Sci-Fi Archives - Page 10 of 33 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) [Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

June 20, 2016****/****, 1980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Star Trek

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, Ricardo Montalban
screenplay by Jack B. Sowards
directed by Nicholas Meyer

The film portion of this review comes from a piece originally published in July of 2000 that also critiqued the A/V quality of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan‘s very first DVD release. I opted not to repost Vincent’s comments on the DVD proper because they no longer seemed relevant, especially in this context.-BC

by Vincent Suarez Legend has it that, despite the popularity of television reruns and the stunning phenomenon of “Star Trek” conventions, Paramount green-lighted Star Trek: The Motion Picture only after the success of Star Wars, in an envious bid for a sci-fi blockbuster of its own. In the minds of many fans and critics, however, director Robert Wise delivered a film that more closely approximated Star Bores. (For the record, I love the film’s slow pace and its oft-neglected reprisal of themes from my favourite classic “Trek” episode, “The Changeling.”) While not the huge grosser the studio was hoping for, fans turned out in strong enough numbers to warrant a sequel, and a cash cow was born. There have since been eight additional films and three spun-off television series, but the most brilliant Trek effort remains that first sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990) [3-Disc Limited Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

June 10, 20161990s, 2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

H.P. Lovecraft’s Bride of Re-Animator
**/**** Image B+ Sound C Extras A-
starring Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabiana Udenio, Jeffrey Combs
screenplay by Woody Keith and Rick Fry
directed by Brian Yuzna

by Bryant Frazer Bride of Re-Animator is surely one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of franchise filmmaking. Stuart Gordon’s 1985 classic Re-Animator wasn’t a fluke–it had been lovingly developed over a number of years by Chicago native Gordon, who initially planned to make it with his Organic Theater buddies. When they demurred, it was just dumb luck that landed the project with producer Brian Yuzna at the genre sausage factory that was Hollywood’s Empire International Pictures. The sequel, on the other hand, was developed as a directorial vehicle for Yuzna, who claims time constraints related to the financing precluded Gordon’s participation. So screenwriters Rick Fry and Woody Keith, who wrote Yuzna’s directorial debut, Society, hacked a new script together in a big hurry. The end result is hard to consider on its own merits because of the big question mark for Re-Animator fans: What could this have looked like if the original film’s creative team had been in charge?

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

May 27, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

***½/****
starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
directed by Bryan Singer

by Walter Chaw I know the sample size is small, but Bryan Singer’s X-Men prequel trilogy (we’ll call it his, since he produced Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class), culminating now in X-Men: Apocalypse, is the far superior prequel trilogy. If you were so inclined, you could find in them–and in all of Singer’s work (just like Victor Salva’s across the genre divide)–assimilation melodramas: tales of the struggle with being born different, complete with abilities and…urges. There’s explanation there of why Singer’s films are always about alienation, best when dealing with teens, and critical of the laws and systems that would condemn things that are natural as criminal. Matt Zoller Seitz recently wrote about the problem with believing that Woody Allen is likely a child abuser/pedophile and still watching, still sometimes enjoying, his movies. I was taken with how the stain of that knowledge on the viewer never really goes away. When I watch Singer’s work, which I tend to like a lot, never more than ten minutes go by without me wondering whether what people have said about him being a serial abuser and statutory rapist is true. If it is, it complicates this reading of his films. He’s a little like Elia Kazan in that respect; I wonder if their message is meant as apologia–if it’s repugnant in its human fascination.

The Stuff (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

May 16, 20161980s, 2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Patrick O’Neal
written and directed by Larry Cohen

by Bryant Frazer “Enough is never enough.” So goes a key advertising tagline featured in The Stuff, a bracingly contemptuous critique of consumer culture from Larry Cohen–a man who knows a thing or two about exploiting mainstream tastes. Well regarded among B-movie buffs as a master of high-concept screenwriting coupled with low-budget execution, Cohen was, in his 1970s and 1980s heyday, what auteurists call a smuggler: a writer-director who embeds subversive social commentary in otherwise innocuous genre storylines. The Stuff‘s science-fiction scenario offered some bare-bones corporate intrigue along with a few opportunities for the special make-up effects team, but it also lampooned the businessmen who hawk goods of dubious quality and the haplessly credulous populace that lines up to buy them. The film’s eponymous grocery product is a mysterious but plentiful and apparently tasty substance that burbles up, unbidden, from beneath the earth’s surface. Capitalism being what it is, the distinctive white gloop is quickly productized and monetized by a corporation that doesn’t realize (or doesn’t care) that The Stuff seems to move with a mind of its own.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

May 4, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Brühl
screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

by Walter Chaw The Russo brothers’ Captain America: Civil War (hereafter Cap 3), better titled “Captain America: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters” or “Captain America: Spider-Man,” is an hour of dull exposition, an hour of fanboy service, and an absolutely fantastic half-hour of Spider-Man (Tom Holland). It continues storylines of which I have no memory while giving more and better time to women characters after the kafuffle around sterilizing Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers 2: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters, thus making her a “monster.” Chief benefactor of that largesse is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), “Wanda” to her friends (not only are there too many characters–most of them have two names), who struggles through a fetishist’s idea of a Russian accent and carries the introspective weight of the 2010s on her shoulders. The film is about two things: Like Batman v Superman: 9/11 Has Made Us Monsters, it’s about the casualties of superpowers waging war with one another over civilian populations; and it’s about the role of Western determinism in our current state. It’s like Skyfall in that way, positing that the West has a moral responsibility to police the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world would like to be policed or not. It’s a theory that only works if the West holds fast to its evergreen ideals of truth and justice. This is different from the solipsistic, Byronic nihilism of BvS, because the character of Captain America (Chris Evans) is so explicitly child-like in his goodness that he becomes the manifestation of an idea every action in the film either runs in conjunction with or in tension against. Superman, too, should have represented that ideal, but alas, on Zack Snyder’s watch, he’s just another emo Spidey.

Midnight Special (2016)

April 15, 20162016, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Road Movie, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shepard
written and directed by Jeff Nichols

by Walter Chaw Jeff Nichols’s Midnight Special is beautiful. It’s a film about aspiration and sacrifice. It believes that the world is still a mysterious place anchored by love and hope and devotion to simple ideas about how hard it is to be a parent–and how important. It’s about nurturing a thing with all your heart and letting it go when it’s strong enough. It’s about listening when it’s the last thing you want to hear; it’s about believing there’s a future for your kids even if all evidence seems to suggest the opposite. It’s like Tomorrowland in many ways, but mostly in its suggestion that there’s a place maybe where things feel like they used to feel when you were a kid and everything was still possible. Even though nothing made sense, things would make sense one day when you were big. Midnight Special deserves its comparisons to films like E.T. and Starman and especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It works in the same small places with ordinary characters who grow to fill larger, echoing spaces. Nichols puts us in medias res with Roy (Michael Shannon) and his best friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) on the run from cult leader Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard), having fled at some point before the movie starts with Roy’s son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher). We learn it was around Alton’s oddities that the cult largely formed. We learn that Alton’s oddities are perhaps supernatural, or extraterrestrial, or interdimensional. It doesn’t really matter. They’re profoundly strange, and there are times it appears that he’s able to tell a little of the future.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + DigitalHD

April 3, 20162015, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Star Wars

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow
written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw I was four when I saw Star Wars. It was the first time I’d seen a film in a theatre; it was the first film I’d seen, period. I didn’t speak a word of English. It was overwhelming, and I’m discovering, after watching J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (hereafter Star Wars 7), that it imprinted itself on my DNA. Thirty-eight years later, I collect the toys my parents couldn’t afford to buy me when I was a kid–the ones I played with at friends’ houses, when I pretended to be Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as a child of immigrants doing his best to fit into a society that promised blond and blue-eyed messiahs. My office is full of these toys. They are fetishized relics for me. I hold them and they possess a totemic value. The curve of a molded plastic stormtrooper’s helmet reminds me of the department store where I looked at it through the packaging–and of my delight at my mom one day buying me one, which I opened on the way home in the backseat of the family car.

Allegiant (2016)

March 18, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller

The Divergent Series: Allegiant
½*/****
starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Naomi Watts
screenplay by Noah Oppenheim and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage
directed by Robert Schwentke

by Walter Chaw Remember those gauzy, halcyon days of youth spent playing “imagination” with your buddies on the schoolyard? Starting nowhere, ending nowhere, structureless? Child-development gurus would say something about how formless mucking-about is the way we first begin to socialize. Dungeons & Dragons made it into something like a communal form of spontaneous storytelling while offering a degree of gameplay and structure. Now Allegiant–the third or fourth (who knows?) film in the Divergent series, based on the third- or fourth-generation YA spin-off trying to capitalize on the Hunger Games-cum-Twilight phenomenon of smushing sci-fi/fantasy together with tween angst–has arrived to make manifest the endless exposition of developmental social psychology. In this one, Tris (Shailene Woodley, with her constantly-surprised blankness) and Four (Theo James) find themselves in a dystopian Chicago, I think, except that later they’re taken to a place I believe is also Chicago, or at least Future O’Hare, thus as the characters repeatedly referred to “going to” Chicago, I was never for a moment not confused. I even checked Wikipedia, which confirmed for me that O’Hare is in Chicago. It is. Over the last few movies, which I’ve seen but don’t remember except as a confusion of several franchises identical in my mind, Tris and Four have apparently discovered they’re pawns in a game–A GAME, I tell you–involving their genes. THEIR GENES. It’s Aldous Huxley, don’t you get it?

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

March 11, 20162016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr.
screenplay by Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken and Damien Chazelle
directed by Dan Trachtenberg

by Walter Chaw I don't believe that art ever occurs in a vacuum. I believe that movies, no matter their relative quality, speak to the time in which they were created, eloquently or accidentally–sometimes both. In that context, Dan Trachtenberg's 10 Cloverfield Lane, the follow-up to Matt Reeves's badly-underestimated Cloverfield (which itself pairs with Spike Lee's 25^th Hour as the best elegies for 9/11 New York (Reeves's film even more in some ways, in its emulation of Japan's kaiju cycle)), is about the way the frightening underbelly of paranoid American fanaticism has suddenly gained legitimacy and voice in the mainstream. When speaking mournfully of his estranged daughter and how his wife has taken her away from him, survivalist Howard (John Goodman) mutters that some people just can't understand what's in the best interest of their survival. He's shut himself in an underground bunker with the bunker's architect, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), like some Egyptian Pharaoh, girding himself against an apocalypse that may or may not be personal. He's also "abducted" a young woman passing by, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), though Howard would say he saved her from the end of the world. His plan, see, is that the three of them wait out the fallout from whatever seismic event did or didn't happen, as a makeshift family. No touching.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – Blu-ray Disc

February 24, 20161960s, 2016, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory

Braindie1

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Herb Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniel
screenplay by Joseph Green
directed by Joseph Green

by Bryant Frazer “I remember fire,” murmurs Jan Compton, a disembodied head resting in a surgical pan, at the end of the first act of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. The moment comes about 20 minutes into a movie that’s conspicuous in its cheapness (stiff performances, unconvincing sets, that particular lethargic pace that pads a Z-grade feature out to a bookable running time), and still it’s chilling. There’s a kind of poetry in the words–which refer to a car accident in the previous reel–that generates the shiver. “Burning,” she whispers to the mad scientist (her lover) who has preserved and reanimated her head. “Let me die. Let me die.” Naturally, he ignores her plea. And it’s the tension between her wishes and his actions that generates the horror in this technically inept but effectively weird fright show.

Deadpool (2016)

February 12, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano
screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
directed by Tim Miller

by Walter Chaw I get it. Deadpool is post-modern. It's absolutely aware of itself. It's The Cabin in the Woods. The primogenitor of Deadpool is Dennis Miller's '90s standup: sneering, smarmy, arch, and peppered with pop-culture references running the gamut from Ferris Bueller to Limp Bizkit to the fact that there are two Professor X's in Fox's X-Men franchise. Carted off to stand before the beloved X-Man, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) asks, "McAvoy or Stewart?" And an audience of savvy comic-book/film fans cheers because they've been recognized. It's the button rock stars push when they say, "Hello (wherever they are)!" at the beginning of a set. It announces that they are aware of the space they occupy, and legions of concertgoers make the devil horns and light their lighters in appreciation: "Yeah, man, you're here. In that you are correct." Deadpool is about recognizing itself for what it is and recognizing its audience for recognizing where they are (which is there, recognizing that their hero recognizes where he is). When Deadpool's alter ego, being wheeled into the place where he's going to be turned into Deadpool, begs them not to give him an animated green suit, well, you knew that Reynolds was disastrously the hero in Green Lantern, right? It's only the second time it's referenced. He also calls a little bald girl Sinead O'Connor twice, because it's hard to write jokes. He could have called her "Blue Sunshine," except the only thing Deadpool can't afford to be is smarter than its audience. Relax–it never is.

The Dungeonmaster (1984)/Eliminators (1986) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

February 1, 20161980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Zombie

Ragewar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Richard Moll, Leslie Wing, Jeffrey Byron
written by Allen Actor
directed by Rosemarie Turko, John Carl Buechler, David Allen, Steven Ford, Peter Manoogian, Ted Nicolaou, Charles Band

ELIMINATORS
**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Andrew Prine, Denise Crosby, Patrick Reynolds, Roy Dotrice
written by Paul De Meo & Danny Bilson
directed by Peter Manoogian

by Bryant Frazer Shout! Factory’s program of disinterred but well-preserved artifacts from producer Charles Band’s genre-flick factory Empire Pictures continues with this platter of aged cheese. I’m generally resistant to nostalgia and suspicious of claims that anybody’s low-budget crapfest is so bad it’s good, but the twofer on offer here is surprisingly engaging, juxtaposing a sloppy but fast-paced horror anthology with a silly but earnest action pastiche in a celebration of a bygone age of guileless indie filmmaking. While some of Scream Factory’s excavations from that era are simply depressing (The Final Terror, anyone?), this highly-derivative double feature makes up for its lack of artistry with a generous helping of vintage latex creature masks, boggling non sequiturs, and 1980s signifiers that generate–at least for movie buffs of a certain age and proclivity–a strong sense memory of sticky floors, stale popcorn, and battered 35mm projection.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

December 16, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow
written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
directed by J.J. Abrams

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)

November 22, 20152015, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

***/****
starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Walter Chaw The first four hours of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (hereafter Hunger Games 3.2) are interminable. Because I barely remember anything from any other movie in this series (I had to go back and reread my reviews, not just to refresh my memory, but to affirm that I’d even seen the previous films), everything that wraps up loose threads, the two (count ’em) times characters are forced to give Biblical genealogies to the probable delight of ardent fans, the deadening nonsense involving love triangles, all that jazz, is exactly like watching paint dry. It’s bookkeeping. They could just be moving their lips and making smacking noises. I like how the late Philip Seymour Hoffman handles these scenes: chin to the chest, looking for all the world like he’s counting minutes. It’s not unlike that part of The Sound and the Fury (which is my favourite book, by the way, so I’m not really complaining) that most people skim. And for good reason. Moby Dick has one, too. I’m saying this in the vain hope that you lay off in the comments section. Oh, I also still hate the silly Dickensian names. They’re stupid and desperate.

The Food of the Gods (1976)/Frogs (1972) [Double Feature] + Empire of the Ants (1977)/Jaws of Satan (1981) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Discs

October 26, 20151970s, 1980s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

THE FOOD OF THE GODS
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino
screenplay by Bert I. Gordon, based on a portion of the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

FROGS
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke
screenplay by Robert Hutchison and Robert Blees
directed by George McCowan

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson, Albert Salmi
screenplay by Jack Turley, story by Bert I. Gordon, based on the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

King Cobra
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Fritz Weaver, Gretchen Corbett, Jon Korkes, Norman Lloyd
screenplay by Gerry Holland, from a story by James Callaway
directed by Bob Claver

by Jefferson Robbins If THE DISSOLVE had lasted, Keith Phipps’s fine recurring genre feature “The Laser Age” might have gotten around to the SF subcategory of Nature Gone Wild–the movies that set animals against humanity, such as The Swarm, Night of the Lepus, Squirm, and Prophecy (The Monster Movie). Distinctly a 1970s phenomenon, as we fretted over the northward migration of killer bees and the health of our DDT-soaked bald eagles, the films usually boasted critters who turned on us bipeds after stewing too long in our toxic effluents, perhaps gaining bestial superpowers as a result. They were cheapies, by and large, although with The Swarm director Irwin Allen tried to pull off the same broad settings and large aging-star cast he’d managed in his previous disaster flicks. As a trope, humanity vs. nature works best in isolation, when solitary heroes or groups of victims are besieged in the sticks, with no outside help forthcoming.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Short Films

October 16, 2015****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Sweden, ZERO STARS

by Walter Chaw

The Babysitter Murders ****/**** (d. Ryan Spindell) For certain artists working in the short-film format, I don't have any idea how or why it is they haven't been called up to the big leagues yet. This speaks as much to my prejudice, obviously: there's nothing wrong with the short form. In literature, many of my favourite writers are best in the short form. In film, though, there's so little real opportunity for distribution that it seems a particular shame when guys like Ryan Spindell have only produced shorts. I'm not complaining (his work is excellent), merely hoping he has the means to continue. Spindell's latest, The Babysitter Murders, is so expertly composited that it would be kind of a shame to dissect it at all. Sufficed to say that it unearths a new place to take Wes Craven's Scream meta funhouse, and does it without a hint of smugness or show-off-y insecurity. It's beautifully paced, conceived, and executed. Look at a cooking scene early on, set to "Fast & Sweet" by Mondo Boys feat. Kestrin Pantera–the way it's shot and edited, the way Elie Smolkin's camera stalks and Eric Ekman cuts it all together. The movie's premise–a babysitter alone on a stormy night when a psycho escapes from an asylum–is as rote as they come, but Spindell, as he did with The Root of the Problem and dentists, finds something new to say. The performances are to a one pitch-perfect and the gore is appropriately horrifying; it's a film balanced in that space between hilarity for its excess and hilarity for its brilliance. I'm out of superlatives. Spindell is one of the finest voices working in genre right now, carving out a niche that's neither self-serious nor self-abnegating. He's full of joy, this one, and his movies are treasures.

Tomorrowland (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

October 15, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Mystery, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A+ (ultra) Sound A+ Extras C+
starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy
screenplay by Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
directed by Brad Bird

by Walter Chaw Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a mess and it knows it. It’s unruly, barely contained, just this side of completely falling apart. There are many and distracting continuity errors, and though it makes a joke of it, it’s clear immediately that the movie doesn’t know how to start, much less end. It has an engaging, irrepressible heroine it strands at the moment she should be doing something (“Am I supposed to be…doing something?” she actually asks), and it has a visit to a memorabilia/collectibles store run by unusual proprietors that is packed to the girders with Brad Bird ephemera of the Iron Giant and Incredibles variety. Tomorrowland has hanging about it, in other words, all the elements of disaster: winky meta references, lack of narrative cohesion, desperation-born mistakes, bad screenwriter/Nick-Riviera-bad script doctor Damon Lindelof as Bird’s co-author…and yet it’s good somehow. Credit Bird, who knows his way around spatial relationships, and credit a simple, plaintive idea that the world can be better if we believe that it can be better. If the sign of a great filmmaker is his ability to make a bad actor seem good, Bird is a frickin’ genius for making something Lindelof worked on not an utter catastrophe. It’s big and simple and corny in a Lone Ranger, Captain America, Silver Age Superman kind of way–the kind of big and simple and corny I can get behind.

Fantastic Fest ’15: In Search of the Ultra-Sex

October 3, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, France, Satire, Sci-Fi

A la recherche de l'Ultra-Sex½*/****directed by Nicolas Charlet & Bruno Lavaine by Walter Chaw I saw a hacked anime once--pre-Adult Swim and projects of that ilk--that took place on a flying aircraft carrier and had been re-dubbed so that all the characters were offering different euphemisms for flatulence. My favourite was, "I can't seem to take a step without introducing Mr. Wetty." It lasted about four minutes and I enjoyed a good three-and-a-half of it. Nicholas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine's In Search of the Ultra-Sex is a full hour of R-rated excerpts from classic porn, dubbed to be a Plan 9…

The Martian (2015)

September 22, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**/****
starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristin Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor
screenplay by Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw The riposte, and it’s a fair one, is: What would make you happy? And the frustrating response is, “I don’t know.” The problem is this (and in a movie about solving problems, it’s germane to raise one): The Martian, Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s faithful adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestseller, is essentially a bwana story in which smart and resourceful black and Chinese people band together to save a white explorer who declares himself both “colonizer” and “pirate” at various points in the movie. It’s a summary of a certain kind of film, too, the space opera that used to be all the rage in the 1950s–a decade actually interested in exploration rather than defunding NASA and rabid anti-intellectualism. The only thing missing is a spacechimp and a space lady with rockets in her brassiere. I confess that I probably wouldn’t have even been thinking much, or perhaps as quickly, about the racial politics of this film had Matt Damon, the bwana in question, not “whitesplained” to a black producer (a female black producer) what diversity means as regards his wish-fulfillment reality series “Project Greenlight”. Or if it weren’t directed by Ridley Scott, whose last film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, required volumes of whitesplaining itself as to why the principals of his Middle Eastern/African tale were white.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

August 31, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disability, DVD, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne
written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw The best parts of Mad Max: Fury Road (hereafter Fury Road) are, as it happens, those that are most like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The parts about civilization rising from the ruins of an atomic war; the parts about misplaced hope and how unlikely alliances can sometimes speak to the human tendency towards faith and the possibility of eternity. The series was always about the myth of the lone hero, striding into whatever situation and facilitating a return to a prelapsarian (pre-poc-y-clypse?) state before disappearing again. Shane, for instance, where a child’s development–or in the case of Thunderdome, a great many children’s development–has been mythologized as the intervention of a mysterious stranger who appears from nowhere and returns there. Max is a metaphor. For courage, heart, intelligence, the yearning for home; he touches in turn each of The Wizard of Oz‘s quartet of self-actualization while keeping the Wizard behind the curtain. If there’s a specific modern mythology to which this series most obviously hews, it’s the Arthur myth, and in Thunderdome, when asked if he’s the return of the fabled Captain Walker, Max responds that he isn’t. But we know that he is.