Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Thursday, April 2nd, 2026
PROJECT HAIL MARY is a nice crowd pleasing sci-fi movie based on a book by Andy Weir, same author as THE MARTIAN. It’s directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, the team who directed 21 JUMP STREET, produced SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and got fired from SOLO. It’s a huge hit, some people are talking it up like it’s Important, and it’s the closest thing Lord & Miller have done to a classy grown-up movie, so time will tell if it sends them on a catastrophic Adam McKay type trajectory. But right now we’re good. It’s a movie with lots of laughs and a lovable alien. People just get emotional about astronauts, I think.
Ryan Gosling (director of LOST RIVER) stars as Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher who accidentally winds up shouldering the responsibility of keeping the entire earth and at least one other planet from becoming uninhabitable. It’s kind of a long story doled out in episodic flashbacks, but an against-the-grain paper he wrote in a former life as a molecular biologist leads to him being one of numerous scientists recruited by a top secret international program to stop the crisis of single-celled alien organisms they call “astrophages” from blotting out the sun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Weir, Chris Miller, Drew Goddard, Greig Fraser, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, Phil Lord, Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 15 Comments »
Wednesday, March 25th, 2026
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH is one of those sequel titles referring more to the series itself than the story. I think the only rebirth is that it’s new characters and storyline, you don’t need to remember any previous entries. They really exhausted all the bringing-back-characters gimmicks in the last couple so this is an all new cast with only one unobtrusive mention of one of them studying under part 1’s Alan Grant.
Scenario-wise it’s similar to THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK and JURASSIC PARK III. There’s no theme park, just a small team sent on a mission to an area where leftover dinos created on a separate island run wild. Since it’s set after three JURASSIC WORLD movies the world is used to and bored of dinosaurs, they get into cities sometimes and it’s not a huge deal, there are genetically altered breeds and mutations created for entertainment purposes. But mostly this is set at the equator, where travel is illegal due to dangerous wild dinosaurs, and on an abandoned R&D island, so it’s not that different from any other chapter. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Iacono, David Koepp, dinosaurs, Ed Skrein, Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Bailey, Luna Blaise, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Rupert Friend, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 88 Comments »
Tuesday, March 24th, 2026
In 2017 there was a straight-to-Netflix movie called WAR MACHINE, a satire about the war in Afghanistan. I was interested because it was from director David Michôd (ANIMAL KINGDOM, THE ROVER, later CHRISTY), but I still haven’t gotten around to it because it went straight to Netflix, it didn’t seem like a real movie, and I forgot it existed.
Now there’s a 2026 straight-to-Netflix movie also called WAR MACHINE, but it’s about Reacher (Alan Ritchson) fighting a robot. This one also went straight to Netflix, also doesn’t seem like a real movie, so I threw it on casually. Times change I guess.
It starts in Kandahar. They finally ended the war in Afghanistan, but it lives on in the traumatic-incident-flashbacks that open all military-based action movies. Ritchson (DARK WEB: CICADA 3301) plays an unnamed Staff Sergeant with a background in engineering who comes to fix an engine for a stranded convoy. He confronts the person responsible for the engine troubles, played by Jai Courtney (DANGEROUS ANIMALS), in that move where two characters come at each other like they’re angry but then it’s a joke and they’re old pals, or in this case actual brothers. I’ve been thinking of that trope as “the Lando,” but here it sort of serves as a “Dillon you sonofabitch,” because this movie exists very clearly in the shadow of PREDATOR. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ritchson, Dennis Quaid, Esai Morales, Jai Courtney, Patrick Hughes, Stephan James
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 16 Comments »
Thursday, March 12th, 2026
Last time I saw THE SALUTE OF THE JUGGER it was called THE BLOOD OF HEROES. That only version available in the U.S. was about ten minutes shorter, but still kinda legendary as a slept-on gem by some of us. That version was recently put in its proper place as bonus material for the original 104 minute Australian version on a 4K/blu-ray combo from Umbrella Entertainment.
It’s written and directed by David Webb Peoples, his only time directing a feature, but he’d written BLADE RUNNER and went on to write UNFORGIVEN, 12 MONKEYS and SOLDIER. Not a bad run. This one has a bit of the sci-fi and a bit of the western, because its heroes (blood and all) are travelers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But mostly it’s a sports movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Katarina, Australian cinema, Cecilia Wong, David Webb Peoples, Delroy Lindo, Gandhi MacIntyre, Guy Norris, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Joan Chen, Justin Monjo, Max Fairchild, post-apocalypse, Richard Norton, Rutger Hauer, Todd Boekelheide, Vincent D'Onofrio
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Sport | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2026
As a fan of writer/director Steven Kostanski’s last three movies, PSYCHO GOREMAN, FRANKIE FREAKO and DEATHSTALKER, I decided it was time to check out one of his older works. MANBORG is his first feature, released in 2011. He had already done several shorts (best title: Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove) while working in the makeup departments of larger productions including CAPOTE and TAMARA.
I would say MANBORG is a tongue-in-cheek movie played with a slightly straighter face than the other three Kostanskis I’ve seen, or at least with fewer straight up jokes. So it’s maybe his purest example of what I think of as a movie in quotes – a feature film that plays more like it’s saying “wouldn’t it be funny if there was a movie like this?” than like it actually is that movie. To enjoy it is to play along and pretend that it is. (And I did enjoy it.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Astron-6, Conor Sweeney, Kyle Hebert, Steven Kostanski
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
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 »
