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As Good As It Gets

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Herrmann Zschoche's "Eolomea" is an OK, not great sci-fi flick. It contains material similar to what we saw in "2001" and "Solaris", but doesn't have the philosophical content inherent in those two. I guess that East Germany wanted to try out the genre, so they made this adaptation of an Angel Wagenstein screenplay. It's about an investigation into the disappearance of some spaceships. There's some jumping back and forth, and even a few scenes that look filmed in a Mediterranean country, so it gets confusing at times. Nonetheless, I thought that it was an OK movie. The movie won't be for everyone, but most people are bound to enjoy the robot scene.

I recently discovered East German Sci-Fi, which didn't produce large numbers but a few very interesting films of that genre. One of these is Eolomea, rather good and in many ways cerebral film which requires all of viewer's attention. Story is carefully constructed and the sets aren't any worse then US films of that period such as "Silent Running,(not counting the "2001 Space Odyssey", of course, which is impressive even by today's standards). No, the sets and the effects are very decent, giving the budget and conditions of the production and if you compare it to big budget US flops such as "Marooned" it's on another level. Beautiful Dutch actress Cox Habbema is a real treat to watch, leading the international cast in which Ivan Andonov (a Bulgarian actor/director) and Vsevolod Sanayev, stand out. This is a first of three DEFA Sci-Fi Collection films, released by First Run Features, I had a chance to watch and it's pretty good.

I've got to begin this by saying I enjoy Eastern European sci-fi. I really loved SOLARIS(very internal; moody) and even less complex pieces like PLANETA BUR (Planet of Storms). SILENT STAR also comes to mind for its wildly imaginative extraterrestrial depictions. This film, EOLOMEA is a movie nestled somewhere between SOLARIS and SPACE:1999. The characters have some complexity and tend to brood a bit( common in '70s sci-fi in general) and the sets look very real and 'lived-in.' While the effects and miniature spacecraft remind me of Gerry Anderson efforts. The story is pretty simple; cosmonauts are stealing spacecraft on a quest for a mathematically plotted Utopian (possibly mythic) world of EOLOMEA. Sounds an awful lot like STAR TREK 5! But it's not THAT bad(what is?!) Space 'cab driver' Dan is bored with routine duty on a lunar base, misses the Earth (for awhile, anyway!) and has lost his 'joie de vive' (and has gained a bitter, sarcastic anti-hero persona in its place). He and his older, former space-pioneer co-pilot vent to each other(the pioneer's son is on one of the missing ships), providing some good character business. Anyway, the seemingly lost spacecraft lead to a temporary ban on all interplanetary flight, and an earth-based (and truly creepy) scientist seems to know a lot more than he is willing to share (he's vaguely reminiscent of 'Ash' in ALIEN, though not as sinister). Dan ignores the ban, of course, and eventually after boarding a seemingly abandoned space station, solves the mystery of the 'missing' spaceships and their rebellious crews. And, since their first choice for navigator (who may not have accurately plotted Eolomea's position anyway) rather conveniently croaks, Dan agrees to take his place. Thus the film ends as the quest for Eolomea and a possible extraterrestrial civilization begins. Nice, ambiguous ending. Not too many of those these days! The film has nice bits throughout; an obsolete broken-down robot, some brief psychedelic images scattered throughout, and nice pieces of music here and there. Most of the characters come off as dull, but Dan really stands out. Sort of a scruffy, Eurotrash combination of Han Solo and Jack Nicholson! While not as profound as SOLARIS or as adventurous as PLANETA BUR, EOLOMEA is an interesting piece of sci-fi from a somewhat oppressive period in Eastern European history. And despite the limits of speech imposed on many films of that time/place, it says much about dissent and the quest to risk one's life in pursuit of something better. Not a great film by any stretch, but an interesting, different mindset of science fiction that we don't often see here in the western world. Worth a look only for those patient with less 'action-packed' sci-fi.

Science fiction made in East Europe usually has different perspectives of life as Western science fiction. This is one example.Not about technology or the future of our society, not even about the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (that it claims to be about), but about humans, their character traits, and their quest for the final frontier.Accordingly the visual effects by Kurt Marks and Boris Trawkin, though awarded the Grand Prix of the UNIATEC, suffer in comparison with other fx-heavy movies made about the same time, like Academy Award-winning The Poseidon Adventure or Douglas Trumbull-directed Silent Running.Still it creates a future that could happen any time, showing technology only in outer-space, and the stations in space and on asteroids look pretty much like good old MIR, the Russian space-station.And yet it is rewarding for those who love the human desire for knowledge...This was the third science fiction movie of the legendary DEFA studio and the first one to be based on an original concept (by Bulgarian Angel Vagenstein), starring Dutch Cox Habbema, Ivan Andonov (a director in his native Bulgaria) and Russian actor Vsevolod Sanayev (who died January in 1996), and German actors Rolf Hoppe and Wolfgang Greese.