Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 16OCT2025 – Something for the Pot

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May I offer up this the 1985 SciFi Enemy Mine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Mine_(film) )? It is an excellent adaptation of Barry B. Longyear’s novella of the same name, Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (of Das Boot fame). It had a low budget (40 Million) and its special effects are well, dated even for 1985. Excellent acting by Dennis Quaid and Louis Gosset as the principals. Bombed at the box office as it was Neither Star Wars, Dune, nor Wrath of Khan.

I would also like to add in the war film department the 1969 film Battle Of Britain . To say the storyline is weak is an understatement (although it is briefly redeemed by Susannah York prancing about in her knickers). The killer here is the aerial fight scenes. These involve LARGE numbers of actual Spitfires, Me109 and Heinkel 111 aircraft (Me109 and Heinkels being part of the Spanish Air Force). They are well scripted and had input from Douglass Baeder and Air Marshall Dowding. It has a G rating but some scenes are almost too realistic and freaked out the 8-year-old me, who dunned my dad into taking me to the movie.

 

Barry Lyndon (1975) – A Movie Review

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I watched “Barry Lyndon” for the first time last night.  I read that it was one of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpieces.  And I do respect Kubrick’s art.  But after watching it I realize that a masterpiece can be terrible entertainment.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The movie is the story of the career of Redmond Barry an Irish man who allowed his passions to dictate his fate to a degree that is painful to watch.  He gets into a duel over a girl (his cousin) and this forces him to flee his home to avoid legal prosecution and then he joins the British Army during the Seven Years’ War and by deserting his service he ends up in the Prussian Army and after that he becomes first a spy and then a crooked gambler.  And finally, he marries a rich English widow and attempts to become part of the nobility.  And while attempting this he allows his philandering to alienate his wife and step-son and eventually lands him in a duel with this step-son in which Redmond loses a leg.  Along the way his wife presents him with a son of his own and the little boy is tragically killed in a riding accident.  He ends his life in exile returning to Europe to attempt to live off his ability to cheat at cards.

If this sounds like a ridiculous plot for a movie, it’s because, it is!

Ryan O’Neal plays Redmond and Kubrick directs the film as a straightforward narrative with very little dialog and only a few scenes that provide much in the way of emotional discovery.  What this movie provides is cinematography.  Beautiful landscapes, remarkable palaces and estates, perfectly lighted and photographed interior shots; all of the products of a master cinematographer.  As a photographer myself I can appreciate the care with which the shots were set up and displayed for the viewer.  And the costumes and battle scenes and rural settings are amazing.  But that’s all you get.  The story moves forward at a glacial pace and there really isn’t anyone in the story (except the six-year-old little boy who dies) that you care about at all.  Redmond himself is a selfish, dishonest man.  And he is surrounded with mostly the same kinds of people.  Who can I recommend this movie to?  I guess photographers, cinematographers and diehard fans of Stanley Kubrick.  It’s just too slow and empty and bleak for a general audience.  It’s visually beautiful and emotionally empty.  Sorry.

What Have You Got for the Pot?

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I wanted to do a movie review.  I’ve recorded Barry Lyndon and was going to watch it.  But I got home late from work and the movie is three hours long and I thought I might fall asleep before I could write a review of it.  So, I’ll wait for a better opportunity.

But it got me thinking about all those lists of the top twenty, fifty, one hundred or two hundred movies of all time.  So, I looked at a bunch of lists.  Some by leading directors, some by professional critics and some by just regular people.

I was horrified.

So many movies that I know are truly awful get on these lists.  It makes you wonder if there can truly be a list of the top twenty movies of all time, never mind the top one hundred.  One list from IMDB had, “The Shawshank Redemption” as the second-best movie of all time.  It had, “Raging Bull” as the fourth-best.  I find both of these rankings impossible.  There are literally dozens of movies better than either one of these (in my opinion).  By the same token, the list made up by famous directors also had movies listed that I’ve seen that were awful.  Any top 100 list that includes, “Eraserhead” needs to be scrutinized very carefully to see if the judges have been using LSD at the time of the survey.

Okay, maybe there is no such thing as an objective list of the best films.  But surely there must be a way to write an algorithm that incorporates several criteria to eliminate the worst excesses of either hyper-artistic avant-gardism and knuckle-dragging philistinism and provide a solid dependable list of very good films to look at.  I think it can be done.

One thing though.  I think it is necessary to divide the list into categories.  Comedies, dramas, action-adventure and other genre movies need to be judged separately.  It’s too difficult comparing films in different categories against each other.  And in a way it’s unhelpful.  Someone who hates comedies isn’t going to agree that any comedy can be better than the films he likes.  And vice versa.

But for today’s post I’m going to ask the audience to take an active role.  Pick one movie that you think has been neglected by critics that deserves to be elevated to a loftier status.  And then pick a movie that is hailed by critics or the public as outstanding that in your opinion stinks.  If you can only do one or the other, please feel free to provide that.  I’m always looking for good movies to watch and I think it will be interesting to hear what movie you think doesn’t deserve the acclaim it currently enjoys.

I’ll start the ball rolling.  Hitchcock’s, “Vertigo” always ends up in the top twenty movies according to high-brow critics and top flight directors.  I’ve seen it and think it’s terrible.  I’m not sure what exactly all the hype is about but it must be the “cinematography.”  Something about camera angles.  Well, they can keep it.

A movie I think has been overlooked is an earlier Coen Brothers movie, “Miller’s Crossing.”  Gabriel Byrne is the protagonist; a gangster named Tom Reagan who works for Leo O’Bannon played enthusiastically by Albert Finney.  John Turturro and Steve Buscemi are also part of the cast.  True to the Coen Brothers style, there is over the top violence and emotional havoc in all directions but the effect is powerful and very interesting.  If you like gangster movies this one is worth a watch.

So, what has everyone else got for the pot?

That’s the Whole Fun of the Thing

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Have you ever looked at a science article that had a title like, “How Old is the Universe?” or, “How Big is the Universe?” or, “What are the Elemental Particles of Matter?”  I remember reading an article that said the universe was 13.8 billion years old.  And another one that said the universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter.  Now I understand that these numbers come with caveats built in.  They’re estimates based on some model.  The age is based on some calculation involving the background microwave radiation and modelling how long it would take based on some estimate of the energy present at the moment of the “big bang” to degrade to what we see now.  And then the size of the universe is based on this age and how far light could travel in that time or some such logic.

But even with these asterisks attached, even reputable scientists talk about figuring out the size and shape of the universe.  And this always make me laugh.  What do they think this finite universe rests on?  A giant turtle’s back?  Even the limited glimpse that modern science has given us of the immensity of time and space should have convinced anyone with a rational mind that we’re dealing with infinity.  And that’s the infinitely large and the infinitesimally small and the infinitely old.

Our perch even in this island universe the Milky Way galaxy is absurdly isolated.  We can reach the Moon relatively easily.  We can send robotic missions to the planets.  And that’s about it.  Even reaching the nearest star with a robotic probe is ridiculously beyond our capability as a species.  We could get a space craft to Alpha Centauri in something like ten thousand years with our current rocket technology.  But that is longer than our race’s complete written history.  Even if the probe reached the Centauri planets and there were intelligent being there to send a message back what are the chances we would still be waiting for the message?  And I’m not even saying we would no longer exist as a civilized species.  I’m wondering if anyone would remember or care that the mission had occurred and be waiting if a message came back.

And none of this is to belittle the achievements of scientists and engineers over the course of the last five hundred years.  We’ve gone from horse carts and wood burning stoves to space ships and nuclear power plants in that time.  The difference between a long sword and a hydrogen bomb is a remarkable change in the amount of power we can wield in that short stretch of time.

What is annoying to me is that anyone thinks time and space are finite.  If anyone told me that the universe was some absurdly large number of trillions of light years in diameter, I’d just ask him, “So if I were standing that absurdly large number of trillion light years from here and I was facing away from where we are now, what would I see?  A brick wall with a sign that said ‘End of Universe, do not fall off!’?  I mean, come on!  If I were versed in multidimensional geometric topology maybe I’d know if there is a shape that has no external surface but a finite volume.  But I’m pretty sure I still wouldn’t believe in it.

And as far as the very small, we’ve gone from atoms, to protons, electrons and neutrons, to quarks, gluons, bosons and heaven knows what else but none of this convinces me we’ve reached the bottom.  I don’t think we ever will.

But at the same time, I don’t see the problem.  There are no ends to infinity.  But so what?  That’s the whole fun of the thing.