Review of Lifepod

Lifepod (1993 TV Movie)
7/10
Low budget sci-fi gem
29 January 2023
Far better than I expected, after it began like a Babylon 5 episode. The judge from Ghostbusters 2 is always great. My favorite is "definitely not Keith David" and the little guy. The pixie haired girl is evoking Katherine Waterston in Alien Covenant twenty years earlier. Note a way to present scale with limited means is through eclectic characters. It's a shorthand that goes a long way. Meanwhile I can't remember a single character in Danny Boyle's Sunshine, who are more Silicon Valley techies; I will take these circus freaks instead, even down to the blind mystic.

Ron Silver directing this, the idea you direct a movie and decide to play this character... basically is its ace up its sleeve to just get to his big scenes, and it will read like those blockbusters who cast him.

This is the skill of the movie is it is always finding that one angle to go beyond the mediocre TV movie it is budgeted as, it is always at work painting the process of its failing. When any one angle falters it quickly goes to the next in the bag of tricks. This to me represents inventive filmmaking, for what they all sort of know is a doomed production.

Such as the cinematography. The director understands to do space everyone needs to be sweating and in gritty shadows. A small statement but I swear that is the power of those James Cameron 80s films. I think Interstellar could have learned those old school cinematography conventions read big on screen.

It's cinematic, it's never cheap. The script. The concept of Lifeboat in space is inspired already but this is putting real attempts at science fiction world building and character arcs, and I am like wait, why is this interesting me intellectually too? It's like a good writer's b-sides. Seriously this film punches way above its weight. Even some of the space shots are kind of cool for a 1993 TV movie.
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