Movie Review: Speed Racer

Go (away), Speed Racer.

Speed Racer, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Starring Emile Hirsch, Nicholas Elia, and Susan Sarandon. Warner Bros. (2008). 135 minutes. Rated PG. USCCB Rating is A-II--Adults and Adolescents.

D.G.D.: Well, we did it. We sat for two hours and fifteen minutes through Speed Racer. Snuffles here is the anime fan, so I'll let him start us off. Any opening comments, Snuffles?

Snuffles: Egad.

D.G.D.: Okay, then. The story follows Speed, played by Emile Hirsch, fresh from his less superficial role in Into the Wild, the middle son of Mom (Susan Sarandon) and Pops Racer (John Goodman), who own a mom-and-pop car-building enterprise called Racer Motors. Idolizing his big brother Rex (Scott Porter), who may or may not have died in a car crash after having a falling-out with Pops, Speed has become a talented race car driver, and given his name, he probably had few other employment opportunities. Approached by corporate magnate Royalton (Roger Allam) after winning a big race, Speed learns to his horror that most races are fixed by unscrupulous businessmen. Determined to win a big race without corporate sponsorship or approval, Speed enters a grueling cross-country rally, the Crucible, against his father's wishes. Helping him are the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox), who may or may not be his long-lost brother, Inspector Detector (Benno Fürmann), who is determined to uncover corruption in the racing industry, and his girlfriend Trixie, who is played by Christina Ricci, probably the closest thing to a living, breathing anime female.

Snuffles, anything?

Snuffles: Egad.

D.G.D.: You can do better than that.

Snuffles: I am convinced this movie was designed to give ADD to all the children and migraines to all the grown-ups. It must have been the Wachowskis' goal to deliver seizures like that Pokemon episode. By the time we left the theater, I felt as though I had been beaten over the head repeatedly with a rubber mallet. Every editing and visual trick in anime and out of it is employed every thirty seconds in this overloaded movie, from fast zooms to speed lines to weird wipes to nonlinear layered flashbacks. As for the race sequences, which ought to be the highlight, they look like a video game--specifically, they remind me of clunky Tomb Raider clones from the late 90s where the camera won't stay in a good place so you can tell what's going on. The colors are eye-piercingly bright and the set designs look like something out of Clockwork Orange. Even the end credits are gaudy with flickering lights and about four different remixes of the Speed Racer theme song. Besides that, the simplistic plot is full of extraneous details; in particular, a lengthy, convoluted, and unimportant backstory is delivered in a rapidfire monologue impossible to interpret. This is over two hours of sensory overload. You'll want Dramamine, or better yet, you'll want a different movie.

D.G.D.: You know, I actually enjoyed it. The candy-colored universe is visually appealing, the acting is all-around solid, and the script, if not exactly deep, is poignant enough, certainly enough for Speed Racer. I agree that the story could use some trimming, but it's not really hard to follow. Even that convoluted monologue, difficult as it is, gets across its basic message. I think people are assuming that because it's called Speed Racer, they should be able to turn their brains off and let their eyes glaze over, but that's not the case. Contrary to your claim that it's made for ADD, it demands a little concentration and attentiveness, but I think that concentration pays off. It is possible to follow the plot and it is possible to follow the racing sequences if you're willing to try. What you have in the end is a zany and overlong but involving story with plenty of imaginative visuals.

Snuffles: Imaginative, yes, but overboard. It isn't that they decided to get inventive with the camera or color palette, but that they did it too much. If the Wachowskis could show some restraint and employ their techniques judiciously so that the visuals add substance instead of mere slickness, they could probably do a fine job of interpreting anime to live action, much as they did in the first of their anime-inspired Matrix movies. But if their future films look like Speed Racer, they'll be giving a lot of headaches and little else.

D.G.D.: But even you have to admit that Speed Racer isn't the most involved story to begin with.

Snuffles: No, it isn't, which is exactly why the movie should be shorter and sweeter. To really translate it into modern live-action film, Speed Racer needs some violence, physics-bending gadgets, family time, and a little fancy cinematography, but it doesn't need these spastic, trippy sequences and it doesn't need a complicated script sprinkled with misplaced profanity. Speaking of which, there's a scene where Speed's younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) gives the finger to Royalton, and I felt as if that was from the Wachowskis to us, as in, "You want to understand this movie? Eff you!" They're so busy revelling in their technological virtuosity, the audience can just go--

D.G.D.: Ahem. To change topic a little, I wanted to get your opinion on the matter of casting. Speed Racer was originally a Japanese series, Mach Go Go Go, yet most of the cast in the movie is Caucasian, and it's filmed in English.

Snuffles: Well, I don't really care. Nobody seems to be talking about it, so I guess nobody else cares, either. Speed Racer's name in Japanese was Go Mifune, but they Anglicized all the names in the American release, and most of the American kids who first watched the cartoon in 1967 probably didn't know it was a Japanese import anyway. Of course, I know you, so what you're really asking about is my general opinion on the appearance of many Japanese cartoon characters, who frequently have huge eyes, long legs, and sometimes even blond hair. The theory certainly exists that this is an adoption and exaggeration of Western standards of beauty; in a related matter, surgery to remove the epicanthic fold from the eye to make it look larger has been popular in Japan, and the famed animator Hayao Miyazaki once said, controversially, that "the Japanese hate their own faces." I'm not sure I want to get into that subject myself, as this is likely a more complex matter than either you or I appreciate. It's worth pointing out that in anime and manga, character appearances are often more fluid than in Western cartoons; characters may, for example, sprout catlike features or become super-deformed in order to convey certain moods. This fluidity of appearance is perhaps most evident in the so-called "body horror," in which a character's body may go out of control and become grossly disproportionate, as in the climax of Akira. But putting all of that aside, if the aim is to reproduce the look of the Speed Racer cartoon in a live-action movie, then casting Caucasian actors makes a certain kind of sense: with the costuming and makeup, the actors in Speed Racer look remarkably like their animated counterparts.

D.G.D.: You sound as if you're more open to translating anime to live action than I would have expected.

Snuffles: I'm not closed to it, and it's been done before, but I wonder what the point is in this case. This movie looks so much like a cartoon, I'm unsure why they didn't just make a cartoon instead.

D.G.D.: Ah, but live-action-as-cartoon opens up another realm of visual possibilities, doesn't it? I certainly think it worked in this case, better than it did in, say, Dick Tracy.

Snuffles: That's because you're easily entertained by colored light shows.

D.G.D.: Look who's talking, anime freak.

Snuffles: That's it, time to take you out of the conversation.

D.G.D.: What are you talking about?

Snuffles: I'm talking about attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

D.G.D.: Wha--oh, going into trance...

Snuffles: He'll be gone for a few minutes, so here's my advice. Don't see Speed Racer if you've had a long day, if you're especially tired, or if you're epileptic. That's all I'm saying.

Content Advisory: Some profanity, frequent action violence, brief scatalogical humor

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Speed Racer:

Myth Level: (I still can't figure out what this stupid "rating" is supposed to be)

Quality: Medium-Low (impressive technology produces incoherent, over-the-top visual glut)

Ethics/Religion: Medium (family-friendliness and positive themes clash with crudities in the dialogue)

Movie Review: Iron Man

It's amazing what you can build in a cave.

Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau. Screenplay by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, and Jeff Bridges. Paramount (2008). Runtime 125 minutes. Rated PG-13. USCCB Rating is AIII--Adults.

Read other reviews here.

Considering that it's two movies crammed into one, the new Iron Man is surprisingly good, largely due to the star, Robert Downey, Jr., whose classy lines and flippant delivery keep the chuckles coming throughout what might otherwise have been a load of dull exposition. Because of Downey, competent directing, and a clever if not exactly streamlined script, this film is easily as good as Spider-Man 2, and even surpasses it in sophistication, if not in artistry. This may even be the first superhero movie that didn't make me impatient and fidgety during the backstory, and considering that almost the entire movie is backstory, with a battle stapled to the end in order to get in the requisite explosions, that's quite a feat.

The story follows playboy industrialist Tony Stark (Downey), a genius, womanizer, heavy drinker, and unscrupulous arms dealer captured in Afghanistan (originally Vietnam in the comics) by terrorists who order him to build them a new super-missile. Fortunately, the terrorists are idiots who can't figure out that he's instead building himself a heavily armed exoskeleton in order to effect his escape. The scenes with the terrorists are surprisingly gritty and frightening, but the appearance of genius scientist Yinsen (Shaun Taub), who patches up Stark's war wounds and saves his life by attaching an electromagnet to his chest to keep shrapnel from worming into his heart, reminds us that we're in comic book camp territory.

Trapped in a cave, equipped with primitive tools, and with only Yinsen as his assistant, Stark soon replaces the electromagnet in his chest with a miniature nuclear reactor that also powers his new battlesuit, which inexplicably has a glass window right over his most vulnerable spot, just so we can see how glowey his chest is. Once he makes good his escape, he returns to America with a changed attitude toward war and begins designing a sleeker, flashier version of his exoskeleton in order to hunt down terrorists who have acquired weapons manufactured by his company. Opposing him and appearing only at the movie's tale end in a tacked-on action sequence is Iron Monger, who has a big, clunky, well-armed mecha battlesuit of his own.

Stark is very much a tortured and even selfish hero. Though upon his return from captivity he stops dealing arms and gives up much of his dissolute behavior, he becomes monomaniacally obsessed with hoarding his technological discoveries, believing that if anyone else had a miniature nuclear reactor, an exoskeleton, or advanced weapons, he would inevitably use them for evil. This is in tune with the comics, in which Iron Man spends a good deal of time tracking down and defeating characters who have acquired technology based on his Iron Man suit. When Stark stops manufacturing and selling weapons, viewers may mistakenly believe he has become a pacifist, but that is not the case; as an arms dealer, Stark wanted to make sure only America had his weapons, but as Iron Man, he wants to make sure only he has his weapons. Iron Man is therefore the story of a narcissist whose narcissism is not exactly cured by his traumatic experiences in war. Although a little muddled thanks to the script's misdirected (albeit enormously entertaining) focus on the protagonist's technological inventions rather than his interior life, Stark's less-than-perfect motives as a hero form a believable continuity with his previous life as a decadent playboy, and Downey's consistently charismatic delivery ensures that Stark is likable even when he's dislikable.

Speaking of which (this is the part where the oh-so-clever Catholic sf blogger pats himself on the back for smoothly changing the topic), the Catholic Church has a teaching that for me, as a former Conservative Baptist, was hard to swallow. The Catechism summarizes it, "Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality" (par. 2264). To me, this idea of love of self sounded like empty warm fuzziness at best, narcissism at worst. The command to love others is clear in scripture, but I tended to view love of self with suspicion.

Fortunately, when I went through RCIA, I had a good priest who explained that my suspicions were based on a misunderstanding of love, which is an unselfish desire for what is best for people. Because this desire must be unselfish, it does not permit self-indulgence. Viewed this way, it can be understood that true love of self is a genuine demand of Christian morality and not a recent innovation. Love of self, therefore, is not narcissism. In Iron Man, there can be no doubt that Stark has begun treating himself and others a little better after his trying experiences: his womanizing has essentially ceased, he drinks slushy green shakes, and he is careful in battle to protect and save innocents. He still has a long way to go, of course, but that's what sequels are for, and perfect superheroes are boring anyway.

To change the topic yet again, I'll mention that I was surprised to see so many young girls, around age eight or so, in the theater. When the sex scene happened in the first nine minutes, I was embarrassed that they were there, and during some of the harsher violent sequences, I was embarrassed yet again. As usual, I defer to parents on the issue, but it's not the sort of movie I think of as being appropriate for young children.

Content Advisory: mild sexual content, some coarse language, scenes of torture and surgery, brutal action violence

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Iron Man:

Myth Level: Medium-High (hero journey and comic books and all that)

Quality: Medium-High (give that man an Oscar! Great writing, too, but could we have a smoother plot?)

Ethics/Religion: Medium-High (generally good message, bad person who has a change of heart, etc.)

Kung Fu Night! The Forbidden Kingdom

Hey, where can I find one of those Gates That Are No Gates?

The Forbidden Kingdom, directed by Rob Minkoff. Screenplay by John Fusco. Starring Jet Li, Michael Angarano, and Jackie Chan. Casey Silver Productions: 2008. Rated PG-13. USCCB Rating is AIII--Adults.

Read other reviews here.

Yes, the plot is simple yet somehow over-complicated in execution. Yes, the directing is generally poor. Yes, the movie has unnecessary bookends ripped off from The Never Ending Story or something similar. But then again, who cares? It has a wire-fu fight between Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and that's all you need to know.

The movie opens with Jason Triptikas (Michael Angarano), He of the Perpetually Cracking Voice, a good-natured loser of a high school Kung Fu junkie who just wants to watch his Bruce Lee bootlegs and maybe actually go on a date for a change, but he instead gets mixed up with some generic gangster types and witnesses a murder. Fortunately for him, he is at that point sucked into a fantasy version of ancient China where he learns he is the prophesied Seeker (yeah, "Seeker") destined to return a magic staff to the Monkey King (Jet Li), an immortal warrior turned to stone in a battle with the evil Jade War Lord (Collin Chou), whose fancy-pants armor and heavy eyeshadow mark him as a Most Nefarious Villain.

The fish-out-of-water fantasy hero needs a goofy but capable sidekick--enter Lu Yan, played by Jackie Chan, reprising his sloshed comedic warrior role from Drunken Master. The fish-out-of-water fantasy hero also needs a G-rated romantic interest, preferably one who speaks only in third person and is single-mindedly bent on revenging her parents' death--enter Golden Sparrow, played by Yifei Liu. The fish-out-of-water fantasy hero also needs to run into Jet Li, because if he doesn't, the studio can't advertise this as the first Jet Li/Jackie Chan collaboration. Enter the Silent Monk, who has the necessary misunderstanding with Lu Yan, resulting in a lengthy fight sequence.

Now get world-famous martial arts choreographer Woo-Ping Yuen (or Yuen Woo-Ping; I wish Hollywood would make up its mind), add plenty of lavish set designs and special effects, and let the whole thing go.

The movie has major flaws, but I can think of few action movies that don't. The unnecessary plot complications and uneven exposition are the biggest problems, but easy to overlook, especially since the film is consistently gorgeous eyecandy, albeit in a fakey sort of way: most of the sets look computer-generated, and the Kung Fu involves a lot of wire-work. The target audience is martial arts movie enthusiasts, and they should be pleased just to watch Jackie Chan and Jet Li kick the snot out of each other. Although the cinematography could be better, and in several sequences there's too much happening at once for the audience to comfortably follow it, the fighting is great--it definitely got me pumped, though the action doesn't quite give that crush-a-beer-can-against-your-head-and-wail-on-your-air-guitar level of adrenaline rush that you can get from the action sequences in, say, Fearless or Iron Monkey.

Now, as for the central character, Angarano's Jason, there's a lot of negative buzz on the Internet about Hollywood putting in a Caucasian actor in order to attract a Western audience yada yada, but I believe this buzz misses the point. The basic premise of this movie is standard fantasy stuff: somebody geeky from our world gets sucked through a portal into another world where he stops being geeky, fulfills some prophecy, and defeats a supervillain, after which he returns to our world and applies the valuable life lessons he has learned, especially the How to Beat Up Juvenile Delinquents lesson and the How to Win Babes and Influence People lesson. It's escapism designed for people who share attributes with the central character, and on that level, the movie definitely works. The movie is aimed at young American men who love Kung Fu, so naturally the geeky central character is a young American man who loves Kung Fu. This makes perfect sense to me, though I suppose, since Jackie Chan is in the film, the movie could have plausibly starred a suicidal Japanese schoolgirl instead,* but those girls get sucked through these portals at a rate of about one a week. Why should they hog all the fun?

Content Advisory: Contains some crude humor and lots of stylish action violence.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for The Forbidden Kingdom:

Myth Level: High (hero on quest, magic and immortals, pretty typical stuff)

Quality: Medium-High (very beautiful movie with good production values, uneven presentation)

Ethics/Religion: Medium-High (good themes, some crudity, little problematic material)

*According to Eastern Standard Time, two Japanese girls attempted suicide when they learned of Jackie Chan's marriage. One succeeded.

Kung Fu Night! Kill Zone

Will wait 83 minutes for Kung Fu.

Kill Zone (SPL: Sha Po Lang), directed by Yp Wai Shun. Screenplay by Szeto Kam Yuen and Ng Wai Lun. Starring Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, and Simon Yam. Produced by Carl Chang. Abba Movie Company Limited, 2005. 93 minutes. Unrated.

See other reviews here.

And yet another American distributor feels the peculiar need to tack a generic title onto a Kung Fu movie. What the heck is a "kill zone" and what do kill zones have to do with this film? Thanks to these American distributors, we have a plethora of Fists, Red Dragons, and Legends on the shelves. I'm having trouble telling these movies apart, and believe me, that was difficult enough already.

Kill Zone is probably the most unique martial arts film I've seen in my short time of watching martial arts films, mainly because it made me wait until the last ten minutes to see any martial arts. Normally, that would be damning, but Kill Zone is intriguing enough, it gets away with it. The final fight sequences are just a bonus appended to an already solid movie.

Kill Zone, a cop drama (or, rather, melodrama), opens with Detective Chan Kwok Chun (Simon Yam), who's trying to protect an important witness in a case against ruthless mob boss Wong Po (Sammo Hung). Detective Chan has a personal interest in the case, in that the witness's young daughter is his own goddaughter, but in spite of his efforts, Wong has the witness assassinated along with the witness's entire family (except the aforementioned daughter, of course), an event that sends Detective Chan over the edge and starts him down the road of corruption. When Chan discovers he has an inoperable brain tumor, he and his team of cops decide to put Wong in jail at any cost, even if they have to commit murder and forge evidence to do it.

Since Chan is dying, Inspector Ma Kwan (Donnie Yen) arrives to replace him. At first, Ma appears to be the good cop, but we soon learn he has a questionable past, and it isn't long before he's sucked into the shady dealings.

As the image of the policemen grows worse, the story brings out the nicer side of Wong's character: he is one of those family-man mob bosses, a doting husband and proud new father whose cell phone plays a lullaby whenever it rings. Nonetheless, he remains consistently vicious when it comes to his enemies, especially those in the police department.

Everything in the film is over the top: characters' faces distort into masks of agony as music swells, lingering shots and still frames depict pining looks, and then, of course, the movie climaxes with two brutal, brilliantly choreographed fight sequences. The first is between martial arts superstar Donnie Yen as Ma Kwan and the less famous but highly skilled Kenji Tanigaki, who plays a nasty, monosyllabic bodyguard who speaks softly and carries a big knife. By the time they're finished, they've managed to spray an entire alleyway with red corn syrup. That's the warm-up for the fight between Donnie Yen and the movie's other famous martial arts giant, Sammo Hung, the aforementioned Wong Po. The combined result of these sequences is a lot of broken glass, a lot of blood, and me in a fetal position.

(Spoilers follow.)

According to David Cornelius with Hollywood Bitchslap, the movie moves in "the grey zones," but to my own mind, this is incorrect; rather, the film deals in stark blacks and whites, but mostly blacks. The family-man mob boss is still a mob boss, and the cops, though they have their redeeming moments, are still relentless and underhanded. By the time the movie is over, none of them has gotten away: most of the corrupt police officers have been gutted (literally), and even though Ma defeats Wong in the movie's final fight sequence, Wong rises up afterwards and tosses Ma out a window--onto a car holding his wife and son. After realizing he has inadvertently killed his family in the process of killing his nemesis, Wong sits over his shattered crime empire and weeps.

Viewed from one angle, this is sick and a little amateurish, but viewed from another, it is an interesting spin on the tropes of the Kung Fu film genre: normally, the most virtuous warrior with the most just cause will also have the best Kung Fu and will defeat the bad guy in a one-on-one battle at the end, just to further prove that, yes, he really is the most virtuous and has the most just cause and therefore has a right to soundly kick the butt of nearly everyone else in the universe in order to avenge the death of his master/sister/girlfriend/third cousin. But what do you do in a Kung Fu movie in which nobody is virtuous or just? Obviously, you punish everybody--and note, too, that the death of Wong's family is ironically symmetrical with the murder of the witness and his family at the film's beginning.

The movie isn't quite over yet; in the final scene, Detective Chan (somehow still alive) is standing on the beach with his goddaughter, where he finally succumbs to the brain tumor that's been killing him. The girl continues playing in the waves, unaware that her godfather is dying behind her. So, when the movie is over, all the sinners are dead or punished, and only the innocents live on. The movie's prime theme could be summed up with any number of platitudinous but important maxims: crime doesn't pay, the ends do not justify the means, what goes around comes around.

Kill Zone also has a strong sense of the corrupting influence of evil, as portrayed through its policemen who have dealt with criminals for so long that they have become indistinguishable from them. The movie carries a sense that only the oblivious can remain innocent. The young girl on the beach is one example: though she is the daughter of the witness killed at the beginning of the movie, she was so traumatized by the murder that she has no memory of it (I know what you're thinking, but I said this was a melodrama, didn't I?). Another example is a character from Ma's past: Ma had once punched a suspect so hard that the suspect suffered brain damage and, as a result, became good natured but mentally disabled, innocent and unaware.

(Spoilers stop.)

The movie's connection between innocence and ignorance is an interesting one. In the sf community, several authors and others discussed whether or not such a connection exists in a series of essays on Young Adult fiction at SF Signal. (And just so we're clear, "Young Adult" here actually means "early teens.") John C. Wright thinks, and I agree, that the best essay on the subject comes from sf legend Orson Scott Card:

It seems to me that if YA writers want to write about adult stuff, they should change category. Nothing stops young readers from following them into the adult shelves. When the YA label is placed on a book, it's a promise to parents, teachers, and librarians that certain standards are being adhered to. This is not a trivial matter. There is genuine damage to some young readers from being exposed too early to sexual or overly violent material. Other young readers seem to be unharmed. But the writer is in no position to judge the maturity of each reader. [more...]

In other words, protecting the innocence of children (we'll talk about adults in a moment) involves protecting them from some knowledge that they are unprepared to handle. This thinking is in tune with the teaching of the Church as well: in 1995, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a document entitled "The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality," which includes a section on "Learning Stages" that reads, in part:

It can be said that a child is in the stage described in John Paul II's words as "the years of innocence" from about five years of age until puberty - the beginning of which can be set at the first signs of changes in the boy or girl's body (the visible effect of an increased production of sexual hormones). This period of tranquility and serenity must never be disturbed by unnecessary information about sex. During those years, before any physical sexual development is evident, it is normal for the child's interests to turn to other aspects of life. The rudimentary instinctive sexuality of very small children has disappeared. Boys and girls of this age are not particularly interested in sexual problems, and they prefer to associate with children of their own sex. So as not to disturb this important natural phase of growth, parents will recognize that prudent formation in chaste love during this period should be indirect, in preparation for puberty, when direct information will be necessary. [more...]

A similar principle could be applied to violence or other potentially disturbing subject matter from which it is prudent to protect young children (I wouldn't recommend taking them to see Kill Zone, for example).

Now as for adults, I refer to the Catechism:

Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin--an inclination to evil that is called 'concupiscence'. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle. [par. 405]

The presence of this concupiscence means that the battle against sin is to a large extent an interior one, and that is why Christians are to avoid what are called "near occasions of sin," that is, avoidable situations in which a person would be tempted to sin. Such near occasions could include the acquisition of unnecessary and potentially perverting information.

However, note also the words of Christ in Matthew 10.16: "Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves" (NAB). Here, we see that Jesus expects his followers to be innocent, but does not expect them to be a bunch of naïfs. This is especially true of those who perform certain necessary functions such as police work; because of the nature of this work, police officers are necessarily knowledgeable of, and frequently exposed to, certain kinds of evil. Such exposure is necessary, but, if not mitigated against with the cultivation of virtue, self-control, and an active spiritual life, can potentially result in lasting damage, even if the damage is not as graphic as that in Kill Zone.

Content Advisory: Contains graphic violence, copious blood, brief nudity, and potentially disturbing themes.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Kill Zone (SPL: Sha Po Lang):

Quality: Medium-High (good writing, good production values, good directing; it works if you don't mind the corniness)

Myth Level: Medium (some universal themes and some twists on the conventions)

Ethics/Religion: Medium-High (difficult to interpret, but appears to contain a good message about the devastating consequences of immorality)

Movie Review: Cloverfield

Bring Dramamine.

Cloverfield, directed by Matt Reeves. Screenplay by Drew Goddard. Starring Lizzy Caplan, Lily Ford, and T. J. Miller. Produced by J. J. Abrams and Bryan Burk. Bad Robot, 2008. Runtime 84 minutes. Rated PG-13. USCCB Rating is AIII--Adults.

Read other reviews here.

Cloverfield is a smart retread of an old idea--a monster comes out of nowhere and stomps a city while people run around screamng and the military creates further mayhem by ineffectively trying to blow the monster up. In the midst of the chaos, Cloverfield offers a small human drama: a man (Michael Stahl-David) goes back into the thick of danger in order to rescue the woman he loves (Odette Yustman), a small group of friends follow him, and they take along an indestructible video camera. The blockheaded "cameraman," Hud (T. J. Miller), offers a humorously deadpan commentary throughout and deals with his own unrequited affection for a woman (Lizzy Caplan).

Cloverfield's various elements, taken individually, are pedestrian. The monster is nameless and generic, the characters are unoriginal and flat, the plot is by-the-numbers monster movie fare, and the script contains not a single memorable line. However, when these elements are put together, captured on what looks like a camcorder, combined with the convincing acting of a mostly unknown cast, and competently directed by Matt Reeves, they take on a surprising immediacy. I cannot remember the last time I saw an sf or fantasy film that so completely suspended my disbelief.

The acting has none of the cheesiness typical of monster films. Each of the actors genuinely appears to be an average joe caught in a horrible circumstance. The special effects are perfect and never distract. None of the CGI creatures or explosions appear fake. Even the questionable cinematography works to the movie's benefit: though intentionally badly framed, the cameras always capture exactly what we need to see so that the tilted shots and blurred images have a curious power. Even the script, though leaden, has an ending symmetrical with its beginning, satisfyingly concluding a story that would seem to be impossible to conclude satisfyingly.

If we think about it too hard, it's obvious this could never be a real home video. This camera takes abuse no real camera could survive. Somehow, Hud keeps filming even when dragging a wounded comrade by both hands or when engaged in hand-to-hand combat with giant killer crab/spider thingies.

Probably the movie's greatest drawback is its slow opening. The movie begins with a going-away party where Hud is stalking around with a camera, interviewing twenty-something characters and gossiping about other people's love lives. This lasts a good eighteen minutes and will fail to interest anyone who isn't a fan of MTV's The Real World. Though over-long, this sequence has its clever moments, and fortunately for all of us, it ends with a big explosion and the now-famous image of the Statue of Liberty's head lying in the street. From then on, the movie is good.

The shaky camera work may disturb some viewers; though I enjoyed it, I won't be quick to see it again, and I think we need a moratorium on this style of fake-umentary. Though it's inevitable, I have no wish to see Cloverfield II: I'm not sure the Blair Witch-meets-Godzilla concept can work twice.

Perhaps the film's greatest asset--and the basis for its plot--is a depiction of heroism inspired by love. The central characters, though shallow and thick-headed, manage to be heroes when they find the people they love most are in danger. Ultimately, in spite of the widespread destruction, that makes this a positive movie about self-sacrifice and redemption. Listen closely to the dialogue at the end if you don't believe me.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Cloverfield::

Myth Level: Medium-High (classic plot and characters, heroics)

Quality: High (an almost seamless production with a cool gimmick and a good cast)

Ethics/Religion: Medium (some vulgarity under stress, an implied premarital sexual encounter, positive depiction of bravery and generally good themes, some gore and scary moments)

Movie Review: Juno

Wait a minute. Someone told me this had space aliens.

Juno, directed by Jason Reitman. Screenplay by Diablo Cody. Starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Garner. Dancing Elk Productions: 2007. Runtime 97 minutes. Rated PG-13. USCCB Rating is AIII--Adults.

See other reviews here.

The rest of the Catholic blogosphere has already swooned over this movie and moved on to better things, but here at The Sci Fi Catholic, we're proud to be always one step behind the pack. Critics are virtually unanimous in praising this movie, so in order to maintain my reputation as a cynical curmudgeon, I'd like to point you to the comments by dissenting critic David Edelstein (hat tip to Jeffrey Overstreet).

In case you don't know, the reason we Catholics are swooning is because Juno, besides being sassy and jam-packed with quotable bon mots, has a pro-life theme.

Story revolves around sixteen-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), who discovers she's pregnant after a tryst with her passive wiener of a best friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), who plays the effeminate counterpart to Juno's tomboy personality. The story follows Juno as she takes it all in stride and prepares to give the baby away to a seemingly perfect couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), who as it turns out have serious problems of their own.

It is, as you have heard, a witty screenplay. It isn't exactly deep; there isn't a lot of philosophical subtext under the characters' sarcastic barbs, and Diablo Cody is not the return of Oscar Wilde. However, it's undeniable that this is one smart and funny script, even if it achieves its quirks largely through obscure pop culture references. But we at The Sci Fi Catholic can't condemn anyone for obscure pop culture references, so we're obligated to give the film a thumb up. We may hope that Cody will produce more substantial fare in the future. This is one Hollywood screenwriter I'd actually like to get paid.

The message, too, is generally positive: divorce is bad, abortion is bad, people who use terms like "intercourse" and "sexually active" are losers, married men who feel unready to have children are losers, and it's weird to put condoms on bananas. All these are beliefs that I as a Catholic can heartily support.

The film's major weakness, easy to overlook, is that it is a combination of a teen pregnancy story and a love story. Because the teen pregnancy story stays center-stage, the love story gets short shrift, so the film's climax comes out of left field. Similarly, several matters are thrown at the viewer purely for humor, but receive no development: early on, Juno delivers a monologue on how jocks really prefer geeky girls, and a couple of funny scenes deal with a cheerleader (Olivia Thirlby) who has a crush on a frumpy science teacher. Then there's the funny romantic argument between a couple of chem lab partners (Stephen Christopher Parker and Candice Accola). All of these are hilarious, but they have no real point. Other elements of the narrative, however, are developed in a believable manner with a solid, steady pace. I don't want to give away any details, but Jason Bateman's performance is particularly good. He and Ellen Page really crackle when they're on screen together.

Speaking of the love story, I was surprised, and maybe a little disappointed, at the film's conclusion (spoiler alert). About halfway through, I figured I knew where it was going. I assumed Juno and Bleeker would fall in love and keep the baby, and I was half right. I'm not going to complain, however, because I should consider it a good thing when movies don't follow the numbers exactly the way I expect them to.

Some Christians might complain about these protagonists who, having already had a baby, don't get married at the film's end, but Juno, who has watched marriages crumble around her, is naturally suspicious of the institution of marriage and says as much in a conversation with her father (J. K. Simmons), one of the film's more moving scenes. This is a story of young people who have to find their way among the debris of institutions their elders have destroyed, so some distrust of institutions should be expected. Besides, it was written by a stripper, so what do you want?

Speaking of distrusting institutions, our friend Christine at Catholic Media Review has a statement on the movie that deserves address:

Before I get into it, I have to ask: Did anyone else spot the 'no religion' sticker inside Juno's locker door in a school scene pretty early on? It was a cross with a red-circle around it, and a red line through it. It only showed for a couple seconds, but I considered it a negative subliminal message.

I think we're getting too sensitive. Actually, Christine is mistaken. The sticker does not say "No Religion" but "Bad Religion." It's the name of a rock band, the sort of rock band a character like Juno would probably listen to. Furthermore, the message is not "subliminal"; it's right in front of you. If it were subliminal, you wouldn't be able to see it. You also wouldn't need to worry about it because according to my Psych 101 class, subliminal messages don't work.*

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Juno:

Myth Level: N/A

Quality: High (good production with great script and excellent performances)

Ethics/Religion: High (mature themes, sexual references, positive messages)

*At least that's what the aliens want us to think.

Filmography links and data courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.

A Tantalizing (?) Notice

No post today. Snuffles and I are preparing a joint review we hope you will find intriguing, if we can pull together the source material we need and make anything worthwhile out of it. Check in again tomorrow. HINT: It involves cities.

B-Movie Catechist's Monthly Film Club: House on Haunted Hill

Oh, so it is just Old Man Smithers in a ghost costume.

House on Haunted Hill, directed by William Castle. Screenplay by Robb White. Starring Vincent Price, Carolyn Craig, and Richard Long. William Castle Productions, 1958. Not Rated.

Read other reviews here.

Watch it on Google Video.

This homework is overdue. Apologies to all concerned. What if I claim my dragon ate it?

It really is entertaining...as long as you don't think too hard. This month, the B-Movie Catechist has let the Film Club off easy with a low-budget classic starring Vincent Price as the possibly psychopathic millionaire Frederick Loren, who offers to give ten thousand dollars to five strangers--if they can survive a night in the House on Haunted Hill.

The characters are familiar and underdeveloped but comfortable B-movie types. Vincent Price is cold and sinister as Loren, yet he humanizes the role with numerous shows of emotion. His mutually nasty dialogue with his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) nicely sets up the mood for the film and makes a fine example of tight scripting. Other characters include an alcoholic (Elisha Cook) convinced everyone will die at the hands of the house's ghosts, a gambling newspaper columnist (Julia Mitchum), and the obligatory attractive young woman (Carolyn Craig) and hunky young man (Richard Long). Rather than doing the obvious, sensible thing and sitting together in the living room, drinking and telling ghost stories, these various characters wander the house alone with loaded firearms and get themselves in trouble either through ineptitude or their own twisted, conniving plots, which backfire.

The movie makes a number of forgivable mistakes. Central to the film is an elaborate attempt to commit a "perfect murder," but this murderous scheme has so many holes in it, it would be remarkable if it did work. Additionally, the movie sets up certain things but doesn't follow through: for example, a character is "marked" for death by the ghosts early in the film, but this never amounts to anything. Furthermore, the film's ending is hokey in the extreme and entirely unbelievable, yet emotionally powerful nonetheless.

The movie's greatest sin, and the focus of this discussion, is a conceit of poorly written horror, one I've encountered numerous times: inexplicable events occur, yet at the end of the story, we are expected to believe that it was all just a trick and that the ghosts were fake, even though they could levitate, travel through locked doors, and make objects move on their own. Several inexplicable events occur in House on Haunted Hill, but we get only a weak naturalistic explanation at the movie's conclusion.

A good example of this sort of thing is Under the Ocean to the South Pole, Book 2 of the acclaimed Great Marvel series, a set of adventure books for boys considered classics and collectibles. In this novel, the indistinguishable Caucasian heroes Mark and Jack decide to travel to the south pole in a submarine with their Kindly Old Professor. During the course of the journey, Our Heroes encounter a ghost haunting the submarine. The ghost, we are told, is transparent and headless, but at the end of the novel, we learn the ghost was really just one of the crew members sleep-walking in his nightshirt. How many people do you know who sleep-walk transparent and headless?

Now, I grant that it's possible to do a lot of sneaky things with smoke and mirrors. Heck, David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear while simultaneously making himself appear charismatic and sexy. That's no mean feat. And let's not forget that freaky Bermuda Triangle special of his, which still gives me nightmares. But he's a special case; most people are not David Copperfield and can't pull of the things he pulls off. The brainless connivers in House on Haunted Hill certainly couldn't.

Like House on Haunted Hill, the world is full of strange happenings. Some of them certainly deserve naturalistic explanations: the last "true" ghost story I heard, for example, clearly involved a clanky furnace rather than a restless spirit. Other events are more difficult to explain: the 1995 phenomenon of Hindu statues drinking milk, for example, at first appears miraculous. This particular event has produced a small cottage industry of atheist debunking, and I admit that, though I was previously inclined to a supernatural explanation, the naturalistic ones make more sense the more I read about them.

Catholics are used to stories of miracles and visions and similar supernatural events. Some of these are folklore, some are medical phenomena with no known explanation, some are witnessed miracles, some are visions, and some are all in people's heads. The Church examines many claims of miracles and visions; when unable to determine they are hoaxes or doctrinally objectionable, she labels them "worthy of belief," which means the faithful can take them or leave them, but are not obligated to believe in them.

St. Louis de Montfort, in his The Secret of the Rosary, a collection of stories about the rosary, recommends that Christians approach pious legends with belief unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. Admittedly, my first approach to such stories is usually skepticism, especially when a tale is presented without names or dates. In the case of St. Louis de Montfort's book, I sometimes find the stories doctrinally questionable as well: in one of them, a bad king is allowed into Heaven because of his habit of wearing a rosary on his belt. To my mind, this should have won him the added charge of hypocrisy rather than a full pardon. Catholics should understand that medals, rosaries, and other sacramentals are useless unless the faithful strive to live up to what those trinkets represent: I have a Brown Scapular, a St. Benedict's Crucifix, a Miraculous Medal, and a blessed rosary on my person as I write this, but I understand these are worthless if I do not live the Gospel.

Similar thinking can be applied to those miracles and private revelations the Church considers worthy of belief. They are helpful to the faithful unless they become a hindrance or an obsession, at which point they can be safely discarded or minimized. I have at home a booklet (I'm not at home, so cannot make a proper citation) by a woman who claims to have had a private revelation from Jesus and the Virgin Mary while attending Mass. The content is essentially a commentary on the Mass describing the liturgy's supernatural benefits and inviting prayers and full participation from the faithful. Though I of course have no way of verifying the genuineness of the revelation, it is in tune with Catholic teaching, and I find it useful, so I give to it the form of natural (as opposed to supernatural), human faith appropriate for such things.

In addition to revelations with useful insights or inspiring messages, there are miracles which defy naturalistic explanation, including some Eucharistic and medical miracles. These too, unless satisfactorily debunked, deserve belief and can be helpful to the faithful. In many cases, miracle is a better explanation than Old Man Smithers in a ghost costume.

As an added note, sf writer John C. Wright, who converted to Christianity after a series of visions, once commented that his experiences are no help in times of doubt. It strikes me as likely that private revelations are ultimately of more use to the people who don't receive them than the people who do.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for House on Haunted Hill:

Myth Level: Medium-Low (just, you know, not really)

Quality: Medium (some uneven scripting but a lot of fun)

Ethics/Religion: Medium-High (little objectionable; some revenge depicted positively, depending on how you want to look at it)

Beowulf the Movie (review Christian) ReCAPped

The last time I typed "movie review Beowulf Christian" into Google, the first thing that came up was the review of Beowulf and Grendel at Catholic News Service and the second thing that came up was the review of Beowulf at The Sci Fi Catholic (I don't know whether to be pleased or frightened). Further down the page was the review of Beowulf at CAP (Childcare Action Project) Movie Ministry. Since I'm on the Internet mainly to pick fights with this sort of people, and since a Google search with a very specific word order says I'm Better Than Them, I figure now is the time to strike.

First, I will reiterate that Beowulf is a film lacking in good taste and containing foolish criticisms of religion. Besides my own review, I recommend the hilarious dismantling of the movie at Got Medieval. For a more cool-headed explanation of why taking cheap shots at religion in a movie about Beowulf is a bad idea, check the review at Filmcritic.com.

But I'm not here to criticize Beowulf. I've already done that. Let's take a look instead at everything wrong with CAP's analysis.

First of all, we have the website's slogan, "Stay informed...OBJECTIVELY...on what Hollywood feeds your kids." Already several questions appear in our minds. What's with those ellipses? Why is objectively in capital letters? Why is feeds your kids in italics and bold? Besides that, we may ask how exactly Hollywood can feed your kids anything without your knowledge and consent. If you're kicking the kiddies out the door to see a movie without knowing what the movie is first, that's your fault.

But then we have to ask the question, why is objectively in the slogan in the first place? The answer is on CAP's site, and you can find it here. Essentially, their movie reviewers watch movies, jot down content they find objectionable, and then fill out a form, the contents of which are processed statistically (how or to what purpose, I have been unable to discover). Somehow, the filling out of a form is supposed to remove subjectivity from the moral evaluation of a movie's content, even though the form itself is an arbitrary human creation.

The fallacy of the CAP system is easily visible in the Beowulf review. Besides the (presumably subjective) review itself, the list of "objective" objectionable content appears in a sidebar on the right. The first problem with this list of "objective" criteria is that it is entirely negative. There is a listing for "Impudence/Hate (I)" and one for "Wanton Violence/Crime (W)," but no space for, say, "Positive Moral Messages (P)" or "Selfless Acts (S)" or "Loving Characters (L)." CAP is uninterested in finding anything positive in movies and is apparently proud of it.

CAP's system of rating movies is admittedly clever, but it leaves out one important thing, key to Christian morality, and that is intent. I can't imagine how CAP could possibly produce a form listing every conceivable potentially objectionable scene in a film, but even if it can, it cannot take into account how that content is used. I can sit here and condemn every man who has ever stuck a blade into another man, but if I do, I condemn surgeons as well as ax-murderers. In evaluating movies, this means taking into account not only the "objective" content, but the way it is presented and the reason it is presented, something we are ultimately unable to perfectly evaluate. The underlying message of a film is more important than its "objective" content.

Listed beside the review under "Offense to God (O)" is "exchanging soul for power and riches," something the character of Beowulf does indeed do in the film. Here we see CAP's great error, divorcing content from context: it fails to evaluate how this exchanging of the soul is used. Beowulf's selling of his soul is depicted negatively, and he pays the price for it. This is a positive message, but CAP, "objective" as it is, is unable to take this into account.

I sincerely wish the people who do this sort of thing would think first. Is any story containing the selling of a soul automatically negative? Then we must condemn Doctor Faustus, Tannhauser, and The Scarlet Letter as well as Beowulf. Are we really willing to take that step? Are we really willing to condemn all stories that say emphatically that there are more important things than power, riches, and earthly joys just because they inevitably depict characters who revel in power, riches, and earthly joys, and in many cases pay the final price for their foolish dissipation? If we are willing to take that step, how many stories in Scripture will survive our scalpels? Indeed, how many stories is it even possible to tell without moral offense if we rigorously abide by the ironclad rules of CAP's "objective" criteria? Probably none.

Beowulf contains much that is objectionable, but what is most certainly not objectionable from any sane, thoughtful, and subjective Christian standpoint is the basic story of a shallow braggart who seizes wealth instead of goodness and ultimately pays for it. This is the tale of Dives; Jesus spoke of him. The basic moral of Beowulf is good: only the trappings are obnoxious.

So intent and context are supremely important. Had Beowulf told the story of a man who sells his soul and receives redemption without repentance, as Goethe does, we might say the depiction of a man selling his soul is immoral, but that is not the story Beowulf tells. When watching a movie, put down the fill-in-the-blank form and use your head.

Finally, I should point out that CAP's actual review is frankly weird. Get a load of this:

I have read lots of poems but never have I seen nudity in a poem. Even the nudity in some Bibles was not there when the inspired pen was put to paper; man put nudity in the Bible, not God. That some church approved nakedness in the Bible does not make it acceptable to God.

I am a science fiction reader, but those are easily the strangest three sentences I have read for many months. Weird, man. Weird.

Anime Review: Escaflowne the Movie

Come again?

Escaflowne, directed by Kazuki Akane and Yoshiyuki Takei. Screenplay by Ryota Yamaguchi and Kazuki Akane. Voices by Maaya Sakamoto, Tomokazu Seki, and Joji Nakata. Produced by Masuo Ueda, Minoru Takanashi, Masahiko Minami, and Toyoyuki Yokohama. Executive producer Ken Iyadomi. Sunrise/Bandai Visual: 2000. Runtime 96 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Read other reviews here.

According to all my sources, school in Japan is tough, so tough it's unsurprising that a number of popular shōjo (girls') manga and anime series focus on Japanese schoolgirls who get sucked into alternate universes where they can learn magic, battle monsters, and maybe have a romance with a hunk instead of studying for their high school entrance exams. Magic Knight Rayearth and Fushigi Yûgi, as well as the shōnen series InuYasha, for example, all use this conceit.

And then there's mecha, in which pilots get inside robotic exoskeletons and fight really loud battles. There's Mobile Suit Gundam, Bubblegum Crisis, Ghost In The Shell (the manga, not the movie), and Neon Genesis Evangelion, for starters.

Well, why not put them together? Enter The Vision of Escaflowne, a 26-part TV series shown in Japan starting in 1996 and then shown in America, after censoring, on FoxKids. Aimed at both boys and girls, it features a sprawling fantasy world, magical mechs, and a schoolgirl who gets sucked into it all. A good formula, but if you want to experience it, head for the TV show and skip the movie adaptation.

The movie version, simply called Escaflowne, has the same basic problem every 96-minute film adaptation of a sprawling epic has. It has no time to develop anything, so the viewers are stuck watching characters they know nothing about doing things they don't understand. Escaflowne looks like a bare-bones outline of a much bigger story, undoubtedly because it is. We have Hitomi from Tokyo, who's depressed and lonely for no reason. She gets sucked into the magical world of Gaea and learns that she's supposed to be the Wing Goddess, capable of bringing to life a magical biomechanical armor suit called Escaflowne, which can maybe destroy the world or something. The evil Black Dragon Clan, led by the evil Lord Folken, wants to destroy the world for some reason. Some rebels, led by an angry youth named Van, with whom Hitomi has a perfunctory romance, want to stop Folken and save the world. Both sides want the Wing Goddess and the magic armor, and the movie ends with a big mech fight involving yet another magic exoskeleton that comes out of nowhere. You follow all that? Good, because I couldn't.

We don't know why Folken wants to destroy the world. We don't know why Hitomi's depressed. We don't know why Hitomi is attracted to Van. We don't know what the heck this magic mech thingy is. We don't know why everyone in the movie is doing whatever he's doing, we don't know who they are or what they want, and we don't know why we should care. Major problem with Escaflowne? Zero development. This movie is an almost perfect example of exactly how sword-and-sorcery can go bad: if we can't get to know the people and explore their world, we can't care about their struggles. The creators who made this should have known ahead of time they would have this problem. You just don't compress a big epic into an hour and a half, especially if you're going to spend a lot of that time displaying silent mood images. I never thought I'd say this, but I almost think a couple of infodumps might have improved this movie. They certainly couldn't have hurt.

That's not to say it has no good points. The music by Yoko Kanno and Hajime Mizoguchi is excellent. The animation, though variable, certainly has its moments. The atmospherics are great and the general look of the fantasy world is imaginative. Fun to look at and listen to, I suppose, but a most unsatisfying story. Fans of the TV series might want it to complete their collections, but nobody else should bother.

As an added note, make sure you watch this one with the subtitles. I did, but according to all sources I've seen, the English dubbing is lousy.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Escaflowne:

Myth Level: Medium (the formula appears to be there, but delivery is weak)

Quality: Low (poor script, no development, moderate animation, good music, nice mood lighting)

Ethics/Religion: High (nothing objectionable, a number of blood splatters)

Movie Review: Battle Beyond the Stars

It just doesn't get any campier.

Battle Beyond the Stars. Screenplay by John Sayles. Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami. Starring Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn, and John Saxon. Executive Producer Roger Corman. Produced by Ed Carlin. New World Pictures (1980). Runtime 103 minutes. Rated PG.

See other reviews here.

A low-budget cult classic, Battle Beyond the Stars is the movie The Last Starfighter wanted to be. The basic gimmick: it's The Magnificent Seven...in space!

The peaceful planet of Akir, where the people wear robes and live in big Styrofoam trees, is threatened by Sador (John Saxon), an evil overlord who enunciates very clearly and announces that he. Wants. To. Take. Over. Your. Planet. After a little bickering, the peaceful inhabitants of Akir decide to send stony faced farmboy Shad (Richard Thomas) on an expedition into space to find some mercenaries to fight off the villain.

Shad takes off in Nell, a chatty spaceship designed to look like a woman's torso (seriously), and accomplishes his task in record time, swiftly picking up six goofy mercenaries who happen to be flying through the solar system, each with an eccentric personality and spacecraft. Among them we have Space Cowboy, played by a pre-A-Team, post-Breakfast at Tiffany's George Peppard, who looks embarrassed to be here, but nonetheless gamely chomps cigars, chugs scotch, and plays the harmonica while flying a spaceship decorated with a Confederate flag. Also present and accounted for is Gelt, played by a Robert Vaughn reprising his role from The Magnificent Seven. Not to be outdone is Valkyrie Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning), a warrior woman whose main purpose is to wear a bronze bikini and show off cleavage that can almost compete with Nell's. The other mercenaries are similar sci-fi clichés.

The script is unabashed camp. The evil yet motiveless Sador and his army of clones cackle like old-timey villains. Lovable absurdities include an android who does the "robot" and a woman who makes electronics innuendos, as in, "I would tingle his transmitters." Yes, she says that. With a straight face.

They really don't make them like this any more, not since Star Trek: The Next Generation decided the inside of a spaceship ought to look as if it were designed by Oldsmobile. Battle Beyond the Stars has surprising riches in the form of set and model designs by James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron). The ships, though obviously Star Wars-influenced, look good and by themselves make the movie worth seeing. James Horner's musical score is excellent. The film also features some imaginative surreal touches, including a half-constructed android singing opera and a villain who likes to attach parts of his vanquished enemies' bodies to his own. It's only in the action sequences that the movie's low, low budget takes its toll. The space battles, which almost never show more than one ship on the screen at a time, are nearly impossible to follow. Battles on the ground are poorly choreographed and look to have been filmed in one take.

Strange as it may seem, stories like this are often the most wholesome, and yet for over a century now, stories like this have received undeserved ire from moralists. For example, in Eight Cousins, Louisa May Alcott pauses in her storytelling to warn the reader away from boys' fiction, which too often features such dangers as high adventure and bad grammar. More recently, we have the embarrassing assaults on Harry Potter by Christian agitators with an uncanny habit of aiming at the wrong targets: first they attacked J. K. Rowling for her harmless fantasy series while Philip Pullman quietly picked up awards and accolades for a vicious collection of propaganda disguised as kid lit, and then they turned around and attacked the castrated film version of The Golden Compass while ignoring the vile adaptation of Beowulf that came out at the same time.

All the way back in 1901, G. K. Chesterton wrote an essay entitled "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" to answer these critics. The essay is as fresh as if it were written yesterday; it applies as easily to Harry Potter as to Dick Deadshot.

This trivial romantic literature is not especially plebeian: it is simply human. The philanthropist can never forget classes and callings. He says, with a modest swagger, "I have invited twenty-five factory hands to tea." If he said, "I have invited twenty five chartered accountants to tea," every one would see the humour of so simple a classification. but this is what we have done with this lumberland of foolish writing: we have probed, as if it were some monstrous new disease, what is, in fact, nothing but the foolish and valiant heart of man. Ordinary men will always be sentimentalists: for a sentimentalist is simply a man who has feelings and does not trouble to invent a new way of expressing them. These common and current publications have nothing essentially evil about them. They express the sanguine and heroic truisms on which civilisation is built; for it is clear that unless civilisation is built on truisms, it is not built at all. Clearly, there could be no safety for a society in which the remark by the Chief Justice that murder was wrong was regarded as an original and dazzling epigram.

Feelings with no new way of expressing them? Sanguine and heroic truisms? Well, you'll find plenty of those in Battle Beyond the Stars! Not only does the movie blatantly rip off other movies, it's absolutely jam-packed with truisms. The peaceful inhabitants of Akir have a strict moral code that mostly involves teachings against unnecessary violence, yet also allows for self-defense. The characters haul out this wholesome moral code frequently through the film. And then there are all those mercenaries who fight because it's the right thing to do or because they're bad people with a shot at redemption. Even the ones who fight for revenge or just because they like to fight end up sacrificing themselves for others. Yeah, they all end up dead (you've seen The Magnificent Seven already, so you knew that, right?), but their deaths are heroic and redemptive. Why, the movie even goes beyond that and tells you to quit smoking! Here on film is a pristine example of all those noble attributes Chesterton describes as the essence of bad literature:

The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life, just as there are a large number of persons who believe they are the Prince of Wales; and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining conversationalists. But the average man or boy writes daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call Penny Dreadfuls, a plainer and better gospel than any of those iridescent ethical paradoxes that the fashionable change as often as their bonnets.

So eat your heart out, Alcott.

The Sci Fi Catholic's Rating for Battle Beyond the Stars:

Myth Level: High (off the charts! Farmboy turned hero, evil villain, planet in danger, seven heroes who show up out of nowhere, perfunctory romance, etc., etc....)

Quality: Medium (for a low-budget camp classic, it's not bad)

Ethics/Religion: High (wholesome story, some skimpy clothing and innuendo)