Reviews

I only discovered this little gem in June 2021. Had I discovered it in 2017, the past four years might have been a little easier. Don't let it drive you away early in frustration - that's just to make the payoff at the very end all the sweeter.

Everybody likes to say how cheesy the monster looks. But I'll be honest. It still gave me nightmares at age 10.

I also didn't like this episode much as a kid because we hardly see the Enterprise, and how can that be Star Trek? Eventually I learned that good science fiction, like all drama, is about characters and ideas, not sets and costumes and special effects. And so "Devil in the Dark" is now one of my favorite Star Trek episodes.

I sometimes wonder if it was done as penance for "The Man Trap". That episode also featured an intelligent creature, native to the planet and the last of its species, who began murdering humans for no apparent reason. But that episode doesn't fit the Star Trek philosophy at all, while this one is among the very best examples of that philosophy in action.

Yes, as another reviewer said this episode reeks of Cold War stereotypes. But if that bothers you, just mentally replace the Soviet nationalities of the characters with a defecting al Qaeda terrorist or Taliban operative or whatever you like because this episode isn't about communism vs capitalism. It's about the ironic (and highly satisfying) comeuppance of an overconfident sadist with a huge ego at the hands of someone he hugely underestimates.

And in that sense it's a classic Twilight Zone plot. Most episodes are morality tales that depict a fundamentally good but unlucky character getting a second chance or an evil character finally getting his due. The only real differences in this one is that there's one of each type of character and they each earn their rewards by their own acts and wits, not through alien intervention or some inexplicable supernatural occurrence.

This is quite possibly the most minimal movie ever made. Except for the opening and closing credits, all we ever see is an elderly woman in closeup, apparently in her own home, talking past the camera to an unseen interviewer. He's only heard a few times. He seems completely superfluous. The interview segments are punctuated with brief blackouts.

There's no score. No film cutaways or slow Ken Burns-style pans over countless still images of the Third Reich. She just talks for an hour and a half in her native German, so much of my attention was focused on the subtitles. A few segments show her watching her own interview and making additional comments.

After watching "Blind Spot" I found on Youtube a much earlier interview in which she speaks in English. Judging from her apparent age, it looks to have been made circa 1970, probably for the British "World at War" series. She recounts many things in much the same way in both interviews, so it's obvious she's spent much of her adult life reliving the events she's talking about and pondering her own role in them. She doesn't need much prompting.

Because of the minimal production values and the subtitles, I felt more like I was reading a book than watching a movie. But this was a very good book that really engaged my imagination. I'd seen the movie "Downfall", based in large part on her recollections, but her own verbal imagery would have been vivid enough.

When "Downfall" came out there was a lot of hand wringing about how it "humanized" Hitler, some from people I thought knew better. Similar criticisms have been leveled at Frau Junge, but they completely miss the point. Accuracy is what matters in a historical account, and I have no reason to doubt hers. Whether we want to admit it or not, Hitler was a fully human being. He wasn't a highly evolved space alien or a demon from hell with supernatural powers who took human form to enslave mankind from the outside. He was one of us. We have to deal with that.

As Junge explains so well, Hitler actually had many positive personal attributes. At one time it was her job to open his personal mail, so she saw the letters he received from the countless women who absolutely swooned over him. And the only time I doubted her veracity was when she claimed not to understand why. Her own story - that she so readily agreed to become one of his secretaries - shows that she understood his attraction all too well. Not just to women but to Germans in general.

And that's precisely the point! We don't want to believe that Hitler was anything like us "normal" people. We don't want to believe that a man who caused so much destruction and suffering could have any redeeming qualities at all, much less be perceived as highly attractive. We're much more comfortable putting him on a shelf and labeling him as something unique and different, an inhuman monster quite apart from us "ordinary" people. We do the same with the German people of that era. Unlike us noble Americans, with our humanitarianism and respect for personal freedoms and rights, the Germans of 1933-1945 were stupid, gullible, unthinking automatons, blind to the obvious evil of their leaders. Why, that could never happen to us!

It damn well COULD happen to us. That's why Frau Junge's story is so important. Watch this movie.

I'm an American, and to my knowledge this show hasn't yet made it to US TV so I can't actually review it. I've only seen their now infamous clip on alkali metals.

Last night I saw the Mythbusters demonstrate that Brainiac faked their spectacular explosions with rubidium and cesium metal. I have to say that I'm more than a little dismayed. Like many people, I'd been taken. I remember thinking that the rubidium and cesium explosions seemed well out of proportion to the much less violent lithium, sodium and potassium reactions. But hydrogen/air/heat mixtures are highly unpredictable, and besides who can argue with empirical evidence?

Lying just isn't cool, even (especially) in the cause of science education. There's no greater sin in science and engineering than faking a demo.

Now I fully understand that "Brainiac: Science Abuse" is more about entertainment than science, and some forms of entertainment such as magic rely entirely on deception. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you label it as such.

But just as the occasional magician crosses the line when he claims real supernatural powers, so does an show like Brainiac when it claims to be doing real science experiments.

Now if I ever do get to watch this show, I'll be too busy continually wondering if what I'm seeing is real or fake to enjoy it. It will certainly ruin whatever educational value it might have had.

Shame on you guys.

Basically, that's pretty much it: a totally unsympathetic 9-year-old boy gets into a pointless fight with his equally unsympathetic mom and has a serious psychotic break with reality during which he imagines visiting an island inhabited by a bunch of remarkably neurotic monsters.

Maybe it's because I didn't know this book as a kid, but I found it hard to care about anyone in this movie, "real" or imaginary. I found it hard to even stay awake.

I don't mind "dark" movies about troubled characters. Some movies about mental illness, like "A Beautiful Mind", are masterpieces. But there has to be a point or message, an achievement or gained insight, something that makes the trip worthwhile. And I just didn't see one in this movie.

In an otherwise good review, loleralacartelort7890 says "The truth is that the Americans use a secret aluminum-anti-radiation-alloy. It is not that well-known. And the exact specifications are a secret. And why is it a secret: Well, why should they reveal it back then?? If they where in a space race with the Russians, then it would be VERY dumb to reveal that they had new technology that could shield crew against radiation." This is completely incorrect. There is (and was) no "secret" to radiation protection in Apollo. The design and construction of the Apollo Command Module has long been publicly available. It uses a lightweight "honeycomb" of aluminum and stainless steel. The entire outer surface (except the windows of course) is covered with a heat shield made of a phenolic resin, thicker on the bottom that faces forward during re-entry. These materials are actually *better* at stopping the kind of radiation we have in space (charged particles) than lead, which is better suited to stopping ionizing photons like X-rays and gamma rays.

Space radiation is a definite problem for *long term* space flight because of the risk of big solar flares. But it simply wasn't a serious threat to the Apollo astronauts. The Command Module gave them pretty good protection during their brief (1/2 hour or so) passage through the Van Allen belts. They all carried dosimeters so we know exactly how much radiation they each received: no more than 1.5 rem, and usually much less. Of the 24 men who flew to the Moon (12 of whom landed), 18 are still alive. Only two have died from cancer: Alan Shepard (leukemia) and Jack Swigert (bone cancer). The rest died from heart attacks, pancreatitis (Roosa), and a motorcycle accident (Conrad). These are actually pretty good statistics for a group of men now in their late 70s (Shepard would be 86).

First, a caveat: I drove the EV1 for five years, a Gen 1 from 1998-2000, and a Gen 2 from 2000-2003. I loved those cars, and I know many of the people in this movie. Like them, I hated to lose my car. So I probably can't give a wholly objective view of this movie.

That said, I think it did an excellent job of portraying the sad, infuriating story of the EV1. It's told mainly from the view of the highly dedicated EV1 drivers, but contrary views from the auto makers are also heard. It methodically demolished the various negative myths about electric cars, especially the oft-heard claim that "nobody wants them".

A market trial of a new product that manages to sell or lease every single unit made available, despite virtually no marketing, strictly limited availability, a lease-only policy and an actively hostile sales force, to highly enthusiastic customers would normally be considered a major success. But as the movie explains, GM had a strong incentive to "prove" that no one wanted electric cars: that was the loophole, the "escape hatch" in the California zero-emission vehicle mandate.

GM was taken aback by the strongly positive response to the EV1. Even when a long waiting list developed, GM refused to build more. With a straight face they maintained their position that "no one wants electric cars." The success of the EV1 was a major threat to their strategy to eliminate the ZEV mandate, so the program had to end. GM and the other automakers sued to repeal the mandate. As soon as they succeeded, GM took all the EV1s off the road, and in a heartbreaking scene, crushed them. Offers from the drivers to buy the EV1s for their residual value were totally ignored.

The movie also depicts the hydrogen fuel cell as a "bait and switch" tactic used by the car companies to eliminate the ZEV mandate in exchange for a vague promise to develop fuel cell vehicles at some future time, which always seems to be 20 years off.

This movie is an excellent companion to "An Inconvenient Truth". That movie explains the threat of uncontrolled CO2 emissions, but it doesn't really suggest any fixes. This movie shows one highly promising contribution to the fix that died far before its time. But maybe this movie will raise public awareness, and the EV will someday be resurrected.

I can't think of any movie made in the past 5 years more deserving of the full treatment by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang than this one. Cheesy dialogue, ludicrous plot holes, cardboard characters, overused disaster movie clichés, bad acting; you name it, this movie has it.

The bad science appears in almost the first frame. And it gets much, much worse. But we can count on Hollywood getting the science wrong, because (it is claimed, probably correctly) most movie goers are so scientifically illiterate that it just doesn't matter. Besides, expecting Hollywood to respect the laws of physics is about as reasonable as expecting George W. Bush to respect the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights; it just Ain't Gonna Happen. So I won't belabor the point.

But what about the things that movie audiences are supposed to care about? Stuff like character development, plot and dialogue? Well, this movie doesn't seem to think they're terribly important either. In this regard, this movie is just the latest in a long line of cheesy, big-budget disaster movies such as the Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Earthquake!, Airport 1975, Armageddon and so on.

The major subplot of Day After Tomorrow centers on the efforts of an ultra-smart scientist in Washington DC to reach his teenage son, holed up in the New York Public Library with a bunch of fellow nerds as they ride out a cataclysmic snowstorm. How do we know he's ultra-smart? He speaks at UN conferences and personally advises the Vice President and the President. (We're already starting to suspect that maybe he's not so smart.) And what does our ultra-smart hero do? Disregarding his own emphatic advice to the President that people should either flee south or (if they're too far north) ride out the storm indoors, he sets out for New York to find his son. What exactly does he plan to do once he gets there, especially since it quickly becomes clear that his son is a lot smarter and better able to take care of himself than his dad? This is never explained.

Naturally, such subplots has to have a happy ending, so there is no suspense at all in this particular story line. That leaves a lot of admittedly fun special effects, such as Los Angeles being destroyed by tornadoes, a Russian freighter cruising past the New York Public Library, and a shot of the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the ice. (When I saw this, I just had to say "They blew it up! Damn them all, they blew it up!", much to my wife's annoyance.)

The directors throw in a few obvious jokes and comic reversals, such as the discovery of the US Tax Code as a particularly suitable source of fuel for a fireplace, but the unintentional hilarities were far more numerous.

Don't waste your money seeing this one in a theater unless you're a special effects junkie. Rent the DVD when it comes out, gather a bunch of friends, and do your best to imitate Joel and the 'bots on MST3K.

I must confess up front that I'm not a horse racing fan. Personally, it has always seemed like a form of ritualized animal cruelty practiced for entertainment. Nor do I think much of any kind of professional sports.

But even if I were a racing fan, I'd still have to say that this is just another trite, predictable potboiler from the Hollywood schmaltz factory. Even though I knew nothing about the history of the real Seabiscuit, nothing in this movie came with the least bit of surprise or real suspense. Even Red Pollard's major accident was fully telegraphed well in advance; that sort of plot development is absolutely de rigeur in a movie like this! But I'm sure none of this kept a lot of people from crying over how wonderful it is.

Anyone even mildly annoyed by the character of Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation will want to throw their TV out the window when they see this turkey. Remember how, week after week, young Wesley would always find some amazing way to pull the Enterprise out of trouble and all those highly trained and experienced Starfleet officers could only stand around and gape in wonder? Well, this movie is far, far worse. Anyone even remotely aware of the real history of Project Mercury will retch at the liberties taken with basic facts by this movie.

I don't expect historical accuracy in a film like this. But this movie is full of tired cliches (such as James Woods' German scientist) and ludicrous plot holes that even kids should see right through. For example, our hero discovers that a corrupt NASA manager has sabotaged a launch to gain a lucrative position with an aerospace contractor. Now one would ordinarily expect someone in such a position to immediately inform the appropriate security officials, right? Not in this movie. No, the kid, his father and a few of his co-workers secretly fix the rocket themselves!

I suppose this movie might amuse some very, very young kids, but that's about it.

This is an outstanding production. And I think it no coincidence that it wasn't produced in the US.

Over 50 years later, American emotions still run high about our use of nuclear weapons against Japan; the recent backlash against the Smithsonian exhibit is proof. This film is a nuanced, balanced, objective treatment with, as far as I can tell, remarkable historical accuracy. One sees just how simplistic and myopic the leaders of both sides were as they made (or avoided making) momentous decisions that affected the entire future of the human race. The one voice of reason, scientist Leo Szilard, is brushed off with hardly a hearing.

This film is an effective indictment of our human propensity to place enormous powers in the hands of just a few individuals. I doubt any American producer could have made it.

The film deftly mixes historical footage with re-enacted scenes using actors. Normally this sort of thing is rather jarring, but here it works. Even the transitions between the real Truman in newsreel footage and the actor playing him work well.

I've watched this short a dozen times, and I still laugh out loud at the main gag. This film is comic perfection.

Remember how the Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons always looks plaintively at the camera whenever he makes a mistake, the pupils of his eyes narrowing just before he falls off the cliff, the boulder crushes him, or the dynamite explodes in his face?

That was the kind of touch that made those old cartoons great. And it is clear from this film that the spirits of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and the other classic animators are alive and well at Pixar.

As you can tell from the other comments, this show is not for everyone. It's definitely not for kids or religious bluenoses. But if you like your humor with a highly irreverent and politically incorrect edge, this show is one of the best.

Yes, "Son of the Beach" is a "Baywatch" parody. But that doesn't do it justice. It's a Baywatch parody that mixes elements of "Police Squad!", "Get Smart", the 1960s "Batman" TV series and "South Park" with Timothy Stack's own brand of humor.

The show has its share of sight gags, but clever dialogue is its real strength. Almost every line is a sexual double entendre, tortured word play or horrendous pun. It helps that most of these fly right over the heads of the characters who, save one, are far too thick headed to catch on. The one exception is straight-laced, overly serious Kimberlee Clark (Kimberly Oja), whose embarassed frowns and double takes are always fun to watch.

The leader of the "SPF-30" lifeguard unit is Notch Johnson, played by chief writer Timothy Stack. A running gag is that everyone sees and treats Johnson as a perfect physical specimen even though Stack is middle aged, balding, has an overbite and is definitely not in the best possible physical condition. Stack gives himself most of the show's best lines.

All the other characters are humorously broad caricatures. Chip Rommel (Roland Kickinger, obviously cast for his close resemblance to a young Arnold Schwartzenegger) is a good-natured but brain-dead hunk who's surprised to learn that America and his native Germany had fought wars with each other. His incomplete command of English is always getting him into trouble, and he never knows why. (Example: he decides to help kids with attention deficit disorder. He calls his program "Chip Rommel's Concentration Camp").

Anita Massengil (Lisa Banes) is an evil, sadistic scheming politician in the Cruella DeVille mold. B. J. Cummings (Jaime Bergman) is a naive bimbo from the rural south. Jamaica St. Croix (Leila Arcieri) is a streetwise black from an urban ghetto. A late addition was Porcelain Bidet (Amy Weber), a bitchy, jealous, gold-digging bimbo.

All in all, if you are not easily offended and revel in outrageous, politically incorrect humor, you will love this show.