Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
What if there were like a book of maps, only it was made out of the sky? That would be weird.
Well, anyway. At a climactic point in CLOUD ATLAS a character talks righteously about freedom, and about refusing to accept boundaries. And that’s what Lana and Andy Wachowski (who directed this along with Tom Tykwer) have done with their lives, their careers and this movie in particular. If you haven’t heard what CLOUD ATLAS is, it’s a nearly 3-hour epic based on a supposedly unadaptable book. It takes place in a bunch of different time periods ranging from the age of slavery to a dystopian future to even a post-apocalyptic future after that. But not in order – it jumps around from story to story, like a bunch of unrelated movies edited together as a weird joke on Youtube.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ???, Ben Wishaw, big budget arthouse spectacles, Doona Bae, dystopian futures, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Keith David, post-apocalypse, slavery, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks, Tom Tykwer, Wachowskis
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 38 Comments »
Saturday, November 3rd, 2012
PREVIOUSLY, ON UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: In 2009 John Hyams, fine sports documentarian and son of the director of OUTLAND, knocked the world of DTV flat on its ass with a grim and shockingly great part 3 (or part 5 including the made for cable 2 and 3). It is one of its decade’s best American action movies and a classic example of a hungry artist taking a disrespected medium far beyond its perceived limitations. Also Dolph Lundgren makes a hell of an impression with a small appearance, the Alec-Baldwin-in-GLENGARRY-GLEN-ROSS-of-DTV.
And now, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrei Arlovski, Dolph Lundgren, good part 4s, JCVD, John Hyams, Larnell Stovall, Scott Adkins
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 192 Comments »
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
LOOPER is the new time travel related science fictional picture by Bruce Willis. But due to scheduling conflicts Bruce is only in part of the movie, most of the time he’s played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (SHADOWBOXER) with a fake nose. This one is written and directed by Rian Johnson, the guy that did BRICK.
“Looper” is a made up futuristic word similar to how “Rian” is a made up spelling of a real name. I’m not buying either one. But I did like the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Garett Dillahunt, Jeff Daniels, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Dano, Rian Johnson, time travel
Posted in Bruce, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 71 Comments »
Sunday, September 23rd, 2012
Dreddful. Absolutely dreddful. That means good! I really liked this movie.
It’s a coincidence, but it’s kinda cool and weird how much DREDD is like a sci-fi version of THE RAID. Similar premise: heavily armed but outnumbered police team raid a building controlled by a crimelord, crimelord announces over the intercom that they need to be killed, they have to fight their way up to the top of the building to kill the leader. But since it’s sci-fi the brutality and overkill of the police force is part of a dystopian future, the building (called “Peach Trees”) is 200 stories instead of about 30, and the whole thing is sealed behind blast shields so that nobody can get out. Instead of powerful silat skills our protagonist Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) relies on a badass computerized and voice-activated gun with various forms of bullets, explosives and firebursts.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Alex Garland, dystopian futures, Karl Urban, Lena Headey, Olivia Thirlby, Pete Travis, Wood Harris
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 195 Comments »
Wednesday, August 29th, 2012
Remember how they made two DTV sequels to STARSHIP TROOPERS? Now there’s a new one, but I think the world will be sharply divided over whether we consider this part 4 or not. It does continue the futuristic bug war star trooping of Captain Carmen Ibanez (originally Denise Richards, now Luci Christian), master psychic Carl “It’s afraid!” Jenkins (originally Neil Patrick Harris, now Justin Doran) and Johnny Rico (now promoted to General). But one thing they did different, they gave it to the Japanese animation director Shinji Aramaki (APPLESEED) to computer it up. Now instead of deliberately white bread humans it’s creepy Real Doll type animated characters sort of along the lines of FINAL FANTASY and those types of computer animated pictures.
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Tags: Casper Van Dien, DTV, DTV sequels, Ed Neumeier
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 94 Comments »
Wednesday, August 1st, 2012
David 8’s basketball practice in PROMETHEUS got me thinking about Ripley 8’s b-ball skills in ALIEN RESURRECTION, so much so that I decided to make it the topic of my Badass Cinema 101 column for CLiNT Magazine. Ask for it by name at your favorite newsstand or magazinier.
Well, I had to re-watch the basketball scene for research, but I decided instead of just watching the scene I wanted to sit and watch the whole movie again. I’ve always liked this one and thought it got a bad rap. It lacks the seriousness and groundbreakingness of ALIEN and ALIENS, but in its own way it’s a highly entertaining sci-fi popcorn movie with great characters, great set-pieces, original ideas, cool monsters and lots of weird shit that only this particular director would’ve done. That last one I’m afraid is probly one of the reasons it’s so hated. Alot of people don’t like seeing things they didn’t already plan to see.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, Dharius Khondji, Dominique Pinon, Gary Dourdan, good part 4s, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Joss Whedon, Ron Perlman, Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 223 Comments »
Saturday, June 9th, 2012
Okay, we’ve had high hopes for this movie for a long time. We’ve tried to avoid finding out too much about it. We have a sense of trust because of its connection to an all-time great movie by this same director but we also hope this is gonna be something new we’ve never seen before. So it has this weird combination of known quantity and total mystery.
Well, it’s a little more familiar than I was hoping but I also think you should just see it fresh so come on man, don’t read this review until you’ve already seen it. This is gonna be all SPOILERS.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Charlize Theron, Damon Lindelof, Guy Pearce, H.R. Giger, Idris Elba, Jon Spaihts, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Ridley Scott
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 758 Comments »
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Isn’t DEMOLITION MAN a weird one? Sci-fi/action moosh up, Sylvester Stallone plays cryogenically frozen supercop Jack Spartan, cryogenically unfrozen Captain America style to capture his arch-nemesis Simon Phoenix (Wesley G.D. Snipes) in a jokey future society of wimps.
Spartan is a typical non-iconic Stallone character – mumbly, down-to-earth, see-through-the-bullshit everyman, except when he goes into battle, then he’s so prone to blow shit up that he’s nicknamed Demolition Man against his wishes.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benjamin Bratt, Daniel Waters, Dennis Leary, Sandra Bullock, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 184 Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2012
I’m kind of interested in this Kurt Wimmer guy. My favorite movie by him is before he made it big, the first of his three directorial works so far, ONE TOUGH BASTARD a.k.a. ONE MAN’S JUSTICE (1996) starring Brian Bosworth and MC Hammer. And I just discovered that his first writing credit was DOUBLE TROUBLE starring the Barbarian Brothers. But since then he’s had some success in much bigger, studio-backed b-movies: he wrote LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, SALT and the remake of TOTAL RECALL. He also wrote the remake of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, which I liked.
But as a writer/director his best known movie is EQUILIBRIUM (2002), that sort of asinine dystopian one where Christian Bale rebels against A World Where Love Is Against The Law because they try to make him kill a puppy. ULTRAVIOLET (2006) is Wimmer’s only directing job since then, and his biggest budget one. I heard it was kind of dumb fun, so I rented it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Bright, Kurt Wimmer, Milla Jovovich, Nick Chinlund, vampires, William Fichtner
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 67 Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
JOHN CARTER is your typical Civil-War-veteran-transported-via-magic-cave-to-Mars-to-fall-in-love-with-a-princess-and-fight-a-war tale. I mean, how many movies can we have on this topic?
Oh wait, I was thinking of can-you-fuck-your-friend-all-the-time-and-not-fall-in-love romantic comedies. That’s the more common one. The civil war veteran on Mars deal is not that big of a genre this year, and this new (partly) live action take from Disney might be the last one. It’s not shaping up to be the smash hit required to make back its big budget, and the box office trainspotters are already giggling and high-fiving each other as they dig it a shallow grave in an unused lot behind Space Mountain. That’s too bad, ’cause it’s a hell of alot of fun.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: adventure, Andrew Stanton, Brian Cranston, Cieran Hinds, Disney, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Purefoy, Lynn Collins, Mark Strong, Mars, Samantha Morton, Taylor Kitsch, Thomas Haden Church, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 164 Comments »
