Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Wednesday, November 27th, 2002
Well that young bald man Steve Soderbergh is still on a roll. He just keeps hittin em, bam bam bam and even when they’re not a home run like THE LIMEY or OUT OF SIGHT they’re still real good. Hell, even FULL FRONTAL, he just squirted that one out like a soft ice cream, and it was pretty good ice cream too. This one is a little more of a sunday. It’s not my favorite soderbergh movie but that’s like saying “that’s not necessarily the greatest blowjob I ever got.” This guy has never made a bad movie. Go ahead, try to find one. You can’t. You would have to make a fake movie and put his name on it. But he didn’t make that one, you did. You can’t fool me. Fool me once, shame, shame, you can’t fool me.
First of all let me make it clear that I am ignorant on the topic of Solaris. I have not seen the legendarily long and boring and brilliant Russian version by Mr. Tartavsky. Also I have not read the book which is according to the credits what Mr. Soderbergh’s version is based on. But I did see this movie. So that’s my background on that one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: George Clooney, James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh
Posted in Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002
E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL: THE SPECIAL EDITION: FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY: THE MOVIE
This is one of those things where they take an old movie that was very popular, and then they change it, because they think the only way anybody would want to see a movie they loved on the big screen again would be if somebody just completely fucked with it and tried to ruin it. They did the same thing with the Star Trek pictures, and the exorcist (see below) and Night of the Living Dead on video (I’m still staying away from that one).
This goes into the Star Trek category where the individual who made it (Steve Spielberg) gets old, forgets everything that made him vital when he was young, and decides to change things, but claims it’s actually perfectionism. The most infamous thing here is that he wanted no guns in the movie at all. Which is kind of weird for a movie where the main characters get chased by a mob of cops. So there they are, a bunch of fuckin cops and government spooks, running around all holding a walkie talkie with their trigger fingers poised to, I don’t know, hit the little beeper button that you use for Morse code. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Dee Wallace-Stone, Drew Barrymore, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Friday, August 2nd, 2002
There are bigger fans of M. Night Shymalan than me. He seems a little too nice to me, trying too hard to please everybody. They call him a new Spielberg but if so he’s a new Spielberg who skipped over the young vital years of Spielberg when he made shit like DUEL and JAWS. Still, I really like this young man’s style. He seems to have a couple of trademarks already. He treats supernatural themes very seriously and in a unique style that tricks mainstream audiences into thinking they are not watching a genre picture. He populates his stories with precocious child actors and movie stars who give uncharacteristically quiet performances. His stories have themes of tragedy and loss, and they are much more about character and suspense than about actual action. SIXTH SENSE was about discovering what’s goin on with these ghosts, not running from them or fighting them. And UNBREAKABLE was a super hero movie without a single scene of somebody swingin on a rope or shooting a laser or something. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Joaquin Phoenix, M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 12th, 2002
I heard a rumor, or actually I just saw it on the ad, that REIGN OF FIRE is supposed to be the perfect summer movie. And in a way I think it is. Because it takes a good special effects extravaganza premise – the world is obliterated by firebreathing dragons and a small community of survivors fight back in postapocalyptic england – and treats it much smarter and more dramatic than you’d expect.
Yeah, this is a movie with computer animated dragons, and a bunch of people fighting them. But the emphasis of the story is not on the fighting. It’s always on the drama. After a prologue and a MAD MAX-like dragons-take-over-the-world explanation montage, you get basically a DAY OF THE DEAD setup. Here is this community of survivors living in spruced up castle ruins using what limited resources they can find to survive. You find out about their whole system – how they eat, their security system, how they use birds for lookout and what they teach their kids to do if they see a dragon. There’s also a little I AM LEGEND in there because they treat the dragons scientifically. They are not magical. They explain how they breathe fire, how they reproduce, the best way to kill them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christian Bale, Gerard Butler, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Bowman
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 21st, 2002
Like PLANET OF THE APES, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and soon STAR WARS PART 2, MINORITY REPORT is a sci-fi picture that will mainly be discussed in context with the politics of the time. (the time being now. because it came out today.)
Again like the Yoda picture, it has been in the planning stages long enough that director Steven Spielberg (JAWS) and co-writer Scott Frank (I only remember him because he did OUT OF SIGHT. who knows who the other writer is) couldn’t have known how timely it would turn out to be. The movie takes place in Washington DC, 2056, where Tom Cruise is an agent in the flagship “Pre-Crime Deparment” – cops who use three water-submerged psychic “precogs” to track crimes of passion that haven’t even happened yet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Philip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 65 Comments »
Wednesday, June 12th, 2002
Some of you will wonder why I choose to watch this kind of crap. The answer is because of the French.
This one is from a series of movies made for cable called Creature Features. They have special effecting by Stan Winston (director of A GNOME NAMED GNORM) and are all based on the premises or titles of old movies produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff. They got SHE-MONSTER, DAN AYCKROYD VS. SPIDERMAN and many others. The one I’m waiting for is actually TEENAGE CAVEMAN directed by Larry Clark, the pervert who did KIDS and BULLY and ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE where the main kid wears his pants so low you can see his fuckin pubes. Jesus, Larry! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clea DuVall, George Huang, Jason Marsden, remakes, Tyler Mane
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 16th, 2002
STARWARS VOL. II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
a.k.a. YODA VS. DRACULA
This is a picture that most people already have an opinion on, that will never change, whether they’ve seen it or not. This is only one of those opinions.
First of all, I enjoyed this picture. I laughed at some of the cornball speeches, the sometimes stiff acting, and a couple bad puns. But you know, I can get into this space ‘n robots shit sometimes, and for one main reason: Dracula. As you know from my review of Lord of the Rings Part 1, I enjoy any picture where some dude has a duel with Dracula. This one raises the bar by making the dude be a little green space-elf/Shaolin monk. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 36 Comments »
Saturday, April 27th, 2002
JASON X is the future of slasher franchises left over from the ’80s, and not just because it’s about Jason Voorhees being frozen and defrosted in outer space 450 years later. No, this is the future because it finally figured out a good approach to keeping these stupid characters going. This isn’t trying to update things by infusing the same old crap with last month’s stale gimmicks. See for example the upcoming Blair Witch/webcast Halloween picture you see advertised before JASON X (although I do like seeing Buster Rhymes say “Trick or treat motherfucker!” – wouldn’t he make a better Dolemite than LL Cool J?)
No, this one works because it works as a genuine dumb slasher movie, as a parody of one, and as some weird pop culture accident where a familiar series got thrown into the wrong genre unexpectedly. It’s a more consistent attempt at the BRIDE OF CHUCKY approach to modern slasher sequels. Take the character and cliches from the earlier sequels, put them in a way more ludicrous situation (and it really is WAY more ludicrous in this case) and have fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Cronenberg, in space, James Isaac, Kane Hodder, slashers, Todd Farmer
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 33 Comments »
Friday, March 15th, 2002
Apparently this one’s based on a video game that’s kind of based on the night of the living dead movies. So it turns out real crappy like a xerox of a xerox. And apparently the machine needs servicing. The video game is probaly better because after three of your pac-men get eaten by zombies, the game is over. The movie lasts, like, more than an hour.
The plot isn’t that bad. Milla Jovovich, who is still gorgeous even after leaving Luc Besson and becoming integrated into society, plays some kind of security agent or something in a dress. (Not sure.) She wakes up naked in the shower of a mansion with no memory. Some army goons rush in and bring her along with them into a secret underground chamber to investigate, even though she doesn’t remember how to help them.
Okay so I am not really backing my claim that the plot isn’t that bad. Well it turns out that before she lost her memory (I never understood how) she was undercover, living in the mansion to guard the secret entrance to this underground facility “the hive” where a realistically sinister corporation performs illegal genetic experiments. But somebody let loose a deadly virus, the computer put the place in lockdown, and all the scientists and dogs inside were turned into zombies. Also some monster comes out at the end. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Milla Jovovich, Paul W.S. Anderson, video games, zombies
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Videogame | 6 Comments »
Saturday, February 9th, 2002
Well once again the conventional wisdom turns out to be right. You would think that as dumb as a movie like this would probaly be, it might be enjoyable. Well, I would think that. But I would be wrong.
I’ve never seen the original, and I always meant to. I understand that it is kind of a satire of sports and american society’s thirst for violent entertainment. The great DEATH RACE 2000 was made to cash in on the same themes but is generally considered to be better. Anyway the approach that John McTiernan, the director of DIE MOTHERFUCKIN HARD 1 & 3, took was to set it in pretty much the present, since wrestling and ultimate fighting become more ridiculous and lurid than anything filmatists of the ’70s could’ve imagined. But there really aren’t new points to be made here. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Klein, Jean Reno, John McTiernan, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn, remakes
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Sport | 4 Comments »
