Sometimes we watch stuff that we want to talk just a little bit about, not a full review worth. These are those films. If any of the films reviewed are available on Netflix Instant Watch (US or Canada) HuluPlus (US only) or just on You-Tube, we’ll note that by putting a direct link below the capsule.
Moscow-Cassiopeia
(4/5)1973 USSR. Director: Richard Vicktorov. Starring: Misha Yershov, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Vladimir Savin.
Clearly, in the early 1970s, episodes of Star Trek, The Prisoner and prints of 2001: A Space Odyssey were sneaking through the Iron Curtain and finding their way into the impressionable minds of filmmakers. Every strange in-camera technique – from the Alien3 Wide-Dolly shot to the kaleidoscopic lens to a fish-eye shot (actually from a fishes eye in this case) – was used in conjunction with some pretty spiffy production design to yield a fun feast for the senses. The film is aimed at children, as the protagonists are 15 year old kids trained up on earth and sent on a 50 year space mission to the star system Cassiopeia such that they will be 40(ish) when the vessel arrives. But these kids are smart, and the script is smart; Einstein’s Space-Time relativity is discussed at length (maybe too much), as is the concept of folding space, and Star Trek’s Holodeck and Q are both effectively used here 16 years before the ST: THe Next Generation Show even was made! It may be a kids adventure, but it is never dumb-ed down. Even sweeter is that the thrust of the character development of this young space crew centres around a folded sheet of paper love note passed around in school. It’s a superbly acted (by actual 15 year olds) and well told story that a lot of care and money were invested – the soundtrack alone is wonderful – and very much worth your while looking up the DVD or watching in 8 parts on Youtube.
-KURT
Adolescents in the Universe
(4.5/5)1974 USSR. Director: Richard Vicktorov. Starring: Misha Yershov, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Vladimir Savin.
Not wasting any time, and arriving with clearly a lot more money and strange ideas, the sequel to Moscow-Cassiopeia finds our 15 year old crew accidentally breaking the barrier to faster-than-light travel (a fortunately placed worm hole, or the films “Q” – named ASA – meddling again) and arriving at their destination 25 years too early. Here they discover more The Prisoner references (those white security balls), but also a race of albino-bipeds that have been conquered and ousted by their own created machines. The machines want to make their creators so happy that they relieved them of responsibilities, creative impulsiveness, and eventually, the will to live. Looking like Daft Punk (with bell bottoms, and freaky dance moves to boot) the machines split up our intrepid adolescents until they can figure out a way to escape and thwart the fascist/Cylon/AgentSmith regime. Something tells me the production design team for David Lynch’s DUNE spent as much time with Adolescents in the Universe as they did with H.R. Geiger’s concept art. For all the remake-itis going on in Hollywood (in TV land), nothing makes a stronger case for a modern update in long-form TV than Vicktorov’s pair of films. It could be made into the greatest ‘smart-kids’ television, period! As it stands this is a true cult-kid-cinema experience. Watch for the ‘defective obsolete robot ‘husband and wife’ in this one, they are great.
-KURT
One of the earliest of the bunch is Terry Gilliam’s 
