There are very few things in life that Jay and I love more than a good space movie. And while we would both trade everything we have for an hour of wife and child-free peace, sitting back and viewing an incredibly well-written, visually stunning, and powerfully inspiring space movie runs a very close second. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a copy of Howard the Duck, but Apollo 13 was a decent backup.

Apollo 13 was one of the few horrible hiccups in NASA’s moon program, and it would be easy to key in on the things that went wrong. However, this movie does something that very few films can accomplish successfully - it provides competency over abundance. Thousands of people, each the absolute best and brightest in their area, working together with extreme dedication, calm, and brilliance to bring three men home from certain doom. There is nothing better than the best acting like the best, and the fact that everything in this movie actually happened lifts our dark spirits in a way we never thought possible.

We don’t use the word masterpiece very often, but everything in this movie - the casting, acting, writing, directing - all contribute to one of the best movies ever made. If billionaires buying social media companies and Russia threatening nuclear war are getting you down, this movie is like a healing elixir, reminding you of a time when humanity achieved the impossible, just because they wanted to. 

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go get severe joint injuries just from waking up in the morning.

You can be forgiven for forgetting about Starman, an early 80’s science fiction romance that came out in the same year as such obscure indie films as Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, The Terminator, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Conan, The Last Starfighter…Can we please travel back in time to 1984? We digress - Starman wasn’t a flashy popcorn blockbuster. It didn’t have crazy action sequences, outrageous special effects, or big budgets with bigger production values behind it. It was, however, a movie with a lot of heart, with shockingly good acting and writing that grabs onto your feels like two daughters you have to pretend to love until they're both 18.  

If you can get over yet another sci-fi lead actress with a hideous chin-bum-thing, you’ll find an extremely well written and acted story that truly does the “visitor from another world” trope justice. Characters learn and grow, their attitudes and relationships mature in a natural and believable way, and it transitions seamlessly from a compelling science fiction film into a love story easy to invest in. A grieving widow meets a stranded alien who looks like her dead husband, gradually falls in love with him, and helps him find his way home. It sounds simple - because it is - but the most beautiful things in our lives tend to be the simplest ones.

Seriously, though…Benny has an unnerving reaction to people with those chin-bum things. He needs help.

Ahhh…another turn of the decade sci-fi classic, featuring an indifferent and poorly conceived modern day Earthling protagonist with flowing locks, thrust into the far future to embark on a space battle for freedom, while having to choose between an attractive but boring romantic interest or an absolute sultry smokeshow of a romantic interest. Is this a horrible run-on sentence? Absolutely. But one thing it is not is describing Buck Rogers. This time, it’s Flash Gordon - the star Quarterback who ends up helping winged barbarians fight an Asian-themed villain, while an evil princess - who is clearly the superior romantic option - ends up with a classically trained Shakespearean actor in green tights.

We really, truly want to say that this is one of those examples of “so bad it’s good”, but the least thing we want to do is turn this podcast into a house of terrible lies. We aren’t fun-killers and we can appreciate a cheesy flick for the entertainment value it provides, and Flash certainly has its moments; the opening comic book scrawl is fantastic, Omella Muti makes us want to travel back in time, and Timothy Dalton acts the absolute #$%! out of his role. But everything else is just a jumble of horrible writing, horrible acting, and so many plot holes that you’ll pop a truck tire driving over them. If you’re keen on a SUPER 70’s/80’s feeling film that will absolutely never make you have to use your brain whatsoever, then strap in and blast off to absolute apathy and regret!

Flash…saviour of the universe and king of the impossible indeed.