movie seen

[calimac]

Safety Not Guaranteed

This is a quirky little independent film concerning a (possibly) mad inventor who is building a time machine to travel into the recent past.

I want you to see this movie. I want you to see it, and then I want you to look me in the eye, and tell me that you agree with me that it is a much better movie than Back to the Future.

If you can say that, I will be inclined to take your further recommendations for movies. If not, I probably won't.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily agree that character gets lost in sf movies more than in other genres. Good sf movies are about the people affected by new technology, eg Singing in the Rain. A bad sf movie can be as fun as a bad western if you lower your expectations and wear heavy-duty disbelief suspenders.

I saw all the Back to the Future movies once, in initial release. So I'm going by 25+ year-old memories. That I remember it well is much to its credit, as far as I'm concerned. At some point I may see them again, in a row with commentary and extras on a large screen at home. I like living in the future.

Still, I'm puzzled by your astonishment. My major complaint against BttF was that it was too internally tight. Like many Spielberg movies, the world didn't seem to exist outside the frame. It was storyboarded to death. Virtually everything said in the early part of the movie was important, and virtually everything in every shot in the early part of the movie was mirrored in the later part. This made for a finely crafted pop movie which happened to have one of my favorite actors (Christopher Lloyd) and a decent sf plot. I was born in 1955 and enjoyed the comparisons with then-modern times. Okay, the Chuck Berry thing was gratuitous, but fun.

BttF is so tightly written that the first sequel was written around it, and BttF 2 worked, though not as well.

I liked Peggy Sue Got Married.