NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #392
every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with random anti-alphabetical cheats)

Ice Ball (2020)

Here’s a 14-minute short celebrating the Minnesota ice harvest, a few eccentrics carving huge blocks of ice from the frozen lakes, to keep it for electric-free summer refrigeration. It’s more work but also sustainable than refrigerators, and some people give a damn about such things, which is beautiful.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Identical (2024)

Three teenagers or young adults are in a van, lost somewhere in Mississippi, smoking reefer and arguing and trying to make sense of too-cryptic directions to get wherever they’re headed. Then they see something, and something happens, in this 6-minute short.

And then, just as the set-up’s been set up, it’s over. I’m guessing the filmmakers are looking for funding to make this concept into an hour and a half. What they’ve got so far is OK, almost good, except that I hate all three of the super-stereotypical teenagers or young adults in the van.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ignoramus (2021)

This is a 10-minute short about a strange tubby white guy who doesn’t have much to say. “I don’t know what just happened,” one of the characters says, after an oddly silent encounter with the strange tubby white guy.

Neither do I.

It’s something I’ve dealt with it all my life, so let me ‘splain: Looking kinda dopey, being tubby, and not having much to say doesn’t necessarily mean someone’s an ignoramus.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Iguana (1988)

Everett McGill (later of Twin Peaks) stars as Oberlus, a facially and emotionally malformed 19th-century sailor. He’s abused and whipped by his shipmates, and escapes by swimming off into the night, all before the opening credits.

When he comes ashore, it’s on an otherwise deserted island in the Gallapagos, where he swears angry vengeance against any humans who trespass into his lonely kingdom. A few do, and Oberlus does what he swore he’d do.

Monte Hellman made Two-Lane Blacktop and China 9, Liberty 37, and like those, Iguana is the opposite of Hollywood movies that show-and-tell you everything. It’s enigmatic, challenging, and requires your participation. Hellman wants you to figure things out for yourself.

There’s little effort to render Oberlus as a sympathetic character; he’s as injured and ugly inside as his near-reptilian prosthetic face, but he’s fascinating nonetheless.

So’s the flick. It’s moody, thoughtful, brutal, visually marvelous, and bi- or tri-lingual but with adequate subtitles. To the end, it’s as stark as anything you’ve seen at the movies, and I hated Iguana — but also loved it.

Joni Mitchell’s “Wayfaring Stranger” will never sound the same to me.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ikarie XB 1 (1963)
a/k/a Voyage to the End of the Universe

This is science fiction, heavy on the science, from communist Czechoslovakia. It’s based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Magellanic Cloud, which gave me a head start, having read the book 50 years ago.

A crew of several dozen, mixed ages and genders but all white, are launched to explore the Alpha Centauri galaxy. It’s a mission that will take months, but 15 years will have passed on Earth before they return, so there’s seriousness in the artificial air. This is not a gee-whiz action-adventure; the film aims for profound, à la Solaris, Stalker, or 2001, and it succeeds.

Which doesn’t mean the film is entirely dry. There are moments of humor, some romance and hints of sexual innuendo, even an on-board cocktail party. Soon, though, there’s trouble to be dealt with. Nobody draws their laser guns or wrestles with space lizards, but Ikarie XB 1 tells a heck of a story, and tells it swell.

The ship is insanely large and fancy, with wide hallways and art everywhere, a computerized cafeteria and a gymnasium, etc. Czechoslovakia was a pinko place, and all this luxury was presumably intended to promise a glorious future for communism, despite its everpresent present in Eastern Europe at the time.

Yeah, the film has an agenda, but I ain’t complaining. You think there’s not propaganda in Hollywood movies?

Actually, in addition to being a fine movie on movie merits and well ahead of its time, Ikarie XB 1 also illustrates how propaganda works, on either side of the so-called Iron Curtain.

In America in the early ’60s, we were being shown sci-fi like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Invasion of the Star Creatures. Schlockmaster Roger Corman imported Ikarie XB 1 for stateside distribution, and booked this heady, brainy, foreign sci-fi into American drive-ins, under the title Voyage to the End of the Universe.

I watched both versions in a double feature, and the American version is ten minutes shorter, with dialogue and story severely dumbed-down. Even the credits are re-written, giving the cast and crew easier-to-pronounce Americanized names — Irena Kacírková becomes Irene Kova, Radovan Lukavský becomes Rodney Lucas, etc.

In the original Czech, the film’s first dialogue is a kick in the brain: “There is no Earth! Earth never existed!” In the American version, that opening line is, “Turn back! Everybody’s going to be killed!” That diminished IQ-level goes on all through Voyage to the End of the Universe. If you’re only going to see one of these two movies, Voyage isn’t the one you want.

There’s a subplot in both movies about a lifeless ship found floating in space. A few crewmembers from the Ikarie XB 1 (Icarus) board the vessel, and in the original Czech version, it turns out to have been an American ship from centuries earlier. Its occupants had suddenly and mysteriously passed away while having what appears to have been a gambling party — there are chips and dice on the table, and one corpse is shown clutching cash.

That’s commie propaganda, certainly, but not far off the mark. As the philosopher Mellencamp said, “Ain’t that America something to see?” But wait, there’s more:

Piecing together the evidence, it becomes clear that the American ship had run low on oxygen, so the officers had killed the crew with chemical weapons intended for their conquest of a nearby planet. Then they celebrated by playing poker, but one of the chemical canisters leaked and killed the murderous officers, too.

That’s overwrought, certainly, but again, for Americans it seems plausible.

Later, there’s a stone cold conversation about the savagery of those 20th century Americans. Staring sadly into space, which is just outside the window, one of the crewmembers says, “Our ancestors…”

“They were not,” says another. “Certainly not those people.”

In the American version, these events and dialogue are rather different. Despite scanning the historical records, the crew concludes that “We know nothing about that ship, nothing at all,” and, “We’ll never know how they died. It’s very mysterious.”

That’s propaganda too, the American style.

Can’t finish without mentioning the music, which is appropriately stellar and spacey. It’s composed by Zdenek Liska (or “Danny List,” in the American version), and it’s frickin’ excellent. Usually sci-fi movie scores concentrate on dissonant sounds and flat notes to suggest ‘strange’ or ‘outer space’, and Danny does that, sure, but he also makes a melody amid the chaos. During the dance scene at the cocktail party, I almost climbed out of my recliner to shake a leg.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

A shark scientist reflects on Jaws at 50

It’s true: the Jaws shark is public domain

You sure you’re in the mood for another Wes Anderson film with everything that’s going on?
by Wes Anderson

6/23/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

Neverending Film Festival

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