Review of Space Station 76 (2014) by Melancholicalc — 05 Feb 2015

The subtext title for this film is of course: a space station as imagined from 1976. Setting the movie in the 70s is both a clever cost saving device, because it's a lot cheaper to simply use decors, furniture, props from the 70s) and a hommage to the only golden era Hollywood has ever known, the seventies. It was the one time Hollywood prefered to make meaningful quality films, (Parallax, Lolly Madonna, They shoot horses, Sergio Leone) over the bombastic superficial crap that came before and the meaningless crap that came after.

Of course many people will mistake this for a sci-fi movie. It is not. It's a straight drama, despite the occassional absurd moment, like with Dr. Bot. I do have a preference for less plot driven films because plots are like straight jackets: The struggle HAS TO be resolved, the boy NEEDS to get the girl, the killer SHALL be caught, the world WILL be saved etc. Why, oh why should we give in to the infantile yearning for plots? It doesn't challenge us one bit. The characters are being made fun of, sure, but that's more to demonstraty the banality of life, or it's absurdity, than to make us laugh.

Special mention: Kylie Rogers, who is the 10 year old veteran with 20 credits, including a TV show with 9 episode.

Her acting is deceptively natural, and if she overcomes the obstacle of her rather run-of-the-mill Barbie looks, she might be a big one a la Knightly or Adams.