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Chaos Walking (2021)
Should have been rated G. Nothing new or interesting here.
So much promise and potential for originality, but in the end it was just a collection of tropes and stereotypes with a poor wrapping of scifi.
Coming of age: Check
Appeals to American obsession with Settler mythology and the Wild West: Check
Crappy science: Check
A small town, power hungry mayor: Check
Must have a preacher because... America: Check
Once again, Hollywood lets down good actors, film crew, and production staff to churn out garbage like this, with poor scrpting, poor writing, long drawn out scenes, and plot holes everywhere.
Hire mature story writers. Get science advisors. Make better movies.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
Not a single original thought to be found.
Rebel Moon is a disappointing film that fails to deliver anything original or exciting to the sci-fi genre. The film is a blatant rip-off of several classic films, such as Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, The Hidden Fortress, and of course, the original Star Wars trilogy. The film lacks any creativity or innovation, and relies on clichés, tropes, and fan service to appeal to the audience. It is poorly written with a predictable plot, shallow characters, and cheesy dialogue. The film tries to be dark and gritty, but ends up being dull and boring.
The film's only redeeming qualities are its visual effects, including some stunning landscapes, spaceships, and battles, which are enhanced by Snyder's signature slow-motion and stylized cinematography. However, these aspects are not enough to save the film from its many flaws and, ultimately, Rebel Moon is a forgettable and uninspired film that does not live up to its own potential.
Would have been 1 star for being such a staggering disappointment, but extra stars awarded to all the crew for their hard work and skill, especially in light of being given such awful material to work with.
Chosen (2022)
Rate it for what it is, not what you were hoping it would be.
If you want it to be Interstellar, you will be sorely disappointed, and the negative reviews and low scores for this show seem to have really missed the point.
This is a young-adult coming of age story with a sci-fi backdrop.
The show has suspense, mystery and action. It explores identity, family, friendship and survival. Shows like this that are suitable for all ages family viewing are few and far between.
It's well-acted, well-written and well-produced, with great visuals and an engaging plot.
If you want some light hearted sci-fi drama with a dash of Nordic noir then give this one a go.
Ignore the low score reviews and judge it for yourself.
Atiye (2019)
So much wasted potential.
As so many others have remarked, Season 1 was a good setup, if somewhat slow. Season 2 continued, but with increasing frustration because the story took you no closer to any answers.
And then Season 3 completely jumped the shark. Not only did it create new and disjointed story elements, it took you no closer to what was going on as alluded to with "shadowy figures".
In the end it's all a great waste of time, stringing you along from one episode to the next. By season 3, character motivations and believability are thrown completely out the window.
Regardless of country of origin, this show is yet another great example of how Netflix keeps destroying everything they touch.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
You need to understand the source material!
This is not a zombie movie. This is a Victorian era romance ... with zombies!
If you don't understand this then there's a good chance that you won't appreciate this masterpiece for what it is.
Do yourself a favour and Wiki search Pride and Prejudice, and read the synopsis.
The movie follows the plot perfectly, with only minor changes to insert a meaningful zombie storyline. And this is again noteworthy - the zombie storyline has purpose. They haven't just randomly thrown zombies in for the action.
This is a great movie. Top acting, solid special effects, humour where it's warranted (thanks Matt Smith), and great direction. The cast and crew should be applauded.
The Gray Man (2022)
Additional minus for being so bad.
Mediocre. Poor script. Tries to carry it with star power and fails miserably. $200mil to make? What were they thinking?
Netflix wonders why they are losing money and eyeballs. This movie is a fine example from them to learn from.
The Discovery (2017)
A slow paced drama unsuccessfully riding on the life-after-death trope.
If you take away the life-after-death elements, this a dull, plodding relationship drama with several relationship threads.
Adding the life-after-death elements are not enough to pull it up to an interesting level.
The mystery elements were poorly paced. It feels like they were running out of time and stuffed a whole lot of story into character exposition and what-if hypothesis, all in the last quarter.
Would have scored it lower but the actors deserve credit for working with the script.
Mortal Engines (2018)
Amazing visuals. A big bold fun movie. Park your expectations.
So much hate for this movie, especially from those who have read the book, so I suppose that's the first piece of advice. If you have read the book then maybe don't watch this.
However for everyone else, this movie is an amazing action adventure ride! Sure there are plot holes, and obvious storylines, and physics that make no sense, but sometimes you just need to let these things go.
Almost an 8 out of 10 for me.
Stalker (1979)
Don't expect to be impressed. Just choose to watch it, or don't.
With such polarising reviews from 1's to 10's, it may be hard to watch this movie if you have pre-expectations. If you see a movie labelled as Sci-Fi do you expect space action? If so, then this is not for you.
If you have seen Tarkvosky's Solaris and enjoyed it, then you will appreciate more of the same. Nothing is quite spelled out for you. You need to simply absorb, listen, and watch.
Did you like The Man from Earth? This is the same sort of "science fiction", although Man from Earth is a lot easier to consume.
Every word counts in this movie. This is all the more challenging if you are reading subtitles because they are doing their best to call out key thoughts and philosophies. There are barely a handful of sentences throughout the movie that explain what happens at the end, so if you don't pay attention you might miss them.
Note that although the movie is very closed related to Strugatskiy's "Roadside Picnic" (Strugatskiy was involved in the screenplay), it is not a movie version of that book. There are significant differences between core characters and final outcomes, however there are also some nice references to incidents that occurred in Roadside Picnic.
I rate it a 9 for bringing philosophy to the screen, for it's long, silent cuts, and incredible visuals on a small budget.
Stowaway (2021)
Could have been an 8 but they failed on key plot points
Definitely worth watch but ...
Why does Netflix keep making movies that are almost-great-but-not-quite? Is it the time pressure on the directors? The writers? I'd love to know because over the past 8 years that they have been making original content they have had so many great opportunities to really shine and then failed at the finish line.
Stowaway is another example of this. You have great actors, an amazing set, great attention to detail, excellent pacing, and then fail with a couple of gaping plot holes and little points of physics that could have been easily addressed.
Congrats to Toni Collette, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, and Shamier Anderson for great performances.
Dark Skies (2013)
Great suspenseful little flick - definitely worth a watch
Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton deliver great performances as average suburban parents struggling to understand what is happening to their family.
J. K. Simmons is a nice surprise, delivering his character well and not overshadowing the main characters.
Overall the story follows a not-too-unexpected path, but is absolutely worth the watch, nonetheless.
This is easily a 7 on its own merits, and probably deserving of an 8 or more for being a scifi flick that stands out in a crowd of mediocrity and low-budget Netflix garbage.
Skylines (2020)
Watch it, but keep your expectations low ...
The story picks up off the end of the second movie but seems to take the whole tone of the trilogy into unexpected directions.
The past movies had some rough dialog, but this one has cringeworthy lines, carboard characters, and odd filler scenes that you could cut out to make significant improvements to the flow.
Alexander Siddig is completely wasted.
Despite all the above, this movies continues the trilogy's trend of great ship designs, alien tech, and overall visual appeal. However, for entirely baffling reasons, someone still thought slowly spinning backlit fans were necessary to build a brooding environment. On an alien spaceship. WTF?
Still, worth watching to round the series out.
Beyond Skyline (2017)
Giving it an extra star to counter the hate ...
So much hate and anger for this movie with no appreciation for great sets, costuming, ship design, and rising above the garbage that comes out of Hollywood and Netflix these.
Consider, someone fronted the money for whole seasons of The Mist and Another Life (2 seasons of garbage!), yet these guys made a fun Friday night flick on a shoestring.
There's lots to criticise, but more than enough to offset to make for a fun Sci-Fi flick with a few new ideas.
A must watch for any sci-fi fan.
Skyline (2010)
Why the hate?
Given the low budget for this movie, the results are excellent. Sure, there are rough edges, but the whole package is worthy of at least a 7, and gets an extra star for standing out in the crowd of mediocre high budget chaff that is pumped out these days by Netflix and Hollywood.
Grab a drink and a snack, sit back, and enjoy.
Oh, and the sequel is pretty good to.
Raised by Wolves (2020)
Why I went from a 1 to a 9 ...
SPOILERS ...
REALLY, SPOILERS! ...
For the first 2 episodes I thought "Looks like we have something good here", and then it seemed to start to slide into an incomprehensible mess.
By episode 6 I was about to pull the pin. Sure, sci-fi is speculative fiction, but the test is whether or not it makes sense according to the rules set up by its own story. And whether or not it makes basic science sense.
But once we cross into "Android is having a baby" territory, it really is seeming like wishful fantasy crossing into the world, with a touch of Pinnochio ... can the android have a real child !?!
But I stuck with it until the end of the season and I am so glad I did. The entire first season is a setup that is giving us the initial glimpses through the crack in the door into the full picture, and once you are done you will feel like backing right up and rewatching from the start to understand all the hints and snippets we were given along the way but didn't realise what they were about.
SPOILER - The unstated story as implied by what has been seen to date:
"Sol" is likely the fiery entity at the centre of Kepler-22. On this planet there was an advanced civilization of humans that developed android tech and other advanced tech. For reasons unknown (likely influenced by Sol and Sol's ability to telepathically communicate with the local humans) the civilization used androids as incubators to birth snakelike creatures (ref: Mother's visions of the android tapped inside the dodecahedron box, with android fluid dripping from its mouth ... which is what we subsequently see happen to Mother). The jewel encrusted skull Mother finds is an ancient android skull.
Speculation: In the distant past some members of that civilization escaped Kepler-22 and relocated on Earth, and were what we believe are Neanderthals.
Sol transmitted to Earth the tech data needed to build androids, especially Necromancers like Mother. This information was received and presented to the world as religious scripture and led to Mithraism as the dominant religion rapidly displacing other religions because it was "evidence of god". The zealotry also inspired the religious war that pitted Mithraists again Atheists. There is a neat possible clue here - the phrase "Praise Sol" is an anagram of Polarises i.e. believers vs non-believers.
Sol's message to the faithful was to kill all unbelievers and come to Kepler-22
In the meantime, Campion the android hacker used instructions to modify pre-Mother on Earth to be receptive to software instructions that would enable her to combine silicone and carbon compounds within her torso and artificially create a new creature - likely instructions received by the scriptures. We are told at some point that Campion used live with the Mithraic.
Now it all falls into place:
- Humans come to Kepler-22 and some of them are telepathically receptive to
- Sol because we are all descendants of the original inhabitants of this planet.
- Sol wants Mother to birth a snake and is able to affect her programming via influence through the sim pods.
- The giant dodecahedron in the desert responds to Caleb's needs because both it and Caleb are receiving messages from Sol.
- Other humans, and also Father, see fleeting figures of the past because they are being telepathically influenced by Sol.
- Native Hooded priest dude leaves metallic "tarot" cards for Mother to find.
- Because Mother is of Mithraic tech, the cards respond to her but she doesn't understand the warning.
- Paul finds the cave painting of Mother and Father's ship landing, and the subsequent giant snake - another warning that is not understood.
- Mary's reading of Mother's amniotic fluid makes her realise that whatever is growing inside is growing abnormally fast.
- Hooded priest dude realises Mother doesn't understand the warnings so as a last resort rushes to push her into the hole. But fails and dies.
- Mother finds the android skull, recalls her vision of the trapped android being forced to birth a snake, and realises too late that she is an unwitting vessel of something bad and gives birth.
- Mother and Father aim to save the children by destroying themselves and plunge into a hole. This, and other holes, lead to the centre of the planet and they pass through the fiery core unharmed because Sol won't harm the snake child ... for reasons we don't know.
- Mother and Father pass through to the other side of the planet and the snake escapes ... as super-snake.
With all of the above unpacked, I am really looking forward to Season 2. This is the most ambitious sci-fi we have seen brought to TV since The Expanse.
The Midnight Sky (2020)
Space drama!
SPOILERS!
Setting this in a space environment helped create cheap plot devices that don't pass basic science tests. The movie would have worked exactly the same if set on earth and it was an expedition ship returning from exploring undiscovered lands, only to discover calamity had befallen home.
If you removed all of the action scenes, the downed plane, the wolves, the water, the meteors, and even the little girl entirely, you would have ended up with a much tighter movie focussed on the core themes: extremely inhospitable environments, regret, longing for home. And it would actually be a scifi movie.
By using "Space" to create action drama, the movie cheapened itself.
Following on from Ad Astra, this seems to be the new trend: Waste a lot of money with big actors and great cinematography on bad screenplays.
I really hope that someone fanedits this.
Infini (2015)
Worth watching but keep your expectations low
No spoilers....
The story starts with an interesting premise but quickly falls apart in a jumbled mismash of scifi tropes.
Given the poor script, the actors were exceptional and carry the weight of the movie forward.
Sound design was excellent, and set construction was good given the low budget.
Fight scenes were executed flawlessly, yet painfully drawn out. They could have edited them all to half their length.
The third and final act was lacking... almost inconsistent with the tone and direction of the first two acts. It's like they ran out of plot.
Still, there are many worse scifi movies than this. Would have been a 6,maybe 6.5, if the story was a little more solid.
Salvation (2017)
Struggled to make it to episode 3 then gave up.
Controlled a Jupiter probe from NASA with zero radio lag. This capped it.. on top of the cardboard cut out characters.
Alien Warfare (2019)
Bad, but consistent in its badness!
This is certainly B-grade stuff, worthy of a 2am viewing, but there are moments of great amusement in the material. Some of the plot devices and the ending are truly awful, again delivering great amusement if you are in the right frame of mind.
I give it 4 stars for at least trying, and for being produced with such an obviously limited budget. This is Sharknado level.
If you want a benchmark for 1-star productions, just watch "Another Life" and be angry at the waste of money o that smoking ruin.
Another Life (2019)
Someone put money down to produce this?
WARNING - VERY SPOILERY
I watched every episode to the end. All 10 of them. It doesn't get any better than episode 1. The Metacritic reviews by Tim Goodman and Brian Tallerico are as honest as it gets and right on the mark for this series - it's awful.
When I said to a friend "It gets better around episode 7", he said "Does it become good?", I had to reply "No, it moves from truly awful, and gets better by raising itself to really bad". At no stage can it ever be described as "Good".
I feel sorry for the actors who had to deliver this nonsense, and sorry for all the great science-fiction writers who have stories waiting to be screenplayed and then see that someone threw money at this garbage.
So, let's look at the story ...
An alien ship plants a giant tinsel antenna on Earth, so in response the US government (not a global effort, that's why they put a US ambassador on board), sends a group of incompetent, undisciplined, 20-somethings on a deep space mission to save the human race. They couldn't perhaps have put on board, I don't know, maybe people with military training, science training, and medical training? Oh sure, one of them says she's a doctor, and another is an engineer, but have you ever seen how professionals behave? The word is ... professionally.
Instead we have:
A captain that suffers from PSTD for accidentally killing another crew of 20-somethings.
A jealous second-in-command what was previously captain of the existing crew.
... who then immediately angles for mutiny, and when his moronic plan fails, suffers neither punishment nor is put into cold storage.
... and his mutineering supporters also get no punishment.
A microbiologist who is sterotyped into the overweight idiot looking for love.
A lead engineer on a ship with a faster-than-light and a holographic AI, yet she acknowledges she is barely out of school - how is this person qualified to be on the crew?
A secondary engineer who's only purpose appears to be scrubbing floors and lusting over the lead engineer.
A computer "hacker" engineer who makes up the third point of the sexy threesome with the other two engineers.
An AI that needs to create a physical holographic presence to know what's happening on the ship - isn't it omnipresent?
A doctor with no confidence in her abilities whose response to seeing someone having a seizure is "I don't know what to do".
A comms specialist who doesn't know how to fix the ships comms and whose primary contribution is being a foul-mouthed latino female to round out the gender balance.
A useless ambassador who declares he isn't Earth's representative but rather a US representative.
This is, apparently, the very best of humanity that we can send to meet an alien species, with the best chance of success.
And what sort of things might happen, what else is wrong?
- Crew members who endanger the crew by breaking protocols and remove their helmets on the first planet they reach.
- A microbiologist who doesn't properly sterilise or quarantine soil samples
- "Alien"-like infections and breakouts.
- Crew that are meant to either have military or science backgrounds but appear to have neither.
- Crew that handle alien plants without gloves.
- Captain that decides to get high on space plant scent only days after they have had an alien infection
- Need power urgently? Just plug a power cable into the back of the head of guy who has brain cybernetic implant, and that will give us enough juice to escape a black hole.
- Bad alien guy drills into peoples eyes and their eyes are fine afterwards.
- Need to neutralise a cybernetic robot parasite? "Surely it all just bit and bytes." (Actual quote) - Let William (the AI) have a go at removing the nasty bits. Apparently William can interface with, decode, interpret, and understand alien software now... and then we'll just put it into the comatose engineer's brain and watch him magically wake up. Sighs of relief all around.
- Technical details: There are VGA connectors on the back of monitors, door panels look like cheap ipads velcroed to the wall, there are axes strapped to the walls everywhere, there is a wall of physical books in the rec room (apparently no issues with mass and storage on this ship), the FTL drive can stop the ship within meters of a target destination (like a shuttle, or a spacesuit drifting in space), and the list goes on.
And lastly, the soundtrack. This is meant to be a big budget production. I have heard better sound engineering and soundtracks on indie game productions. At strange times big thumping techno tracks are played during key scenes.
If there is one thing that can be said, it's that Another Life is the best space teenage drama on TV.
We can only hope that the Mystery Science Theatre team have a run at it. This is prime material.
Revolver (2005)
Yawn. Tries too hard.
It might work as a printed novel but as a cinematic delivery it's only going to appeal to a very narrow audience. I love a good arthouse film, but this one meanders all over the place and at the end of the day just doesn't deliver the type of finale a broader audience needs.
It was, however, amusing to see Statham with hair.
OtherLife (2017)
Solid, near-future sci-fi that delivers with solid acting
There appear to be a few low rated scores here and it seems many think all movies need to be hollywood blockbuster level to be worthy of a good score. Ignore those people.
Stop reading the reviews and watch this without being influenced by what others are saying, and then make your own judgement.
This is an all round, solid sci-fi movie with great acting and storyline depth. You can take it on face value, or when you are done, sit back and consider what were the motivations of the characters? What were their flaws?
And if that's not enough (or perhaps it's too much), enjoy the Australian environment and accent. You know you love it.
Maleficent (2014)
Rated M ... for Morons
After you suffer through the first 15 mins of sugar sweet Disneyfication, you are teased with a change of direction that suggests this might actually be an adult tale of substance.
There's a great fight scene, a moment of reunification, and then a fairly blunt message - you loved a man and he ran off to pursue his own ambitions ... that's when you should have woken up to yourself honey and moved on. But you accepted him back and he drugged you and physically violated you. Moral of the story - men who love you aren't to be trusted if they come crawling back.
Now I like that message, there's truth in it. After the physical violation we should have seen immediate, harsh, magic enriched vengeance. But instead we get a thinly veneered, alternative Maleficent/Sleeping Beauty story that's drawn out by pointless attempts at slapstick fairy humour, and more coatings of Disney sugar.
Eventually Aurora turns 16 and the tale plays out predictably. And since simple twists to the tale have already been made, the clever true love twist is just as predictable as everything else in this movie.
Angelina Jolie was an Executive Producer so when you are paying for your own movie I guess you are entitled to make whatever you want. But in the end this movie was pointless. A waste of Jolie's talents and a waste of the viewers time.
The Beyond (2017)
It almost made it ... but not quite.
Science fiction movies shouldn't have to be Michael Bay lens-flare extravaganzas to be good science fiction. Take "The Man from Earth" as an example of doing philosophical sci-fi well.
Often the best sci-fi simply asks a question and explores it. In this movie the question is "Would we understand what first contact means?", and then explores that from a number of different angles.
The Beyond takes a pseudo-documentary approach, and that's ok (despite annoying camera shakes and hiding-in-the-bushes points of view). However if you are going down the documentary path then you need to get your science right. And this is where the movie lets you down.
The movie is unnecessarily loaded with pseudoscience made up words, science words used in the wrong context, and outright bad grammar in the script. But even with these issues it is bearable right up to the 'reveal' of the purpose of the spheres. And that's where it should have stopped.
But it didn't stop. It went on for another 10 minutes with needless exposition, a complete breakdown of physics, and absolutely rubbish special effects.
It's such a shame because with a bit of attention to detail this could have been a low-budget classic.
The only reason I didn't rate it lower is because it still has decent scifi story at its core, and worth seeing for it.
The Revenant (2015)
Great direction and effects but nothing original here ...
The original story about Glass as published in The Missouri Trapper ( http://hughglass.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1825-Hugh-Glass-article.pdf ) was far more interesting due to the bleakness of the real events.
This movie would have been richer and more focused if it had dispensed with unnecessary embellishments and stayed closer to the true story.
Instead we get a standard serving of tropes on a very pretty plate: Bad thing happens, abandoned person survives against odds to exact his revenge. The end. Oh, and the scenery is beautiful.
Tom Hardy's bad guy character, Fitzgerald, never had the chance to be raised from a fairly 2-dimensional mumbling racist. The motivations of the Indian chief looking for his daughter was filler and you could cut out all scenes involving this group and the French trappers, and end up with a tighter film.
There were some impressive effects used to create some very long takes - nice sophistication but if you are adding icing to the cake, at least make a nice cake.
Almost every other DiCaprio film is better than this one. Watch this if you really don't have anything else to do for 2.5 hours.