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Posts Tagged ‘sci-fi’

Dr. Who and the Daleks / Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

So, background to my watching these is: the first part of the season finale to Matt Smith’s first run as The Doctor on BBC1 thrilled me so much, and there have been so many references to the legacy of all the old Doctors in this latest series, that I decided to watch the whole thing from the beginning. My plan was to watch everything (reconstructed episodes where necessary – a lot of stuff was “junked” by the BBC in the 70s) in the order that it aired or was released, and there were a few episodes between these two movies, but I ended up watching them one after the other, reasoning (despite the fact I really hate when fans talk of “canon”) that they’re not really canon anyway.

I’m kinda-sorta sure I may have seen the first of these at least before, but my early Doctor Who experiences are a major blur and the imagery so iconic across the board that I could really be remembering anything. Both these movies are remakes of existing stories in the Hartnell years, but from the very title music and credit design, you know the approach is gonna be different. The Doctor is painted here as a much more fun and contemporary character than he was in the early years of the TV series, if only through the way he’s presented (Peter Cushing’s actual performance is beautifully refined as ever).

You’ll find way better informed views on why the TV versions of these stories were ideologically better than these lavish remakes all over the net, and that’s why I decided to blend these two movies into just one review here. What will bring me back personally to watch both movies again is two-fold… firstly, that very lavishness in the design. Early Doctor Who on the TV was adventurous but because of the sheer number of episodes frequently came out wobbly, cheap, even to the point of line-fluffage from the actors. There’s none of that here, and the sets, effects etc are simply beautiful.

Secondly, and more importantly, there’s Roberta Tovey. I love that they make The Doctor’s granddaughter so much younger here. There’s something just plain more aesthetically satisfying about Susan being genuinely precocious, not to mention her physical size, in these environments. She’s far more convincing as “An Unearthly Child” for me than the teenaged Carole Ann Ford (though fine in her own way) ever was in the TV series, and her presence just makes the whole thing a little more fun. If I ever did see either of these when I was younger, there’s no doubt I related most immediately to her, and I’m not sure if anything’s changed

In short, these movies aren’t exactly essential viewing for anyone be they film-lovers, modern Who-fans or passing sci-fi geeks. But if you’re just a little of all the above, they are worth a look. For the time they were made they have crazy production values and Cushing makes for a Doctor so good (if, as I said, you can ignore the presentation) that you almost wish there was more.

Tags: cuties, sci-fi, time travel, TV
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Hot Tub Time Machine

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Mark Kermode has said a few times of this on his weekly podcast that it’s “not as funny as the title”, and frankly, I still don’t find the title even remotely funny, so aside from the fact that I always love John Cusack in anything (yes, even High Fidelity), I really didn’t expect much from this movie. I certainly didn’t expect to find that, actually, the only bad thing about the movie is the title, lol.

This is essentially Back to the Future meets Superbad, in the best way possible. On the time travel front, I’m not exaggerating when I say this is among the best of the genre, doing pretty much everything right in my opinion in addition to doing just a few things a little different. On the gross-out guy comedy front, I was careful to select Superbad in the earlier equation, because that was one of the few comedies of its kind over the past few years (and from the Apatow stable to boot) that I actually enjoyed because it actually had marginally endearing characters. I think I saw the “Unrated” edition of the movie so I can’t tell you exactly which parts but to say, this definitely goes “too far” in places but – and again it’s hard to really explain so you just have to trust my judgment – it’s done in a way that’s actually funny.

For example – I’m sure this is in any cut of the movie as it’s a huge part of the plot – one of the heroes decides to call his (in the present) ex-wife when they are back in 1986. She’s 9. He yells at her like it’s “today”, potty words and all, and it cuts to her astonished little face in bed. Later, we get the following killer exchange when this guy is having sex with another girl (the gang having decided to just enjoy themselves in the past):

Guy: [crying] “Courtney!”
Girl: “Tara!”
Guy: [more intense] “Courtney!”
Girl: [slows] “Seriously, it’s Tara.”
Guy: “Naw, my wife.”
Girl: [stops] “You’re married?”
Guy: “No… I mean, not yet. She’s 9 right now…”

That’s probably a decent benchmark as to whether you’ll like the movie as much as I did lol… if that kind of thing is funny to you, you’ll be fine. But it’s really not all dumb/dangerous gags like this… like I said, and what surprised me most about the movie, is that it actually has just as much heart in the end as the very best of the time travel genre.

There is a wonderful character in the form of Lizzy Caplan (who I loved in 2004’s Mean Girls but I admit didn’t even recognise here). It’s what I’d call a kind of Zooey Deschanel character. She kinda “gets” that something odd is going on the minute she lays eyes on John Cusack (she’s native to 1986, the year to which they’re transported) and she runs with it almost like it’s an every day occurence. The quirky romance that blossoms between her and John Cusack is as cute to me as any love story Cusack has been involved with.

There’s a lot more to be said about this movie but I feel like I’ve lost my way in this review and I’m way behind. I will only add a little something about Chevy Chase’s part in the movie. He essentially plays the mystical old man you find in a lot of stories like this – the guy with the remote in Pleasantville, or the truck driver in Small Soldiers, come to mind – and he’s written very tongue in cheek. The thing is, he’s seriously funny, almost brilliant, and considering I thought Chase had pretty much gone away, this was a seriously pleasant surprise and just one more reason to recommend the movie. I feel confident in saying no matter what you’re expecting of this movie, you will probably be just as surprised as I was.

Tags: comedy, Eighties, retro, sci-fi, time travel, trash
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Dude, Where’s My Car?

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

So, umm, I have to begin this review by saying, go me! ‘Cos it seems I actually managed to block this movie out so successfully for an entire 10 YEARS, so well that I came to it at last knowing so little about the actual plot that when the alien stuff started, I genuinely thought I might still be dreaming from the night before…

The most important thing for me to say in this review is that it was a lot better than I expected, and I think the distance may have a lot to do with it. This movie has kind of been (at least in my mind) cornered as “the one that started it all”, the dumbing down of movies etc… but the fact is, compared to more recent stuff, this one actually almost has charm, and I’m surprised that the alien aspect of the story has been so downplayed that, as I said, I really didn’t know about it at all before watching.

The whole thing had been done before and better by the likes of Beavis & Butthead, Bill & Ted, Wayne’s World, and even after in the form of Jay & Silent Bob… but really and truly, this is not a bad movie at all.

Tags: comedy, dumb, sci-fi
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2010

Monday, January 4th, 2010

“We have been given a new lease, and a warning, from the landlord…”

I figured for obvious reasons that this would make the perfect movie to start this year and decade with, especially on Blu-ray which I’m still a newcomer to, and especially since I’d never really watched it from start to finish if at all (I recognised a few parts but I’m not sure from when). Anybody who loves or at least knows cinema will know enough not to bring great expectations to this sequel to 2001 (which I’m not a personal fan of, but whose merits I fully appreciate), and approached this way, it’s not too bad at all.

What surprised me about the movie most was how much abstract remains regarding what’s revealed to us about the nature of the monolith etc. The movie begins with a computer readout of the “known unknowns” at the end of the first movie and what follows is futher exploration near Jupiter, the “resurrection” of HAL, and further developments leading to the creation of new worlds and a “new Eden” kind of set up that ends the movie with the line above. Watching at the start of a new year and decade, clearly we haven’t come quite so far as Arthur C. Clarke’s envisaged … but one can’t help but hope for events similar to this, something so cosmic and transformative we couldn’t all help but throw down our bullsh*t and look up together. [uhrm, /end corny mode]

Tags: sci-fi, sequel
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Moon

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

I’m incredibly glad that even in this Twitter-enabled world I managed to avoid pretty much all plot details of this movie, and if you haven’t seen it yet, so should you. With that warning, I’ll still try to avoid any spoilers here as best I can. This movie completes a hat-trick of pleasant surprises for me this week, for though I’d heard many positive words about Moon, though I’m not a bit averse to the genre, though I think Sam Rockwell is a great actor and I’d seen an interesting interview with its director Duncan Jones on Robert Llewelyn’s Carpool, I still didn’t really feel that compelled to watch it.

This is, I’ve learned recently, what’s known as hard sci-fi – in this case, perhaps the hardest kind. There’s virtually nothing here that struck me as particularly far-fetched in terms of its vision of the (fairly near) future, even though the sci-fi aspect of the movie is not really what rings most true. I found myself drawn in and ultimately transfixed by where the story goes in the end, a seriously harrowing degeneration, both mental and physical, that brought to mind something like “When the Wind Blows” combined with revelations about a very recognisable corporate evil to whom human life is entirely expendable (to continue the wild genre-hopping comparisons, this complete disregard for human life in pursuit of capitalism reminded me of Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation). In short, way heavier stuff than I might’ve expected from what is a relatively small movie.

One thing I had known before the movie began was how it is almost entirely a one man show by Sam Rockwell. I’d seen the IMDb cast list and knew this not to be technically true, however, with Kevin Spacey on hand as the ship’s HAL-like computer (complete with very unsettling emoticon faces) and a wife and child on the end of a video communications link, but for all its visual wonder – with intricate model work instead of the CGI you’d find in most recent movies of this kind – it’s testament to good writing and acting indeed (to say nothing of Clint Mansell’s alternately unsettling and emotive score) that I could easily imagine this working as a one man stage play. Rockwell is phenomenal, easily the best performance I’ve seen this year so far – there’s one moment in particular which is actually kind of played twice (for reasons I won’t explain) where he receives some information from earth and breaks down, “That’s enough … I wanna go home,” he says, and it totally crushed me. This is the kind of sci-fi that even those who don’t consider themselves sci-fi fans should enjoy, where the “science part”, though amply established (it’s a slow burner but stick with it), serves merely as a kind of McGuffin for one of the most genuine explorations of the conundrum of human existence that I’ve ever seen.

Tags: clone, corporate, future, loneliness, sci-fi
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Twilight Zone: The Movie

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Alright, no more dallying, it’s time to catch up on all the stuff I’ve been watching since my unplanned absence, lol. This one was watched on a sort of whim – I’d just finished watching all the Masters of Horror episodes and found myself still in the mood for anthological story telling, and this particular movie had been mentioned once or twice on those DVDs’ extras. I enjoyed this movie a heck of a lot more than expected, especially Steven Spielberg’s segment.

I’ve seen little if any of the original episodes that most of these stories are based on (though I’d of course seen parodies of the William Shatner “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) so I came to pretty much the whole movie fresh – the bookends sequence is kind of corny and the first story didn’t do a lot for me at all but the wonder of Spielberg’s, the nuttiness of Dante’s and the manic performance in the third story more than made it worth the watch. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is fantastic, too.

Tags: age, anthology, horror, sci-fi
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S. Darko

Monday, May 18th, 2009

This was a lot better than I expected and reading other people’s reviews of it proved very interesting indeed. One of the first bad reviews I found said the following:

“To me this movie felt like someone watched Donnie a few times, wrote down some key elements from the movie in a notebook and then tried to incorporate it into a new movie.”

What can I say but I’m glad if this was the way they approached it. I have no time for those who think they can fathom the mystery of the original movie. Richard Kelly ruined it with his own director’s cut in my opinion. The mystery was key for me. For me, the things you need to fairly compare this straight to video sequel to are not the original theatrical cut of Donnie Darko (which it could never match) but other straight to video sequels, Richard Kelly’s demented director’s cut of the original, and Kelly’s own output since his ingenius debut. On all those counts, this for me easily comes out on top.

If you had any great love for the director’s cut of Donnie Darko over the original, clearly, this is not for you. You probably love the abundance of exposition in The Da Vinci Code and (I’m told) its sequel. I’m personally a fan of abstract cinema, believe it’s something that cinema does particularly well in fact, and to find that in a movie like this which on the surface at times looks as shallow as The OC or something is a huge relief. Like I said, it’s no Donnie, it couldn’t be. But it is beautifully produced, even the music being impressive; it has many parallels to the original story without being 100% rehash; and for a moment or two at least it even took my breath away a little. The ending kind of fizzles rather than blazes as it should and it’s an homage to the original too far that just doesn’t work, but otherwise, for what it is, I was very impressed with this movie.

(PS. Another of the reviews I just read said it was ‘worse than Grease 2 …’ which to my ears is really counter-productive, lol)

Tags: cuties, dream, future, religion, sci-fi, sequel, surreal, time travel
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Star Trek

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

This one comes with such good spirit that reviewing it is entirely a waste of time … but I’ll do my best to recount my experience as always. I came to this, the first midnight screening available locally, not quite knowing if it’d be the biggest cinematic misstep I could make in 2009 or if, in fact, I might actually be the ideal audience for JJ Abrams’ approach to resurrecting the franchise. I’ve never been a huge Trekkie by any stretch, always citing the over-attentiveness to the details the show and movies seemed to have compared to more frivolous sci-fi outings like Star Wars, for example; I never really watched any of the TV series for any great amount of time, but I have seen all of the movies, even on the big screen, and with the possible exception of Final Frontier, I enjoyed them.

The biggest barrier for me here from what I’d seen in the small clips that had been released to the public seemed to the cast, in particular the two most important characters Spock and Kirk played by Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine. What I’d seen made the new crew look horribly fratboy-ish and to my mind horribly unbelievable in terms of their becoming the Enterprise crew of the original series. To make a wild comparison, like the Tinkerbell movie of last year, it looked like it wouldn’t matter how great the movie looked, no matter how they served it up, and even though like I say I was never even a fan, I would just never buy this crew as that crew.

How unwarranted could my worries have been? Though I still have my misgivings about Quinto in the Spock role (I don’t know, there’s something about his face like Casey Affleck that makes me feel like he’s constantly making private mockery of the material), the character here I found more “fascinating” than ever. The emotional content of this movie absolutely bowled me over and a lot of it centers around Spock of all creatures. Add to that of course (I’m sure you’ve heard) the presence of Leonard Nimoy who lends the movie an all-important sense of authenticity (I won’t touch on the what-where-how of why he’s there except to say sequel-prequel-wise this movie is insanely clever) and I can easily forgive this piece of casting. Chris Pine along with the rest of the main crew are another story entirely. Simon Pegg’s accent notwithstanding, I adjusted to them all almost immediately. Pine almost weirdly channels Shatner at some points, and like a lot of the could-be-awfully-cringeworthy-but-we-have-to-do-it-anyway moments, the balance struck is near perfect.

One of the things I always did love about Star Trek was the music and it was always gonna be interesting to see what happened after Jerry Goldsmith’s death. I was surprised to find nary a hint (at least until the glorious end) of Star Trek music past in Michael Giacchino’s score here and he dives in boldly creating the kind of score that overhypes the imagery that I’m usually averse to, yet he somehow gets away with it so much does the imagery live up to his hype. The visuals here are stunning – I was so afraid I would come away from it saying something along the lines of, “it’s good, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” but I think I can say for sure that there were things here I really hadn’t seen before.

In short, it’s a stunning creation. It stands alone and it fits in with what came before. I don’t know if it fits in enough for some fans, but then I wouldn’t know that, but they do a valiant job of showing they care a little about those fans. Again, I won’t hint at the plot and how it ties in etc, but I want to point out again how incredible this movie is in terms of being a part of everything that came before it. It is not another reboot (god, how I hate that word applied to cinema), it’s much more than that, it’s almost dare I say genius. Just in purely objective terms this must be one of the cleverest and smoothest continuations of a long-running franchise that has ever hit our screens. The more I think about it the more impressed I am. The Nimoy factor is the icing on the cake. At the risk of being corny, may it live long and prosper.

Tags: prequel, sci-fi, sequel, TV
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