SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARY

Anton van Beek and John Martin cast a critical eye over the very latest in cinema, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and streaming releases, and home video extras too!

THE MOON: LIMITED EDITION STEELBOOK

(2023) 
4K UHD & Blu-ray. Out now. Capelight. Cert: 12

★★★

Five years after its first manned mission to the Moon ended in a tragic disaster when the rocket exploded shortly after take-off, South Korea embarks on its second human space-flight. The country’s history-making mission to the lunar surface may go against the wishes of NASA and other international space agencies, but what are the odds that disaster could strike again?

Pretty damn good as it turns out. Following a fairly uneventful launch, thing start to go wrong when solar winds damage the rocket, leading to an escalating series of crises that kill two of the three-man crew, leaving novice astronaut Hwang Sun-woo (Doh Kyung-soo) stranded with no idea how to keep the craft running.

In desperation, the authorities persuade traumatised former Mission Control director Kim-Jae guk (Sol Kyung-gu), the man who oversaw the first tragic mission, to return to the Space Centre to help keep the wide-eyed astronaut alive. However, as Sun-woo’s father also worked on that earlier fateful mission and committed suicide in shame afterwards, he’s not exactly thrilled to get advise from his dad’s old boss. Mashing together elements of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013) and Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015), at first glance director Kim Yong-hwa’s South Korean blockbuster would appear to have all the makings of a thrilling disaster movie.

However, while there’s certainly no shortage of big budget CGI spectacle on show, as well as a couple of well-constructed setpieces, when it comes to everything else The Moon barely rises above acceptable.

From some strange tonal shifts (leaping from desperate space crisis to a comedy boar hunt and back again) to the iffy science, broad performances and the tidal wave of melodrama that overwhelms the story on several occasions, The Moon ends up having more in common with Roland Emmerich’s brand of brainless disaster blockbusters to Cuarón and Scott’s more serious - and satisfying - efforts.

The plodding nature of the 129 minute film is only reinforced by the repetitive nature of its second half, as Sun-woo makes it to the moon, flees a meteor shower, takes off, ends up back on the moon, endures another meteor shower, takes off again…

While the excellent production design and visual effects ensure it looks the part, when it comes to making you care about its characters or becoming invested in the story it wants to tell The Moon just doesn’t have the right stuff.

Extras: ★★

Capelight’s snazzy-looking Steelbook houses UHD and Blu-ray copies of the movie, the former serving up pristine Dolby Vision-graded 4K visuals and immersive Dolby Atmos sonics (in Korean, English and German language variations). Bonus features, however, leave a lot to be desired with both discs featuring the same set of two four minute promo featurettes and a trailer.

AvB

FIST OF LEGEND

(1994) 
4K UHD & Blu-ray Out now. 88 Films. Cert: 18

★★★ ★

There aren’t many martial arts stars out there that can measure up to Bruce Lee. That said, Jet Li came a hell of a lot closer than most with this stunning reinvention of Lee’s 1972 hit, Fists of Fury.

Set in 1914, the film casts the perpetually baby-faced Li plays Chen Zen, a Chinese student studying at Japan’s Kyoto University. Learning that his former master has died after a fight, the distraught Chen Zen returns home to Shanghai and sets about challenging the Japanese karate master responsible. Easily beating the karateka in a fight, Chen Zen realises that this man could never have defeated his master in a fair fight - a fact that is confirmed when his master’s body is exhumed and an examination reveals he was poisoned prior to the fight he lost.

Things get even more complicated when a Japanese General frames Chen Zen for murder causing tensions to further rise between the Chinese and Japanese martial arts schools; a situation that isn’t made any easier when Chen Zen’s Japanese girlfriend Mitsuko (Shinobu Nakayama) arrives on the scene, much to the disgust of his former friends.

As good as Bruce Lee’s Fists of Fury is, nobody could ever accuse it of really painting a balanced portrait of the Japanese. As far as that film is concerned the Chinese are good, the Japanese are bad, and that’s as deep as it gets. Now, in the context of watching a film in order to see Bruce Lee putting the hurt on people, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But Fist of Legend proves that a film can deliver all of the hard-hitting martial arts action you could ask for while also digging deeper into the story’s social, political and historical context. And by doing the later it puts the fighty stuff into context within a conflict on a far bigger (yet more believable) scale.