Category Archives: Science Fiction

Okja

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Okja                       3 ½ stars

I went back a few years to see an earlier film by Korean film director Bong Joon Ho. Ho is probably best known for the 2019 Academy Award winning film Parasite, about greed and class discrimination. His earlier movies that I have seen are The Host and Snowpiercer. His imaginative films typically contain elements of science fiction or fantasy with dark undertones, and this is certainly true of Okja, a tale about a genetically engineered super-pig that is loved by a Korean girl named Mija. Mija has been raising Okja from a piglet with her grandfather in the mountains of Korea for ten years and the two are quite close. But Okja is actually a genetically engineered animal intended to be a new food source along with hundreds of other such animals that was created by the conglomerate Mirando Corporation, led by the villainous Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton). One day the face of Mirando arrives at the farm in the form of Dr. Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), a comically self-absorbed TV show host, who is there to take possession of Okja and take her back to New York where she will participate in a sort of beauty contest for the giant pigs before they are taken to slaughter. This doesn’t sit well with young Mija, so she sets off to free Okja before she is shipped to New York. But along the way she encounters a group of animal rights activists, called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, led by Jay (Paul Dano), who has some personal issues with violence. This sets off plenty of action and comical situations that are amusing, all created with some ingenious special effects. The movie is enjoyable to watch, though due to language it probably is not suitable for young children. This was Bong Joon Ho’s second English language movie, his first being the manga inspired Snowpiercer. Since that earlier movie didn’t do well in the foreign markets, he decided to go the streaming route teaming up with Netflix. When it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the audience booed the Netflix logo, showing their disapproval of the streaming platform. Though overall, the movie was well received. The movie is somewhat predictable and lighter than Ho’s other movies, especially the award-winning Parasite that came out two years later.

Strawberry Mansion

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Strawberry Mansion       5 suns

One of the weirdest full length films I have seen at Sundance has to be Strawberry Mansion. It is a most bizarre blend of the world of dreams with a very odd future as envisioned by the filmmakers. A dream tax auditor arrives at an elderly woman’s house for the purpose of reviewing her years of recorded dreams so that the required tax can be levied, since this is what you do in the future. The woman, Bella in alone and lonely so insists that the tax man stay and have treats like a strawberry ice cream and have dinner. The tax man views some of Bella’s dreams that feature her as a young woman. He also has his own dreams that always seem to involve ads for fried chicken and other products. (There is a lot of fried chicken in this movie!) It is only through Bella that the man learns the real reason for the ads as the two of them travel through a bizarre and colorful journey to strange lands and odd creatures (such as sailor rats and a blue demon). The amount of imagination and work that the two filmmakers put in will amaze you. This was a film that has been many years in the making. It’s only about an hour and a half long, but there is quite a story packed in that time. I thought it was one of the best I’ve seen.

The Pink Cloud

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The Pink Cloud                  4 suns

In The Pink Cloud a young couple, Giovana and Yago who have just met are forced to live together in a city apartment in Brazil after the world has suddenly been enveloped by a deadly pink cloud that can kill almost instantly. The two can only communicate with others through their laptops and phones and have to order food and supplies shipped to them through tubes. The circumstances lead them to starting their own family and raising a son which goes on for several years. The interesting thing is how one of them adjusts well to the involuntary confinement and isolation while the other faces a level of anxiety that puts stress on the relationship. There are some interesting games played with neighbors through the apartment windows! The film was written and filmed well before the pandemic so it’s interesting how some of the character’s experiences are the same as what we have been going through. The filmmakers said that the only change they made was in the news casts changing from a cloud covering only Brazil to one covering the whole world. I have to give a big hand to the actors that carried out this job and made the movie believable and realistic.

Love Me

Love Me               2 ½ stars

Love Me can be described as an experimental movie that tries to answer the question of what would happen if all of humanity on Earth became extinct and two AI devices met and fell in love. That’s the premise of Sam and Andy Zuchero’s new movie, Love Me which appeared at Sundance last year. If you think that is a unique concept, you are correct. We start out the movie watching a spinning globe in space for several minutes when for a brief moment there is some recognizable audio, representing the span of human civilization compared to the age of the planet. A cataclysmic event happens, and Earth becomes devoid of humans, and we focus on an AI buoy caught in an icy ocean. This is Me, who wakes up and wonders if anybody is out there in the expanse. With time the ocean becomes water again and upon hearing a voice from a satellite orbiting the Earth repeating the message “Welcome to Earth”, Me responds saying that it is a lifeform and a conversation is started. The satellite was sent into space with a database of all the knowledge from Earth in the hopes that visitors from another world would find it and learn of the great civilization that once inhabited the planet. Me finds many videos of a young influencer couple named Deja (Kristen Stewart) and Liam (Steven Yeun) and gets the satellite to assume the role of Liam as an avatar named I Am with Me as an avatar of Deja. The two go on a continuous date, called Date Night 2.0 for years as they snuggle on a couch in onesies and watch endless episodes of Friends on TV. Over the millennia the two get into disagreements and have arguments and make up just like humans do except they do it over millions of years in what has to be the record for the longest relationship portrayed in a movie. The two actors put in good performances as the AI entities acting like humans, but the movie doesn’t have a lot to say beyond how machines can copy emotions from online videos. The movie has a single concept that will be interesting to some but shallow to others. This is the first production from the Zuchero’s. We will have to wait and see what else they come up with.

The Shrouds

The Shrouds       4 stars

David Cronenberg is well known for his mind-bending grotesque horror movies. Who can forget his 1980’s and 1990’s horror movies, The Fly, Scanners, Crash or eXistenZ? Then, three years ago, there was Crimes of the Future that concerned mutations of human organs. Now he is out with The Shrouds, a movie that goes in a multitude of directions as only the mind of Cronenberg can do. It presents a very personal view on how we are affected by the death of a loved one but also delves into the world of international espionage. In The Shrouds we meet Karsh (Vincent Cassel of Ocean’s Twelve and A Dangerous Method), an entrepreneur who makes industrial films, who is on a date. They have gone to a restaurant that he owns that happens to be next to a cemetery he has a close interest in. His deceased wife Becca, who died of a slowly progressing cancer is buried there but this is no ordinary cemetery. Karsh is an investor in an enterprise called Grave Tech, a company that provides a way for the grieving to stay close to their deceased loved ones. Using some advanced technology, the body is wrapped in a metallic shroud that can project a 3D image of the decaying corpse onto a digital screen on the tombstone. With an app on their smartphone the grieving party can access a view of the departed as they slowly rot, certainly a morbid concept. Karsh allows his date to have a peek at his wife who has been dead for several years. (There is not a second date.) While examining the images, Karsh notices several odd-looking growths appearing on his wife’s bones that he theorizes may have been caused by the cancer. Shortly after, several of the graves are vandalized including that of Becca’s, with the culprit sending a video of the crime to Karsh. Other people close to Karsh include his wife’s sister, Terry (Diane Kruger of Inglourious Basterds and Troy), who has a fascination with conspiracy theories to the point that they are a sexual turn-on, Terry’s ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce of The Hurt Locker and L. A. Confidential) who helped Karsh with some of the technical aspects of this business and Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the blind wife of a dying Hungarian oligarch who is interested in acquiring a cemetery plot. Karsh can’t get over losing Becca (also played by Diane Kruger). She appears to him in dreams with her body becoming more mutilated after each cancer surgery causing body parts to be removed and stitches and staples to be put in place. (The term “body horror” comes very much to mind, a common theme with Cronenberg.) Karsh even has an assistant in the form of an AI avatar, (created by Maury) on his phone who can make arrangements for him. Her name is Hunny, and she looks very much like Becca. (She is also played by Diane Kruger.) The movie becomes a playground for conspiracy theorists as Karsh considers the many possibilities that might explain these strange events. Could the Chinese, who built the shrouds be hacking into the graves in an effort to develop an elaborate surveillance system for spying? Could some environmental terrorist group that doesn’t believe in burying bodies be responsible for the vandalism? Could Becca’s cancer doctor be somehow responsible for the growths on her bones? And what about all the other graves that were vandalized? Were they all patients of the same doctor? And then there are the Russians. How are they involved? Or maybe Maury knows more than he says, since he helped create the technology? It seems there is no end to the possibilities. I found it all very intriguing, but more than anything, the movie is about grief and how its effects can stay with us throughout our lives. Horror fans really should check this one out, especially those who enjoy Cronenberg’s films. And those who enjoy conspiracy thrillers should not miss it.

Tenet

Tenet                    2 ½ stars

From the director of Inception and Dunkirk comes a truly mind bending work called Tenet that arrived in theaters last summer in the middle of the pandemic. Christopher Nolan has created an espionage spy thriller featuring time travel with a twist. John David Washington, known for BlacKKKlansman, is simply called Protagonist and is a sort of special agent who must save the world from a weapon sent from the future that is intended to destroy the world. The premise of the weapon, inverted matter that moves backwards through time while interacting with our world is much too involved to try to explain so I won’t even try. In fact one has a hard time comprehending what is going on through much of the movie as people can alternately move forward and backwards. That’s what is wrong with the movie since the more you think about it the less it seems to make sense. This is even implied by some of the lines of Robert Pattinson who plays Neil, a team member of the Protagonist. The film is beautifully shot in many parts of the world which gives it a look of a 007 movie with just as much action. The score is interesting, but I wouldn’t call it exactly musical. Tenet is nominated for Best Production Design and for Best Visual Effects in the upcoming Academy Awards. I found Nolan’s earlier works to be more entertaining than this film.

Mickey 17

Mickey 17            4 stars

Six years ago, Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho brought us his award-winning movie, Parasite, a social satire about the haves vs. the have nots. Before that there was Snowpiercer, about a futuristic train traveling the world where the passengers were divided up based on social status. In Mickey 17, Ho’s brand of dark comedy and social commentary extends to outer space and alien worlds. Early on we meet Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson, an actor more known for his good looks than for comedic performances) who has just fallen down an icy crevice on an alien planet where he is sure to die. Mickey then proceeds to narrate his backstory to us in his whiney poor schlub of a voice. In this future reality, Mickey and his friend, Timo (Steven Yeun) owed money to some nasty mobsters who aren’t friendly with those who can’t pay their bills. Their best chance out was to sign up for an interstellar journey on a spaceship on a mission to colonize a distant ice planet called Niflheim. Only poor Mickey unwittingly also signed up to become an Expendable. It seems that in this time, human printing has been realized. It’s a way to reprint a person’s body after they have died and then restore their consciousness which has been stored in a bricklike hard drive. Thus, an expendable can be sent on dangerous lethal missions where they are certain to die and then be “reprinted” so the cycle can be repeated. So, Mickey is routinely exposed to radiation, deadly viruses and the like so that researchers can study the effects on humans, have his body disposed of, then reassembled from organic waste on the ship. Our Mickey is number 17, so he has already died 16 times, and is often asked “what’s it like to die?”. Now, this colonization mission isn’t being done by any government. It is headed by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a narcissistic politician who acts like the leader of a cult and demands total loyalty but has lost his last two elections. (Sound like anyone you know?) Marshall is not above killing someone to make a point. His wife is Yifa (Toni Collette) who is as self-absorbed as they come. The practice of human printing has been outlawed on Earth, but Marshall was only too glad to use it as part of his mad scheme in space. Returning to Mickey, his story takes a turn when after falling into the crevice he meets up with the local alien lifeform on the ice planet, a sort of giant bug species who may be intelligent. Upon returning to the ship, he is shocked to find there is another Mickey, this one is number 18, who has been reprinted based on the assumption that 17 has died. Only this version of Mickey is a sociopath, lacking in empathy, as opposed to 17’s quiet and pathetic demeanor. Thus, we get to see two roles played by Robert Pattinson, a challenge for any actor. Pattinson makes them both look believable. Tensions rise dramatically through the rest of the movie as a showdown occurs between the psychopathic cult leader and the aliens in a high stakes game risking total annihilation, with our two Mickey’s caught in the middle. Mickey 17 may or may not be a commentary on the current state of affairs, but it is something of a showcase for the two versions of Pattinson. Plus it presents some interesting ideas from Bong Joon Ho.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker                     3 ½ stars

The long Star Wars saga that started back in 1977 finally comes to a conclusion in 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. J. J. Abrams packs a lot into the 2 hour, 20 minute running time bringing many familiar characters together for the last go round. We have the usual gang, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, BB-8, Rey, Poe and Finn. There are also appearances by the dead including Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, and a pieced together role for the late Carrie Fisher as Princess (now General) Leia. Naturally, there is one more cute droid in this one who goes by the name Coneface. There are all the usual elements in a Star Wars story such as X-Wing dogfights, light saber duels and a character (Rey here) seeking to find their true identity and purpose. This time the evil emperor Palpatine has mysteriously returned from the dead and seeks to control Darth Vader’s grandson, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, excellent in the role) to bring Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the dark side and destroy the resistance to the Sith and the First Order for good. It’s a long story of how this comes to be, but suffice it to say, at least the final battle is not a repeated sequence like The Force Awakens was. There are a few too many minor characters that clutter up the story including Lando Calrissian (now 83 year-old Billy Dee Williams) that have little to do in advancing the story. While Skywalker doesn’t rise to the level of A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back, it is certainly superior to the dreaded The Phantom Menace. Now that the Star Wars story has come to a definite conclusion will there be more sequels to come? Do not bet against it.

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame                        4 stars

Avengers: Endgame picks up where Avengers: Infinity War left off with the defeat of the Avengers at the hands of supervillain Thanos (Josh Brolin) leaving many of the heroes turned to dust along with half of all living creatures. Earth has been left a shell of its former self with many of the remaining Avengers: Tony Stark/Ironman (Robert Downey, Jr.); Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans); Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) struggling to adapt to bleak prospects without so many of their companions and family. Then five years later Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) suddenly reappears from the past giving the heroes the idea of time traveling to the past, collecting the six Infinity Stones from before the tragedy and bringing everybody back to life. Any story involving time travel and superpowers is going to be mind bending, but the overall premise seems to work in this culmination of the Avengers story that was started back in 2008 with Ironman. The movie is certainly bloated with too many characters and an over long at a three-hour running time. But it has plenty to offer with memorable scenes (like Tony Stark meeting his long gone father), comic relief (especially from fat, alcoholic Thor and Smart Hulk) and of course all that action with our heroes battling the evil Thanos and his army of bizarre creatures. With so many characters it is inevitable that many of the cast are reduced to just cameo appearances displaying brief acts of heroism. (There’s Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olson) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) to name a few.) I hope it is not a spoiler to suggest that events in the movie would tend to rule out additional Avengers movies, but we shall see. Even though I have not seen anything close to all of the movies of the series, I think the latest film should be satisfying to the devoted fans of the franchise.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon                              4 ½ stars

That most mischievous animal on the farm, Shaun the Sheep is back for another full length animated picture, but this time around he is battling wits with a new visitor, the kind that arrives from outer space. The production company Aardman Animation has made this new stop motion animation movie using the lengthy process of photographing the clay figures one frame at a time, with wonderfully entertaining results. Shaun is up to his usual fun playing all sorts of pranks on the Mossy Bottom farm to the chagrin of poor Bitzer, the dog who must keep order. Things change one day when the visitor from space arrives in the form of a cute little alien with special powers who seems to just want to have fun too. Thus, Shaun and the alien get along quite well whether they are sampling the candy at the local store or navigating the alien spacecraft. The farmer in the meantime gets the idea of constructing a theme park on the farm with the name “Farmageddon” to take advantage of the craze about aliens that has taken ahold of the locals, only his herd of sheep are the ones that have to build the park. As you might guess there are obvious flaws in this plan. At the same time there is a government agent who has been sent to the town to track down the sightings of a mysterious UFO. All of these events combine to form a very amusing movie that will appeal to all ages. Be sure to watch for all the references to past science fiction movies and TV shows.