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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated Lifeforce (1985) in Movies

Oct 22, 2020

Lifeforce (1985)

1985 | Horror, Sci-Fi

7.6

(13 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Fun fact - this is the second film I've seen where a female character uses Patrick Stewart's body to communicate with someone. Maybe this is some kind of niche sub-genre I'm just discovering...

Lifeforce is a film of three parts - it's one part sci-fi, one part British thriller, and one part ridiculous end-of-the-world horror, in that precise order.
The sci-fi part is decent enough, where a space crew discovers a strange object near Halley's comet, and further inspection reveals giant bats and sleeping naked humans in crystal coffins that turn out to weird space vampires (so on board with this ridiculous plot). It has a great aesthetic and some good special effects (keeping in mind this movie came out in 1985). The puppetry when some of the space-vampire victims come back to life is awesome.
Then the film shifts to Colonels Caine (Peter Firth) and Carlsen (Steve Railsback) as they track down one of the escaped aliens through London, whilst it kills and shapeshifts to it's hearts content.
This portion is slower, but Lifeforce has an engaging screenplay, and boasts a cast good enough to keep things entertaing. Patrick Stewart, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, and John Hallam amongst others provide a solid ensemble that ensures the film doesn't fall into silly territory.

Everything leads up to the absurd finale however. London is completely aflame, hordes of vampire zombie things flood the street, there are bodies everywhere, shit is blowing up, vampire aliens are being vanquished with giant swords, people are being thrown out of helicopters - Tobe Hooper doesn't fuck about with this kind of stuff, and Lifeforce has a final sequence that puts a lot of other horror films to shame, and looks fantastic. It's glorious - This sci-fi-horror gem is well worth checking out.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated First Man (2018) in Movies

Oct 26, 2018 (Updated Oct 26, 2018)

First Man (2018)

2018 | Biography, Drama, History

6.9

(32 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

(Spoiler alert: Neil Armstrong lands on the Moon at the end.)

Neil Armstrong/Apollo 11 movie eschews flag-waving bombast and conventional spectacle by focusing much more on what was going on inside Armstrong's head during the moon mission and its build-up (by the way, I have a horrible suspicion that the moon-landing sequence in this movie was faked in a studio). Given that Armstrong himself was such a notably quiet and undemonstrative man, this seems like a good choice, although whether it excuses Damien Chazelle's choice to depict Armstrong's whole career in space as some kind of coping mechanism for dealing with a family tragedy is probably a matter of personal taste.

Like its subject, this is a notably low-key and unflashy film, and many may find it slow-going; space fans will probably have a lot to enjoy, though. The actual moon-landing sequence is superb, flag or no flag. In the end this is (perhaps inevitably) less of a guaranteed crowd-pleaser than La La Land (Chazelle and Gosling's last film together) but still a substantial and impressive movie.

Kudos

Tim McGuire (301 KP) rated Harbinger Down (2015) in Movies

Nov 13, 2019

Harbinger Down (2015)

2015 | Horror, Sci-Fi

8.5

(2 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Old Movie Revisited: Harbinger Down. Now if you're anything like me, you've spent a fair amount of time thinking, Man, they should remake The Thing with Lance Henriksen. Well those dreams have been answered in the form of Harbinger Down. Now sure there are differences, Instead of an Arctic outpost, they are on a cargo ship in the arctic... Instead of a ufo crashing to earth with a nasty alien on board, this one has a russian space capsule, crashing to earth contaminated with a space virus... And from there its pretty much the same... including the mimicking of the host... Shit even the ending is the same, sorta, a lone survivor stranded in the arctic. Now all that aside, it wasn't a bad little low budget flick, and c'mon it has the low budget movie God in it, Mr Lance Henrikson, remember how he wowed us all in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the guy standing in the background. Its almost as incredible as Cliff Clavin being part of the Rebel Alliance, its true!! But that was a long, long time ago, in what seems like a galaxy far far away... Filmbufftim on FB