“Moon,” an independent film directed by Duncan Jones, is a refreshing piece of science fiction. This is not what I’m used to seeing in the theaters. Hollywood science fiction is usually just a fantastical kind of action movie, roaring across the screen in a blaze of guns, heroes, monsters, exploding chase scenes and latex-wrapped boobs.
As [...]
SciFi Movies
Moon
September 7th, 2009 · 3 Comments
District 9
August 22nd, 2009 · 4 Comments
“District 9″ is not a movie about aliens. You might be forgiven for thinking otherwise from the previews; there’s certainly no shortage of the traditional accouterments of a space alien movie there. But despite the spaceships and robots and laser guns (and yes, despite the aliens), this movie isn’t about aliens.
This is a movie about [...]
Terminator Salvation
May 24th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Like the indestructible constructs it features, Terminator seems to be a franchise that just won’t die. The Governator appears only as a cameo in “Terminator Salvation”, which systematically destroys at least half the reason for the series’ existence. “Salvation” still serves as a passable action movie, but the horrendous script and too-serious tone render the [...]
Star Trek
May 13th, 2009 · No Comments
They boldly go, but not where they haven’t been before.
Expectations for a new Star Trek film have not been this high since the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, the first since the TV series’ cancellation a decade earlier. That film certainly laid bare Gene Roddenberry’s ambitions, since he was no longer [...]
Repo: The Genetic Opera
February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments
If you are a regular reader of blogs, you might have noticed the proliferation of “punk” suffixes in recent months. A December 2008 entry on Boing Boing spoke of “atompunk”, a Dutch movement fetishizing the atomic space age of the 1950s and ’60s. The entry was posted at a time when steampunk - a style [...]
CJ7
September 26th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Cynics have long contended that in Stephen Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the titular alien could be replaced with a dog and the fable would remain intact. In CJ7, schoolboy Dicky jubilantly shouts “an alien dog!” when first setting eyes on his new pal. While it remains a mystery whether CJ7 - with its Ewok [...]
Babylon A.D.
August 31st, 2008 · 2 Comments
Science Fiction movies have always had a big problem: most Science Fiction movies are adapted from Science Fiction books, and this isn’t exactly a good thing. Science fiction novels and graphic novels tend to have very ambitious storylines full of intricate plot. Characters have complex motivations and relationships and frequently, things are not always as [...]
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
June 1st, 2008 · 1 Comment
In King Solomon’s Mines, the 1885 adventure novel introducing Allan Quartermain (a definite proto-Indiana Jones), the quest for the ancient mine’s diamonds concludes with our heroes unable to transport all the treasure home - but rather, just enough so that each is able to live comfortably to the end of their days.
Indiana Jones and his [...]
Iron Man
May 14th, 2008 · 1 Comment
The best superhero movie yet? Iron Man is certainly vying hard for the title. While not clearly trumping past and recent classics like Superman (1978), Spider-Man (2002), or Batman Begins (2005), Tony Stark’s adventures can stand proudly alongside the genre’s elite.
Iron Man tweaks the formula in that it isn’t set in a heightened comic [...]
Sunshine
March 1st, 2008 · 3 Comments
” We should split up.”
” I’m not sure that’s such a good idea . . .”
“You’re probably right. We might get picked off one at a time by aliens.”
Sunshine is smart enough to recognize a cliché, but dumb enough to follow it anyway. The crew splits up, and let’s just say it really wasn’t a [...]
