Criticker MOM - September 2014

[ShogunRua]

Regardless of whether Lucas is suffering from PTSD, almost everything that he gets angry/upset over is a legitimately fucked-up part of the military or insanity of war. There is no real way to "heal" from such experiences. If anything, living in normal civil society is the "sickness" and war shows you the disgusting reality underneath it all.

The short is idiotic, boring propaganda meant to convince soldiers that everything fucked-up about the US military or war isn't really the cause for their ire, it's solely "combat fatigue irritability". (And in most real-life cases, their reactions wouldn't be as comical and over-the-top as Lucas's case, but would be blamed on the same cause) At the end, what happens? The guy talks about, the doctor dopes him up, and he's on the road to recovery? Bullshit.

It's cartoonish government brainwashing. At least most Soviet government brainwashing during the war had the decency to be much shorter and funnier;

[hellboy76]

Just finished Wavelength. Yeah, that is definitely a B movie. I was really concerned at first as it felt pretty much like a MST3K movie. It slightly improved from this, but as soon as I saw the lesser Carradine, I just kept thinking of Revenge of the Nerds.

The performances were a bit wooden at times, but not awful. The music from Tangerine Dream was noticeably 80's, which could turn some people off.

The biggest issue though is the story. Its murky and a bit meh.

That being said, you could probably do a lot worse, sci fi, along with horror tend to be the worst when done poorly. I wouldn't recommend the film except to true genre nuts, but if you had to see it, you most likely won't slit your lists before it's over.

[CMonster]

Just watched Aces High. Not exactly sure what to think of it. It was engaging enough that I wanted to keep watching, but at times bad at others baffling and consistently had no concept of tone or direction. At least half the film was spent drinking in the mess hall. There was lots of silly things and then the film would spend 30 seconds trying to show WWI was deadly. At one point there was a pillow fight with a Hungarian POW. And more than anything, it was so very very British. The bright spots were Malcom Mcdowell, Christopher Plumber, and some of the plane stuff was pretty cool and well done. The plane stuff did get a bit redundant at the end and the superimposed explosions may have been necessary but looked awful. I gave it a passing score but it was very odd.

Ribcage wrote a fantastic review for it.

[hellboy76]

Ditto to Aces High. Some good actors, some neat planes but other than that, its completely underwhelming, which is too bad as there are so very few good aerial films.

[CMonster]

Also, it must be noted that akin to Top Gun, there were some oddly homoerotic glances between pilots.

[Gregzilla]

After an unexpectedly busy month I finally got around to Aces High. I had seen this on VHS in the mid-80s and promptly forgot about it. Easy enough to do. Gritty biscuits and no sugar for the custard, Gads! War is Hell! McDowell and Plummer are good, But Simon Wards' final crack-up and the tragic ending totally miss the mark.

I had probably seen Wavelength around the same time. Wasn't as good as I remembered. Not that I found it bad, But it didn't hold the otherworldly aura that It had back then.