The Nova Awards - The Groovy 70s

Silent Running



Yes yes, I turned down Solaris as too boring and made the winner a movie whose entire cast is 3 people and two dumb robots. Still, there’s something I really like about this movie. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s still pretty great and unique. You just have to embrace your hippie side a bit.

Sleeper



It’s been a while since a comedy has won, but it’s not like this movie doesn’t have interesting sci-fi elements such as the famous robots and sex spheres.

A Boy and His Dog



A Boy and His Dog is an interesting and unique movie for sure, it's just not a lot of fun to watch. It's dirty and dreary and not a lot happens for a while. The movie certainly picks up steam in the final act and the movie has its moments and funny parts, but overall it's not something I'd really recommend.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers



In my opinion, this is one of those rare times where a remake is better than the original. The first one is done in a bit of a silly way and this one is just so suspenseful and creepy. It also has one of the best endings of all time.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture



Here’s a review of mine:

Over the years, Star Trek: The Motion Picture has had me flip-flopping on my opinions of a movie like no other. But I think I’ve finally figured out why this is. The movie hasn’t changed; my expectations of it have. Typically when I’m watching this movie, it’s because I’m going through all of the movies, or at least the first six, and this one is mightily different in style. When I start this movie, I’m already thinking about and looking forward to the characters I know and love from Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home, and therefore become disappointed when everything is slow and everyone is so moody or stoic. But this movie stands alone.

“Star Trek: Motion Picture” isn’t Wrath of Khan, Independence Day or Serenity; it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, and Silent Running. You have to be patient with it and love it for what it’s giving you. In this case, we are given epic science fiction at its most grand, the kind of stuff you expect from the greats of literature, like Asimov and Clarke. In no other film that I can think of is there a more deeply philosophical sequence than the latter half of this film. If you pause to take it in and think about all of what they say in the final scenes you may find some of the logic is a bit fudged, but they do surprisingly well for a feature film.

This film doesn’t just celebrate the big questions of who we are and what we want, but it celebrates space exploration and human achievement. In no other Star Trek movie will you see a full 4 minutes devoted to showing off the Starship Enterprise (and there’s also about 8 full minutes devoted to the design and scope of the alien entity, depending on what version you’re watching). It seems to be saying: “We live at the height of human civilization in a time where we have giant spacecraft that can whiz us across the cosmos…and isn’t that wonderful?” After all, the movie’s climax involves the revelation that the alien entity was born out of a Voyager probe…the very craft humans sent out when we were first getting our space legs. It all comes full circle. And this is what Star Trek is at its core. The future doesn’t have to be a dystopia filled with war and death (like 95% of science fiction out there), but it can be a wonderful and mysterious place where there are no limits.