Reviews

First things first, there's a public domain copy of M on archive.org (I guess it's legal at least in some parts of the world).

I do not like thrillers or movies about assassins. Usually the bad guy is invincible up until the final scenes. Usually no attention is given to the relatives of the victims, those who have to endure the pain for the loss. Usually violence is depicted in all gory details, and sound is innaturally loud and sudden (nowadays they mix animal cries into human screams to make them more unsettling, ain't that cheap...)

Then I get to see M. A plot that unravels with a slow pace, and no music, like that thing called "real life" often does. All the violence is inferred, not fed to the viewer instincts. It's essential, but not pretentious nor cold film making: most characters show some kind of humanity, the monster, the victim and their relatives, of course, but also the crooks and the police. I like the way actors performad back in the 30s, that seems kinda exotic now and may affect positively my opinion of the movie. Yet after watching M, Hitchcock approach seems more stimulating but in an artificial way, and newer stuff of the same genre seems almost irrelevant.

The ending of the movie is terrible, with a mere repetition of something already said, but I read another comment saying it was tacked on. Nevermind, I'd have rated it excellent anyway.

M must also be one of the first movies with a "there is no cop when you need one" line. Funny I saw this one right after The omega man, so I was quick to notice that.

An interesting dystopian future, a plot with maybe too many elements but not so cryptic or nonsensical as some IMDb comments would make you believe. OK, too many tits, guns and killings to be a family flick...

I do not agree with the SciFi/Fantasy label. A strangely built computer, a flying head and mind capabilities are not enough to get into the fantasy genre. I suspect that the traditional console full of LEDs is as unlikely as Mr Connery's costume, in the distant future, so either all SciFi is Fantasy too or Zardoz is not Fantasy.

Some overacting and some scenes show a bit of self irony, too, so I would not consider them faults. The Zardoz logo is also cool, predates some video game graphics by 15 years or so, what do you want more from a low budget film? You can also do like me and adopt the ZAAAARDOOOOZ low scream when you're too angry for a simple "D'oh!". It works :D

Despite being the fourth of the series (and you all know how easy is for followups to become stagnant and tiresome) this episode of the adventures of "ragionier" Fantozzi is funny and well conceived: slapstick comedy, surreal situations, and the usual social satire and performance from the actors that made Fantozzi a cult.

If you want to understand the true nature of Italy and Italians in the seventies and eighties, I strongly suggest seeing these movies: they were surely inspired by real life stories.

Newer Fantozzi movies, there are like 4 of them, are decent comic films but they cannot match this and the previous ones (with maybe the exception of "Superfantozzi", a history of the world that I don't consider as being really part of the series).

In this movie the year 2022 looks much like the seventies. This is amusing at first, but soon the viewer perceives how very different that decadent futuristic world is despite the appearances, how many things that we take for granted could become unavailable.

Characters often interact in a peculiar way, with no tact or manners or respect. I believe this is intentional, not bad acting. After all, who witnessed the social changes in the 60s and 70s may well assume that by 2022 an overpopulated city's inhabitants behave like that.

I didn't like most of the action scenes, apart the death of the priest: too cheap even for the seventies. The plot isn't too polished. But the great scenes and ideas - like the death of Sol, the way rioters and dead bodies are dealt with, the "furniture" - outweigh the shortcomings of this film.

8 out of 10.

The first science fiction work I ever saw was Space:1999, and i was six. Italian Tv had co-produced the stuff so it was aired around 6pm, not a very appropriate slot to broadcast scenes of people burned alive by their commander's lasergun... I probably had nightmares about it, but missing a single episode was out of the question. I got to see some first season episodes some twenty years later and I appreciated the show even more. I don't recall much of the second season apart Maya and Tony, so let me concentrate on the first one.

The electronic soundtrack and the opening credits (a kind of "Pulp Fiction" style guitar alternated with an orchestral version of the same theme) were very original, as it was the look of the Eagles: they are solid transport spacecrafts but at the same time one can see their pilots from the outside, so that Eagles seem vulnerable... well, they are, most of the time. Base Alpha is a large, well lit and comfortable place (some stylish seventies furniture, too) which is home and prison at the same time.

Anyway the most peculiar aspect is the atmosphere in Moonbase Alpha: The crew is shocked for what happened to them, unprepared to deal with the future, they don't agree with each other, they make mistakes, they often prefer not to show much emotion. No "Space as the last frontier" rhetoric, here. Space is cold and mistakes are lethal. That increases the realism even if 1999 is well past. Action progresses like a slowly unfolding bad dream.

Don't believe people complaining about bad acting. They just expect things that Space:1999 wasn't going to offer. The actors performed well. For example, Commander Koenig (the symbolism in the name is evident) is waiting for the "black sun" to swallow the base, he's talking with Prof. Bergman. He's about to break into tears but manages to restrain himself so that his eyes show only a little trace of what he's feeling underneath: A very good performance from Martin Landau, nearly impossible to find in better rated SF series/movies.

What? a Ren and Stimpy rip-off? isn't that cute... BUT IT'S WRONG!

If at all, this is a *parody* of that kind of cartoons and it appeals to a different (and probably smaller) audience. This is obvious in "Cartoon canines" episode: the two dogs learn how to be "funny", Ren and Stimpy way, in an army camp (Drill Sergeant: "No cutesy in my corp, only funny cartoons! You know, lots of butt jokes!").

If i recall correctly, at one time the dogs even morph into something very close to Ren and Stimpy! From the drawing style i suspect this is one of the first episodes to be conceived, even if it was aired later.

2 stupid dogs was made with a deceptively innocent animation style: smooth shapes, reassuring colors, attention to detail. The jazzy soundtrack is perfect, and the sound effects are purposefully unrelated to the action they try to describe.

The stories are not silly, but minimal (some episodes can be narrated in one sentence) with exaggerated particulars. They can be poetic, satyric, just plain silly and, parents beware, with some extremely sick or revolting details. Usually i can't stand revolting stuff that I usually perceive as a cheap way to make things interesting by tickling istinct, but here it's just the authors' fantasy running amok. I enjoy every single episode. Nobody dare to miss the one in black and white!

Little Dog is the best characterization of a little dog i have ever seen. Big Dog, my personal fave, seems just a lazy glutton, but when he decides to talk... listen to him as a foreign ambassador ("Drop all cares about politics, business, and the foreign situation. You will be astonished to find the world will manage to struggle on, somehow.") The big man and Red are awesome too! gee... better i stop writing this and watch a Two stupid dogs videotape for the hundredth time.

Vote: 10/10

This is a virtually unknown movie. I taped it off a test feed by an Italian pay TV, many years ago. No wonder, cause it deals with prostitution and sexual violence, contains nudity, defines international drug traffic and other crimes as official US government activities... it even had censorship problems.

The story: women in the rapidly evolving Italian society of the first seventies want to have their sexual appetites satisfied, and the "American Love Company" corporation is not going to miss the opportunity, so they send a veteran of the field to estabilish a new branch and recruit local workforce. Expect a lot of nonsense, random references to famous films and characters, and a light hearted approach to just about everything.

The inversion of roles between male and female triggers many funny situations and bad jokes, but the atmosphere is quite different from the typical Italian B-movie of the same age: "Bordella" is more original, daring and better produced. It also contains the most humorous suicide attempt you can think of.

Italians looking at the cast overview will be surprised to find so many locally famous names. Their performance is good, considering the genre. The soundtrack could well suit a gangster movie, all the songs are cool.

Don't miss the opportunity to see this movie (that is, if you have any), and see how "The Full Monty" could have been written twenty years earlier.

I don't care about the sixties, nor about drugs, nor even about Jane Fonda's very fine figure, as one can find much more explicit stuff on the net nowadays. But Barbarella is a cult movie. Things like the "mathmos", the excessive machine, the "essence of man", the blind angel, the voice of the on-board computer (again, in the Italian version), the villain named Durand Durand... things that won't be easy to forget.

The rhythm is slow, but this isn't an action movie. The acting is appropriate: I don't expect characters inspired by a comic strip to act differently. Deeper and more complex characters would have been completely out of place (and would have prevented some benevolent satire to emerge).

The same goes for the atmosphere and the special effects. With age they become more evocative. Who cares about realism? By the way, is a fur lined spacecraft interior less realistic than people dueling with lightsabers?

Come on, IMDb people, give this work of art the rating it deserves.