lloydbraunaia Reviews

Bye Bye Jupiter (1984)

Sayonara Two Hours

[1/10 · 15 February 2022]

This is high school level filmmaking, and I'm talking freshman year first submittal. It has an always-present musical score that can only be described as the "B" side of Olivia Newton-John singles sung in Japanese, but not half that entertaining. The horrific music is not only unrelenting, but the entire movie is repleat with musical interludes featuring song-length servings of nature scenes, or people frolicking on the beach. You do realize I'm still talking about Sayonara Jupiter, right?

The premise is very compelling; a black hole enroute to collide with our sun, some alien life type discoveries, and a novel way of rescuing the earth. Now I like all types of sci-fi, including low-budget Kaiju film, so I knew what to expect (or so I thought). But that torturous music WILL NOT STOP. At least the stilty dialog and terrible acting is punctuated by a line occasionally being delivered believably (though rarely), but that music...

All scenes take place in only five or six rooms and one small beach area. The "giant space station" is comprised of about four of those rooms with a mission control type room being the other. The approach to planets and so forth are all shot by the camera zooming in or out on a grainy still. A few slow-flying laser bullets, too. You know the kind.

Did I mention the fat Japanese Jerry Garcia who heads a Jupiter cult? He's intent on seeing this space project stopped. Well, he is until his pet dolphin gets bit by a shark. But hey, if you want to hear him perform some lengthy numbers while watching old Wild Kingdom stock footage, don't pass up this cinematic wunderkind. Otherwise, I haven't wanted two hours back this badly in a long time.

Capricorn One (1977)

Great premise, bad script, robbery of an ending

[4/10 · 14 February 2022]

I missed this movie until late last night. It was well received in it's day, but it is a film to be endured. The director's premise is excellent. In fact it's so compelling that you'll stick with it to see how it ends, even though you'll have welts on your head from banging yourself with the TV remote because of the writing. Oh, the director also wrote it. Bet he didn't tell his all-star cast that unimportant little detail before signing. My patience with the writing blew at the early scene where Hal Holbrook "explains" to the astronauts why they were yanked away at the last second. (Have patience, he'll eventually get around to it once he remembers why he's there.) What a meandering monologue -- and the astronauts just sit there like glasses of Tang, stoic and unemotional despite their entire lives seemingly turned upside down. It also doesn't help that the secure facility in which they are confined to work for the next nine months has almost no occupants but themselves. And by confined I mean a single locked door.

It has all the special effects of a Mannix episode except for being amply graced with tons of props and locations courtesy of NASA - the only reason you'll keep giving the movie until the next commercial. But that helicopter chase scene? The only fire being unleased by these two rocket-armed attack helicopters was by somebody leaning out the window with a firearm. Plus they exhibited no strategy but to unrealistically follow the biplane in close single file. At one point one helicopter hovers over the biplane and bangs on its wing several times. Excuse me, but if you couldn't hit the biplane from a couple hundred feet back, ever think of shooting the pilot now that he's six feet away in an open cockpit? But I digress because that still wasn't the most insulting part of the movie.

The worst part was the final scene in the cemetery. Imagine Star Wars rewritten to have Luke shoot his torpedoes at the Death Star in slow motion and then pause at a still of them entering the Death Star's ports, and then...roll credits. THAT, or the equivalent, is how this movie ends. Don't let the clock read 1:30 a.m. Like it did for me when that "great premise" (remember that?) culminates. You will regret it.