Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

JasparLamarCrabb A fairly depressing view of a future in which having a child is punishable by death. Oliver Reed & Geraldine Chaplin decide to have one anyway. As expected, that proves to be a bad idea. Best friends Don Gordon & Diane Cilento blackmail them into "sharing" the child. There's a good central idea here that's actually quite frightening & the actors, particularly Chaplin & Cilento convey a real sense of misery as wannabe mothers forbidden to give birth. Their desperation and utter sadness is palpable. Unfortunately, the movie is directed with little finesse by Michael Campus. Additonally, this sci-fi thriller suffers from very poor art direction and very dark cinematography...there are times when it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on. Not exactly a dud, but no classic either.

mickeyshamrock ZERO POPULATION GROWTH is a very cool little, subtle/in-your-face, sci-fi movie from 1972. It's literally LOGAN'S RUN meets CHILDREN OF MEN but staring Oliver Reed (and released in theaters before either film). I had 8 beers before I watched this and I suggest you do too (and I'm sure Oliver Reed had at least that before the cameras rolled so when in Rome...). Anywho ZPG is one of those "utopian future but utopia is actually totally f'd up" movies where most of the inhabitants are like "hey, I'd complain, but nobody would listen" but one guy manages to step up and fight the power. I love that theme so if you're into that kind of thing too then you should absolutely check this movie out. Sure, the beer helped, but I sort of loved this movie.

Deusvolt In the not too distant future, overpopulation with its resultant pollution has made most of the earth unfit for habitation. A portion of humanity has retreated into a hermetically sealed city. By edict couples are prohibited from having children. Exempt are those born Before Edict and the initials B.E. are invisibly engraved on those children's foreheads visible only under a special light wielded by law enforcers.Deprivation of maternity has driven many women to psychosis. There is a scene where women scream at another woman with a young child "Baby! Baby!" and the authorities move in. It turns out that the child has a B.E on his forehead.Despite the danger, the characters played by Reed and Geraldine Chaplin decide to have a baby anyway. Gripping was the scene when Reed was researching via a virtual library on how to perform a baby delivery. He was of course being monitored by a "Big Sister" computer of the authorities. How he got to the sections about maternity and delivery is interesting. He first surfed through sections about some obscure aspect of monastic art,Premonstratensian art. From there he managed to navigate to pregnancy and delivery. The computer, however, sensed that he drifted into the taboo topic of childbirth. Reed's chair clamped onto him sending volts of electricity into his body. He pretended to be disgusted at the videos he saw of childbirth and alleged that he was about to report and protest the presence of such "filth" in the library. His acting here was notable as he seemed to be really in pain with his face oily and perspiring. The leader of the civilization rides in some kind of whimsical toy-like flying saucer that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" every time he makes an appearance. The tone, texture and general treatment of this film is both amusing and unsettling at the same time. It is what makes it a fine one.The horrors governments would be willing to perpetrate to achieve Zero Population Growth was accurately predicted in this movie. Compulsory mass abortion was (is?) practiced in China in the '80s. There too was the testimony of a Chinese lady doctor who escaped to the West that babies who were delivered live illegally (more than two children for the couple) were murdered by injecting poisons into the fontanel. Later China amended the two-child decree to only one. During Indira Gandhi's regime in India, Rajiv (her son who later on became PM himself), regularly went on patrol gathering young men and having them forcibly sterilized. And of course, women who went to public health clinics for any reason were summarily sterilized once it was determined that they already had children. But why pick on China and India, abortion in the U.S. and in most of the EU is also done on a massive scale under the alleged "right to privacy" and of "freedom of choice."If you are intrigued by societies that seal themselves off from the rest of the world and humanity, check out Zardoz (1974 with Sean Connery) and Logan's Run (1976 with Michael York). There is also, of course, The Time Machine of which I know of at least two film versions. I like the older George Pal production because of its lush texture and the beautiful actors (Yvette Mimieux and Rod Taylor). The Lost Horizon also has two versions one made in 1937 and the other in 1973. The newer version is the better one with Peter Finch and Liv Ullman although the parts with George Kennedy (singing at that) and Sally Kellerman made it somewhat corny.

uds3 Usually most any film with Oliver Reed has its moments, even the worst, and he made some stinkers (LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF, SPASMS). This little sci-fi offering about a LOGAN'S RUN type society where babies are disallowed, animals exist in stuffed form only and the weekly roast comes out of a tube, just never engenders any audience interest.No ONE particular fault - direction is competent, cinematography suitably bleak and the cast suitably depressed, just no SOUL to the thing and inclined towards the so-whattish?If you want to see Reed and Chaplin on the run having been way too naughty one night, then this is the film for you. I carry a permanent memory of this film in my head as a mini black and white "trailer" Good companion piece to the much bigger budgeted but in the upshot, no better, LOGANS RUN.