Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025
M3GAN 2.0 is an impressive sequel because of how thoroughly it avoids repeating the format of part 1.0. It’s not even the same genre – more straight up sci-fi thriller than killer doll horror – but it feels of a piece by having the same joyful sense of absurdity. I laughed at its audacity to open as a straight up action movie – imagine if CHILD’S PLAY 2 opened with the infiltration of a terrorist compound on the Turkish-Iranian border! U.S. Army Colonel Sattler (Timm Sharp, KING OF THE ANTS) watches remotely from a war room, bragging that his agent Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno, High Fidelity) is in fact a highly advanced android on loan to Saudia Arabia to skirt laws. But just as they’re celebrating a successful test run Amelia executes the scientist she’s supposed to capture, steals his biological weapons and turns off her tracking. She’s gone rogue.
Then we get an info dump on our part 1 characters, now living in fake San Francisco instead of fake Seattle. Gemma (Allison Williams, GET OUT), genius roboticist/flawed aunt whose artificially intelligent doll creation Megan went on a killing spree, has spun her infamy into a successful career as an author and AI regulation advocate in partnership with her new boyfriend, cybersecurity expert Christian Bradley (Aristotle Athari, featured player on SNL season 47). She still works with Tess (Jen Van Epps, 1 episode Power Rangers Dino Fury) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez, 80 FOR BRADY), but instead of electronic toys they’re trying to make useful and ethical things like an exo-skeleton for the disabled. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akela Cooper, Allison Williams, Amie Donald, Aristotle Athari, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Gerard Johnstone, Ivanna Sakhno, James Wan, Jemaine Clement, Jen Van Epps, Jenna Davis, Timm Sharp, Violet McGraw
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, July 1st, 2025
June 29, 2005
Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS (original review) follows the BATMAN BEGINS pattern for me: loved it at the time, loved it on rewatches, but watched it now and still found myself thinking holy shit, I forgot how good this is. In the set up it’s almost JAWS-good – the beautiful look and sense of place, the natural and economical ways it sets up these people and their relationships, the dread about what horrors are coming even though honestly I wouldn’t mind hanging out longer in this normality that’s about to be interrupted.
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
Turns out his reckless driving is for a different reason: he was supposed to be home at 8 when his ex-wife Mary Ann (Mirando Otto, HUMAN NATURE) drops off the kids to stay with him during her trip to Boston. He pretends he thought it was 8:30 and doesn’t even say he’s sorry, so it’s not that surprising his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin, TAKING LIVES) hates him, doesn’t acknowledge him, won’t take off his headphones for him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dakota Fanning, David Alan Basche, David Koepp, H.G. Wells, Josh Friedman, Justin Chatwin, Miranda Otto, Morgan Freeman, Peter Gerety, Rick Gonzalez, Steven Spielberg, Tim Robbins, Tom Cruise
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 21 Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2025
ABSOLUTE DOMINION is the new one from writer/director Lexi Alexander (GREEN STREET [HOOLIGANS], PUNISHER: WAR ZONE), her first feature film in 15 years (she’s been doing television). If you’re like me you’ve been interested in her since her PUNISHER movie, are very aware that she was a German kickboxing champion sponsored by Chuck Norris to immigrate to the U.S., where she portrayed Kitana on a Mortal Kombat live tour, and were excited to hear she was doing a martial arts movie. She’s also known for being fearlessly outspoken, particularly about Palestinian and Arab issues, so it was extra promising that this seemed to have an aspect of social commentary to it.
Well, the results are interesting, at least. The movie is primarily set in 2063 A.D., nineteen years after an era of devastating terrorist attacks by various factions of religious zealots. What changed? A live streamer named Fix Huntley (Patton Oswalt, BLADE: TRINITY) jokingly suggested that each religion should train a fighter to enter a tournament called “The Battle of Absolute Dominion” to decide which religion the world would follow. The idea immediately caught on, now Huntley oversees the tournament and I guess everyone just goes along with the results. World peace. Not bad. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Winter, Alok Vaid-Menon, Desire Mia, fighting tournament, James Adam Lim, Julie Ann Emery, June Carryl, Junes Zahdi, Lexi Alexander, Mario D'Leon, Naya Olinga, Olunike Adeliyi, Patton Oswalt, Philip Tan
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 6th, 2025
COMPANION, which played in theaters a couple months ago and is now on disc and streaming, features certain genre elements that are strategically withheld for a while. For almost a third of its 97 minutes we can tell there’s something we’re missing about the main character because of some of the weird things people say to her, so we’re very intrigued. I don’t include myself in “we” though because I knew the premise of the movie, controversially (but understandably, I think) included in the second trailer and other promotions. There is good reason to go in blind, but I can confirm that the movie is still fun without being surprised by that part. And I’m not gonna write a review on eggshells, so I’m gonna get into it a couple paragraphs from now.
The movie is about a group of friends who go stay together at a rich guy’s fancy-ass lake house. Iris (Sophie Thatcher, MAXXXINE) is our narrator, these are friends of her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid, LOGAN LUCKY), and she’s worried she’s going to embarrass herself in front of them. Sure enough Kat (Megan Suri, IT LIVES INSIDE), who answers the door, barely acknowledges her presence. Poor Iris just stands there forcing a smile while a conversation goes on next to her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Drew Hancock, Harvey Guillen, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Marc Menchaca, Megan Suri, Rupert Friend, Sophie Thatcher, Zach Cregger
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Monday, May 5th, 2025
I’ve enjoyed David Cronenberg’s movies for most of my life, and he’s been highly respected for as long as I can remember, especially in horror circles, but also elsewhere. I was still a kid when THE FLY came out, and yet I remember it being a phenomenon, a genuine blockbuster that everyone talked about, with an appreciation for its weird grossness.
These days he’s a bigger icon than ever, but I feel his work is being unintentionally diminished by the way he’s been short-handed as the “body horror” guy. I don’t think he’d still be going if that was all there was to him. In the most recent issue of Fangoria, Phil Nobile Jr. did a great interview where he asked about that. Cronenberg said he was proud to have Coralie Fargeat and Julia Ducournau as his “cinema daughters,” but “I still don’t know what ‘body horror’ means.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Cronenberg, Diane Kruger, Eric Weinthal, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Dale, Sandrine Holt, Vincent Cassel
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 16 Comments »
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025
O’DESSA is a pretty cool dystopian musical that Searchlight Pictures released straight to Hulu last month. The story involves love and music in the face of fascism – probly not anything anybody would be interested in these days. It’s pretty slick mainstream entertainment, but kind of a cousin to SHREDDER ORPHEUS and SIX STRING SAMURAI, so I support it.
An apocalypse has happened. Something called plasma (a rainbow colored oil-like substance) has poisoned the earth. But people still have farms and stuff. O’Dessa Galloway (Sadie Sink, FEAR STREET PARTs TWO and THREE) is a young woman who lives on one with her mother Calliope (Bree Elrod, RED ROCKET). She has a guitar made of junk and, like Pearl but not psychotic, she’s lonely enough to perform for a scarecrow.
Calliope discourages O’Dessa’s musical ambitions, because O’Dessa’s father Vergil (Pokey LaFarge, THE LONE RANGER) and five generations before him were what they call “ramblers.” Vergil took off one day to travel around playing music, never to return. Some deadbeat shit right there, but sounds amazing to O’Dessa, a regular pre-aunt-and-uncle-being-burned-alive Luke Skywalker. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bree Elrod, Geremy Jasper, Jason Binnick, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Mark Boone Junior, Murray Bartlett, Pokey LaFarge, post-apocalypse, Regina Hall, Sadie Sink
Posted in Reviews, Musical, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025
Recently I rewatched PRIEST (2011) for a podcast – I’ll link to it when the episode goes up (here it is: Vampire Videos #109). Do you remember that movie, though? Few do, but it’s one I really like, a post-apocalyptic vampire western action movie based on a Korean comic book. The director was Scott Stewart, a visual FX veteran (MARS ATTACKS!, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, THE HOST, RED CLIFF, co-founder of The Orphanage) who broke into directing with the weird angel-related action-horror movie LEGION (2010). Since then he’s directed the pilot for a TV continuation of LEGION called Dominion and a segment of the anthology HOLIDAYS, but only one full length feature: the close encounter movie DARK SKIES (2013). (I almost called it a UFO movie, but that’s not accurate, because we never see a space ship.)
This is the story of a middle class suburban family, the Barretts – real estate agent mother Lacy (Keri Russell, HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID), trying-to-find-a-new-job father Daniel (Josh Hamilton, MAESTRO), teenage son Jesse (Dakota Goyo, DEFENDOR, REAL STEEL) and younger brother Sammy (Kadan Rockett, “Mini Howie Mandel,” America’s Got Talent). They all have their normal human difficulties they’re going through and then one night Lacy gets up and finds the kitchen completely trashed, like an animal got in. Then another night she finds all the objects in the kitchen perfectly stacked and balanced, like a brilliant installation artist got in. And then all the family photos disappear, like a… I don’t know. Like something weird is going on here.
Increasingly bizarre things happen and what else can they do but in the moment be horrified by the inexplicability then in the sunlight the next day try to treat it like a normal problem with a normal way to deal with it. They talk to the cops, re-up their lapsed security system, add cameras. Surely something will work. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Annie Thurman, Blumhouse, Dakota Goyo, J.K. Simmons, Josh Hamilton, Kadan Rockett, Keri Russell, L.J. Benet, Myndy Crist, Scott Stewart
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »
Monday, March 31st, 2025
MICKEY 17 is one of those lucky breaks humanity gets every once in a while where for some reason some American company gives South Korean master Bong Joon Ho (THE HOST, PARASITE) a whole bunch of money for a big, weird, wonderful English-language goof that they have no idea how to make money off of. The fucking Weinsteins did it as distributors of SNOWPIERCER, Netflix did it with OKJA, now it’s Warner Bros.’ turn with a movie that shares elements with both of those but speaks directly to this specific era of capitalistic exploitation, idiotic cults of asshole personality, and just all-around reckless stupidity. But in a fun sci-fi way. It’s based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, but its sensibilities are unmistakably Bong Joon Ho.
Robert Pattinson (THE ROVER) stars and narrates as the 17th clone of Mickey Barnes, a harmless doofus who, in debt to a loan shark over his failed macaron business, tries to flee by signing up as an “expendable” on a flight to colonize the snowy planet Niflheim. This is not a common line of work – everybody acts shocked when he writes it on the form, and keeps double-checking that he read the paperwork. Basically, nobody’s been stupid enough to sign up before, but he agreed to it out of ignorance and because a lady’s shampoo scent reminded him of his mom. He admits this with embarrassment but also like he’s telling a funny story you might be able to relate to. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anamaria Vartolomei, Bong Joon-ho, clones, Edward Ashton, Edward Davis, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Ackie, Patsy Ferran, Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 23 Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2025
Today instead of one regular-sized review I have two fun-sized looks at movies I saw in theaters last week. They are not making much money and might not last long, but I support the theatrical experience (please clap).
ASH is a low budget sci-fi movie produced by Shudder and directed by Flying Lotus, who I’m a little familiar with as a musician, but I have to confess I couldn’t make it very far into his previous cinematic effort, KUSO (2017). This doesn’t happen to me often but it was just too gross with its pervy opening segment about pustules and stuff. By comparison this one is normal and tolerable, but it still makes sense coming from the same director.
Eiza González (BLOODSHOT, CUT THROAT CITY, AMBULANCE) stars as Riya, a space traveler of some kind who wakes to find her ship in emergency mode, her entire crew dead (including one with a kitchen knife in his chest), not remembering what the fuck happened, or even who she is at first. She medicates herself to calm down (a patch that lights up when she puts it on her neck – nice future tech), wanders out onto the desolate planet where they’ve landed, looks up at cosmic mandalas in the sky, has little scary blips of flashbacks and begins to slowly remember some of the events leading up to this, including bonding with crew members Clarke (Kate Elliott, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), Kevin (Beulah Koale, DUAL), Davis (Flying Lotus himself), and the captain, Adhi (oh shit, it’s Iko motherfuckin Uwais, MERANTAU, THE RAID, HEADSHOT, BEYOND SKYLINE, THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, TRIPLE THREAT, SNAKE EYES, FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale, Eiza Gonzalez, Flying Lotus, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Looney Tunes, Shudder
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, March 18th, 2025
ZEIRAM is a goofy but entertaining Japanese sci-fi movie from 1991. I always thought it was based on an anime or manga, but now I’ve learned that the six episodes of Iria: Zeiram the Animation were a tie-in that came out the same year, like CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY or VAN HELSING: THE LONDON ASSIGNMENT. But obviously there is some anime influence going on with some of the futuristic armor and weird creatures and stuff, which are given more consideration than the plot, so it might as well be a live action anime adaptation.
Zeiram (Mizuho Yoshida, who later played Gojira in GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK) is the name of a villainous alien on a rampage. He looks like a guy with a Boushh-style slit mask and a wide brimmed hat. The hat has a little kabuki-white face on the front that sometimes looks like a doll head, but in closeup appears to be a living person. Sometimes it extends on a long wormy neck. Eventually it’s revealed that he’s a “forbidden biological weapon,” and the “hat” is actually Zeiram, the rest is a biomechanical attachment. He’s basically a manta ray driving a mech! Spoiler. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Japanese sci-fi, Keita Amemiya, Kunihiro Ida, Mizuho Yoshida, Yukijiro Hotaru, Yuko Moriyama
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 6 Comments »
