Category Archives: Science Fiction

By Design

By Design            2 stars

If there is a movie genre for absurdity, then Amanda Kramer’s By Design would certainly fit that category. I am sure there are people that like this type of movie, but it’s not me (at least not this one). Camille (Juliette Lewis) likes to spend time with her friends, but she mostly listens to them, not participating in the conversations much. One day the friends go to a furniture store to look at the chairs they have on sale. One of them, a wood chair that is plain but elegant, attracts Camille’s attention and she must have it. Before she can buy it though, someone else purchases the chair and Camille is so upset that she transfers her soul into the chair leaving her own body behind in a trance. The chair comes into the possession of Olivier (Mamoudou Athie) who senses something special about it and essentially falls in love with the chair as if it is a person. In the meantime, Camille’s body at home is visited by her friends and her mother who have conversations with her as if she is engaged with them. Camille herself only stares into space without ever speaking. The movie sends a message that we are defined by the objects we possess. We have relationships with our possessions that can be as important to us as people. There are some interesting performances that can be called interpretive dance with bodies climbing over one another and over chairs. Some acting performances are very good, but at other times they have a bland speaking tone. Athie is especially good in his role. The movie tends to drag on too much and could have been better as a short. It was not a good start at Sundance with it being my first film. Amanda Kramer has directed several movies before, none of which I have ever seen.

The Ugly Stepsister

The Ugly Stepsister 4 1/2 suns

The Ugly Stepsister (from Norway) takes the fairy tale Cinderella and turns it upside down and inside out making it a body horror movie about envy and body image.  In this take of the classic we see things from the point of view of Cinderella’s stepsister, Elvira who is on a mission to get the attention of the kingdom’s prince at the ball and marry him and save the family from poverty. The problem is that she is rather homely and fat. That won`t do so with her mother’s help, a doctor’s facial modifications, a finishing school and an internal parasite, she sets on a scheme to make herself beautiful. Oh, and there is also the little problem of that attractive annoying stepsister that must be dealt with.  I had never heard before that there was so much sex and baudy language in this classic story.  I guess I must have missed something.  The actress playing Elvira really goes through a range of emotions going from a naive yiung girl to a monster who will do whatever it takes to reach her goal.  The body mutilations become more and more extreme as she seeks to become attractive and meet the world’s expectations of female beauty. There were many exclamations from the audience during each cringeworthy step. It all culminates with the fitting of the slipper and the removal of the “parasite”. The theme is on par with last year’s “The Substance” though maybe not to that extreme.  It’s all about how society sees women as objects,  judging them by some impossible standard and how some women seek to meet them.  And for fans of horror genre it’s a lot of fun.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Venom: Let There Be Carnage    4 stars

I went to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage without having seen the original Venom, thus not knowing what to expect. This movie out of the Marvel universe can be described as a buddy B-movie with plenty of humor about a codependent relationship between a man and his alien symbiote. The premise had been set up in the original with failed journalist, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) having formed a bond with a bodyless alien intelligent being called Venom. Venom helps Eddie out with his writing, crime solving career and in return Venom, gets to eat the heads of bad guys. The charm of the movie comes with the comic banter between the two with Venom using an inner voice in conversations with Eddie. And there is a tremendous amount of energy involved in Venom’s antics with his tentacles in the small apartment they share with a pair of chickens. The relatively short movie (for a Marvel movie) does have something of a plot involving a serial killer on death row named Cletus (a fiendish Woody Harrelson) who grants an interview to Eddie with dire consequences. It takes about half the movie before the real villain appears in the form of another alien symbiote who calls himself Carnage and the inevitable battle ensues. (Just the name of this movie gives you a good clue about the level of violence you are about to see.) Director Andy Serkis uses Hardy’s acting skills well in the funny codependent conversations in which Hardy voices both Eddie and Venom. I occasionally like to try out a good B-movie and this one was just the ticket.

The Wild Robot

The Wild Robot                 5 stars

In DreamWorks’s animated feature The Wild Robot by Chris Sanders AI meets motherhood. Sanders previously directed Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon for DreamWorks and now returns with another winner. The premise of this beautifully animated film has to do with a shipwrecked robot that is lost on an isolated island far removed from all humankind. The robot, called Rozzum Unit 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), is programmed to serve and to obey all requests. She must complete every task when asked and frequently asks for feedback. In this new environment though, the furry and feathery inhabitants only fear this large menacing thing and usually just run away (except for the bear). After much confusion and getting thoroughly banged up, the robot goes into hibernation and through its artificial intelligence learns the language of the animals of the wild, but this still does not lead to much progress. Then, Roz as she comes to be known accidentally becomes acquainted with a new hatchling gosling after accidentally killing its mother. The gosling becomes completely attached to Roz and follows the robot everywhere. Thanks to a wily fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who has been watching all of this, Roz comes to realize that her new job is to care for the gosling, now named Brightbill (Kit Connor) and raise him until he becomes mature enough to fly on his own and leave the island. What follows is a series of comedic frustrations as Roz tries to find ways of feeding Brightbill and training him to swim and to fly. Every parent will recognize that this is what it is like to raise a child. Roz learns that not everything comes with analysis and logic, but from the heart, (a line that is said more than a few times). This theme accounts for about two thirds of the movie. In the last third, a villain is introduced in the form of robots from the human city Roz came from who venture to the isolated island to bring Roz back to civilization. The lead robot, (voiced by Stephanie Hsu of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) a floating drone with long tentacles for arms is especially menacing. The movie then becomes a confrontation between the robots and the animals of the forest, symbolizing man’s destructive nature on the environment. I much prefer the earlier part with Roz interacting with the animals of the island to this part of the movie. The Wild Robot is highly entertaining and suitable for all ages. Look for it to earn a Best Animated Feature nomination. Also, the song “Kiss the Sky”, sung by Maren Morris could earn a Best Song nomination.

Don’t Look Up

Don’t Look Up   2 ½ stars

I was among the first to view Adam McKay’s new satirical comedy Don’t Look Up, just released in theaters. McKay has previously brought us The Big Short and Vice, both inventive and amusing films. In Don’t Look Up we have a star-studded cast in a movie about the approaching end of the world. Leonardo DiCaprio is Michigan State astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy and Jennifer Lawrence (who we haven’t seen much of lately outside of The X-Men franchise) is grad student Kate Dibiasky who have just discovered a new comet in the solar system. Unfortunately for them and the rest of humanity the calculations show that the five to ten kilometer wide comet will crash into earth in just six months and will cause a cataclysmic event and destroy all human life. The Don’t Look Up title refers to the faction of disbelievers who deny the facts before them including the visible comet in the sky. The parallels to the environmental crisis and the denials we see are obvious. Most people are more interested in following social media and watching what is going on with their favorite pop stars than the stories of impending doom. (Good for Ariana Grande mocking herself.) Even President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her dimwitted son Jason, serving as White House Chief of Staff (Jonah Hill) cannot be bothered with listening to science and just want to move on. (The elections are coming soon.) A lot of the humor is a spot on indictment our media obsessed culture in America, but overall the movie goes overboard on the ridiculous plot, including a tech mogul (Mark Rylance) who is more interested in profiting from the situation than saving the planet. The movie, at two and a quarter hours could have been much shorter and did not have to rely on so much CGI effects to make its point. I read that many of the stars jumped at the chance to be in this satire, but after a while I thought the point had been made. The rest was unnecessary flush and craziness.

Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters         4 ½ stars

It’s almost Christmas so what better time to see a movie about the end of the world? In the action comedy Love and Monsters we follow the exploits of Joel, a young twenty something man on a journey to be reunited with his high school sweetheart. The only thing is that most of the human population has been wiped out by giant mutant creatures that have infested the planet after multiple rockets were fired into space to destroy a comet that was on a collision course with earth. But the pollution from the rockets resulted in said mutant creatures. Does this sound completely implausible? Yes, but don’t worry about it. Joel leaves his underground colony of fellow citizens on an 85 mile journey across hostile terrain to find his love, Aimee, who he has not seen in seven years. Along the way he is accompanied by a dog named Boy who aids him as he battles some giant carnivorous creatures. So far this sounds like a very tame variation on A Boy and His Dog. (If you haven’t seen the movie from the seventies you should check it out.) This movie, though is very family friendly due to the personality of the star, Dylan O’Brien as Joel. Like any family oriented movie it has a positive message like learning to gain self confidence and to appreciate those we love. It deserves some special recognition for some impressive effects that bring the monsters to life. I didn’t know what to expect when I started the movie, but found it enjoyable. It seemed odd though that there was a near lack of firearms with the humans relying mostly on crossbows, spears and swords for defense. Along with an occasional hand grenade.

Something In The Dirt

Something In the Dirt                                                     2 suns

In this story about paranormal activity, Levi has just moved to a new apartment in the Hollywood Hills where he strikes up an acquaintance with long time resident John. Then the two witness the impossible in Levi’s apartment as objects seem to float in the air and light emanates into the room with no source. The dives into endless tangents involving numerology, the Pythagorean Brotherhood, alien fruit, a perfect ratio and long dead city planners as this weird pair of random dudes try to solve the mysteries of the universe. They come up with the idea of making a documentary about the experiences, but their own incompetence gets in the way. Flash forward scenes with interviews of others linked to the documentary lead us to believe that the plan went awry at some point. This low budget movie was made mainly by three close friends in the apartment owned by one of them. It’s a fairly long movie that just is forever following the rabbit hole. It is silly and in the Q&A we learn that at one point the movie was three and a half hours long. We also learn that Something in the Dirt is the fifth movie created by this group of friends. I will not be seeking out their earlier works.

Neptune Frost

Neptune Frost                   1 sun

Neptune Frost is a futuristic science fiction story set in Africa with an all African cast and filmed in Rwanda. It concerns a rebellion of miners against an authoritarian state that is led by an intersex runaway named Neptune who is able to affect events through the internet. There is much poetic language and imaginative music involved and much use of discarded computer parts to create the art in the film. Though creative, this film just did not connect with me. I think it shares some themes of William Gibson science fiction novels, but it took a while before I started to get the ideas behind it.

I Think We’re Alone Now

I Think We’re Alone Now              2 ½ stars

I Think We’re Alone Now is yet another movie about the end of the world, a common theme nowadays. I finally got around to seeing this film that premiered at Sundance in 2018. Peter Dinklage is Del, the seeming lone survivor of the apocalypse, who spends his days gathering and burying the bodies of the dead and cleaning the houses in his neighborhood. As an introvert, Del seems perfectly fine with this new reality spending time in a library reading and sipping wine until his world is interrupted by the arrival of Grace (Elle Fanning), a loud and talkative teenage girl who is the opposite of Del. At first Del is annoyed by the girl but gradually accepts her and her assistance in cleaning up this world. Both actors are excellent and very well suited to their roles. Dinklage is exceptional at conveying emotions without speaking. The movie is more about a developing relationship than anything about the end of the world. In fact we never find out what the cause is, only that it happened very suddenly. Then the movie takes an abrupt turn revealing that things are not at all what they seem. It turns into something out of The Twilight Zone leaving us to think, “But how did that happen?” The movie is trying to deliver a message that we can grow through pain and sadness, but does it with a plot twist that didn’t seem all that genuine. I have a hard time with movies that have this much of a change in its reality.

Oxygen

Oxygen                 3 stars

Oxygen is a new sci-fi horror thriller from director Alexandre Aja that has one of the most limited sets I have ever seen. It opens with a young woman (Melanie Laurent of Operation Finale and Now You See Me) who awakens inside a futuristic cryogenic pod with only a computer voice named MILO for company. She is told that her oxygen supply is running out and to make matters worse she has no memory of where she is or even who she is. To say the movie is thin on plot is a colossal understatement. The woman slowly pieces together who she is through visual clues provided by MILO who is not always very helpful, and phone calls she is able to make to the authorities who it seems have something to hide. The hidden secrets eventually do get revealed but the events seemed to take forever to get there. It helps not to think about the situation too much or you will start to see some holes in the story. The movie is aided by a great performance by Laurent who puts plenty of energy into this very limited role. In fact the entire movie depends on how convincing she is. The movie could have been significantly shorter without losing any of the story. The director is known for other stylistic horror thrillers like Crawl, Horns and Piranha, so if you have seen any of these you have some idea of what to expect. The movie is in French with subtitles. If you ever saw the French horror film High Tension (also filled with plot holes) you will know what I mean. Oxygen is available on Netflix.