Zardoz

Zardoz. 20th Century Fox 1974

Before watching the movie:

The discourse around Zardoz typically begins and ends with Sean Connery’s outfit. Nobody has anything to say about Zardoz other than how bad it is, and at this point I wonder how many people saying that have actually seen it. On paper, there are a lot of cringeworthy elements, but I have to wonder how it manages as a cohesive whole. I have to know for myself what Zardoz is like.

After watching the movie:

In 2293, most humans live in a brutal, uncivilized state. A chosen few are selected by their god Zardoz, a flying stone head, to use weapons to exterminate the rest, in the belief that humans only destroy nature in their existence. Zed, one of the Brutals, hides inside the stone head to gain entrance into a Vortex, a utopic village of the elite Eternals who control the Brutals and force some of them to grow crops for them. Almost immediately, Zed shoots Arthur Frayn, the Eternal in control of the stone head and Zardoz identity, and Frayn falls to a death below. However, Eternals have developed a life without natural aging, where those who manage to die are immediately reconstructed in new, identical bodies. The scientist Consuella and her assistant May capture and pacify Zed with telepathy in order to study him and subject him to menial labor within the community. Another Eternal, Friend, plans to use Zed to overthrow the social order the Eternals have been imprisoned in for hundreds of years. But none of the Eternals suspect that Zed is not as mindless and savage as he seems.

At least in the British Isles, there was often a dreamy, new-age aspect to science fiction in the 70s. I feel like, by watching this movie, I’ve seen several episodes of “The Prisoner”. And I think I would have rather watched The Prisoner. This movie is full of trippy visuals that don’t make much sense, trying for something more artful and psychedelic than representative. Everything hinges on crystals, video projection is used to paint walls and people, and everything in the world of the Eternals that isn’t straight out of an 1800s Irish countryside feels so technologically advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.

The other aspect that came to dominate 70s movies was an overindulgence in the evolution of social mores caused by the sexual revolution. This movie sets up a society of haves and have-nots where the haves are as repressed and oppressed by their lifestyle as the have-nots they distantly rule over, but rather than explore that very much, it would rather exult in explicit assault and meditate on the collision of raw sexual power with a world that has bred reproduction and desire out of itself. I don’t think there’s a single woman in the movie that doesn’t spend at least a third of her screen time topless. The result is both deeply uncomfortable to watch and dramatically disappointing.

There is also an incredibly frustrating mix of over-explanation and drawing out mysteries so long the viewer decides they aren’t important. I finally found something really interesting to watch in the third act, when Zed begins to really develop into his full potential and explain his intentions, but the mysteries and tensions that set that up are so buried by exploring the Vortex and the pretenses for nudity that it affords that I had thought that Zed’s origins were just unimportant.

There’s an interesting spin on the kind of social commentary that’s been a part of science fiction since The Time Machine here, but unfortunately, it’s held back by the extravagances and limitations of the 70s. Maybe a modern remake could salvage this, but I’m sure it would be so different that it would be rejected as a remake. I’ve seen Zardoz, and in that knowlege, in this form, I can’t recommend others do so.

The Adventures of Pluto Nash

The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Castle Rock Entertainment 2002.

Before watching the movie:

I was vaguely aware of this movie coming out, and it looked vaguely interesting, but I couldn’t really tell much about it from what I saw. This poster, which is just about all the promotional material I saw at the time, tells you that it stars Eddie Murphy, that he’s having adventures on the moon, and it looks vaguely like throwback to the Flash Gordon serials.

This has since become known as one of Eddie Murphy’s biggest flops, which is a distinction with a lot of competition from the 90s through the 00s. I always got the idea it was either not the movie audiences wanted it to be or didn’t hit the tone it was trying for, or both. I can certainly see Summer 2002 being a very bad time for an homage/parody of 30s pulp sci-fi.

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The Conqueror

The Conqueror. RKO Radio Pictures 1956.

Before watching the movie:

This movie was probably forgotten for a while except as a strange footnote in John Wayne’s career. However, it’s been seized on due to the fact that it was filmed downwind from nuclear bomb testing, which leads more and more people to discover the bafflingly bad idea of casting Hollywood’s most famous Cowboy to lead in an epic on the origins of Genghis Khan.

On paper, it sounds bad, but hardly any movie deserves to have this much ridicule heaped on it. Most of the people mocking it haven’t even seen it. One thing I like to do with this blog is give movies a chance at the minor redemption of pleasantly surprising one hobbyist critic on the internet, so this was an irresistible pick.

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Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Northern Lights Entertainment 1992.

Before watching the movie:

I don’t recall who made them, but I think this has appeared at least close to the top of lists of the worst movies of all time, which has always attracted me to it. What does it take to make a movie that bad? I’m sure Stallone fans were really disappointed to see him being embarrassed by his mother instead of blowing away mooks with dual-wielded machine rifles. But is the whole problem that it wasn’t what audiences wanted, or is it really just a bad movie? I’ve always wanted to find out.

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When We Were Kings

When We Were Kings. Polygram 1996.

Before watching the movie:

I had heard of the “Rumble in the Jungle” before, but I didn’t really understand it as much more than a trivia question. A sport, two names, and a date. Honestly, whenever I pictured it, something more like the cover to “Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali” came to mind, and that’s all.

I had no idea there was a documentary about it until I went looking for theatrical documentaries. Now that I know, of course there would be a documentary, but I hadn’t heard about it before. Even though it didn’t come out until late enough that I would have been around to hear about the release.

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Man on Wire

Man on Wire. Discovery Films 2008.

Before watching the movie:

I was fairly aware of this documentary coming out at the time, but I didn’t really know much more than the image on the poster. At some point I heard that the high wire walk was done without permission, and when the police showed up to arrest him, he spent a while walking back and forth to whichever tower the police weren’t on top of and dancing in the middle.

I never really put much thought into what kind of preparation would have gone into setting up a tightrope where you’re not wanted, let alone just getting into the place. I suppose there would be a documentary in that story.

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F For Fake

F For Fake. Janus Films 1973.

Before watching the movie:

I may have only heard of this film a few days before deciding to add it to my checklist (after thirteen years, I finally made a list that’s not just in my head or bookmarks on a streaming site). I know that it concerns Elmyr De Hory, an art forger so skilled and so prolific that the art market would like to pretend he doesn’t exist, and that it was made by Orson Welles, which caught my attention. Especially when I was looking for older theatrical documentaries, which are surprisingly hard to find recommendations for.

While Orson Welles is highly talked about as an actor and director, it occurs to me that his broadly known legacy doesn’t seem to extend much beyond War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane (and an infamous rant outtake on a frozen pea commercial). I was going to say this isn’t one of his better known works, but then, not much seems to be better known.

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The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

The King of Kong. Picturehouse 2007.

Before watching the movie:

I remember hearing about this movie back when it came out, but I didn’t realize at the time that it had just come out. The underlying story is still generating headlines because new developments continue coming out, which I believe is that somebody turned out to have cheated, and that wasn’t known at the time. I haven’t followed the news too closely because I was always slightly interested in getting around to seeing the movie.

It has this reputation of being a big deal documentary for video games, an epic clash of the titans underdog video game story. I’ve seen how documentary crews can gin up events to make stories better, and I’ll be interested in picking apart the story from the truth, or the truth as we know it now.

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Watership Down

Watership Down. Nepenthe Productions 1978.

Before watching the movie:

If there is one thing I know about this movie and book, it’s that they traumatized a lot of children. I know there are rabbits, and I think they go to war, and the horrors of that war are not shied away from. I have to confess that with the sum of that information, I always pictured rabbits holding rifles on a battleship or submarine. When I first heard the title, I pictured an airship crashing, which was especially silly because an airship is not a watership. But anyway, nobody seems to want to discuss what it is aside from “cute rabbits experiencing The Horrors” so I don’t have any idea what to expect.

That poster does look pretty bleak and existential though. I have strong Ralph Bakshi movie vibes from that design, but it might just be a late 70s aesthetic.

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Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Dreamworks Pictures 2003.

Before watching the movie:

Nobody wanted this movie, nobody saw this movie. I didn’t want it and I didn’t see it. I was completely unthrilled by the concept when it came out, and it still doesn’t excite me. But it was the last straw for traditional animation at Dreamworks, so I always though I’d eventually give it a chance, and now I am.

It’s such a generic pitch, I don’t even know what to expect, beyond probably not that great a depiction of Sinbad, since I understand the legendary figure as an Arabic or Middle Eastern sailor and he’s played by Brad Pitt. I don’t really know anything about the traditional character beyond that except for whatever I retained from that Popeye movie that I think had him as the villain, which I also don’t expect would be the most faithful.

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