Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026
TRANCERS II: THE RETURN OF JACK DETH is a DTV sequel that came out in 1991, six years after the original TRANCERS, and four years after the at-that-time-unreleased anthology short TRANCERS: CITY OF LOST ANGELS. The cop from the future was now starting to be a relic of the past, like he’d always dreamed.
A new screenwriter, Jackson Barr (BODY CHEMISTRY, SUBSPECIES, ROBOT WARS, MANDROID) joins director Charles Band (PARASITE), but otherwise everybody is back. Tim Thomerson (between an episode of The Flash and an episode of Baywatch) is Jack Deth, the time traveling future cop now well established as an old-timey private eye in 1991 Los Angeles. Despite the subtitle he’s not returning from anywhere, he’s just sticking around in the same place. (And he beat BATMAN RETURNS to it by a year.) He’s married to Lena (Helen Hunt, a year before starting Mad About You) and they live in a mansion with Hap Ashby (Biff Manard, DESERT KICKBOXER), the former MLB player they saved from homelessness. In the intervening years Hap “made a pile of money” on “commodities speculation” and now collects firetrucks (?!).
The biggest tension in Jack and Lena’s relationship is that Lena wants them to buy their own house to settle down and have a kid in. Gone are her punk rock days. She wears bland ‘90s jeans and has regular-colored hair. She looks like Helen Hunt, actually. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alyson Croft, Art LaFleur, Barbara Crampton, Biff Manard, Charles Band, Full Moon Entertainment, Helen Hunt, Jackson Barr, Jeffrey Combs, Martine Beswick, Megan Ward, Richard Lynch, Sonny Carl Davis, Telma Hopkins, Tim Thomerson, time travel
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
Thursday, February 19th, 2026
40 ACRES is a 2024 post-apocalyptic movie, set 12 years after a fungal infection killed all the animals, causing civilization to collapse. It centers on Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler, THE HARDER THEY FALL) and her family, who grow corn and weed on their farm, which they protect fiercely and skillfully. In the opening some raiders show up (mostly white, mostly rednecks), maybe thinking the Freemans will be pushovers, but at first they can’t even find them. They just hear them whistling. Next thing they know they’re being shot and sliced and chased through the corn field. When it’s over we see that even the Freeman kids were part of the battle, and they’re very proud of their headshots.
We notice some trepidation from big brother Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor, TIME CUT), though. He unmasks the last one he shot and is clearly bothered that it was a young woman. Then she turns out to be alive and he hesitates to finish the job. But his mom orders him to, so he does it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: cannibals, Danielle Deadwyler, Elizabeth Saunders, Glenn Taylor, Jaeda LeBlanc, Kataem O'Connor, Leenah Robinson, Lora Campbell, Michael Greyeyes, post-apocalypse, R.T. Thorne
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 20th, 2026
MARSHMALLOW (2025) is a well made summer camp horror movie that manages the impressive feat of not really seeming like a riff on FRIDAY THE 13TH, SLEEPAWAY CAMP or THE BURNING (or for that matter CHEERLEADER CAMP, MADMAN, STAGE FRIGHT, CUB, or HELL OF A SUMMER). It does this in part by taking the kids, the parents and (to a lesser extent) the counselors seriously as characters and giving them relatable emotions before most of the horror movie stuff kicks in.
Morgan (Kue Lawrence, DEATHCEMBER, SKETCH) is a shy kid cursed with a horrendous bowl cut. In the opening scene he timidly approaches some taller kids who are aggressively passing a basketball around and asks if he can join them. They pretty much tell him to eat shit and run away while laughing at him. Morgan doesn’t notice this, but his grandpa (Corbin Bernsen, THE DENTIST) is sitting across the street witnessing the whole thing. So we feel both the pain of the kid and of the adult who’s gotta be torn up about what he’s seeing but can’t really intervene without humiliating the kid further. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alysia Reiner, Andy Greskoviak, Corbin Bernsen, Daniel DelPurgatorio, Giorgia Whigham, Kue Lawrence, Marcia King, Max Malas, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Paul Soter, Pierson Fode, Robert Kurtzman, Samantha Neyland-Trumbo, summer camps, Sutton Johnston
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2026
AFTERBURN is one of the two post-apocalyptic Dave Bautista vehicles that played theaters in 2025, but it’s the one I missed. I saw IN THE LOST LANDS, which is more of a stylized fantasy movie, while this is more like a straight ahead lower budget action movie done, apparently, on a mid-budget. Huge compared to the DTV stuff I watch (including FINAL SCORE starring Bautista), of course, but in a similar spirit. It’s out on physical media today and I was happy to catch up with it.
It’s set six years after solar flares devastated much of the earth and destroyed the infrastructure so that electricity doesn’t entirely work (but some of it does? I’m unclear). Bautista’s character Jake was a deep sea treasure hunter who now takes jobs going into dangerous territory to find rare objects for warlords like August (Samuel L. Jackson, THE RETURN OF SUPERFLY). He’s good with bombs and puzzles, and in the opening he’s on a mission that involves pretty cool video game style problem solving to get a Stradivarius out of a secret vault. He doesn’t personally care about that type of rich people shit – the rare item he brings home for himself is a Public Enemy record. It’s late Public Enemy (“How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People?,” 2007) and it sounds very tinny on his phonograph, but it speaks well of his tastes. As with IN THE LOST LANDS, I also appreciate knowing a guy has BLADE RUNNER and Basquiat neck tattoos in the future. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dave Bautista, Eden Epstein, George Somner, J.J. Perry, Kristofer Hivju, Matt Johnson, Nimrod Antal, Olga Kurylenko, post-apocalypse, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Monday, January 5th, 2026
You may remember that I recently saw TRANCERS for the first time. Which of course means I haven’t seen any of the other TRANCERSes. And I’m a sucker for a long series of sequels. I’m not planning to watch them all in one chunk, but I don’t want to let them sit and fester, I thought I should get started. So I learned about the unusual fact that it took them seven years to get around to part two, but three years before that they filmed a TRANCERS short meant to be a segment in an anthology film called PULSE POUNDERS. The movie was never released, a casualty of Empire International Pictures going out of business.
I didn’t mention this before but after the black and white version of JOHNNY MNEMONIC came out, Charles Band released TRANCERS in black and white calling it TRANCERS NOIR. So he’s not one to miss out on a quickie library exploitation. When a copy of the PULSE POUNDERS segment turned up in 2013 he released it as a standalone on DVD even though it’s only about twenty minutes long and of rough transfer quality. These days you can get it as an extra on the TRANCERS blu-ray or just watch it on Tubi. The lost angels were found. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Art LaFleur, Charles Band, Danny Bilson, Grace Zabriskie, Helen Hunt, John Carl Buechler, Paul De Meo, Telma Hopkins, Tim Thomerson, time travel, Velvet Rhodes
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2025
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Silver, Britain Dalton, David Thewlis, Edie Falco, Giovanni Ribisi, Jack Champion, James Cameron, Jemaine Clement, Josh Friedman, Oona Chaplin, Rick Jaffa, Sam Worthington, Shane Salerno, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 29 Comments »
Monday, December 22nd, 2025
Would you believe I never saw a TRANCERS movie before now? And I’ve still only seen one. But when Dreadguacamole recently mentioned in a comment that it “goes pretty full-in on its christmas cheer” I decided that would be a good one to watch right now. Thanks for the tip. It’s a good balance – not a movie about Christmas that would feel weird to watch in some other time of year, but enough decorations here and there to make it kind of cool to watch when it’s seasonal.
I was aware that TRANCERS (1984) was directed by Charles Band (PARASITE), and that it reunited him with METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN’s Tim Thomerson (UNCOMMON VALOR), now playing a character called “Jack Deth.” And that’s really all I knew. I’m filling in some blindspots here. Trying to become more cultured.
Turns out it’s a time travel movie and a zombie movie and a couple other things. It starts in 23rd century Angel City (FKA Los Angeles) and it immediately reminded me of some weird ‘80s comic book, because it has that era’s fascination with futuristic worlds where men try to seem like they’re out of some old detective novel. Not like BLADE RUNNER – it knows it’s cheaper, pulpier, not all gloomy and shit. But you got trenchcoats, a mix of futuristic and retro cars, a neon-ed out ‘50s style diner called Mom’s No. 3., and Jack’s big ears and enormous shoulder pads make him look more caricature than man (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne Seymour, Biff Manard, Charles Band, Christmas, Danny Bilson, Empire Pictures, Helen Hunt, Paul DeMeo, punk, time travel, zombies
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 21 Comments »
Thursday, November 13th, 2025
At some point on this here internet I started seeing people refer to the alien species from the PREDATOR movies as “Yautja.” I sure never noticed anybody calling them that in the movies. Looking it up now I have learned it comes from a 1994 book called Aliens Vs Predator: Prey by Steve Perry and Stephani Perry*, which is a novelization of the original Aliens Vs Predator comics. Okay, so it seems the word has been around for a while, but still – Yautja mind if you think I’m gonna call those things anything other than Predators. That has always been my stance.
So I laughed when the very first thing on screen in the new movie PREDATOR: BADLANDS was the word “Yautja.” They use the word dozens of times, conservatively. So it’s official now – they’re Yautja, from the planet Yautja Prime. But in this review they’re Predators. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benjamin Wallfisch, Cameron Brown, Dan Trachtenberg, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning, Jacob Tomuri, Mike Homik, Patrick Aison, Reuben De Jong, Sarah Schachner, Vincent Bouillon
Posted in Reviews, Action, Monster, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 22 Comments »
Friday, October 10th, 2025
When I was writing about VILLAINS the other day I looked up its writing/directing team of Dan Berk & Robert Olsen, and realized I’d already seen 3/5 of their filmography (including BODY and STAKE LAND II). I’ve been meaning to get to their latest, NOVOCAINE, but I’m in horror mode this month, so I went for the other one remaining: SIGNIFICANT OTHER (2022). This one went straight to Paramount+ which, like so many parts of our society today, is now owned by a fascist billionaire currently buying up and destroying our institutions to try to make life shittier for everybody. So I understand if you want nothing to do with that service. But as far as the movie itself this is a good one, I think my favorite by this team.
It’s another one about a young couple, the lady once again played by Maika Monroe (INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE), but it’s more like her usual downbeat characters, and it’s a much more serious movie. She plays Ruth, whose boyfriend Harry (Jake Lacy, CAROL, BEING THE RICARDOS) has convinced her to go on a hiking trip through a forest somewhere in Oregon. He doesn’t seem like a horrible monster or anything, but tends to dance around the line between charming and condescending, and he doesn’t seem very sensitive about how nervous she is. She’s a surfer girl, she didn’t grow up camping like he did, and she suffers from panic attacks. She intellectually understands that yes, going way out into nature with him should be safe, but that doesn’t mean she’s gonna be all relaxed about it. You gotta give her some leeway and understanding, dude. Jesus. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dan Berk, Jake Lacy, Maika Monroe, Robert Olsen
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, August 13th, 2025
I don’t know much about Oakland, but FREAKY TALES seems designed to be the Oakland-est movie of all time. So Oakland that Too $hort is the narrator and one of the producers and has a cameo as a cop and is a character in the movie played by rapper Demario “Symba” Driver. Also they have a cool retro synth type score but they got Raphael Saadiq to do it.
It’s presented as an anthology film, but it’s the type where each of the stories intersects a little bit and ultimately becomes one story in the last chapter – actually not that far off from the structure of WEAPONS, which I watched the day after I watched this. What it made me keep thinking of though is the made-for-cable movie COSMIC SLOP, even though this is pretty different and definitely way better. I guess just because it’s weird stories hosted by a music icon and named after one of his works.
Although there’s a sci-fi element in a stylishly fake looking “cosmic green stuff” that pops up occasionally (Short Dog figures it “was just one of those freaky things that made the Bay Area so damn fresh” at the time) I think it comes closest to being a crime movie. There’s a hitman, a corrupt cop, and everything revolves around a botched robbery of Golden State Warriors point guard Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis, TOP GUN: MAVERICK). I of course enjoy that type of story, but the standout chapters for me are the two about circa ’87 Bay Area music scenes, following some punk rockers and then a female rap duo, each group having a fateful incident after leaving the same showing of THE LOST BOYS. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angus Cloud, Anna Boden, anthologies, Ben Mendelsohn, Dominique Thorne, hip hop, Jack Champion, James Newman, Jay Ellis, Ji-young Yoo, Marshawn Lynch, Oakland, Pedro Pascal, punk, Raphael Saddiq, Ron Yuan, Ryan Fleck, Too Short
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 12 Comments »
