In 1992 there was a silly little movie called The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag. It was a bit of fluff about a librarian that gets into trouble. Somewhere near the end there is a scene of the bad guy having dinner with a man and his wife. He offers the wife a bit of food on the end of a knife. She take the food into her mouth nervously-and then the bad guy scrapes the blade across her teeth and slices through her cheek. This was one of the most shocking bits of violence I have ever seen in…
Category: sci fi
Rogue One
Many Bothans died to bring us this information. Many years ago, when computers were first used in films, someone predicted that one day there would be digital Marilyn Monroes and digital James Deans. But what, he asked, if the CGI actors couldn’t act? We find out the answer in Rogue One, where several characters from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi make cameo appearances. The most jarring of these was a stiff and emotionless Peter Cushing composite playing Grand Moff Tarkin. It was very good, but still not perfect. Of course, it is only…
Arrival
Yeah, that was good. Movies like this normally have a long putting-the-team-together opening like Oceans 11 or The Core, but not here. The team is mainly Amy Adams and it doesn’t take her long to get on board. Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker are the other familiar faces trying to figure out how to talk to some mysterious aliens who have parked in twelve spots around the world. Arrival is a great movie. It works on both the global level, where the end of the world is a real possibility, and on a personal level, where the loss of a…
Ghostbusters 2016
Yeah, that sucked. 1984’s Ghostbusters is the only film I ever paid to see twice in a first run theater. The acting was good, the special effects were pretty damned amazing, and the story was compelling. It had it’s funny moments, but Ghostbusters was played straight. Our heroes were real scientists trying to understand something that couldn’t be understood. My favorite scene was the one where the ghosts break containment and flood the city as some wonderfully funky and scary music plays in the background. These were some scary ghosts that go on a murder spree. 2016’s Ghostbuster cost a…
HBO’s Westworld
The original Westworld was a pretty simple bit of business. We follow a couple of men as they go on vacation at the best theme park in the world and something goes wrong. There was very little depth, the last half of the film was one long chase scene. And a slow chase at that. HBO and J.J. Abrams have taken Michael Crichton’s basic idea of an interactive Disneyland and expanded it to include subtle motivations for the characters, both human and machine. In a nice twist, we find a few characters in reverse roles. Instead of an evil robot,…
Equals
In the future, everyone has been turned into Vulcans. This seems like a perfect role for Kristen Stewart, but she isn’t playing an emotionless drone, she’s playing someone who has a disease that makes her experience emotions. She meets Nicholas Hoult, who is a ‘normal’ person who contracts the disease and falls madly in love with Kristen. This is a mixture of two standard story types, 1) the star-crossed lovers and 2) someone different hiding from all the normals. Equals is basically an art film episode of the Twilight Zone. There are hints of other great love stories, it has a…
Star Trek Beyond
Star Trek Beyond was better than Star Trek Into Darkness, and that’s a good thing. This was a fast paced movie and something was always happening. For the most part, that’s good as well. You don’t have any time to think about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. I’m not a fan of CGI and Star Trek Beyond had more than it’s share of bad computer generate images. A swarm of bad guys that looked a lot like every other CGI swarm you’ve ever seen and a lot of things that were supposed to look dangerous, but just…
High Rise
Set in a 1970s Arcology, a self-contained building where the residents can have all their needs met within, we find a new tenant who doesn’t quite fit in. He’s a doctor who seems to be concerned about finding the perfect color for his walls and the perfect partner for his bed. Since this the 1970s, everyone is part of the swinging set. At first, all seems well enough. The people on the lower floors aren’t quite as posh as the people on the higher floors, but they all still get along. It’s kind of like being on the Titanic, with…
Stranger Things
For those of you who lost your VHS tapes of ET, House, Poltergeist, Videodrome, and pretty much every horror movie made in the 1980s, this TV Show is for you. The Duffer Brothers-a name that makes me think of Homer Simpson’s favorite beer-have ripped off, I mean, paid homage to, all those great old movies from thirty years ago. I seem to be alone in thinking this collection of clichés and CGIs is not that great. If I want to see an old 80s horror movie, why not watch an old 80s horror movie? Because someone is going to bang out…
10 Cloverfield Lane
Spoilers The big mystery in 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t much of a mystery. The name Cloverfield refers to a rather horrible monster movie that J.J. Abrams made a few years back. That was a lost footage film about New York being destroyed by a number of odd critters from space. So it follows that this film will be set in the same universe as that one. But we have left New York City for a farm in Louisiana. The bulk of 10 Cloverfield Lane sees a woman who finds herself hostage in a crazy man’s fallout shelter. John Goodman does…