Movies Seen Recently: The Resonator: Miskatonic U, Interstellar, 2019: After the Fall of New York

The Resonator: Miskatonic U (2021) – I love to see Charles Band’s Full Moon production empire return to its roots — in this case, back to the Lovecraftverse spawned by Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986), re-telling the story of Crawford Tillinghast as a university student continuing his father’s work on the dimensional “resonator” which allows one to see things beyond our normal dimensions.  And check out Michael Pare, Amanda Wyss, and Jeffrey Byron in supporting roles!

Now, here’s my heartburn: This was apparently the first part of a trilogy produced together and released, but then subsequently re-edited into  mini-series of six half-hour episodes. (All of this is “apparently,” since information on this production or series of productions is surprisingly spare.) Now, I think that the production values which look a little tight as a feature film are perfect for a TV series, and I wonder why Full Moon hasn’t done more of that, in this era of on-demand series watching. But editing each feature into two half-hour episodes leaves stuff on the cutting-room floor (even if the definition of “feature” is generous, as this installment clocks in at one hour and eight minutes). Yet I am unable to find the original feature versions of the second two movies anywhere — any of the streaming services, from Full Moon’s own library, even on torrent sites.  The originals have disappeared! What dark secrets do they hold that they have been banished so completely from mortal eyes??? 

Interstellar (2014) – Right now, this movie is sitting at #22 of all time on IMDb.

It does not get a similar assessment from me.

It starts out fine: A hard SF story which also includes some physics-revising future tech, like something that Robert J. Sawyer would right. Then in the middle part, it takes down the next and starts playing really fast and loose with science.

For instance, there’s a (marginally habitable) planet that’s so close to a black hole that gravitational distortions play havoc with time — a couple of hours on the surface translates to a couple of decades in orbit. Um… if we were close enough to a black hole to have that kind of gravitational differential, the planet would long since have been entirely destroyed by tidal forces, and any astronaut would got anywhere near would have become a thin, attenuated smear of red.

By the end, we’ve gone into full Doctor Who woo-woo — which has its place, but if you’ve promised plausible hard science fiction at the beginning, you really need to stick to that menu.

(Oh, and living on an ecologically collapsing Earth is terrible… but a surviving fraction of humanity living inside an artificial orbital ecosphere is completely sustainable and wonderful? Uh huh.)

2019: After the Fall of New York (1983) – Of the four movies that Michael Sopkiw starred in for Italian directors before disappearing off the face of the earth, this one is probably the best known. (How’s that for damning with faint praise?) It’s a predictable Escape From New York ripoff without the charisma, and given that I think EFNY is John Carpenter’s lowest-energy movie, you would be right in assuming that you need to bring your own caffeine to this one.

What’s notable, though, is that there appears to be a larger budget on display than in your standard Italian-produced post-apoc dreck.  Scenes were shot in Monument Valley (you can’t fake the Mitten Buttes), plus a couple in actual New York locations, in addition to the main portion being lensed in Rome.  There’s also credible miniature work, and some burned-out city sets that look like a step up from simply redressing a standard street set.  I don’t know that there was any real return on that investment — it still helps to have good actors and a well-written script — but it’s still good to see something beyond the “five junker cars and a stretch of desert” production values of too many of its Mad-Maxian cohorts.