Warning: Minor Man of Steel spoilers follow. In all fairness, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a beautiful movie. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a “New 52”-era DC Comics adaptation: loads of fun, generally on par with Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, light-years beyond lesser attempts like Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern (2011), and […]
Science fiction and fantasy are taking over the realm of the Hollywood summer blockbuster, no question about it. Marvel Studios is gearing up to launch the Avengers franchise into space with the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy film, Neill Blomkamp’s about to wow audiences with his sophomore full-length feature, Elysium, and Christopher Nolan’s next movie is […]
I’ll try and keep this spoiler-free, because I think it goes without saying that spoilers are the film buff’s bane, but I will need to at least hint at a few key aspects of the story in order to properly criticize it in the manner I intend to. Which is to say, I didn’t really […]
Having seen Star Trek Into Darkness twice now, and having very much enjoyed it, my aim is to avoid spoilers here whenever possible, for the sake of those readers who might intend to see the film but haven’t gotten around to it yet. That said, if you’re really worried about it, I’d say close your […]
I think Django Unchained is one of the ballsiest, most badass flicks I’ve seen in ages — significantly more mature, artful, and honest than Tarantino’s own Inglorious Basterds, I’d argue. Its unflinching portrayal of the acts committed against an entire culture for centuries, exposing the ugliness beneath America’s blood-soaked rug, is beyond commendable. Academy Award winner […]
Iron Man Three surpasses its predecessor, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, in one very exciting and fundamental way: it feels more like an actual comic book than any single Marvel flick before it—hell, maybe more than any comic adaptation, period. It celebrates the humor and cool-gadgetry flair of the first two Iron Man flicks while simultaneously […]
I’m sitting with a group of friends in the Seminary Street Pub, familiar faces here and there casting shadows upon near-forgotten memories, making plain the slippery nature of time and life. Red neon lights drench the dark paint of the walls. I watch my last beer swirl, dizzying, half-gone, inside a green glass bottle as […]
Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion (2013) is a love letter to every science fiction film you’ve already seen, and a pretty beautiful one, at that, but it nearly collapses under the weight of its own ambition. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable movie, filled with the kind of eye- and ear-candy you’d expect from the man who directed Tron: […]
You can almost smell the rain, feel it hammer the leather of your trenchcoat. Hear the harmonic buzz of blue neon all around you. You can taste the Tsingtao, bubbly and cool on your tongue. If there’s a single flaw worth noting about the Blu-ray transfer of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cut (’07), […]
The following essay originally appeared in issue number 111 of the quarterly journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, edited by Graham Sleight. Revised and expanded, 2nd ed. Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road exemplifies both the acknowledgment of essential human goodness and the flaws inherent in the Emersonian individualism that has grown to […]
“The safest place there is. . . .” It’s a dubious, quizzical line, delivered by Lois Smith near the end of her one unforgettable scene as the self-proclaimed mother of Precrime. Dubious because we’re talking about the reliability of the human mind; quizzical because it’s a Philip K. Dick adaptation. But it’s a line, I’d […]
According to my extensive academic research over at Wikipedia this afternoon, the third installment in Fox’s Alien Quadrilogy (’Cause why use the word tetralogy, right? What a lousy word . . .) went through development hell for several years, and despite the criticism it’s received since from longtime fans and critics alike, it should’ve ended up a much worse film […]
Last Saturday, I spent my morning on the couch with a debilitating migraine, wondering what karmic injustice I’d committed in order to deserve being so miserable on my weekend off. But like the glass-half-full seeker of silver linings that I am, I whipped out the Prometheus 4-Disc Collector’s Edition Blu-ray I’d gotten as a gift […]
We geeks love our gadgets. Can’t live without ’em. Granted, I have a dumbphone and a laptop—neither a tablet nor smartphone to boast of. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather own a Galaxy S-III or MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface. But unfortunately, money is sometimes a concern. As someone who is both a young, introverted […]
I would put forward that the next thing is going to be a story, because right now, people really don’t have a big story, a big software. . . . They don’t have a big meta-narrative story; they don’t have a big story like Christianity was a big story. So right now, we need a […]
I had given some thought to doing an Oscars recap this week, tallying the various gains and losses of the science fiction and fantasy fields within that most prestigious of movie awards ceremonies. But given the controversy surrounding the show’s perceived undercurrent of sexism and other ugly mentalities, primarily attributed to the show’s host, I […]
Vampire flicks have been all the rage since Twilight flooded the box office with sticky, coppery crimson in ’08, and have proven a solid moneymaking strategy ever since, with each of the saga’s four sequels averaging about three hundred million dollars per film, according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo. But for some of us — […]
(Or, Why Your Beloved Franchise Is About to Become More Powerful than You Could Possibly Imagine.) Since the news that J. J. Abrams will be directing the seventh installment of Star Wars hit a couple weeks back, fandom has been more or less polarized. While some rejoiced in the knowledge that their beloved franchise is […]
