Tag Archives: Sci-fi

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 462 – Tron: Ares

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Far from an outstanding film, but amazing to look at and too much fun not to recommend, we had a great time in Tron: Ares, which reverses the reality-computer interface that brought humans into the digital world in the previous two films; it’s now the virtual that becomes real. An evil company searches for the code that will give its 3D printed computer assets longevity in the real world – so far, they crumble into dust after about twenty minutes – but the AI tasked with doing so goes rogue, hoping to use the code to bring itself to life. It’s Pinocchio and Frankenstein with neon-oozing motorbikes, and as entertaining as that sounds. (We think that sounds entertaining.)

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 448 – Jurassic World Rebirth

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The seventh instalment in the Jurassic Park (now Jurassic World) series, Jurassic World Rebirth might be the first of the sequels to really come close to capturing the kind of wonder, excitement and horror that the 1993 original offered. That might be in part because it cribs liberally from it, with both moments and entire sequences closely evocative of their 32-year-old counterparts. But there’s plenty else that’s new here, and Rebirth is a characterful expansion to the Jurassic Park story.

Thoughts of containment have finally been totally discarded – dinosaurs have now been roaming the Earth for some time, to the point that they’re dying out everywhere other than a narrow band around the equator, which is illegal for human travel. So that’s where we’re headed, of course, as a pharmecutical exec seeking to make a fortune from dino-sourced drugs hires a team of mercenaries to extract blood from three creatures: one that swims, one that walks, and one that flies. It’s a decent structure that tells you what to expect and allows for a variety of settings and action, into which are placed such charismatic stars as Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey and Rupert Friend. Director Gareth Edwards builds the world beautifully, exploiting it for that sense of scale that so defines his aesthetic, and reminding Mike in particular of his feature debut Monsters; and although in simple terms – this is, ultimately, a blockbuster sequel – the film has a moral message worth expressing.

Jurassic World Rebirth is easily the best of the Jurassic sequels and equally easy to recommend. Just try not to focus too much on how it reminds you of a better film from 1993.

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With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 440 – Mickey 17

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After a little time off, we’re back at the cinema to see Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi comedy, Mickey 17, in which Robert Pattinson dies. Repeatedly. Leaving Earth on a spaceship seeking to colonise an icy planet, Pattinson’s Mickey is an “Expendable”: a disposable worker given lethal assignments, regenerated by a biological printer, and sent out to die again. But when the 17th version of Mickey fails to die at the mandibles of the local fauna, he finds his way back to the colony, only to find that he’s already been reprinted as Mickey 18 – and clone coexistence is strictly prohibited.

We’re disappointed by what looked like a marvellously energetic, knockabout comedy and social satire from the trailer. Even considering the film’s very broad tone, there’s too little in the characterisation to really buy in to, a severe lack of pace, and an ending that betrays it. Nonetheless, as failures go, it’s an interesting one, playing with plenty of ideas, and featuring more than enough good jokes to support it. Our recommendation of Mickey 17 is far from whole-hearted, but you ought to give it a whirl.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 428 – Megalopolis

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Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited passion project, Megalopolis, self-funded to the tune of $120m, has finally arrived. We love it. It’s wild, imaginative, earnest, and beautiful. We discuss and decry some of the criticisms of it we’ve already seen while coming up with some of our own – how could we have known that an octogenarian might hold rather traditional views? – in between breathlessly enthusing about what captivated us.

Megalopolis is hardly a perfect film but it’s a visual treat and a fantastic cinematic experience. Don’t let the naysayers’ sniping turn you off. Indulge!

The podcast may be listened to below:

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 427 – Alien: Romulus

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A welcome new instalment in the Alien franchise, which has moved between genres and directors, remained popular for over four decades, and offered fascinating expansions of its internal mythos, Alien: Romulus moves with the times to give Generation Z the opportunity to die in space. It goes like the clappers, orchestrates loads of entertaining, tactile action, and is unbelievably good-looking. It’s also underwritten, arguably overstuffed with reference to previous films in the series, and features one of those entirely uncontroversial and ethically pure reanimations of a deceased actor through CGI and other technologies. Perhaps after seeing the muted responses to the ideas on offer in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the series has decided to seek refuge in the cloying bosom of nostalgia – but we differ on how excessive it is, while enthusiastically agreeing that Romulus is great fun, and easy to recommend.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 423 – Dune: Part Two

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Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation of Dune makes its first appearance on the podcast in the form of the second film in the series – we saw the first when it came out but never podcasted on it. With the lore in place, the scene set, and the characters established, Dune: Part Two is free to develop romance, engage in action, and tell the story of the construction of a messiah. It’s beautiful, exciting entertainment – as long as you can remember everyone’s names and what their magic powers are and what they’re up to and why.

José feels no such issues keeping track of Part Two‘s various story elements, but Mike hasn’t done the homework and finds that the film isn’t going out of its way to help him. But no matter! The imagery on offer is astonishingly pretty, reassuringly expensive, and tuned for maximum visual impact – though we wonder how poetic it is, and ask ourselves to what extent the imagery in Villeneuve’s other work lingers in the mind, despite its premium sheen. We also discuss the degree to which we feel Part Two really feels like it’s buying in to its more supernatural elements. It tells a story of prophecy, visions, and unlikely fates, but, Mike suggests, also offers mechanisms and plausible explanations for things we see, arguably favouring its scepticism to avoid putting off an audience unwilling to go along with the otherworldly.

Whether you care or not, whether you can follow the details or not, there’s no reason to not see Dune: Part Two on the biggest and best screen available. For the visual design and production alone, it’s value for money – that the rest is good is a lovely bonus.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 414 – Poor Things

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Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest absurd comedy, Poor Things, creates a wonderful confluence of themes, all through the lens of Bella, a grown woman with a child’s brain, experiencing the world anew and detached from emotion. We discuss Bella’s attitude to the world she encounters, the men who try to control and cage her, Lanthimos’ idiosyncratic visual style and comedic sensibility, the examination of the nuances of sex, what Mike finds lacking in the brothel scenes, and more.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 399 – The Creator

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We heartily disagree on The Creator, a sci-fi film directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards, who made his name with Monsters in 2010, which he made largely by himself for half a million dollars, and quickly graduated to tentpole cinema with Godzilla and Rogue One. José had a wonderful time, finding it marvellous to look at and emotionally effective, though leaving room to criticise cinema’s continued insistence that John David Washington is a star. Mike finds it dull, brim-full of clichés, and even a little ugly at times, although Edwards’ sense of how to convey scale, already shown off in his monster movies, remains intact here.

Also featured: ChatGPT and how AI will kill us all.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 384 – Avatar: The Way of Water – Second Screening

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Listen to our previous podcast on Avatar: The Way of Water here.

We take a trip to London to see Avatar: The Way of Water again, this time on the biggest screen in the country at the BFI IMAX, in high frame rate and 3D. We discuss the difference in experience between seeing it here and at the IMAX Digital cinema at Cineworld Broad Street, where we saw it previously. Mike questions why the film switches between 24fps and 48fps, rather than sticking with the high frame rate throughout – director James Cameron describes how HFR assists in making 3D imagery less difficult to resolve, and implies that he limits its use to avoid the so-called “soap opera effect” that made the Hobbit films and Gemini Man look so cheap, but Mike doesn’t buy that it’s necessary to keep returning to 24fps, and thinks Cameron’s a big scaredy-cat. José, on the other hand, can’t seem to tell the difference between the frame rates at all.

We also discuss what a second viewing of the film brings into focus that we hadn’t put our finger on before, Mike comparing it to the nature documentaries that IMAX have produced for years, and José implores the film community to drop its snootiness and embrace the opportunity to see such a marvellous spectacle while it’s still in cinemas. It’s really special.

The James Cameron interview we refer to in the podcast is available here.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 381 – Avatar: The Way of Water

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A mere thirteen years after the release of the highest-grossing film of all time, its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, arrives to a cinematic landscape that has changed significantly. James Cameron’s epic sci-fi franchise Avatar began life in 2009, when Marvel had released only two of its (at present) 30 films which would make universes, crossovers, and interconnected stories de rigueur for blockbuster cinema – and one of which would, briefly, overtake Avatar‘s record for worldwide gross. That’s how long it’s taken to create just one sequel to Avatar, with no indication that anything more complex than a linear progression of further sequels is planned. And there was no question that this sequel would, like its predecessor, make use of stereoscopic 3D – but while the 2009 film catalysed a new wave of interest in the technology, it has since fallen out of favour, as it always has over the years. As 2023 approaches, is The Way of Water out of date?

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 370 – Nope

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Nope, Jordan Peele’s third film as writer-director, following his zeitgeist-capturing Get Out and complex, ambitious Us, invites its audience to speculate on audiences and spectacle. The kinds of things it wants us to think about are clear, and we discuss its themes of commercialised tragedy, fear of the audience, and photography as truth, among others – but what it has to say about them is at best muddled, and, more frankly, disappointingly uncritical. Like Peele’s previous films, Nope is a terrific conversation starter, but unlike them, its contribution to that conversation is weak.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 357 – Everything Everywhere All at Once

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We’ve seen a lot of the multiverse lately, and Everything Everywhere All at Once brings to it a combination of Gen Z existential angst and mid-life where-did-things-go-wrong woe, in a frantic comic-action-sci-fi wrapper. It’s a lot of things in one, and we discuss as many of them as we can remember, including its campness, puerility, basis in multi-generational immigrant life, film references, endless endings, and much more. It’s full of life and imagination, and despite its unevenness, easy to recommend.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 332 – The Matrix Resurrections

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Listen to our episode on 1999’s The Matrix here.

After eighteen years away and vast changes in the blockbuster landscape in which it once broke incredible new ground, the Matrix series is back with a fourth film, The Matrix Resurrections. Keanu Reeves’ Neo is once again plugged into the Matrix as Thomas Anderson, but having trouble separating reality from dreams of events that happened twenty years ago… if dreams are what they are.

We discuss Resurrections‘ endless self-reflexivity, how it uses motifs and themes of the previous films, updating them where necessary and bringing more out of them (Mike is glad of the much improved use of mirrors). We also consider the film’s inclusivity, which is key to the Wachowskis’ work, and an uncomplicated joy here – it’s not difficult for people from a range of ethnic backgrounds and situated in different places along sexual and gender spectra to coexist in a blockbuster with no particular importance placed upon their identities, as Resurrections proves. You just have to want to do it, and the world that results is beautiful. And, at heart, it’s a middle-aged romance – for which José swoons!

Resurrections isn’t without its issues, and we consider those too – Mike asks whether the sense of wonder associated with the special effects of the original films is simply gone forever in a world in which literally anything can be done, and is, with all-powerful CGI, and we agree that the action is a Bourne-inflected disappointment, especially so in a series that itself spawned so many imitators of its own action scenes two decades ago.

But seen in its entirety, The Matrix Resurrections is an imaginative and interesting continuation of the story begun twenty years ago, and a holistic triumph of well-intentioned, positive and effortless representation. Whoever thought we’d get a fourth Matrix? And that it would be this different, and this good?

The interview with Jean Baudrillard referenced by Mike can be found here.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eunsoo Lee on A. I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)

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Eunsoo Lee and José Arroyo discussed Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Compared to other representative SF films before 2000, A.I.‘s David may exist as a character who desires to be a human being, but it also can be said he represents a new style of mecha narrative in which the human being is not the right aim. In addition, With the theory of SAVE THE CAT, Eunsoo discusses SF narratives as genre arts. As a film genre, they discuss to what extent the SF narrative is able to offer a variety of narrative styles.

The podcast may be listened to here:

A.I. Artificial Intelligence – Podcast

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 282 – Lapsis

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First-time writer-director Noah Hutton imagines, in Lapsis, a near-future gig economy dystopia that isn’t that different from our own. Unable to pay for his brother’s healthcare, Dean Imperial’s Ray takes on contracting work for a Google-esque tech giant, hiking through forests laying cables. Imperial’s performance is a standout, his Ray always sympathetic and legible, and Hutton’s sketchy, piecemeal world-building suits the film – until it doesn’t. Lapsis creates a recognisable milieu and has a leftist politic with which we broadly agree and are happy to see, but as its story develops it wants to evoke the feeling of doom one would expect of a revealed conspiracy, without the burden of having to bring together its disparate subplots and building blocks in order to explain anything.

Despite our reservations, we enjoyed Lapsis and are glad to have seen it, and are keen to see what comes next for Noah Hutton and Dean Imperial.

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 252 – Tenet – Second Screening

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Birmingham’s full-size IMAX cinema closed in 2011, having proved unprofitable (the independent venue it became, the Giant Screen, closed four years later for the same reason), so it’s off to the Manchester Printworks, home of the second-largest screen in the UK, for our second viewing of Tenet. We ask whether the full IMAX experience is worth it, Mike comparing the feeling of the images offered to those he saw in Dunkirk and The Dark Knight; José argues that it’s detrimental to the film to be exhibited in different cinema formats, as shooting in IMAX’s 1.43:1 aspect ratio, where the film is supposedly best seen, with the knowledge that it’ll be cropped for conventional cinema screens for its wide release and home media, means that artistic, interesting composition is impossible – you can’t compose well for two frames at once.

Mike suggests that an easily overlooked pleasure of Christopher Nolan’s cinema is turning his films over in your own head, playing with the logic, asking questions of it and trying to unlock the puzzle box – something he’s been doing since his first screening, and which we both spend some time on after this one. Laying out the timeline, speculating on what might happen that we’re not shown – this isn’t the first of Nolan’s films to invite that type of reflection. And Mike describes the pleasure of understanding things that aren’t hidden but simply too many to grasp all at once the first time – now that he broadly knows the film, things that left him confused at first now smoothly fall into place.

We reflect again on the film’s score, performances, and action scenes, finding that rather than changing our initial impressions, this second viewing helps us to perceive and explain better what made us feel the way we did at first. We find more to discuss – the use of Elizabeth Debicki’s height, the cost of Nolan’s adherence to achieving visual effects without the use of CGI, the pleasure of the way in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character interacts with the heroes, whether Mike is just shit at watching spy movies – but our overall experience hasn’t changed. What we liked, we still like; what we didn’t, we still don’t.

(Mike’s short film, which he claims was harder to make than Tenet, can be seen below. It’s probably worth mentioning that if you still don’t know what Tenet is about, watching this could constitute a spoiler of sorts – after all, Mike brought it up because of its vague similarities.)

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 251 – Tenet

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After a long wait and three delays, Christopher Nolan’s latest high-concept blockbuster, Tenet, has finally arrived in British cinemas. This description is a spoiler-free zone, but the podcast is decidedly not, so tread carefully before you listen: We spill every secret the film has to hold. The ones we could figure out, anyway.

Following our revisitation of five of Nolan’s massive flicks – the DarkKnight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception – we’re keen to see how Tenet fits amongst its brethren. We consider, as we have done repeatedly, Nolan’s action direction, the aesthetic design, the tone, the concept that drives everything, how it’s explained, what we love, what let us down, and, well… to detail anything further would be indecent.

Mike is gobsmacked by it, finding brilliance in some of the film’s execution, though is keen to make more than a few criticisms. José is much colder towards it, dismissing it as no more interesting than comic books for children – can Mike’s enthusiasm rub off on him? Tenet has its flaws, but it’s ambitious, intriguing, large-scale, wonderfully cast and acted – it’s worth your time.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 227 – Southland Tales

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A film many have heard of and few have seen, Southland Tales is writer-director Richard Kelly’s infamous difficult second album. Six years after his eventual cult hit Donnie Darko, this sprawling, confusing mess of an end-of-days parable was released to thunderous bafflement and almost no box office. We dive in and find that perhaps all we needed was to give it thirteen years to breathe.

There’s no defending much of the film’s execution. Kelly’s visuals are functional at best, almost never expressive, and rather obvious, there’s an abundance of plot that feels at once over- and under-developed, and there’s no emotional way in to significantly connect with any character. But Southland Tales is chock full of ideas and ambition, and there’s much to respond positively to. José considers how its critique of American culture continues to resonate today; Mike suggests that alongside M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, it captures the state of mind of post 9/11, pre-financial crash, perpetually warring, deeply conservative and fearful America. Kelly may show little instinct for visual expression, but his ability to cast well and get the best out of his actors is remarkable, and for José, Justin Timberlake and Dwayne Johnson have never been better. And we consider the use of Revelations in the voiceover, and wonder where Seann William Scott has been for the last ten years.

For a Saturday night in, it’s tough to recommend Southland Tales. As a sizzlingly ambitious attempt to combine just about every worry it was possible to have in mid-2000s America into a grand work of sci-fi satire, it’s fascinating and worth your time. Its reach far exceeds its grasp, but that’s so much more appealing than the other way round.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 220 – Commando and Predator

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Hollywood action in the Eighties was a world unto itself, and we look back on two specimens of one of the genre’s icons, Arnold Schwarzenegger. One a delightful, over-the-top romp, the other a macho, moody sci-fi, we compare and contrast Commando and Predator.

We’re in agreement that Predator is the better film, but that Commando offers the better time. José describes this era as his awakening to the fact that heterosexual men were checking out each others’ bodies – Arnie and co. are put on display, made to flex their muscles in absurd ways, their bodies painted in glistening sweat, for the pleasure of a straight male audience. We discuss how Arnie’s extraordinary body means entire films have to built around it: elsewhere cast as a pseudo-Greek hero and android killing machine, in Commando and Predator he’s theoretically human, but still a G.I. Joe male fantasy inhabiting similarly oversized films. Similarly, his accent always needs at least a hint of acknowledgement – the films taking a line of dialogue here and there to reassure us, don’t you worry, we also know he sounds odd.

We also think about the fact that these films have simply lasted. Commando in particular is not a very good film, but 35 years after its release it retains a loyal audience, and has to be considered a classic of a kind. Though dated and easy to critique in all sorts of ways, there are still pleasures in this cinema, and Arnie in particular.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A Brief Note on High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)

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A film I´ve only seen once and yet to fully figure out.  But I am already entranced by it and convinced of its greatness. It´s not ‘entertaining’ in a traditional sense. It´s dour, and harsh, sexy and tender, with moments of harrowing violence and many instances of sexual violation, some by women towards men. It´s a complex movie. And beautiful: amber lights reflected on space-ship helmets designed to show as much of Robert Pattinson´s face as possible, the luminous greens of a garden inside a spaceship that seems an Eden, keeps everyone alive but hides dead bodies.

Denis makes a space movie like no other I´ve seen. The spaceship here is not a phallic cock triumphantly piercing through the atmosphere and into space but a box, rusty, like a jail, which is kind of what it is. The ship houses convicts who were given the choice of life sentence on earth or a mission into space, one which would take several generations to succeed, so reproduction is necessary. The spaceship has a fuck box were inmates go to relief their sexual frustrations but which also gathers sperm that women are then forcibly inseminated with.

 

Monte (Robert Pattinson) is the only one who chooses to remain celibate but Dibs, the doctor played by Juliette Binoche, has sex with him whilst he´s sleeping and forcibly implants the sperm he´s left in her on a younger woman. Finally, after many failed attempts, a baby is born in the ship, and Dibs tells Monte it´s his.

Conceptually the film is fascinating. The ship is a jail. News from earth keeps arriving in soundbites, faded images of Native Americans dying in early Westerns, news that is no longer relevant. Life on board is always on  24 hour notice. If the daily log isn´t filed nightly, the ship shuts down and with it the food and energy necessary for survival. Moreover, the ship is heading towards a black hole and previous attempts to change direction have failed. Will Monte and his daughter succeed when they try again at the end? We don´t know.

It´s a film to think about a whole lot more but what remains vivid at present is Pattinson´s performance, so reticent, recessive even, but conveying a hurt, a shying away from society, yet power too — he´s muscly and built– and capable of great tenderness with the child. He reminded me of that famous ´L’enfant’ poster but one imbued with a more complex character and motivation, less syrupy.  The look of the film is astonishing also, with haunting poetic imagery, imaginatively composed, and expressively coloured. It´s not an easy watch. But it´s a great film, mysterious and complex, one to see again and think about some more.

 

José Arroyo