Iron Sky Movie Review

One Line Synopsis

Nazis in 1945, knowing they would lose World War II, discover an anti-gravity drive and  build a base on the dark side of the moon with plans to invade Earth in 2018.

Comments

Here’s more of the plot. A Sarah Palin-like U.S. President sends a black male fashion model and an astronaut to the moon as a re-election stunt. Ambushed by Nazis, the white astronaut is shot and the black fashion model is captured. Shocked at his appearance and race, a mad Nazi scientist turns him blond and white through a set of chemical  injections.

He returns to Earth and so does Renata (Julia Deitze) and Nazi officer and future moon Fuhrer Klause (Gotz Otto) to find smartphones to power a massive Nazi invasion vessel currently controlled by a computer that makes ENIAC look sleek. The movie accelerates from there.

Iron Sky is what I expected, and more. Over the top caricatured performances (the prize goes to Kier Udo), wit, cheeziness and sometimes clever dialog along with a preposterous plot pulls you in and the CGI keeps you there. The occasional dirty jokes are unexpected and made me laugh out loud.

Check out the website here: http://www.ironsky.net/site/

Director

Timo Vuorensola

Screenplay

Johanna Sinisalo, Jarmo Puskala

Standout Actors

Julia Dietze is charming and sexy as the innocent, brainwashed Nazi schoolteacher, believing that the Nazis will bring peace and love to the Earth. Kier Udo is a walking cartoon as the Moon Nazi Fuhrer. The best actress was the exotic Peta Sergeant as the uncontrollable psychopathic presidential advisor. Nuke innocent women and children on the Nazi moon base? No problem!

Best Bit Part

The two Nazi storm (space?)troopers looking at and commenting on a Playboy centerfold. Hilarious.

Here’s a cut and paste from the Iron Sky pre-review posted a while ago:

What makes this Iron Sky really interesting is the financing. This is a crowdfunded film, the first of its kind as far as I know. According to their website that seems a little out-of-date, the total budget for the film was 7,500,00 Euros. 6,300,000 of which came from secured financing, 300,000 fro crowd funding and 900,000 from crowd investment. The website is cool and packed with information, trailers and development videos. This project reeks of creativity, intelligence, coolness and fun.

Grade: A

 

Detropia Review

We went to the Main Art Theatre and saw Detropia this afternoon. Detropia is a documentary of Detroit in decline and decay. I was really looking forward to seeing it and came away disappointed, on a lot of levels. Detropia begins at the Detroit Opera House with what looks like all white wealthy patrons listening to an expansive Wagnerian-style opera.  The opera house director then comes on stage and begs for money. Cut from there to what some people call “ruin porn” and introduction of the recurring characters.

First, the good. A lot of the urban landscape shots (ruin porn) are first rate. I’m in the heart of Detroit five days a week and I was surprised by the rawness of some of the images. The dudes salvaging scrap metal and trying to pull down derelict buildings with their pickups trucks were colorful and gritty. That’s about the only good things I can say about Detropia. Detropia descends from there, and quickly.

I found Detropia cliched, self-indulgent and rambling. Frankly, it was boring. Why? The operatic metaphor didn’t work for me, and it’s reoccurrence quickly became tiresome. The film rambled, almost endlessly. The performance artists featured were hugely untalented and the Detroit videographer portrayed was irrepressibly obnoxious and self absorbed. The lengthy soliloquies of the blues bar owner and UAW local president were ill informed and filled with bizarre illogic.

The film, and audience, would be better served if the focus was on the bitter conflict between the Mayor, City Council and city unions. Chronicling the struggle to keep the city on life support versus the preservation of union entitlements and benefits and a dwindling police and fire department working daily twelve hour shifts would have painted a more relevant picture of Detroit. That at least would show viewer what is really going on in Detroit, every single day.

This film does not reflect the real Detroit. Real Detroit is infinitely worse, and infinitely better.

Be your own judge and see it, but wait until it rolls around on Netfilx or Redbox, or even YouTube. That’s what I wish we would have done. In my opinion it’s not worth going to a theatre to see.

Here’s a review that says it better than I do:

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/09/26/scene-in-detroit-detropia-fails-in-idealism-irony-and-integrity/

Here it is on imbd:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125490/

Here’s the Detropia’s website:

http://detropiathefilm.com/