I saw X-Men: First Class last night. It was a good, solid action movie with stunning special effects. It moves and kept me interested. It never had me on the edge of my seat. It’s an origin story– it has to go through certain details to collect them all–but it doesn’t do it very interestingly, [...]
Archive for the ‘movie’ Tag
Mob Rules and the Art of the Team Movie— a review of X-Men: First Class 2 comments
Janelle Monáe and Science Fiction: Metropolis, Freedom, and the Other 3 comments
I like finding science fiction in odd places. Janelle Monáe is a genius. Think if the Archies had been a ska band with a funk lead singer. But she’s more than that. She’s also a brilliant storyteller. Her “Many Moons” reimagines the beginnings of science fiction cinema, Metropolis. She gives the silent film Metropolis the [...]
TRON: Legacy needs a CLU, gets a “journey without a goal”
I wanted to like this movie. I have such fond memories of the original TRON. It was ahead of its time in many ways back then, and probably a little cheesy too… It was wrapped up in religion a bit, which wasn’t bad— it gave programs a “culture,” a “faith.” TRON: Legacy has kept up [...]
Desperate Times Call For Desperate Magic: A Review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Leave a comment
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt 1. is a good film–a solid film, giving a good arc and screentime to all three of the main characters, and a host of others. There’s plenty of action, but this film also takes time to develop the story and the characters. I stood in line at the [...]
Is There No Wonder in Wonderland? A Review of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 4 comments
What do you want when you get down the rabbit hole? Burton begs this question in his version of Alice in Wonderland. Folks will probably enjoy the visuals–they are delightful to watch. But in this age of CGI, there’s not as much fanfare left for special effects. It’s coming down quickly to who tells a [...]
A Biologist’s Ecstasy: ‘Avatar’ Awakens Joy of Seeing the World Again Leave a comment
This essay over at the New York Times explains ‘Avatar‘ from a Biologist’s point of view. Carol Kaesuk Yoon is encouraging everyone who ever loved biology to go see Avatar purely for the wonder of seeing Life. Please excuse me if I seem a bit breathless, but the experience I had when I first [...]
Flashforward: the Excellence that “Knowing” could have been Leave a comment
Watch Flashforward, Episode One Robert Sawyer’s Flashforward has been made into an ABC miniseries. It is a masterpiece. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how faithful the series is to the original book, but the book won an Aurora Award. The premise is that everyone blacks out at the same moment for [...]
Realistic Science Fiction: District 9 3 comments
This is an amazing film, both for what it sets out to do, and for what it accomplishes. Taking the form of a documentary, it brings science fiction as close to real as I’ve ever seen it. It is the documentary form, I think, that convinces a viewer that this is happening, or has happened. [...]
Star Trek: Playful, Exciting, Character-driven 3 comments
Star Trek has come a long way and just when you thought there were no surprises left, they show up. I’ll admit, the last few Star Trek movies left me cold. Nemesis bombed because the writer tried to copy too much from ST2 but without any of the heart. Insurrection was a trite story line. [...]
Knowing: People Stuck in a Plot (a movie review) 11 comments
Having just seen Knowing, the film starring Nicholas Cage as a man who’s been given a sheet of numbers predicting every accident that will happen, I’m having a hard time with Ebert’s review. Ebert gave it four stars. I would give it two. It is a movie about whether events in life are random or [...]
