Watch To The Stars By Hard Ways For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Masterpiece!

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Whenever there's a Sci-Fi/Fantasy film festival doing a special around virtually untraceable movies, in my case the Offscreen Festival in Belgium, you simply must attend it as much as possible, because where else will you ever be offered the chance to see titles like "To the Stars by Hard Ways". The festival scheduled a theme around Sci-Fi movies from behind the Iron Curtain and, amongst more commonly known classics like the original "Solaris" and "In the Dust of Stars", they showed this peculiar but strangely poetic and compelling space allegory that consists of three main chapters. The film is set in futuristic Russia, where stereotypical house robots stroll around bleeping and people go to their jobs on distant planets. An outer space mission brings back an intergalactic female immigrant who has curly white hair behaves very nervously. The lead astronaut decides to take her into his house for research and to introduce her to earthly hospitality. The first chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" revolves on the girl, Niya, integrating with her new family. She becomes friends with the astronaut's mother and adolescent son and learns about jealousy when she meets his girlfriend. In spite of her relatively happy new life, Niya has unclear but nightmarish flashbacks about what overcame her on her own planet. The tone of this first chapter is moody but tolerably sentimental. It's like a futuristic soap opera, but from the Soviet Union. The second chapter depicts the space trip to Niya's home planet Dessa. The nightmares and flashbacks stimulated her to slip aboard as a stowaway during Stepan's first official mission as an astronaut. The second chapter really is nothing more than a transition between the sequences on earth and on a distant planet. The middle section is rather dull and contain quite a few irrelevant and unnecessary comical interludes, like dropping off a passenger on his home planet called Ocean. He's a watery blubber thing who lives in a washing machine and is petrified of cats. The third and final chapter is the most interesting for the fans, as it concerns pure and genuine Sci-Fi full of desolate apocalyptic landscapes, malignant looking alien races and uncanny atmosphere. Niya's planet Dessa has become uninhabitable due to a massive industrial catastrophe while the tyrannical rules, called the Turanchoks, are selling clean oxygen at high prices. The final chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is exciting, often unsettling and very absorbing. It's a bit of a shame that most comments around here (expect for those written by Russian users) are so harshly negative and mainly talking about the notorious MST3K treatment that the movie received in the late 80's. Now, I'm as much a fan of MST3K as anyone else, but there's a lot more underneath this film's campy surface and deserves some deeper analysis. People are complaining about the horrible dubbing, the terrible music, the cheap and campy special effects and the bad acting performances. I beg to differ on practically all points. Another major advantage about seeing this type of movies at a festival is that they respect cinema enough to seek for a 35mm version in the original language. Personally I liked the psychedelic music tunes and the special effects, well, … Naturally they're not very groundbreaking or on par with the contemporary super popular "Star Wars" franchise, but what do you expect from a film from a politically and hermetically sealed off country without much of a cinema culture. "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is primarily a very ambitious story-driven movie, from the hand of the acclaimed Russian novelist Kir Bulychyov and directed by Richard Victorov with great devotion and passion for Sci-Fi. The acting is terrific, especially from the central figure Yelena Metyolkina who made her first ever screen appearance in this film. "The the Stars by Hard Ways" definitely isn't without flaws, but it's a captivating experience that forces you to switch on your brain functions as well as all your senses. Recommended, but please watch the original version or the respectfully restored 2001 version.

This movie begins when a spaceship discover another, derelict spaceship of unknown design and origin. They mount a salvage operation and discover that the crew are human of appearance but with considerable genetic differences. All but one (a woman) are dead.Next, a group of scientists and officials discuss what to do with this alien called Neeya. They all want to study her, but should she be allowed to study humans as well? She doesn't seem to be able to communicate but has strong mental/telekinetic abilities. They decide to let her live in the house of one scientist with his family, under close surveillance.As the story progresses we discover that she has a control center in her brain that allow others to take control over her - she has been designed like some sort of robot! Added to this story is a cast of interesting characters, a very unique alien, and lots of twists and turns to the main story.The special effects are not as good as one have grown accustomed to from recent top-of-the-line Hollywood blockbusters, but they are okay, and manages to avoid being cheesy (which is the most important in my humble view).All in all it is an excellent science fiction movie. I saw it in the theaters at a recent film festival in a restored version (from 2001 with English subtitles) and it was well worth the time and money. I give it 7/10 and recommend it to you all.

Watch this film knowing it's a pile of rubbish and you realise how good it is. Communism was a strange thing, it did not want their people to stray to the decadent west, so they tried to do there own sci fi epics. I have a communist cuckoo clock, it is a very naked, plain non Bavarian cuckoo clock with a plastic cuckoo, but it was made so that there people had no reason to envy the west and this is another ''cuckoo clock'' it has a bald woman, a robot that is made out of various laundry containers turned upside down with odds and ends stuck on it, maybe bits of my cuckoo clock as well (obsessed or what). I won't explain the plot, but if you enjoyed Solaris, The singing ringing tree etc then get this if you can.

This movie belongs to the russian/soviet culture - this is the reason why so many negative comments are manifested here on IMDB. Besides, the Americanized version ("Humanoid Woman") was cropped and too much spoiled by nasty dubbing, that the whole film's concept has shifted. HOW COULD ONE SAY HERE: "there are some treasure hunters who want to use her at the archaeological dig, so they can become rich and famous"?!! There is nothing like that AT ALL!! And so on about other "comments" available here. The film has a very intelligent plot, written by the famous russian SF writer Kir Bulichev. The director's work is excellent. For example Niya's character is played by non-professional actress Elena Metyolkina, who actually was a model. It was the director's design just to introduce some elements of robot-like behavior. The director managed to make her play as good as possible. All other actors play their characters very persuadingly also. I just wonder how can one abuse the music - it is superb. Of course there should be correction for poor picture and sound quality, presented on the Americanized version. But this film deserves to be watched in its original version and with the TRUE dubbing - JUST TO UNDERSTAND IT. BTW now its remastered version on DVD exists, with both picture and sound quality being superb.Summing up I want to say this film is not a cheap entertainment as some comments here suggest. It is a very kind, heartful, gentle, touching and thought-provoking movie. It is about love - love to people, love to the Earth. Of course there is certain naivity about the film, but it only adds positive to its atmosphere. I see everything quite balanced in it. Some may see flaws in film's imperfect setting (compared with "Alien" or "Star Wars" for example)- of course Holliwood was much more advanced in Sci-fi making (and a lot richer besides), than the Soviet cinema. But that does not seem too important.