imdb - 6.3
2 disc dvdrip w/subs
bdrip w/subs

what's it about?
strangely the pitfall about the movie starts already here. i'll go on with a synopsis of some sort then! the setting of the movie is futuristic tho, which tickled my mog nerves quite alot in the good way. it is 2267 and planet earth has gone to piss and lots of people live on a gigantic space station orbiting the earth. we meet Laura Portmann, who sits on this space station while communicating with her sister Ariane, telling her she's gotten a job as a medical officer aboard the Kassandra, destined for an 8 year long tour to and from some space station far away. this trip will give her enough cash to join her sister and her family on some clean and super nice re-established place on the planet Rhea.

aboard the ship we meet the rest of the cast of this movie, two mechanical grunts, a nerd, some kind of military officer woman, the captain and some kind of third party security officer. this security officer is aboard to prevent some rabid militant anti technology group from blowing up the ship or do other criminal acitivities.


the leading lady, Anna Katarina Schwabroh as Laura Portmann, taking pictures for her spacebook profile.


so, what's mog's thoughts?
hm, when i watched this movie the first time around i had a very hard time establishing what kind of movie this really was until i was aprox. halfway through it. this is the negative thing about this movie that gave this movie such a mediocre rating on imdb (if i am to believe the posts on the boards for this movie correctly).
this brain churner did pull me slightly out of the movie, cos it didn't give away much in the ways of genre formats. is this sci-fi action, with crooks trying to sabotage the mission? is it a sci-fi thriller with aliens aboard? is it sci-fi drama because of all the tension between characters in the movie? is it sci-fi horror in the ways of Event Horizon?
this time i won't spoil stuff, but i'll say this. the movie, to my taste, resolved itself quite good, even tho it took a bit too long to tell me what direction it was going in. i had speculated in many different directions and luckily for me it went the way of one of these speculations.

one of the superbly executed ambitions of this movie was the visuals. the dvd quality movie looked super convincing and properly executed, and it wasn't until i saw the blu-ray quality version of the movie i kind of saw the computery stuff about the visuals. it might also have been a case of "wow, this really looks good" on the dvd tho, but i dunno. i was properly convinced. this was very credible and worked well to enhance the visual feel of the film. the settings too, interior shots, were very convincing and gave a proper space cargo ship vibe.
there were some technical issues that eggheads were debating about a gravity issue and cryosleep tanks, but if you're not the kind of person who has debated the issues of star wars lightsabers or the physics of warp speed, you probably won't notice this.

some will also say it's 20-40 minutes too long, and because of the mentioned plot issues it could easily have been shorter, but when i had finished the movie i thought it was precisely as long as it should've been. i came to enjoy the mysteries of what this movie was about, and attributed my confusion to being polluted by the streamlined formats of modern cinema. this is no Das Boot in terms of plot devices and story telling, but it is no generic Hollywood formatted story either. perhaps Hollywood with lots of bits added to it. that said, i suspect some, or quite a few of you will agree with the people who wanted this cut shorter with less of the confusing bits.


a space dock? a space ship? i can't really remember, i was rendered catatonic by the nice visuals very early on!


so, mog, what's your rating on this?
let's run through the bits that defined the experience for me:

settings/visuals: 400
i don't know exactly why 400, but i liked what i saw so much it will probably be the benchmark for top rating in this review. 400 is an imdb 10, yes! if you could not hear or read subtitles and saw only bits of this without trying to get the story through what you're seeing, you'd fukken love this if you were a sci-fi spaceship geek!

characters: 50
while the woman portraying medical officer Laura Portmann is nice on the eyes and does a believeable and credible role, she isn't exactly surrounded by superb actors. some of them do a proper job, others don't. the actor playing the second in command officer seems to not know much about how strict hierarchy works, and you'd think if she didn't outrank you, you could easily tell her to shut up and do as you please. the captain, a man of wise age, does a decent job, but i suspect this mostly to be due to being an experienced actor. still, these characters, while a bit stereotypic, do not overall detract from the experience. they range from mediocre to good, and overall a credible group of characters.

plot and plot devices: 10
i am trying to be a bit more objective on this one, seeing as despite how much i obviously has taken to like this movie, they do a below average job in creating an ambitious story. i suspect they spent a proper amount of preproduction money on booze and took some shortcuts that shone through in the final execution of the script. i suppose i can't give it much more than 10 points anyways, cos this is a fact. obviously except the booze thing tho. and the speculations of mine!~ it still is an ambitious story, and i am glad they tried. it didn't fail horiffically either, it just didn't tell me where it was going for a good period of time.

overall: 460. comparably i gave it 8 stars on imdb.
as mentioned it is a long movie, much because it spends quite a while on telling you were it's headed. i suppose that's why i gave it 8 stars, but judging by the 460 score i hope this tells you that i, in the end, enjoyed this movie a whole lot. it got a spot on my external hard drive for movies i'll rewatch whenever i don't have anything else to put on (in the good company of jackie chan's police story and clint eastwood movies, like where eagles dare and kelly's heroes). this will fulfill a hole in your lust for movies about space ships in space. there is of course a romance, but it is handled the european way, so it won't be too wet and sexy like the generic Hollywood love story. the couple of holes in the sci-fi physics aren't enraging either, seen from the egghead point of view, even tho they might offer a bit in the debatable part by the conservative beards.

lastly, it isn't much in the way of a movie for the ones who aren't into spaceships and that stuff, so if you've read all the way through and have never thought you were born centuries early, this movie -probably- isn't for you!~

n. mog

--
if you're an amerifat, a shit brit or a convict, chances are you hate subtitles! your fukken loss

any requests or suggestions for movies (or even music!) to watch and/or review are appreciated, but not necessarily acted upon!~
also i suspect that a good review isn't quite as entertaining to read as a total slaughter of a review!

Previous reviews: Another Earth