Tag: science fiction
-
Halloween Pick ‘n’ Mix: Shocker (1989) and The Blood Beast Terror (1968)
Surprisingly cheesy and dull Wes Craven thriller, Shocker is nowhere near as good as The People Under the Stairs, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and his other classics. It’s about a young man pursued by a serial killer, Horace Pinker, who kills most of his adopted family, his girlfriend, and sundry other people in…
-
Megalopolis (2024)
I just saw Megalopolis and although it’s not cool to say so, I enjoyed it. It’s an eccentric satirical and symbolic piece filled with characters with names like Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), and inspired by the Catilinarian conspiracy of Ancient Rome. Set in the city of New Rome (New York in our world, retaining the…
-
The Substance (2024)
“Pretty girls should ALWAYS smile!” So says Harvey (last name not revealed, but you can guess what it might be), a sleazy producer played by Dennis Quaid in The Substance, which I just saw yet am willing to crawl out on a limb to say is the best new horror film I’ve seen in the…
-
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
The Star Wars prequels have recently undergone a slight recovery in reputation given how disappointing the sequels turned out to be, and in my opinion, they deserve it. Perhaps I’m buying into a conspiracy theory here, though at this point I feel that the backlash was really just fanboys who watched the original films as…
-
Alien: Romulus (2024)
I just saw Alien: Romulus and it was so good it made up for every bad sequel in the franchise and has earned its place as the third best after Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). A group of young people living as indentured servants on a mining outpost owned by those dastardly villains of the…
-
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Somewhat dismissed as a weak entry in the Hammer canon of horror and monster movies, including by AllMovie as the worst of the studio’s Frankenstein strand, The Evil of Frankenstein, the 1964 continuation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, actually isn’t bad at all, really. It stars Peter Cushing as Dr Frankenstein, this time assisted by…
-
Madame Web (2024)
You know superhero movies are in trouble when studios start downplaying the fact they’re superhero movies. Sony’s marketing for Madame Web has focused on its supposed properties as a “suspense thriller”, which is a bit like trying to sell I Spit on Your Grave as a screwball comedy. Of course, anyone sensible knows it’s going…
-
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
I just saw Godzilla Minus One and it was good. Easily the best kaiju movie that I’ve seen in a long time; mostly the ones I’ve seen have been American takes on the genre. The one I grew up with was the 1998 Roland Emmerich disaster porno, Godzilla, which I mainly remember for all the…
-
The Marvels (2023)
I saw The Marvels and it was pretty bland. You know it’s bland when one of the recurring themes of positive criticism around it is that it’s blessedly short for a superhero film. It’s a remarkably clunky piece of storytelling, lurching from one set piece to the next with no real ebb and flow. In…
-
Horror Classic Quickies: Friday the 13th (1980) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Arguably the true first of the slasher boom that would help to define ‘80s horror cinema, for better or worse, this is the film that codified and thereby effectively birthed the sub-genre without even meaning to. Director Sean S Cunningham had no intention to make any sort of inspirational piece, he was just ripping off…
I Just Saw 