Movie Reviews

Pitch Black was the original movie. Chronicles of Riddick was the sequel.

I would highly recommend Pitch Black if you're in the mood for it. It's a combination Alien meets Asimov's "Nightfall" scifi thriller/horror. Nothing too original, lots taken from other sources, but the characters and their interactions are interesting and it kept me interest all the way though the end. The main character, Riddick, is very interesting in an "I'm a badass" kind of way. He's a classic villlain with a streak of humanity.

Enter the sequel: "Chronicles of Riddick"
I wasn't expecting much, and I got much less. This was AWFUL! One of the worst movies I've ever seen! Talk about a bunch of ideas that are all crammed in the same movie with none of them going anywhere. It couldn't decide if it was fantasy, or science fiction, or both, and wound up splattered between all of those. All this movie suceeded in doing was ruining a good character, Riddick. This movie should be destroyed.

This is billed as a "psychological thriller", and was first released at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. While this is certainly not "mainstream" science fiction, and probably many would not even dare to classify it as science fiction, I would argue that Donnie Darko IS science fiction. The setting is a suburban community in the 1980's and the protagonist is a trouble teenager trying to figure out the strange things thare shape his life. The teenage life is well written, unlike most movies with main characters in that age group. The science fiction centers around the idea of time travel. <what is is with the time travel theme of late? I can't escape it> There's a great section about a kooky old woman, once a nun, who disowned her faith and wrote a book called "The philosophy of Time Travel". Most of the movie is surreal, with Donnie being haunted by a demented rabbit.

In summation: Definately a movie to check out if your in the mood for something offbeat.

Here's a movie for the creatively oriented. Though it's not a Star Wars or Blade Runner of Alien, this ranks up there with some of my favorite scifi movies.

eXistenZ is about a game designer who has created a virtual reality game that you plug into using bioports only the "realist" movement wants the designer dead and the resulting intrigue travels through level after level of real vs virtual settings.

This is a a slimy, sexual romp that's not for the faint of heart. Lots of blood, and slimy aphibian parts that make up the gamepods. Ultra weird but ultra creative. Love the collision between reality and life, different corporations, game-world acting and real-world acting, sex and slime. Just remember it's all just a game, or is it?

This movie took some hard knocks by critics and viewers alike, but my guess is they didn't understand the concept behind the movie and thus the characters and the way they acted or did not act. Plus the squeemish factor is high which probably disgusted some folks. Also, some of the concepts have been done before (real vs virtual, see Total Recall, Matrix, etc) but the movie should be praised for the sheer audacity with which it dares to push the envelope. Plus the GUN is awesome! (see the movie to understand).

I would recommend eXistenZ to the SFWW crowd as at the very least, its a lesson in extreme creativity. Don't be afraid to push the limits.

One of my all time favorite, underappreciated movies. Didn't do well in the theaters, but this is another movie developing a cult following. Highly recomended.

This movie starts off right in the middle of the action and never lets go. The main character has lost his mind, awakes in a room with a dead hooker, and as he figures himself out and what if anything he has done, he begins to unravel the truth about the city in which he lives. Was not expecting the direction the end would take. This movie uses dozens of fresh ideas in a compact 90 minutes.

Again, there are points I could critique, but at some point the unique ideas, riveting characters, and fast paced plot more than make up for them.

If you want to study a movie that is as tightly scripted and bound together as they come (as well as Clue) then check this out. There is no fluff here, and the movie just spirals further and further into the depths of your mind...

Here's a really old one. I want to say 1959--Nope 1951 (just looked it up)

When I was younger, I never could get into black and white movies. Thankfully, as I've aged, i've come to shrug of my useful bias, and not regularly enjoy black and white movies. I blame it on Casablanca, why did that have to be so good... Anyway

This is a clssic tale abot a space ship landing and the "aliens" bring an upheaval to the planet. The thing is, this is one of the first serious science fiction of the times. Before this, it was all big eyed monster horror flicks. The Day the Earth STood Still set the precendent for future science fiction movies to follow. Sure, as usual, I could nitpick--things like lack of a strong female character, beating the stated issue a little too much--but that's mostly a product of the times--this came out in the nuclear destructionist 50's. The message, though blunt, is as appropriate today, as it was when the movie came out.,

Robert Wise directed. He did Star Trek, the original movie, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and The Haunting--strongly recommended, it's a G horror movie. (The Haunting is also made me want to write a good old fashioned suspence-horror movie, not the blood-splatteing slasher crap that constitutes the genre today. This endeavor is soon to be in a critque slot near you. . .)

Check this out, if nothing else, to see the origins of serious science fiction moviedom.

Anyone seenthis science fiction movie? It came out in 1997.

It seems like a cult type of movie as it didn't do very well in the theaters and the critics gave it mixed reviews. It's not the typical action-scifi flick. The pace is slow, and it's more concerened with good character and probing social issues then blasting out the cool effects.

The premise is a near-future environment where everything is based on genetics. The job you can get and the life you will live is based on your DNA. Children are preselected to have the best possible skills, and therefore exceed at everything. Of Course, there are always exceptiins, and the main character is a guy who is conceived naturally, and therefore has high rates of developing disease or illness, poor qualities for employers. Therefore he goes underground, (becomes an in-valid) assumes a new identify and tries to blend into the main stream upper gene pool society in order to achieve his ultimate dream of flying in space.

Sure there are some hokey things, and I could grumble about some of the infodumping, but overall, I'd strongly recommend this. Jude Law is fantastic, and Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman do well enough, that each character looks at this not-to-unrealistic society with a different angle. Even if you're bred to be perfect, you can never be perfect enough--someone's genes will inevitably surpass yours...

There's a ton of material a science fiction buff can wade through in this movie.

I just saw this movie and um... I have never seen a movie that so polarizes people. Bush-ites are getting downright hostile. So I think it's better to keep my mouth shut.

So this guy has bits of his memory erased (see Johnny Mnemonic, Total Recall) and has to put his missing memories together to save his life (see Memento, Total Recall) and there is a love interest who helps him (see a dozen other action flicks including Total Recall).

It's an average action flick for all that. Ben Affleck is great. Like everyone else I really like him as an actor even though he still hasn't found a really good movie to star in.

Now, I can accept some initial hanky panky to create a story, so long as the rest of the plot flows smoothly.

First, he is supposed to be a wunderkind genius engineer, but he is also a big muscular guy who fights and thinks like a secret agent. I know a lot of engineers, and I don't know any who fit that bill.

I can overlook that. As an engineer, I would like to think that kind of thing is possible.

However, there are two things that kept smacking me in the face that I really couldn't accept:

***spoilers -- don't read if you haven't seen the movie and want to***

(1) these little items that he stuck in a paper envelope and somehow managed not to lose through all his running and hiding and getting shot at (bonus: the envelope didn't even get frayed) were a stretch. Okay, so he could see the future, but come on.

An FBI agent who is supposed to be clever yet he lights up under a smoke detector? A paperclip jammed into a complicated electrical circuit that instead of frying the works, only does exactly what he needs it to do? A quarter that does the same thing? These things would only work if he could also make the future happen!

(2) now, follow me through this one: (a) he sees the future and knows he has to destroy the machine because it's bad; (b) he inserts a bug into the works so no one else can use the machine; (c) he sends himself a bunch of stuff to remind himself he has to go back to remove the bug and destroy the machine.

Question: why didn't he just make the bug destroy the machine in the first place???

Oh right -- because then there would be no movie.

Bleah.

Supposedly this came from a Philip K. Dick short story. I hope the story wasn't as badly written as this script.

I watched this this last week and it was one of the better efforts by the SciFi channel. The premise is that a physics professor finds a brief case that contains the police file of his murder five days in the future. The case has apparently been sent from years in the future.

It is five hours long so there is a lot of other things going on. I would think that you need about five hours to tell a novel length story. As with most TV shows or movies it holds together until the end when they feel that they need to twist the plot so that no one can guess it before hand. Of course logic and/or believebility suffers greatly in these twists. I think it is still playing so I won't say more. Maybe next week I add some spoilers.

I saw this last night and I was stuned. It was such a collection of bad cliches that one has to wonder if it was made as a spoof. Some of the cliches were: pilots that don't take orders, machine gun sounds on the space fighters, sonar, running out of fuel, "Pull up", pilots used as a boarding party, broadside firing of weapons, ejection pods in space fighters, and reverse sexual descrimination in that "women make better pilots than men." It really is a WWII battle transfered to space with little adaption for new technology.

Actually, it would make a great game at a SF con. Whoever comes up with the best reasonable explanation of the cliches wins. Take for instance the escape pods. Why would you abandon most of your ship? It has the supplies you need. So my idea is that it is a stealth thing. Disabled ships would be targeted by the enemy. The escape pod is stealthed so that at least the pilot survives to be picked up later.

It was based on a video game but is it too much to ask for some technical review.

But I did watch the whole thing.