Dish in Space
Movies from late 2000
Originally written: October 2000
The Dish
Space Cowboys
Billy Elliott
The Dish we saw in preview while we were in Adelaide. This is a pleasant movie (which sounds more like damning with faint praise than I mean) from the people responsible for The Castle, Frontline, The Panel and, earlier, The Late Show. This is set in 1969, the same year as both Frequency and Don's Party, and deals with the Australian end of the link-up for the broadcast of television from Apollo 11. It is set in Parkes, the home of the radio telescope which, among other stations, received the image from Luna. Although advertised as a comedy, and containing some comedic elements, the movie is more than that. The humour is at best gentle, and the film treats its characters with much more respect than the caricatures in The Castle. What surprised me was that this ends up being the best documentary on the moon landing that I've seen - at least one told from my perspective, the perspective of those to whom 22 July is the anniversary of the moon landing. (A caveat: I have not seen the multi-part TV series, From the Earth to the Moon, which has never had free-to-air release in Australia.) The writers play fast and loose with a few earthbound facts and fictionalise the local politicians but generally this is a fun and interesting film, which I'd recommend.
CM
is the Featured Attractions Review and Criticism section.
Also in
CM
Alphabetical archive of movies reviewed
also in
Movies
Opening Credits
Critical Mess - Reviews
From the Director's Chair - Essays
Lists
The Last Round-up
Space Cowboys has five good actors and a fun plot device - old codgers left over from the jet experiments at Edwards finally get a chance at space when a Soviet satellite with a cloned power source goes pear-shaped. The gathering together of the clan - Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones (who is surely too young for this group - after all he was Al Gore's college roommate) - and their training for space duty is well done and done with humour. I even was prepared to wear James Cromwell as the baddie. But once they get blasted off, the fun goes out of the movie, the special effects are nowhere near as good as, say, Apollo 13, and the plot and solving of it, together with the all-too-predictable ending(s), don't maintain the fun of the first hour. Still, it has its moments, especially in Sutherland's leering septugenarian sex-maniac.
Gotta Dance
Just when you thought you'd seen the last of the Margaret Thatcher-induced northern coal-town feel good movies, along comes another. And, by gum, it's a good'un. Billy Elliott's eponymous character is the sub-teen son of a widowered striking coal-miner who's supposed to be learning to box. Only he wants to dance and is seduced to the nearby ballet class, run by Julie Waters. The plot is fairly straight-forward: Billy has to overcome parental and siblingal opposition, find enough where-with-all from the cash-strapped, but good-hearted miners, and train his feet off so that he can try out for the Royal Ballet School. Even though there is plenty of ardua, he unsurprisingly gets to his astrae. What is surprising is that he drags you along willingly and that there is a lot more depth to the characters and the story than there appears there is going to be. You like these people and want them to succeed. And the conclusion, though preordained is still very emotional. The Brits have got very good and this sort of working class movie. But they need to make more than one every year or three. Highly recommended.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]