Arrival is the finest first contact film since District 9 and takes its place alongside that work and Spielberg’s standard setter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as one of the best tales of the initial meeting between humans and extraterrestrials ever told on film. (Note: Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey are unfair; Kubrick’s masterpiece occupies a unique and special place.) Arrival earns this distinction by way of its thoroughly original take on the alien life forms that come to Earth in 12 huge elliptical ships that hover off the ground in an inexplicable set of locations that include Russia, China, Australia, and Sudan. The aliens in Arrival not only sport an unexpected look, but their manner of communication is something we have not seen in a mainstream movie before.
Archive for the ‘Science Fiction’ Category
Arrival Review
Posted: October 23, 2016 in 2016 London Film Festival, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Amy Adams, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Denis Villeneuve, District 9, Forest Whitaker, Jeremy Renner
Drive-In Dive In: Thirst
Posted: August 6, 2016 in Drive In, Horror, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Clare Niederpruem, Greg Kiefer, Jes Macallan, John Redlinger, Karl Makinen, Monster Movies
First things first – Thirst is a lousy name for this movie. It’s a pretty bad one for almost any movie at this point, considering how many times it’s been used in the last 40 years as a film title. On almost every occasion, the movie in question has been about vampires. That’s not the case here. This Thirst is about an alien that arrives on earth hungry. Yeah, apparently Hunger as a title might have given too much away.
And that beautifully illustrates the core problem for this movie – it’s lazy, sloppy work. The inspiration likely came from the mind of a nine-year-old boy who spent his school days drawing fantastical creatures in his spiral notebook and his nights watching Alien, Predator, and Terminator movies. The monster in Thirst is a B movie classic – with a lizard body, an alien mandible, predator dental work, a terminator metal skeleton, and an anus in the middle of its chest. Nice work, kid.
Unfortunately, that same nine-year-old apparently wrote the screenplay. How else to explain that the character among the group of eight wandering the Utah backcountry who is given the most backstory is among the first killed? Or that no proper motivation can be given for the group going further away from civilization after a dead body is found? Or that the most annoying among the many annoying characters sticks around until almost the end? (more…)
Drive-In Dive In: 10 Cloverfield Lane
Posted: March 11, 2016 in Drive In, Reviews, Science Fiction, ThrillerTags: Cloverfield, Dan Trachtenberg, J.J. Abrams, John Gallagher Jr., John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
The only risk audiences rushing to see 10 Cloverfield Lane face are overinflated expectations from a brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign and sterling initial reviews (Rotten Tomatoes currently has a tally of 90% favorable). And, yes, there is the matter of the title which may lead some to believe this is a sequel to the 2008 monster movie, Cloverfield, which was a Godzilla found footage flick produced by JJ. Abrams. It’s not a sequel per se, although Abrams has said that this film, which he also produced, belongs in “the same universe.”
Forget about that for now. You don’t need to have seen the other film to fully enjoy this one, and, besides, the latest one is just a helluva lot better. In fact, 10 Cloverfield Lane is just about the best genre movie you’re likely to see this year. Right down to the batshit crazy third act, 10 Cloverfield Lane is pure drive-in fun. (more…)
Midnight Special Review
Posted: February 26, 2016 in 2016 Berlinale, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Adam Driver, E.T., Jeff Nichols, Joel Egerton, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shepard
Midnight Special was one of the real treats of the recently concluded 67th Berlinale Film Festival. The first showing was the film’s world premiere, and the inclusion of a genre movie into the Competition section of the festival was a welcome change from the programming approach of recent years. The initial showing occurred in the coveted first Friday evening time spot and was prefaced by a red carpet march of key crew and cast members including director/screenwriter Jeff Nichols and actors Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, and Kirsten Dunst. The film unspooled, and the proverbial good time was had by all. (more…)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Take Two
Posted: January 16, 2016 in Action, Fantasy, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Adam Driver, Captain Underpants, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, J.J. Abrams, John Boyega, Lawrence Kasdan, Max von Sydow, Supreme Leader Snoke
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a movie that demands a second viewing by most filmgoers – fanboys and casual observers alike. The reason for a repeat is rather simple. The heightened expectations surrounding the film’s release left most audiences in a state of diminished awareness, capable only of following the action from Point A to Point B and forming immediate visceral reactions: good, bad, loved it, hated it. Our eyes were wide and unblinking, but also unfocused on the less obvious and without the needed peripheral vision to incorporate all aspects of the production into our criticism. (more…)
H. Review
Posted: August 20, 2015 in 2015 Berlinale, 2015 Fantasy FilmFest, Drama, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Daniel Garcia, Helen of Troy, Rania Attieh, Rebecca Dayan, Robin Bartlett
Film audiences in Berlin have enjoyed two opportunities to see the film H. this year, first at the Berlinale in February and then, more recently, at the Fantasy FilmFest in August. It is a movie that does well with a second viewing as the allusions to the Helen of Troy mythology from the Iliad and The Odyssey can be distracting rather than illuminating the first time around. As the events slowly unfold on screen, filmgoers can feel as if they have wandered into a graduate school literature class without reading the assignment or even having access to the CliffsNotes version. Letting go of these concerns during a subsequent viewing allows audiences to escape a sense of frustration and enjoy the pleasures of understated storytelling within a technically sound framework. Of course, you still need to devote more mental energy than in most films, but here, one feels as if it is worth the effort even if there are elements that must be pushed to the side.
Tomorrowland Review
Posted: May 22, 2015 in Action, Fantasy, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Brad Bird, Brave New World, Celebration, Damon Lindelof, Epcot, Escape from Tomorrow, Florida, George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Walt Disney
Disney as cult is not a new concept. The Corporation would never choose such a descriptor, but neither has it ever shied away from behavior that justifies the label. Walt Disney saw his company as the landscapers of the future, the architects of the social engineering that would lead us into a brave, new world that simultaneously held the small town values of a past that never existed with a technology-solves-everything, squeaky clean and dazzlingly white future that could be ours if we purged ourselves of our baser vulgarities. (more…)
Ex Machina Review
Posted: April 27, 2015 in Drama, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Alex Garland, Alicia Vikander, Artificial Intelligence, David Mamet, Domhnall Gleeson, Isaac Asimov, Oscar Isaac
On the surface, Ex Machina is a state of the art meditation on artificial intelligence with a sleek, somewhat sterile, post-modern sense of the brave new digital world that awaits when Google and Apple turn from making phones and watches to manufacturing brains. Pop the hood and take a look inside the film, however, and you’ll see that Ex Machina‘s circuitry dates back to post-World War II science fiction. Underneath its shiny, new skin, this very welcome oasis of calm, adult entertainment is a robot movie. And like all robot movies, the central question is: what does it mean to be human? (more…)
Interstellar Review
Posted: November 7, 2014 in Action, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Anne Hathaway, Apollo Missions, Christopher Nolan, Dust Bowl, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow, Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Caine
Through the first half of its 169-minute runtime, Interstellar soars. Christopher Nolan launches this massive undertaking with equal parts skill and guile, and while the early going may be more “aw, shucks” than awesome, the narrative captures the spirit of optimism and possibility that the NASA space program provided in the 1960’s. Every American boy growing up in that decade wanted to become an astronaut, and the laying out of the mission and the launching of the rocket in Interstellar refires those feelings. For one and a half hours, Nolan appears on the brink of completing an even more daunting task than identifying another planet suitable for human inhabitation – making a 21st century blockbuster from original material that qualifies as family entertainment without any of the usual pejorative undertones that accompany that phrase. (more…)
These Final Hours Review
Posted: October 29, 2014 in 2014 Fantasy FilmFest, Action, Reviews, Science FictionTags: Australian Films, Mad Max, Nathan Phillips, The End of the World, Wolf Creek, Zak Hilditch
As we await the reboot of the franchise with the May 2015 release of Mad Max: Fury Road, director/screenwriter Zak Hilditch offers a tantalizing glimpse at what a Mad Max prequel might look like in the early going of his feature, These Final Hours. It’s the end of the world, don’t you know it, but everyone is a hell of a long way from feeling fine. Suicide and homicide have become Australia’s twin national sports with rape, robbery, and pillaging hanging in there as sentimental favorites. Corpses dangle from lampposts, and machete-wielding maniacs carjack passing vehicles to drive them to their next act of retribution. What’s a young Aussie male to do, but run out on his pregnant girlfriend one last time and head for the true party to end all parties, where he can go out in a blaze of tequila, ecstasy, gunfire, and glory? Unfortunately, this promising start in nihilism, hyper-violence, and general bad-assedness is completely undone by the source of ruination of too many genre movies – children. (more…)
Meet Mr. Karma 