Category Archives: Sci-fi

“What Happened To Monday” by Tommy Wirkola (UK, 2017)

What Happened To Monday

Some excellent moments alternating with loss of momentum and some ridiculously weak bad guys

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close, Willem Dafoe
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writer: Max Botkin, Kerry Williamson
Cinematographer: José David Montero
Editor: Martin Stoltz
Composer: Christian Wibe

“Advantageous” by Jennifer Phang (USA, 2015)

Advantageous

Slow-moving satire of the corporate world that dehumanize the individual.
A movie depicting our world in a not too far-fetched future, a world that has no advantage to offer for us, humans, a world in which we have to become inhuman to survive.
Among some of the ideas brought forward:

  • We should talk about “natural deselection” because humanity makes the same errors again and again
  • “There’s nothing fiercer than a mother’s love”
  • Corporations prefer to fire women because they will stay at home, and men won’t

Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams
Director: Jennifer Phang
Writers: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang
Music by Timo Chen
Cinematography by Richard Wong
Film Editing by Sean Gillane, Jennifer Phang

“Into The Forest” by Patricia Rozema (Canada, 2015)

Into The Forest

Good story and realization, average content
Three men: the father, the lover, the raper / Three women: ywo sisters + deceased mother
The “scifi” setting that was perhaps justified when the story was written in 1996 doesn’t convey anything to the plot today.

Cast: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Callum Keith Rennie, Max Minghella
Director: Patricia Rozema
Based on the novel by Jean Hegland
Writer: Patricia Rozema
Cinematographer: Daniel Grant
Editor: Matthew Hannam
Composer: Max Richter

“Moon” (Duncan Jones, USA 2009)

Moon

SPOILER AHEAD: A culminating moment is when the main character discovers that he’s just a clone, and that everything he loves and knows has been implanted in his memory. Standing in a desolate lunar landscape, he looks at the earth, knowing that he has nowhere to go back to, that no one there is waiting for him.

Cast: Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, Kevin Spacey as Voice of Gerty
Directed by Duncan Jones
Written by Nathan Parker
From a story by Duncan Jones
Music by Clint Mansell
Cinematography by Gary Shaw
Film Editing by Nicolas Gaster

 

“Total Recall” (Paul Verhoeven, USA 1990)

Total Recall

A potentially good story turned into a stupid action movie with lots of shooting and meaningless violence. A positive point: one of the first movies in which women are physically involved in the action.

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Screenplay by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon, Gary Goldman
Photographed by Jost Vacano
Edited by Frank J. Urioste
Music by Jerry Goldsmith

“Deep Impact” (Mimi Leder, USA 1998)

Deep Impact

An interesting mix of personages: a woman that has her daughter around when she’s at work, cosmonauts as parents, an ‘old’ man as cosmonaut, a black president (years before Obama), a teenager boy and girl getting married…  but too scattered along the mainline of the story.

Cast: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave
Directed: Mimi Leder
Written: Michael Tolkin, Bruce Joel Rubin
Music: James Horner
Cinematography: Dietrich Lohmann
Editing: Paul Cichocki, David Rosenbloom