Next Week on Mine Was Taller

April 13th, 2008 Posted by Ian W | Site News | no comments

I’ve decided to start posting a list of what’s in store for readers in the coming week, so without further ado here’s what you should be seeing in the next seven days:

I Spy: The Spy with My Face – The second of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. films, and the first in the Region 2 box set.

Literally Speaking: No Way Out – The film that, along with The Untouchables, made Kevin Costner a star.

Watching the Detectives: John Wayne is McQ

Comic Tales: Fantastic Four

The Friday Night Fright: The Eye – The Pang brothers original.

The Weekend Western: Yankee – Tito Brass directed spaghetti western.

Saturday’s Alright For Fighting: Zatoichi the Outlaw – Number 16 in the long running series.

SF & Fantasy Sunday: Tokyo the Last Megalopolis – Live action version of a classic anime.

SF & Fantasy Sunday: Battlefield Earth

April 13th, 2008 Posted by Ian W | Movie Reviews, Science Fiction | no comments

It’s one thing to read how bad a film is but until you actually experience it first hand it’s hard to appreciate just how truly awful it can be. Case in point Battlefield Earth, a film that scores a measly 2.3 and ranks at number 89 in the IMDb Bottom 100 films and gets just 3% on Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. Yet those figures don’t prepare you for just how bad this is, it’s a galactic sized turkey, the sort of film even Alan Smithee wouldn’t want his name on.

It starts out innocently enough; humanity’s last few survivors have reverted to little more than barbarism, a bit like one of those cheap ‘80s Italian Mad Max knockoffs. Everyone has scruffy clothes, dreadlocked hair and perfectly made-up faces (particularly Sabine Karsenti). It’s all a bit silly but no worse than many other films I’ve seen. Thinks reach a whole other level of crap though with the arrival of John Travolta and the other eight feet tall Psychloians, an alien race that has taken over the earth in order to steal its natural resources, primarily gold. Quite why these intergalactic thieves have such a need for gold is never really explained, but that’s just one of the many holes in the story and doesn’t come close to our intrepid survivors being able to learn how to fly jets after a go in a flight simulator.