Moonbase (1997) Reviews

• Good sci-fi flick even without the big budget bells and whistles.

  filmbox2007-03-01

  A nice little story about self-sacrifice and redemption disguised as a low-budget sci-fi shoot-em-up. While most of the special effects are a little cheesy, the characters and storytelling are solid. Scott Plank in the lead is both heroic and vulnerable, Jocelyn Seagrave is both ballsy and tender (easy on the eyes, too). The director does a nice job with both the action and drama, and there are even a few great comic moments (the "real" Neil Armstrong story). Revelations, about the characters' past, add some emotional layers to the movie, and a couple of fun twists help round it out as well. Check out Robert O'Reilley (StarTrek's Klingon "Gow-ron") as the main bad guy (He's pretty intense as a cold-blooded convict desperate to highjack his way back to earth).

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• A Mediocre Movie

  chickinsaw2012-06-01

  While not the worst Sci-Fi movie I've ever seen it definitely isn't good. Special effects are bad which is to be expected with a movie of this caliber. The acting is decent for a B-movie which thankfully prevents this film from being totally unwatchable. The plot isn't particularly engaging, just a b-movie rehash of a prisoner escape attempt with a few other movie clichés thrown in. The whole movie reeks of the 80s, which is weird considering it came out in 1997. It's more entertaining than watching paint dry but I wouldn't put it on my list of maybe watch again movies. If you have absolutely nothing else going on and you're bored out of the gourd there are a lot worst things to watch.

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• Passable Sci Fi and action film worth looking at.

  move-72005-07-16

  I saw this a few years ago. I thought that it looked OK and OK it was. Not an outstanding movie by any means but it has some ingredients that make it appealing to certain people. Obviously to some it won't. One blessing that the film has is that it features veteran character action actor Stack Pierce who plays Will . When the film swings into action mode Stack Pierce's experience in this genre comes in very handy and he plays it well. This slightly better than mediocre Scifi film that is about escaped prisoners attempting to hijack the moon base and gain passage back to earth does have a few saving graces. Stack Pierce and Kurt Fuller are two of them , and I guess that you'll have to watch the film to see the others.

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• A tedious and uninspired affair

  Red-Barracuda2007-03-29

  I watched this movie last night and already I am struggling to recollect very much about it. The story is about a group of criminals who escape from a space penal colony. They fly to the Moon in a space-age dustbin carrier; when there, they terrorise the dustbin men who work on the Moonbase. It strikes me that rubbish low-budget sci-fi films often involve either desert planets or, like this movie, criminals escaping from penal colonies. Why this is I have no idea. But I can say with some certainty that such films are always diabolical. This one is really no exception. It begins reasonably well with a decent credit sequence and a half-way alright dance music soundtrack. It then degenerates into a boring sci-fi thriller. So little of consequence actually happens in this movie that I am literally struggling to write a helpful review, so if you're reading this I apologise for not being able to enlighten you to the film's subtleties and nuances. For the record, I recall a tedious bunch of baddies, a tedious bunch of goodies, some nuclear warheads and a hologram of a naked woman. Other than that, I'm struggling. If you feel you could be interested in the activities of lunar dustbin men then I would not hesitate to recommend this film. I would also recommend it to those of you who wish to send their friends to sleep and steal their wallets.

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• No Fireworks Despite Violent Action.

  rsoonsa2003-07-03

  No Fireworks Despite Violent Action. Science fiction films that reflect quality are scarce indeed, largely because transposal of imaginative themes from the genre to the screen too often falls short of effective execution as a result of insufficient funding or inadequate invention, and unfortunately for its producers, this work is lacking on both counts, woefully so in the case of the latter. With essentially no budget with which to operate, it is a grave mistake to attempt the depiction of such a gamut of events as those within this scenario and, in particular, special effects of space opera warfare which appear only clownish, while seeds from the scriptors' imagination lie fallow due to some of the most fatuous misunderstanding of basic scientific principles to be found. Among these are frequent firing of weapons within a sealed environment, and a wayward law of gravity which enables freedom of movement of cast members while inanimate objects float weightlessly, but it is easier to accept these than it is to pretend that any of the episodes have a basis in plausibility. The plot involves an escape of life sentenced prisoners from a space station penal colony to a waste landfill upon our moon and their various attempts to obtain passage back to Earth, with some few capable players present who are execrably directed by first-timer Paolo Mazzucato, whose production team wastes effort upon such as holographic pornography while ignoring a pressing and basic requirement for the creation of states of suspense and of impetus.

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