Invaders from Mars, the original 50’s version
The Bed-Sitting Room
Zardoz
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Surreal is one way of describing that film… probably best watched while under the influence of mind altering substances.
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Ohh yes. Whole bundle of WTF there.
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I haven’t seen Stalker, but I kinda don’t want to see Solaris, because Lem didn’t like it and I liked the book too much to ignore his opinion. It might be great on its own terms, but I have a feeling I’d have Lem’s criticisms going through my head the whole time.
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Ah, definitely. I think it’s too bad Laloux didn’t leave more work behind than he did. I’ve seen Time Masters, haven’t seen Gandahar.
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The single closest thing I can think of to a Jodorowski sci-fi is Andrzej Zulawski’s Na srebrnym globie aka “On the Silver Globe”.
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I have not read his critique, but I liked Tarkovsky’s version much better than the American version.
Eh, he’s just the author, what does he know?
Seriously - he’s the author of the text, not an expert on the text.
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Wait… as overrated films?
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That looks amazing, actually.
I think Eastern European film during the Cold War is seriously ignored here in the US. I think there are some real gems, especially coming out of Yugoslavia, which, in general had a really well developed culture industries, despite being state run.
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as surrealist science fiction movies
Is this what we’re fighting over today?
The game is afoot!
Oh, whoah! nevermind…
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But I mean do you find them under or over rated?
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I find them to be surrealistic science fiction films.
I don’t have a rating to give at this time.
2001 can get some weird reveiws when people aren’t fawning all over it; I love it, especially the soundtrack and the end.
I love Stalker and Solaris. I’ve read the original Lem novel, but the movie is more memorable. It’s one of Lem’s early works and not much like the rest of his nominally “SF” output.
Been a long time since I’ve seen Fantastic Planet, but the impression it left is good, and mystifying.
Akira rocks, and has the decency to not have the same crappy ending as the manga series (although it has a mystical crappy ending of its own).
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I’ve seen all of them, too and agree about them being surrealistic. I don’t think they are overrated, but generally seem to be well liked films.
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having seen both the tarkovsky and the american version of the film as well as having read the book i feel free to tell you to go ahead and watch the film. i can understand lem’s criticism but i feel that sometimes the price of having your novel made into a film is to find your abstractions being abstracted differently than you did, to find your literary turns being subsumed into filmic turns, and to find your mode of expression being swallowed up by the director’s. all of which is to say that, yes tarkovsky made changes in the way some things were expressed to bring the story within his personal vision but that vision is still a great interpretation of the material in the novel.
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I know I’ve seen Akira but don’t really remember much so it’s going on my list again.
I watch Fantastic Planet probably once a year. It’s so imaginative it never gets old.
Y’all have convinced me to give Solaris a chance.
I thought of another one that may qualify as surrealist science fiction: Herzog’s The Wild Blue Yonder. Even though he uses real footage the way he recombines it for his story it ends up seeming rather unreal. And I might actually call it underrated, though I’m not sure if I’m being objective about that as I’ll lap up pretty much anything that guy serves.
Never heard of On the Silver Globe, it’s going on the list. Thanks for all the great suggestions!
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Just gonna let my unrefined flag fly and say I like the Soderbergh Solaris. To me it is a different work entirely, so I don’t even really judge it as a representation of the book. Tarkovsky’s work is something I can accept is very good, but probably just beyond me enough that it isn’t very enjoyable to watch. My intellectual mind says Stalker is a great work, but when I watch it, my brain goes to sleep as things slowly pan past in the water.
Reading is such a personal experience, with everything visualized in the mind using personal metaphors and constructed from our own memories. I just try to see films made from books I know as unrelated to one another, as best I can, and I tend to enjoy things pretty well.
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Funny, because it seems like whenever I read an essay of his he does usually come across like a crank unimpressed with anything. But I don’t mind because he’s earned it.
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Sad news!
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I feel the need to go out and have a nice celebratory drink over that.
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