Timo Vuorensola: Iron Sky

If you are on the web more than an hour a week, you probably have heard about this film: Nazis have hidden on the dark side of the moon in a massive, swastika-shaped moon base, and now they are returning to conquer the Earth in space zeppelins and UFOs. This is played as a comedy, and the film is very amusing, although uneven in its execution. Sarah Palin is a fitness-obsessed US president, an iPad controls the Nazi invasion fleet and Führer Kortzfleisch drives a VW bug on the moon: There are tons of brilliant ideas, but sometimes the comedic timing is off, or the idea overstays its welcome or is sabotaged by atrocious acting. There are a few changes in tone which mar the overall impression. A few scenes made me wince. But at other times, there is great comedic pay-off, and like me, most of the other moviegoers seemed to have a very good time.

I find it notable that this film exists at all. Please imagine pitching a comedy about Nazis from the moon to a big-studio executive: That sucking sound you just heard in your mind were his balls retracting into his body, to about the height of his liver and you'd be out of his office before you could say Reichsflugscheibe. Instead, a lot of funding came from the net. Now I am able to watch such an utterly crazy idea realized as a full feature movie with quite reasonable special effects on the big screen, and this gives me hope that we will one day have an R-rated film about Lovecraft's mythos worthy of the name. You know, real Shoggoths ripping up real mad cultists, stuff that is to weird for the normal film industry, but would look infinitely better with a big budget. Normally, I would give this film a 3.5 of 5, but it gets a small bonus for showing that crowdfunding can lead to results that leave the standard, safe blockbuster fodder in the dust.

4 of 5 laughably long German composite words