AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

semic-78334 Magnificent costumes created in the spirit of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s. in one of the scenes seen moving robot, reminiscent of the robot from the movie Star Wars

hte-trasme This short Soviet science fiction feature takes an unusual approach which is rather daring but in this case not necessarily hugely successful. As viewers, we are thrust quite directly into events and interactions between characters in what appears to be a very different society of Earth in a far distant future, without almost any context or exposition of any kind to tell us what is going on or what we are looking at. It's an approach that would work successfully many times and become more and more common in the science fiction literature of the years to come. But in the frame of this film of slightly over an hour, it doesn't really have the space to work. Events move fairly quickly, and we don't have time to adsorb why they are important or form any connection to the characters. Apparently this was intended as the first in a series of films that did not get any further off the ground. Whether that was due to artistic or political failings seems to be debated. The character of Veter (meaning "wind" in Russian) does make a point of refusing a post his society and whatever seems to operate for a government in The Future want him for, and that might have struck a wrong note. Equally, it could have been the neglected plot and character development. The filmmakers may have meant to develop that in future installments, but the lack of it here could not have encouraged many to want those future installments to be make. A few scenes that do play on what would be emotional moments seem to exist in a vacuum because the emotional background to them hasn't been built. We know a crew is stranded, but little suspense is created when that's about all we know about the situation. On the plus side, the film does look quite good, with original=looking costumes that are different enough to be accepted as from the far future, and impressive space and alien settings. Sometimes it is charmingly out-there, such as when the conference receives the distant transmission of life-sized dancing women in silhouette. Overall, it's interesting and commendable for its far-future setting and lack of condescension in jumping headlong into its ambitious setting and plot. But these experiments aren't all necessarily successful ones, and I can't say it was really a wrong decision not to continue the film series.

Drago_Head_Tilt A manned space-flight is trapped by the strong magnetic pull of an "Iron Star". The crew land on the surface and discover other downed spacecraft. They drive a cool land-cruiser, have a robot and encounter a shadow-like entity that can "eat" crew members through their spacesuits, and doesn't like light. Meanwhile Earth of the future is a peaceful Communist utopia that resembles Ancient Greece! Characters discuss the compression of time, and watch satellite images on a huge screen, including a woman dancing in red silhouette against the backdrop of space, 300 years ago!?! The 66 min (jumpy, faded quality) DVD print i saw (it was originally 77) had very badly translated subtitles, so i may be missing something. There's also a romantic subplot. Confusing as this was, i really dug the evocative alien planet scenes (real pulp fiction art come to life), and the entire movie is visually very impressive. I also liked the scene of recreational trampolining aboard the spaceship (in the background), and the odd soundtrack of repetitive organ stabs. With Sergei Stolyarov, Vija Artmane, Nikolai Kryukov and Gennadi Yukhtin. It's based on the 1957 novel by Ivan Efremov (1908-1972), a real-life scientist who developed Taphonomy, a fossilization science in the 1940s. Shot at the Ukrainian Dovzhenko Film Studios, a proposed second part (based on Efremov's follow-up novel The Bull's Hour) was never made.

Dolphin2 This film was considered for some strange reason as not really successful (may be it was politically incorrect for its time) and almost not shown and theatres and TV. I saw it only once in 1990 during "Old Sci-Fi festival" but I have to say it's best Russian I saw. Actually in USSR there were almost didn't filmed sci-fi an thrillers. This film in somewhat very similar to Kubrik's Space Odyssey. Probably it well-made, decorations, dress-ups , scenes build strong (as if for real use) and not from plastic and paper. Also people shown at this movie, their interests, behavior and motivations so different from modern's. All this give you a strong filling of future life. This is true, good old-fashioned Sci-fi. Not Hi-tech westerns like Terminator or hi-tech tales like Star Wars. Also it based on very serious story, considered as one of the keystones of Russian postwar sci-fi. Shortly speaking - Good, old-fashioned, space travel pure sci-fi.