I have it the other way around. The Also Sprach Zarathustra opening scene is fantastic, and then there’s the rubbishy cave-man bit with actors in chimpanzee suits; but for the next 80 or 90 minutes I think it’s great, until you get to the stupid and interminable light show and then some incomprehensible stuff about a star baby or something.
Soooo, this is a fifty year -old film that you’ve all seen in the last year or so and are discussing whether it’s any good…
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for me it felt like almost every scene could of easily been done in 3min tops, but they stretched it out to 10min.
No, I saw it for the one and only time back in the early days of VCR’s…probably early 80’s.
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You get a pass.
I’ve seen in the last couple of years, too.
I think SBS just plays it from time to time.
I was flicking and stayed for the duration. Reckon I’d do it again, too.
It’s not whether it’s any good…so many people have it in their best 10 or their best 50 or whatever.
I just come to the realisation that other people are idiots, and by that I mean that they have different views from mine.
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I probably wouldn’t have it in my top 50 but, as I said, I’d be perfectly happy watching it again after a period of about a year.
I think that makes it…pretty, pretty good.
Speaking of 1968 sci-fi films, SBS or Vice or whoever also play Barbarella every now and then, and that’s always worth a look.
I saw it when it originally came out. I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched the whole thing again but I’ve seen substantial chunks of it now and again on Foxtel. Like most SF films it really doesn’t make much sense taken as a whole, but there are so many brilliant things about it that that doesn’t matter all that much.
Like you, I wouldn’t have it anywhere near my top 10, but if I’m channel surfing and come across it I usually have a look and often keep watching.
I’ve seen it a couple of times. The best viewing was at the Astor after a very hot day at the tennis with a ground pass. We lay on the ground down the front of a pretty empty cinema and took our shoes and socks off.
The film on its own makes little conventional plot sense other than the hal stuff. It works a bit better if you’ve read all the books and have a better grip of where the story is headed.
As a spectacle, for a film made in 1968, it is amazing. Cutting edge, experimental filmmaking that no studio would dare back today.
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Ivan is right (as usual). Judging the film by today’s standards where all movies of that type proceed at a frenetic pace is ludicrous.
It’s a great film. Yes, very slow in parts. But the way it builds the tension leading towards the HAL lockout scene is masterful, and that scene (and the shutdown scene) are amongst the most memorable movie scenes, IMO.
As far as i recall, it’s also the only (or one of the only) space movies to portray space accurately - ie dead, unnerving, creepy silence. Not even Gravity (a movie I am a big fan of) had the guts to do this.
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Saw this maybe a year ago for the first time, agree with you about it being really trippy.
lol really? wow I’m not sure what my parents were thinking…pretty sure I saw this on betamax
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I saw the cover sitting on the video shop shelf for years, don’t think I ever watched it.
I saw this on telly a little while ago.
Or some of it.
It’s not very good.
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Looks like a Masters of The Universe clone.
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I borrowed the dvd from the local public library.
Except for the fact that it was released in 1981
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Well there you go. Thought after I said what I did, it would probably be pointed out that it was made before the Masters Of The Universe.
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The animation for masters is probably better than heavy metal, though with less boobs. Most American 80s animation hasn’t aged well. The Japanese stuff stands up much better
Jane Fonda is far easier on the eye than HAL.
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