when a line is a door

[sergebroom]

"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror."

That was Ming the Merciless in 1980's Flash Gordon. In that one line, a door was opened a crack, allowing me to peek at a totally different story from the one I actually saw. Sometimes I like a movie, not because of what it was but because of what it could have been. Of course sometimes I am unhappy with a movie in spite of what it could have been, especially if I had invested myself into it. One example would be X-men: The Last Stand.

Sometimes I like a movie because it's just plain honest about its intentions to simply entertain. Thus I own the DVD of Conan the Destroyer while I can't stand to watch more than a few minutes of the pretentious Conan the Barbarian when it creeps into some TV network's schedule. Besides, the former has Grace Jones and Mako. And neat sets and costumes.

Sometimes I like a movie in spite of its being extremely cheesy because it is so cheesy that it creates its own pleasantly weird Reality. One example of that would be At The Earth's Core, which I religiously watch once a year.

Sometimes I like a movie because it somehow transcends its budgetary shortcomings and manages to convey something decent, an experience of people going into the Unknown. The Angry Red Planet comes to mind. Besides, it has the bat/rat/spider creature.