Eolomea Movie Review

You wouldn't know from looking at it vs. 1960's The Silent Star, but Eolomea represents 12 years of special effects upgrades and enhancements.

East German upgrades and enhancements, mind you, courtesy of East Germany's DEFA film institute.

Eolomea finds our favorite iron curtain filmwerkers looking spaceward again: Here our intrepid explorers learn that their spaceships have gone silent, and they want to find out why -- in addition to understanding the meaning of a strange transmission they've received: "Eolomea." What follows is an extensive 2001-styled trip to space in search of the answers, intercut with a strange idyll on earth (complete with running in slow motion on the beach), as a woman (the ravishing Cox Habbema) tries to convince one of the DEFA-nauts to sign up for another tour of duty in space.

Unfortunately Eolomea isn't much to look at. The space station is rather cool -- reminiscent of the floating tubes of Mir -- but the spaceship interiors look suspiciously like East German bomb shelters and abandoned warehouses, with industrial shelving full of crap and depressing, faded-blue walls. No wonder this guy doesn't want to go back into space.