Science Fiction Films
-
Divergent (PG-13)
Why do we eat candy canes at Christmas? Why are they red and white? Why do we fold our hands to pray? If you ask a child these questions, they often offer an acrobatic answer. By the time they enter middle school, at least in this day and age, the answers become less and less […]
-
Lucy (R)
As a student of the life sciences, I’m somewhat baffled by the persistence of the “ten percent” misconception. The idea that humans only use ten percent of their brains seems entirely implausible not only under the basic principles of evolution, but empirical study of the brain has thoroughly debunked it. Yet the misconception persists, and its […]
-
Snowpiercer (R)
Joon-Ho Bong’s Snowpiercer starts with an intriguing premise: the world has frozen solid after a global warming experiment gone wrong, and all of humanity now inhabits a high-tech train that perpetually circles the earth. (Train wreck jokes would, perhaps, be too obvious.) Snowpiercer squanders this premise on a hackneyed tale of the struggle between the […]
-
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (PG-13)
You can learn a lot about Michael Bay by the numbers. In the last twenty years, he has directed eleven films, and all but two were released in June or July. All his films but the first, Bad Boys, top the two hour mark, and more than half exceed two and a half hours. The […]
-
Edge of Tomorrow (PG-13)
“I always say, ‘If I could start my marriage over, I would do this or that differently.’ But I’m flattering myself. My marriage starts over every day, and there are things I don’t do differently. Everything starts over every day.” I said something to this effect at confession several months ago. I often feel as […]
-
Godzilla (PG-13)
By this point, further cries and moanings over the seemingly endless procession of reboots and remakes of too many franchise pictures must themselves begin to have the air of reboots and remakes, but I beg your forbearance nonetheless as I add just a few more paragraphs of reproof. Godzilla, starring Ken Watanabe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and […]
-
RoboCop (2014) (PG-13)
I feel like a sucker. I liked the Robocop remake. I make it a point not to read reviews of movies I’m reviewing, because I have this lingering hope that maybe there’s something incorruptible and true and creative and my own, right down at the core of me. So I haven’t read any reviews. But […]
-
Inception (PG-13)
In the same way genealogies provide foundation for expounding upon and explaining the personhood and character of real human beings, so any good author deserves to have any individual work placed into the context and trajectory of their oeuvre. Whether or not Christopher Nolan is a good man, I cannot say, although by this point […]
-
Her (R)
Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, contains three scenes of strong sexual content, and at least two other scenes with frank sexual language. All the sex is varyingly virtual. The movie uses sex both to demonstrate closeness between characters, and the gaps between them. Taken as whole, however, it’s not clear that Jonze understands […]
-
Pacific Rim (PG-13)
I remember as a child having near hallucinogenic nightmares after watching Jurassic Park for the first time on our old black and white, sixteen-inch television. After not being able to sleep at all the night after, I wanted to watch it again the next day. Such is the magic of cinema, I suppose. A well […]
-
24 Questions for Sunshine (R)
“Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.” -Jean-Luc Godard “Cinema is lies at 24 frames per second.” -Michael Haneke One of the most important components of interpretation is the peerless act of questioning. Frequently the question carries value even apart from an answer and the right question will always outwork an easy answer. The […]
-
Ender’s Game (PG-13)
Ender’s Game plays like a Power Point presentation of the novel by Orson Scott Card. That’s not an inherent problem. Power Point presentations can be informative, entertaining, and occasionally are not complete wastes of time. I’m not going to go so far as to say that they can’t be exciting, transformative, and powerful— attributes which […]
-
Never Let Me Go (R)
Anybody who picked up a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go after finding it on Time’s list of the best English novels written since 1923 would likely have been baffled after a hundred pages or so. They would have found the Booker Prize winning author had traded out the contemplative, first-person perspective of […]