Nazis in Space!!!

So, I haven't seen any of the Oscar contenders yet this year. I've been busy...not going to the movies. I tend to wait until the furor has died down over anything, new-release movies just being one example of the type of crowded venue I can't stand. Plus there's something to be said for watching movies at home, often for free, with a beer and whatever in hand, haha.

But that's neither here nor there. What I am about to tell you will change your life forever.

Find and watch a movie called "Iron Sky." Just do it. It's on Netflix streaming, and it is all kinds of awesome.

 Nazis apparently make their space helmets in the shape of WWII stormtroopers.

But Kurt, you say, does this purported visual feast of amazingness really have space nazis? Or is it all a clever ruse? Perhaps just something concocted by clever marketers to draw me in and make me sign up to be a Scientologist? Or worse, a Republican?

Nope. It's true. There are space nazis here indeed. The year is 2018, and a U.S. manned space flight encounters a Nazi civilization thriving on the dark side of the moon, to whence said Nazis secretly debarked in 1945.

There is also a black U.S. astronaut who gets captured by them and (spoiler alert) turned Aryan (hilariously) by a mad Nazi scientist.

Of course.

But Kurt, you add (as you don't seem to realize this is a one-way communication format) is there also a super-hot Aryan princess who suffers a crisis of conscience? Yep. How about a future U.S. president who bears a striking resemblance to a certain former half-term Alaska governor? You betcha.

No, the whole thing is ridiculous, and silly, and campy in the best Buck Rogers tradition. If you know "Evil Dead," "The Venture Brothers," or the band Ween, you will recognize the genre: it is art made by artists who recognize the ridiculousness of what they love--in this case, over-the-top, 1950s sci-fi--but who celebrate it anyway, and who celebrate it lovingly, and cleverly, and with attention to detail.

The film is also visually sharp, with excellent CGI and production values, and believe it or not, it is a smart script as well, containing an endless slew of tongue-in-cheek ironies and clever satire, as well as low-brow, silly paeans to almost every sci-fi/action movie trope there is. It got like 6.1 on IMDB and only 30-something percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but ignore that. Watch this and you will laugh, and be entertained, and not only in a "so bad it's good way."

In fact, it's actually good. It really, really is.

And it's the next morning now, so you know it's not just the beer and whatever talking.

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