Science Fiction

Let’s get it right out of the way: yes, James vs. His Future Self is going to get compared to the 2012 Rian Johnson classic, Looper. There’s no two ways around it: both involve a man traveling to the past and battling his younger self in hopes of changing the future, but that’s where the […]

Code 8 started life as a 10-minute short (found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqO90q0WZ0M) concerning a dystopian future where humans with telekinetic superpowers aren’t treated like the gods found in comic books. Instead, they’re outcasts, pariahs stuck in dead ends and made to live in squalor, the rest of society unwilling to allow them into their homes, businesses, […]

I’m not a new-generation video game fan, which is probably why the charm of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (hereafter referred to as simply Valerian) was lost on me. In previous reviews for Pacific Rim and Kong: Skull Island, I decry the overuse of computer-generated imagery (CGI) when it becomes the story as […]

For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And […]

Never has the term “thinking man’s science-fiction film” been more accurate than when describing Denis Villeneuve’s latest directorial effort, Arrival. Working from a thoughtful, complex screenplay written by Eric Heisserer – whom I dismissed as a screenwriter capable only of writing middling films based upon other sources in my review of Lights Out – Villeneuve […]

Author’s note: this review, like the movie itself, is dedicated to the lives of Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin. Everyone knows the Star Trek film curse: the odd-numbered Prime (read: William Shatner era) Star Trek films fell short of their intended reception, while the even-numbered films were the best of the series. So far, the Kelvin […]