All Things:Science Fiction/Fantasy

Review: Ethan Hawke's 'Predestination' An Overlong, Pretentious & Underwhelming Sci-Fi Thriller

Ultimately, "Predestination" isn't about anything, really. There are some handsome compositions and the twinkly electronic score is sometimes nice, but it's an effort in futility. There are so many interesting ideas and concepts that could have been spun from this framework. Instead, it's the work of a bunch of filmmakers who seemingly wanted to offer up a WTF-worthy twist ending and tried to reverse engineer a movie from it. In the end, it's worse than nonsensical—it's boring, overlong, pretentious, and oddly under-styled. Unfortunately, the Ethan Hawke that's easily swayed by underwhelming genre movies is the one that showed up for "Predestination." [D]
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adgy-san said:
Review: Ethan Hawke's 'Predestination' An Overlong, Pretentious & Underwhelming Sci-Fi Thriller
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Filmmakers Michael & Peter Spierig Discuss the Tragedy of PREDESTINATION, Time Travel, and Their Upcoming Haunted House Feature WINCHESTER

Read more at http://collider.com/predestination-spierig-brothers-interview/#JVqdw6PXJafjPqh9.99

Didn't know that was a Spierig Brothers flick. Seems like the kind of movie that may be very divisive love/hate wise. Or...maybe it just sucks out loud.
 
I thought it was good. Hardly mindblowing or anything but interesting enough to keep it above average. Like with most time travel movies there are some paradoxes/chicken or the egg kind of stuff which can put some off but I had no problems with it.
 
PREDESTINATION Review
http://collider.com/predestination-review/

First Rule of Time Travel: Don’t Do It. Every time travel movie is accurate in that no good can come of it. You’re more than likely to create a paradox where you’ll interfere with your own past/future. The “confrontation” trope of time travel stories is well worn, but Predestination treats it like a fresh pair of sneakers, and then proceeds to run head first into a brick wall—it’s a stupid thing to do, but you have to appreciate the gusto. The Spierig Brothers‘ film is both painfully predictable yet excitingly bonkers in how far they’re willing to contort their story to keep firing new twists at the audience. Although the movie can hold on to broad notions of “fate” and paradoxes of human behavior, it mostly provides twists because it’s exciting to do so as opposed to serving some strong thematic purpose. But the whole production is done with such earnestness and confidence that Predestination remains commendable even at its most laughably dumb moments.
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here’s the synopsis for The Expanse:

A thriller

image: http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png
set two hundred years in the future, The Expanse follows the case of a missing young woman who brings a hardened detective and a rogue ship’s captain together in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

This hour-long, ten episode series is based on the popular New York Times bestselling book series collectively known as The Expanse, written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (under the pen name James S. A. Corey). Abraham and Franck will be show producers. The multi-installment, best-selling book series is published in 17 countries, including China, France, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. One in the series, Leviathan Wakes, was nominated for a Hugo Award as well as a Locus Award, while “Caliban’s War” was nominated for a Locus Award.


Read more at http://collider.com/the-expanse-trailer/#sdw6VuCChgyTRFoH.99
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Syfy’s THE EXPANSE Trailer: Future-Set Thriller with Fedoras and Zero Gravity Sex
Read more at http://collider.com/the-expanse-trailer/#sdw6VuCChgyTRFoH.99

Like Thomas Jane...Dunno bout this.
 
Who doesn't love Tremors?

Also, wow I had no idea there were more Tremors stuff than the first three movies.. even a damn series! Not that I'd watch it, but still.
 
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I watched that Tremors series, haha, the father from Family Ties was in it too.

The first Tremors is awesome. I have it somewhere. :good:
 
Review: Alex Garland's Gripping & Brilliant 'Ex Machina' With Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander & Oscar Isaac

When he’s onscreen, its clear that the film is a reinvention of the Frankenstein story, a portrait of man’s hubris and desire to play god. But it’s also more than that: an all-too-realistic glimpse of the future, a tense thriller about the impossibility of knowing individual motivation and a wrenching picture of the terrible things that men do to women. It’s one of the headiest and most impressive sci-fi debuts since “Moon,” and if we see more than a handful of movies better than it across the next twelve months, 2015 will be a terrific year. [A]
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Over 50 JUPITER ASCENDING Images Revealing Some Very Unusual Creatures
http://collider.com/jupiter-ascending-images/

I am hoping against hope that this doesn't suck. The delayed release pushed to February(dumping ground) and the overall Deep Space Nine @ a Tattoo convention look just really gives me dread. And Mila Kunis is genre death. She's like the Ted McGinley of anything sci-fi/fantasy related(Oz, Book of Eli, Max Payne)
 
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm553895424/tt3977848?ref_=tt_pv_md_2

"A team of Arctic geologists stumble across an abandoned laboratory in which the Nazis developed an incredible and brutal secret weapon during the final months of WW2. Deep in the ice, they accidentally awake a deadly army of flying zombie sharks ridden by genetically mutated, undead super-humans, who are unleashed into the skies, wreaking their bloodthirsty revenge on any aircraft that takes to the air. An elite task force is assembled to take on this deadly threat and stop the Sky Sharks from conquering the air, but as time runs out, the task force realizes they will have to fight fire with fire, and the stage is set for the greatest flying super-mutant zombie shark air battle the world has ever seen..."
 
Review: Michael Bay-Produced 'Project Almanac' A Worthy Entry In The Time Travel Movie Canon

All of the young actors are committed, and director Dean Israelite has a good handle on the material, offering his own contributions to the time travel genre (like how violent the act itself is) while continually tipping his hat to what came before. If "Project Almanac" had let the good times roll a little bit longer, with the danger and threat always at the periphery, then it probably would have been an even more solid ride. As it stands, it's a rare time travel movie that does try to cover some new ground, even while shaking off that nagging feeling of d?j? vu.
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Review: The Wachowskis bring mad style to the YA genre in 'Jupiter Ascending'
http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captur...ad-style-to-the-ya-genre-in-jupiter-ascending

"Jupiter Ascending" plays like someone hired Lana and Andy Wachowski to adapt a particularly crazy YA novel and they took the bones of the thing and ran with it. Fast, frequently teetering on the cusp of the ridiculous, and eye-poppingly pretty, "Jupiter Ascending" is a wicked slice of entertainment, and a heck of an antidote to the typical February box-office blahs.


Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captur...enre-in-jupiter-ascending#haSUykFSIVBuFSR4.99
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Review: ‘Jupiter Ascending’ Is Like ‘Battlefield Earth’ Without The Excuse Of Scientology
http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2015/02...ield-earth-without-the-excuse-of-scientology/

Look, if you go see Jupiter Ascending, it’s probably because you want to see a bat**** ridiculous movie, and Jupiter Ascending is nothing if not bat**** ridiculous. That being said, ridiculous movies are usually still about something. There are central characters with central desires forming the cake upon which all sorts of frosting flourishes and flowers and decorative marzipan figurines can be layered. Korben Dallas had to get Leelu Multipass to the temple because she (and love) was the fifth element and you need all five elements to stop the giant ball of space evil that’s about to consume Earth, as the prophecy foretold. Simple, right? Once that’s in place, you can add all kinds of evil industrialists, effeminate hypersexual radio hosts, gun-toting dog manatees, squid-headed opera singers, and everything else.

With Jupiter Ascending, THERE IS NO CAKE. It’s just handful after handful of bizarre-tasting frosting, and occasionally you bite down on a Skittle or a chicken bone. It’s like someone combined an airport sci-fi novel with an airport romance novel and put a firecracker in it. All the kooky flourishes – like C-Tates’ buddy who has the head of an elephant, say – would add a lot more value if the film wasn’t constantly failing the “where are they and what are they doing?” test. You can ask it all you want, but the only answer is ever “pew pew!”

At one point, Channing Tatum, the albino flying rollerblade wolf, has to pilot his space pod – which has wing thingies attached that he can control with his own hands sort of like Robot Jox – through a field of “war hammers,” which we gather are some kind of… uh… space mines? A zero-G spike strip? in order to get inside a massive space ship floating… uh… somewhere… where Jupiter Jones is about to marry Eddie Redmayne’s younger brother, her own space son, before a massive crowd of robots (…don’t ask). He wants to marry her, kill her, and inherit the Earth, you see. So far as I can tell, this whole thing is about the minutiae of intergalactic inheritance law.
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so...none of that makes me NOT want to see it.
 
Was The Wachowskis? 2012 Film ?Cloud Atlas? Really That Bad?
http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2015/02/was-cloud-atlas-really-that-bad/

Cloud Atlas was originally a novel, released in 2004, that told a series of nested stories starting in the 19th century and ranging up to mankind?s post-apocalyptic future and back again. It?s a rich, weird, complex novel that Hollywood, of course, would bulldoze into some dumb story about reincarnation.

So the Wachowskis, who teamed up with Tom Tykwer to direct what amounts to six short films, didn?t make it through Hollywood. Instead, they somehow talked a huge cabal of foreign investors out of $93 million and paid $7 million out of their pile of Matrix f***-you money. And not only did they do that, they managed to talk an all-star cast into what had to be the strangest movie any of them had ever been confronted with.

And that really ties into why, even when they eat pavement, you have to love the Wachowskis. One of the biggest problems with Hollywood in any era, really, is that it?s a business first, and businesses don?t make art. This is why the Transformers have five movies despite the fact that everyone hates them and why found footage horror movies came at a clip of one or two a month for a solid year: They make money. If you?re really lucky, more often than not, you get a director who loves making this kind of product and then you get something special.

But with the Wachowskis, they have somehow managed to pull off, every single time, making the movie they?ve wanted to make. Love it or hate it, they?ve never manufactured a product: They?ve made a movie.

And I get why people hate Cloud Atlas; it turned up on both best-of and worst-of lists in 2012, and Vince has a few excellent points in his review about why precisely that is. It?s a sprawling movie that basically asks you to swallow both hard SF and dream logic in equal measure, and it?s shamelessly sentimental and earnest in ways that feel more than a little corny at points.
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I loved Cloud Atlas when I saw it and it has held up to numerous repeat viewings. I admire the Wachowskis for the exact reasons described in the quote. Go ahead...go back and rewatch Speed Racer. It's also a helluva thing. Just wish I had gone to see it on a big screen.
 
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