Tag: sci-fi

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Z for Zachariah (2015)

I find it fascinating when I find such random movies that I’ve never heard of and there are actual A-list lead actors in it. Although it’s a pretty narrowly scoped setting, pretty much like a chamber drama but in an open world setting, so they didn’t have to spend on a whole lot more.

In any case, this is an absolutely fine little film. It has a post-apocalyptic backdrop but it’s a super simple love triangle flick, so any sci-fi setting is just flavor that doesn’t really have an impact on what happens. And as simple as it is, it gave me just enough ambiguity to look up thread on Reddit and find that there are different views on how the whole thing ends even. I like these kind of tightly focused movies that give a lot more than what they seem to offer.

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Dark Star (1974)

This movie was hilarious, I loved it. It’s old and shitty, well, it’s a university project that made it into a flick, but every second is just gold. All of its ideas and jokes are ones that I want to tell people about while remembering the scenes.

The more I learned about the background of this, the more it solidified for me that this is a movie history gem: first film by Carpenter (not a horror but a comedy), first writing by Dan O’Bannon (who then turned it into a serious tone and wrote Alien).

It is also a perfect film club flick: there’s a lot to talk about and must be a blast to watch with an interested crowd or a group of friends.

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Dredd (2012)

This was a huge surprise. I had it on my watchlist for a long time as a catch-up thing, like something I knew I should not miss, but had no actual expectations. I assumed it to be on the level of the Robocop remake (not great).

Now that I finally watched it, I’m blown away. Great directing, interesting visual style, actually good actors doing actually good acting, good music, absolutely no “but why did they do that” moments, and an absolutely top-notch cyberpunk depiction.

It felt like a DLC for the Cyberpunk 2077 game when you’re playing a cop and see the megacity and the run-down future from their point of view. I can actually see how this movie made it to the inspiration list of the game’s artists. (Okay, now I googled this, and yeah, it’s obviously there.)

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Alien: Romulus (2024)

There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.

What’s going for it:

  • I really appreciated ground time, showcasing what a mining colony looks like, streets, a slice of society, struggles outside of the scope of a single mission.
  • We got glimpse of a new part of alien life: we’ve never before seen them between bursting out as an alien baby and reappearing as a big black monster, and now we saw that there’s an in-between cocoon phase.
  • The whole movie was beautifully shot: colors, atmosphere, consistency of the retro-futuristic setting. As for props, the scenes were built amazingly well, and the aliens looked bad-ass.
  • Acting was fairly good, and the writing had no painful “why would you do that?!” moments.

What felt hmm:

  • The whole cast felt very young, had a bit of a Children of the Corn vibe to it. Although I could think that miners die young, working class has children early, so this is just what this society’s reality looks like.
  • Sometimes I felt that the retro-futuristic technology to be kinda gimmicky. Like I’d see today’s youngsters playing with old props, well, which is the case. Maybe it’s just a hiccup of my suspension of disbelief.
  • The alien-human hybrid was creepy but rather in an odd-weirdo than a frightening way. I liked the Newborn version better in Resurrection.
  • CGI recreation of Ian Holm looked underproduced.
  • There were a lot of plot vehicles that felt exactly like plot vehicles and not embedded well enough so that I don’t see behind the scenes. For example, “you have 36 hours to pull it off”, so there’s a time pressure; “now you have rather 20 minutes”, so the time pressure is elevated; “there’s no air in there”, so you have some limiting factor to overcome; “the gravity switches on and off every X minutes”, so we can use this later as a physical stunt; etc. I know elements like this are part of a story as it is, but still, I can hear the conversation in the brainstorming session how these ideas came about and what plot needs they answered. It’s just too on the nose, like an exercise at a creative writing class.
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Solaris (2002)

I’ve been planning to watch this for a long-long time, finally did, and it was exactly everything I expected and wanted it to be. Beautiful and atmospheric sci-fi chamber drama with a very specific and narrow focus, which it executed and delivered brilliantly. Acting, music, direction, cinematography were all spot-on.

I read the book last year and I know exactly how much of that is in here and what the movie misses, and I have no problem with that. I don’t think this movie misses the science part of the fiction for the sake of delivering a space love drama. I think all the science aspect is in there but portrayed differently, focusing on the protagonist’s journey. The same is in the book too, but with a different focus, so this part is not spelled out that much. I loved both takes on the story: the book is great and fascinating, and the movie is captivating and beautiful.

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Stunning in terms of visuals and theme. A few things that I feel worthy to highlight:

  • The character, set and costume designs are remarkable.
  • The world behind the movie is something that I am totally blown away by. I want to know so much more than I had the chance to catch in the flick.
  • Charlize Theron, obviously. Note: if you like to see her act grim and dark don’t miss out on Snow White and the Huntsman, which may be a much better movie than you might expect.
  • The voices are acted and added in a sterile and distanced manner, which produces an absolutely unique atmosphere. Like the conversations were not happening in place but layered over the story like some kind of narration.
  • The music was great, but in a few occasions the pathos was over the top and out of context. Still it’s something great to listen to even on its own right.
  • And the guy with the guitar! OMG. Every single appearance made me grin like an idiot.

I gathered quite a few poster art (official and fan-made) below.

Continue reading “Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)”
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Ex Machina (2015)

Beautiful piece of art of a movie of science fiction. On the trail of the AI-lead chamber drama atmosphere of the Moon and as stunning as the well-crafted shorts that usually don’t come through any publishing house but are driven by the motivation of one exceptionally talented vfx artist. I have a true hard time believing that this could make it as a normal budget featured film.

So much not said but played out in this film and it is such a relief and reassurance that you just don’t have to say everything out loud to get. Also a lot room for interpretations or I could rather say thoughts transferred for progressing.

Some more poster versions come below.

Continue reading “Ex Machina (2015)”
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Zero Theorem (2013)

Ez az új Gilliam-film megosztó egy darab. Mármint nem a közönségre gondolok (bár valószínűleg ilyen értelemben is az), hanem hogy engem is megoszt saját magamon belül. Első nézés után nem tudok neki többet adni 6/10-nél, mert nem sikerült igazán megfejtenem, hogy milyen mélyebb tartalommal bír. Persze ott van az a lehetőség is, hogy nem bír semmilyen mélyebb tartalommal, de akkor marad is ezen az értékelésen.

Ami kifejezetten jó benne, az a teljesen szürreális sci-fi atmoszféra, a három főbb szereplő játéka (Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges), Matt Damon fehér hajjal és a Creep ahogyan Karen Souza énekli. Ami kifejezetten nem jó, az a mondanivaló súlytalansága (vagy túl egyszerű, vagy túl bonyolult), és hogy Tilda Swinton pontosan ugyanazt a karaktert játsza el, amit a Snowpiercerben egyszer már eljátszott.