A BOY AND HIS DOG - VIDEO REVIEW
L.Q. Jones' cult sci-fi film A Boy And His Dog gets its own video review.
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ANNIHILATION - REVIEW
Based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer and directed by Alex Garland, Annihilation is a science fiction film about a team of researchers who are sent into the mysterious Area X: a gradually expanding coastal area surrounded by an inexplicable shimmer. Unlike the book, the film slowly builds to the team's entry into Area X, instead of throwing you into the unknown right off the bat. Natalie Portman is Lena, a biology professor and ex-US Army soldier whose husband (played by Oscar Isaac), who was believed to be dead, comes back to her one day after going into the "shimmer" himself. Lena and four others, including Jennifer Jason Leigh's psychologist, are sent in to explore as increasingly unexpected events start to occur. Adapting this story was never going to be easy as there's a myriad ways you could approach it. This could have been a very arty, impenetrably abstract affair or an Alien -style straight-up horror movie or even something else entirely. Garland ma
MUTE - REVIEW
Directed by Duncan Jones, Mute is a science-fiction thriller about a mute bartender who investigates the disappearance of the woman he loves armed with only a notepad and the occasional wooden bat. The film has received mixed reviews since its Netflix release. Having the film come out so soon after a full season of Altered Carbon might have been a bit of a mistake as comparisons between both would no doubt arise, seeing as the film and the show owe a lot to Blade Runner in terms of tone and visuals. The relatively recent release of Blade Runner 2049 did not help either since, by this point, this vision of the future might not feel quite as unique as it once did. All this coupled with Warcraft 's poor critical reception, the usual straight-to-Netflix stigma and the fact that Mute isn't really what you'd expect, probably means that Duncan Jones' film is destined for cult adoration and mainstream disinterest. While, in a way, this is your typical sci-fi film noir
THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX - REVIEW
After hinting for months about what the next Cloverfield film would be and when it would be released, The Cloverfield Paradox finally got a surprise release last night exclusively on Netflix right after the Super Bowl. This straight-to-Netflix approach to the film's release has prompted quite a bit of discussion in terms of whether the movie was just not good enough to get into theatres or whether this is something we're likely to see happen with more and more blockbusters, good or bad, in the future. Frankly, those statements are probably both true. With the success of Bright and others, we're definitely going to be seeing bigger movies released directly to Netflix, that's obvious. And yet, while the surprisingly good 10 Cloverfield Lane re-ignited interest in the Cloverfield franchise, the reality is that The Cloverfield Paradox would have probably bombed at the box-office. The great thing about this particular series of films, apart from its usually clever m
WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY - REVIEW
Released on Netflix in 2017, What Happened To Monday is a science fiction thriller starring Noomi Rapace as seven sisters named after each day of the week who try to survive in a dystopian one-child-only society. In order to tackle an overpopulation problem and attempt to fix the environment, the Child Allocation Bureau, run by Glenn Close's intimidating politician, enforces this one-child policy which takes the oldest siblings, if there are any, and cryogenically freezes them until society can accommodate them. When a woman dies while giving birth to identical septuplets, her father (played by Willem Dafoe) decides to raise the kids in a way that allows all of them to live their lives. Each of them is allowed to leave the house on a specific day of the week, hence their names, if they pretend to all be the same individual. At home, they can look and act like who they are but outside, they become the same person. Of course, when one of them doesn't come home as planned, t
DOWNSIZING - REVIEW
From director Alexander Payne comes Downsizing , a science-fiction comedy starring Matt Damon as a man who undergoes a shrinking procedure so he can live in a small-scale utopia where he would be wealthy and lead a worry-free life. The trailers for Downsizing promised a social satire full of the dry wit we've come to expect from Payne's films. This was sure to be a mostly upbeat and clever character study hinting at deeper themes through a "big" sci-fi concept with some inventive visuals and fun deadpan performances peppered throughout. After a brief and well-executed introduction showing the birth of the revolutionary "downsizing technology", we meet Paul Safranek (Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) who, many years later, start to consider moving to Leisureland, a seemingly perfect mini-world where your money is worth five times more. The only catch: you will need to shrink yourself to live in that world and the procedure is irreversible. The fi
WHY IS THE LAST JEDI SO DIVISIVE?
I talk about the "controversy" surrounding Star Wars: The Last Jedi .
