrows many concepts quite openly from “2001″ it does it without ripping it off. It would seem that the movie-makers tried to ground their movie in reality rather than Star Wars-type fantasy, and mostly this seems to hold. Of course, there’s some incongruous behavior (such as the constantly firing engines of the ship) but overall this is a subdued and sober affair.

So, production-wise there’s not a lot to complain about. It’s a polished and visually pretty movie as well as having good sound.

The problems come in the heavy borrowing of themes from other movies. Too much of the movie is essentially a bunch of scifi-staples thrown together to form a movie, and while these themes are always interesting this movie doesn’t really add anything new to them. It’s also a bit hindered by the slow tempo which means there isn’t enough time to explore these themes without making the movie too long. As it stands it introduces the themes and then has to rush ahead to finish the film. A good number of plot-devices are also rather hastily ended and could’ve used a lot more exposition to make them seem more fully realized, but I understand that there’s a lot of compromise being done. A minor subplot is also quite annoyingly left completely ignored, even though the outcome of that subplot isn’t essential to the whole ending.

The acting is a bit wooden, but I suppose that goes well with a movie where one of the primary themes is the dehumanization and isolation in a cold and unforgiving future. Thus I don’t really know if the wooden acting is intentional or simply something that couldn’t be avoided. In the end it somehow works in the movies favor.

Overall I guess you could do worse, and it’s decent enough entertainment provided you don’t expect the typical Hollywood-fare. This movie is a lot more subdued and slow-moving, which might not be something the twitchy teens might like.

“In Silver City, Arizona, Apache Indians and Western settlers must lay their differences aside when an alien spaceship crash lands in their city.”

I hope Hollywood doesn’t fudge this up. Sounds wacky and fun.

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The Black Hole

Drama/Scifi from 1979 starring among others Robert Forster, Ernest Borgnine and Maximilian Schell.

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In some unspecified but spacefaring future the research vessel Palomino happens upon a black hole. When closer examined the crew discovers that there’s a ship floating right in the eye of the hole. Upon closer inspection this turns out to be the USS Cygnus, a ship that went missing twenty years earlier. At first the ship is presumed to be a derelict, but when they approach it turns out to be quite alive. The crew lands upon the ship, discovering it to be inhabited by strange robots as well as it’s captain, the eccentric Hans Reinhardt, who has a plan to take the ship into the black hole…

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Well, I was prepared that this would be a cheese-fest and boy was it true. Some scifi-films just boggle my mind at how short-sighted they are. This movie manages somehow to squeeze together virtually every ’70s space-cliché and somehow also manages to add quite a lot of Disney-style clichés to the mix. Admittedly though, it does get some things right though. But these drown in the overall mix of overwhelming cheesiness.

This movie has not aged well. The special-effects which must’ve been quite impressive for it’s time now look extremely dated. There’s a lot of shots where things just look off, and Disney opted heavily for various matte paintings which is quite clear in many shots. I thought most of the model-shots however were quite neat, even though they’re quite clearly model-shots none the less.

I also appreciated some of the craft-design. The spaceship Palomino is a horrible design which looks more at home in a mid-50s b-movie, but I though the Cygnus was quite cool, looking like a gothic cathedral in space. Completely impractical, of course, but cool none the less.

The movie is full of other goofs which generally sour the experience. Cables are visible, actors in suits, and the robots… oh god. The robots. I absolutely hated the robots Vincent and Bob. Those two robots must be the most horribly designed scifi-robots ever.

When I was finished with the movie I felt that the general plot of a madman lost in space was quite interesting. There’s a good movie hiding inside a horrible cheesy ’70s scifi film. The very odd ending didn’t really bowl me over in any positive way, in fact I felt it to be overly pretentious and mystical, but at least it was more unconventional than the rest of the film which is completely standard in every aspect.

So… to summarize. The Black Hole is parts taken from a good movie that’s hiding inside a horrible gaudy cheese-fest of a monstrosity. Maybe a remake some day would be nice, where someone straightens up the plot and focuses on the themes presented.

One thing that struck me after viewing this film was when I compared it to another scifi-flick released in the same year: Alien. Comparing these two movies is like comparing apples and oranges. They have very little in common. While Black Hole is a throwback escapist science fantasy with strong influences from 20.000 Leagues Under The Sea and a godawful Disney-production that only (thankfully) lacks a dog, Alien is a dark and fully believable science fiction movie.

Recommended just for the experience. If you like kitsch then this is a movie for you.