Warning from Space

4/18/2016

Lately I find I have a special place in my heart for the Japanese disaster movie of days gone by. They are so much fun, and their filmmakers throw everything but the kitchen sink in, both so that there's something to please everybody and because they're frankly just so chock-full of bizarre yet interesting ideas. It seems like it would have been a great time to make movies there! I enjoyed this a lot, though many aspects weren't understandable to me, like why as the meteor got ever closer to Earth it got so incredibly hot. I can understand, since the Moon influences tides through its gravitational pulls, why there could have been flooding, but the impact on temperature...I suppose it's simply one of those aspects of watching pre-manned space flight science-fiction films in which you hav

12/29/2024

Some benign alien visitors decide to visit Earth in their star-shaped craft. Needless to say, their arrival above causes a degree of panic, so one of them decides to take a leap of faith and try to communicate directly - assuming the form of a nightclub singer. Her mission - well, that is to warn mankind of an impending collision with a meteor that will wipe us all out. It now falls to "Dr. Matsuda" (Isa Yamagata) to develop a weapon that might destroy it, and save humanity. This is actually quite a decently paced story. It is the effects - especially the aliens who look like small children in starfish costumes - that rather detract from that. Indeed, they raise way to many smiles far too often for any deeper, more meaningful aspects of the story to generate or sustain any traction. The ac