Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Wednesday, July 13th, 2022
NEPTUNE FROST is a new sci-fi movie, though not the type anybody would picture when I say that word. It takes place in what must be the near future, with technology and civilization extrapolated from and commenting on the present. It has world-building, colorfully named characters (Memory, Innocent, Psychology), futuristic lingo, a rebellion. But it’s very much an art movie, its imagery more based in theater and video art than FX, and also it’s a musical. Its story is more mythical, surreal and allegorical than traditionally cinematic. The narrator, Neptune, acknowledges this upfront when she says, “Maybe you’re asking yourself WTF is this? Is it a poet’s idea of a dream?” So it’s not surprising that its growing cult success has come through a carefully coordinated limited release.
It’s set in Rwanda, and begins in a coltan mine. Skinny men in the sun chipping at rock with various tools, harvesting ore for capacitors used in phones and computers they mostly can’t afford. One miner named Tekno finds a big piece of coltan (I thought it was a fossil), becomes enamored with it and holds it aloft. An overseer yells at him to keep working, and hits him in the head. He falls over, to the horror of his brother Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse), and dies. The others are upset but forced to return to work. They drum and chant and create a beat with their work. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: afro-futurism, Anisia Uzeyman, cyberpunk, Rwanda, Saul Williams
Posted in Reviews, Musical, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Monday, June 20th, 2022
“We tolerate everybody. Even the intolerable.”
May 22, 1992
Let’s get this out of the way first: many things went wrong with ALIEN 3 (or ALIEN3 if you prefer). After Ridley Scott’s sci-fi-horror masterpiece in ’79 and James Cameron’s ass-kicking miracle sequel in ’86, producer/writers Walter Hill and David Giler struggled to develop a worthy followup. After numerous reworkings with a series of writers and a late-in-the-game switch of directors from New Zealand’s Vincent Ward (THE NAVIGATOR: A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY) to MTV’s David Fincher (Madonna’s “Vogue” video, the “Would you give a cigarette to an unborn child?” American Cancer Society PSA), they finally got the ball rolling. With an unfinished script. The 27-year-old first time feature director fought for (and lost) creative control, eventually quitting during post-production, at which point the studio recut the movie without his input. Never great when that happens.
Based on what we learned from THE PLAYER, studio interference should mean they gave it an unearned happy ending that changed the whole spirit of the thing. Like when they reshot the ending of FATAL ATTRACTION, or later when they tried to make Fincher get rid of the head in the box in SEVEN. This is a different situation. What came out of that battle was a mean, dark, anti-crowdpleaser that disappointed, outraged or depressed many fans. Artistically I never thought it was the outright disaster it was initially received as – in fact, I always liked it – but I could never pretend it matched its predecessors.
30 years later – after it’s been in my life so long I can’t remember anything else – it requires no effort to drop all the baggage and admire ALIEN 3 as a singular-ish vision or, at the very least, an act of sheer audacity. Another ’92 blockbuster sequel I’ll be reviewing caused a commotion for allegedly being “too dark,” but I think this baby is still the undisputed bleakness champion of big studio sequels to mainstream hits. To illustrate how unusual the approach is, let’s imagine if the summer’s earlier part 3, LETHAL WEAPON 3, had made some of the same decisions. What if rather than bring back the whole gang, including Leo, they only brought back Riggs? Murtaugh and Leo are said to have died in between 2 and 3. We see brief glimpses of Murtaugh’s mutilated corpse. Riggs goes to the morgue to see Leo’s body, then demands to watch the autopsy. He spends the movie working with murderers and rapists, almost all of whom die, and then the triumphant ending is that he commits suicide. How about that? Do you think that would go over well?
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Gillis, Alex Thomson, Brian Glover, Charles Dance, Charles S. Dutton, Christopher Fairbank, David Fincher, David Twohy, Elliot Goldenthal, Eric Red, John Fasano, Jon Landau, Jordan Cronenweth, Lance Henriksen, Larry Ferguson, Paul McGann, Pete Postlethwaite, Rex Pickett, Sigourney Weaver, Terry Rawlings, Tom Woodruff Jr., Vincent Ward, William Gibson
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 77 Comments »
Tuesday, June 14th, 2022
JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION* is not exactly the “dinosaurs running loose in the world” story I expected from the ending of JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM – it ends up centering on yet another dinosaur park – but it does indeed take place at a time when dinosaurs have been running loose in the world long enough to proliferate, and for humans to respond with new governmental agencies, black market industries, etc. Which is an interesting world to spend time in.
Maybe that’s why some of the best stuff is before the plot really gets going – that part of a sequel that’s a loose set of scenes catching us up with the old characters and their new situations. First we get a nice web video about the state of things, featuring fun clips like a wedding where the bride and groom release doves and a pterodactyl swoops down and eats them. It’s in a joyful Dinosaurs Attack! spirit (though admittedly the cards themselves had an even better dinosaur wedding crasher – see right). Then we join JURASSIC WORLD co-lead Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, HEREAFTER) and her FALLEN KINGDOM dinosaur rights associates Franklin (Justice Smith, The Get Down) and Zia (Daniella Pineda, MERCY BLACK) raiding an illegal breeding facility and rescuing a caged baby triceratops. The chaotic shots of adult triceratopses ramming Jeeps as they escape are a total joy.
*I dig the lack of a colon!
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: B.D. Wong, Bryce Dallas Howard, Campbell Scott, Chris Pratt, Colin Trevorrow, Daniella Pineda, DeWanda Wise, Dichen Lachman, dinosaurs, Isabella Sermon, Jeff Goldblum, Justice Smith, Laura Dern, Mamoudou Athie, Sam Neill
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 48 Comments »
Wednesday, June 8th, 2022
(warning: to the extent you can spoil a movie like CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, this review contains spoilers)
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is your typical undercover story – a guy is working for The Man and thinks he’s doing the right thing, but through his investigation he starts to see a different perspective, rethinks his loyalties, and questions whether or not to narc these people out. In this case the guy is a performance artist famous for growing inexplicable new internal organs and having them removed in front of an audience by laying in a machine that looks like a chrysalis, with robotic bone arms cutting him open under the control of a partner sensually poking her fingers into a gooey bladder. And the people he may or may not bust are (spoiler) an underground movement of people surgically altering their digestive systems so that they can eat plastic. But you’ve seen that before too. Just a good old fashioned organ opera like the ones we all grew up on.
Okay, yeah, on second thought maybe it’s fair to say that this is a weird fuckin movie that could only be made by writer/director David Cronenberg (TOP GUN [offered but turned down]). When he did that trilogy of more reality-based Viggo Mortensen joints (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, EASTERN PROMISES and A DANGEROUS METHOD) people thought he’d moved beyond slimy mugwumps and uncharted glands and shit, and that this is a throwback. But he wrote and tried to make this before all those, so maybe he’s just getting back on track.
Either way, this has a scene where Mortensen (AMERICAN YAKUZA) has had a zipper installed on his belly and can open it up, and Léa Seydoux (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL) pleasures him by spreading it open and licking his innards. So it was cool to see at a multiplex on a giant screen with Minions ads and shit playing before it. The summer movie season has finally begun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ???, David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Ephie Kantza, Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, Nadia Litz, performance art, Scott Speedman, surgery, Tanaya Beatty, undercover, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 15 Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2022
“Are you telling me there’s some thing running loose in this city ripping the hearts out of people and eating them so he can take their souls back to Hell?”
“Looks that way.”
I think you will be surprised to hear that I never saw SPLIT SECOND until now. Released against LEAVING NORMAL and NIGHT ON EARTH on May 1, 1992, I guess we could say it was the first sci-fi or action movie of Weird Summer. It’s part of that brief, beautiful phase when Rutger Hauer could be the protagonist of action movies (see also WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, BLIND FURY and THE BLOOD OF HEROES).
He plays Harley Stone, an infamously burnt out London homicide detective in the futuristic year of 2008. His first line of the movie is “Police, dickhead,” said to a barking guard dog while flashing his badge. Later he’ll call the dog a dickhead again and accuse him of knowing something about a murder. So he’s a pretty good action hero.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alun Armstrong, Arthur Wooster, Dave Duffy, Francis Haines, Gary Thompson, global warming, Ian Sharp, Kim Cattrall, Michael J. Pollard, Neil Duncan, Pete Postlethwaite, Roberta Eaton, Rutger Hauer, Stephen Norrington, Stephen W. Parsons, Tony Maylam, Wendy Carlos
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Monday, May 2nd, 2022
“I always used conspiracy theories because, not that I really believe in them in any way, it’s more like it’s kind of the lure of it… There is like endless stuff about the moon. So, in that respect, it was so strange for me that we got supported by NASA. I have no clue why they’re doing this. Honest to God. I have no inkling of an idea why they did this, but obviously, they need it.”
—Roland Emmerich to Collider
MOONFALL is the most recent picture from director Roland Emmerich (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER), now available on video. It uses pretty much the same character tropes, broad cliches, annoying humor and preposterous approach to plotting that made him briefly an A-list director after (for reasons I still have not been able to discern) people liked those things in INDEPENDENCE DAY. That was a long time ago, and for quite a few years now the public has been less accepting of Emmerich’s product. By now all the destruction in his movies is computer generated, and we’ve seen every single thing everywhere digitally destroyed many times over, so the novelty has worn off. But somehow I’ve grown to get more of a kick out of his wildly ridiculous movies because they seem much more charming now that everybody agrees they’re just some puzzling bullshit that Hollywood made for some reason and not the current state of the art for blockbuster filmmaking.
In other words, this was by far the dumbest shit I’ve seen in a while, so I enjoyed it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlie Plummer, disaster movies, Donald Sutherland, Eme Ikwuakor, Halle Berry, Harald Kloser, John Bradley, Michael Pena, Patrick Wilson, Roland Emmerich, Spenser Cohen, Zayn Maloney
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, April 6th, 2022
It’s hard not to think of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE as some kind of miracle movie. I had no idea it was something I needed, or something that anyone would think to make, until a couple months ago when the trailer came out. It stars Michelle Yeoh in her best ever English language role, a very layered character who gets to be funny and goofy and troubled and kind of an asshole but totally lovable and yes, she also does some kung fu. It co-stars Ke Huy Quan, who we knew as a child star in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and THE GOONIES, but who hasn’t been in a movie in almost 20 years, making a triumphant return in surely his best part ever (and he also gets to fight).
It would be worth celebrating just for putting those two actors together, even if it didn’t entirely work. But this thing is much more advanced than that. Written and directed by “Daniels” (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, of SWISS ARMY MAN and various music videos), it’s a very original movie, but if I had to give it a short hand description based on other people’s work I’d go with “if Michel Gondry made THE MATRIX.” Or if that scares you, substitute Stephen Chow. It uses a convoluted sci-fi gimmick as a vehicle for some absurd humor, artfully hand-crafted imagery and outlandish action, which all weaves together to explore ideas about life and relationships and family and happiness. That title is no lie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Le, Brian Le, Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan, Martial Club, Michelle Yeoh, multiverse, Stephanie Hsu, Tallie Medel
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 83 Comments »
Monday, April 4th, 2022
WILD ZERO (1999) is something that I was aware of as a major cult movie twenty-some years ago, but I never got around to seeing it until now. So young people, please ignore that first sentence and pretend this is an impressive find on my part.
I remembered it because I watched that Japanese post-apocalyptic punk movie BURST CITY not too long ago. WILD ZERO is very different, but it’s another crazed genre movie starring rowdy Japanese rock ’n’ rollers who play music and get into trouble. A trio called Guitar Wolf (led by Guitar Wolf, backed up by Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf), who play a garage rock style they call “jet rock ’n’ roll,” star as themselves in a goofy zombie/sci-fi movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Guitar Wolf, Japanese punk, zombies
Posted in Music, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, March 16th, 2022
I was excited to watch INVINCIBLE as soon as it came out, because it’s the first major Marko Zaror role I’ve been able to see since SAVAGE DOG in 2017. Since then he’s been in something called THE GREEN GHOST that I don’t think has come out, he had a tiny appearance in ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, he doubled young Will Smith in GEMINI MAN, and it looks like he was in one episode of a Marvel TV show that I haven’t watched because it’s a crossover of several other Marvel shows I haven’t watched. I’ve missed him, so it was exciting to finally have another movie with his name on the cover.
Unfortunately, this is not what I consider to be a good movie, and not bad in an interesting enough way to recommend it to most people. It does however once again demonstrate Zaror’s extreme talent and professionalism – not just anyone could be in a production this shoddy and still be good in it, so for that reason I don’t regret watching it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Daniel Zirilli, Jason Archilla, Johnny Strong, Marko Zaror, May Myat Noe, Michael Pare, Sally Kirkland, Vladimir Kulich, Wych Kaosayananda
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022
CUTIE HONEY, like DEVILMAN, is a 2004 live action movie based on a manga character created by Go Nagai. This one is much more comedic than DEVILMAN and comes from a more pedigreed director: Hideaki Anno, the anime auteur behind the Neon Genesis Evangelion series. I would like to try to watch those some day because I know how much people love them, but for now my impression of him comes from the excellent 2016 Godzilla reboot SHIN GODZILLA. That one has a really cool, weird Godzilla in it but is most notable for its really funny satire of bureaucracy (though at the time it came out it also worked for me as an appreciation of people actually trying to pool their knowledge and resources to solve problems). It was recently announced that Anno will be overseeing a shared universe combining his Shin (new) Godzilla with Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider. But before all that he made a live action movie based on one of the most famous manga by the guy who played the food critic in THE TOXIC AVENGER PART II.
Honey Kisaragi (Eriko Sato, DOOMSDAY: THE SINKING OF JAPAN) is a bubbly young woman who lives alone and works a temp job at an office where everybody hates her except a janitor lady. One interesting fact about Honey is that she’s actually dead but her late father built a robot body for her so her consciousness could survive. Another interesting fact is that she wears a choker with a heart shaped button on it and when she pushes it and says “Honey… FLASH!” she can change her appearance and disguise herself, or she can turn into the sword-wielding super heroine Cutie Honey to battle monsters and stuff. However, she has to eat rice balls and drink green tea to build up the energy to do this stuff, so in the opening she has to run through the streets wearing a garbage bag until she has enough energy to create her work clothes. So it’s not all glamour. It deals with the gritty real life hardships of being Cutie Honey. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eisuke Sasai, Eriko Sato, Go Nagai, Hideaki Anno, Jun Murkami, live action manga, Mikako Ichikawa
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
