SquidFlicks

Tag: sci-fi

  • Nope

    “I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt
    and make you a spectacle.”

    Nahum 3:6 (NIV)

    Spectacle is the key word here in Jordan Peele’s latest foray into the horror genre. Nope features a real shift in tone from previous films US (2019) and Get Out (2017), moving from the realms of a shadow state and slavery to more subtle finger pointing at greed and the consequences of taking nature for granted.

    I don’t want to spoil anything in this review as this film has the same hallmarks as M. Night Shaymalan’s legendary Signs in that once the antagonist of Nope is revealed, everything makes more sense. The first watch is incredibly powerful to take that revelation in, and you should have the opportunity to experience that first hand.

    What I will talk about is how ingenious the premise of this film is on the thematic level. It’s going to take more watches to really tease it all out, as with Peele’s other two films, but what I have after just one viewing has had the wheels in my head spinning and inspired me to pen this review so quickly after the watch. I just can’t stop thinking about Nope. What has really captivated me is the unraveling of what a “miracle” is. Now in the Christian and Jewish faiths, based on events described in the Bible, miracles are almost always thought of and conveyed as positive and powerful manifestations of supernatural power and might. Moses and the burning bush, Jacob’s Ladder, The Walls of Jericho, Jesus and Lazarus, etc. However, miracles can be negative in nature too. They can be a manifestation of supernatural wrath, a rebalancing of nature – the plagues cast upon Egypt, the razing of Sodom and Gomorrah, the serpent in the garden of Eden, the great flood that prompted Noah’s building of the Ark.

    What those negative miracles are is spectacle, referenced in that powerful verse of Nahum, an old testament book written by the eponymous minor prophet. It is a largely overlooked section that tells the story of the fall of the great Assyrian empire circa 615 BCE, but Peele has used this deep old testament text to great effect in telling a modern horror parable.

    There are three stories that move in different directions – one of the Haywoods, a family of black ranchers and horse trainers known for their legendary work providing animals for Hollywood productions, but with the recent and freak death of patriarch Otis Haywood Sr, son Otis Jr. and Daughter Em are left trying to salvage their family legacy. The second thread involves the traumatic past of child actor and star Ricky “Jupe” Park, who rose to fame in a 90’s kid’s western film and then went on to star in a sitcom that was marred by a traumatic accident involving an on-set chimpanzee cast member. In the modern day, he has capitalized on his child stardom by building a kitschy western theme park on the property adjacent to the Haywood Ranch, and his fixation on burying the past instead of learning from it intertwines the destiny of both his theme park and the Haywood ranch.

    I think there will be a lot of nay-saying and punching down on Nope because it is not subtle in many of it’s themes and mechanisms. I think it was an ambitious story that hit a lot of marks and why I thought Nope was such a departure from previous works.

    • The major commentary on modern Hollywood:
      • disrespect of live animal welfare and trainers
      • industry shift to CGI instead of practical effects
      • pretentious and grizzled art directors
      • wannabe livestream superstars
      • Hollywood hustlers
      • child stars
      • the paparazzi

    In addition to the thorough roasting of Hollywood’s folly, there is an intentional recurrence of visual elements that key on the “spectacle” and focus – framed by spectacular cinematography of day and nighttime vistas. There’s an uneven but unsettling pacing in this film, a quick first and final act with an intentionally slow middle. There’s the actual full reveal of the antagonistic entity after dancing around the issue in the first two acts. As the goals of the Haywoods seem to shift from making money to exacting revenge, it marks an evolution from greed to principle, and their freedom from oppression both seen and unseen. Prophetically and Literally.

    One day I will write about the spoiler-y parts. Take this as a down payment and catch Nope for yourself. I’m seeing way too many hot takes about Peele being the next M. Night. An unfair assessment of both director’s careers. I think Peele’s ambitions are still playing out fine on the screen. Shayamalan’s career and box office swoon was more of a product of poor production influence more so that trying to sell movies that no one can understand or wants to. I think he gets a bad rap, sure there are some stinkers but a lot of his ‘real’ work still holds up.

    Trailer:

  • Star Wars Episode 9 Tabs Star Sci-Fi Art Director

    The visionary Paul Inglis has been selected as the art director for the upcoming finale in the Star Wars Skywalker saga, the as-of-yet unnamed Episode 9. He was the art director for Blade Runner 2049, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, and Prometheus – all gorgeous works in their own right. As art director, Inglis is responsible for setting the creative theme of the movie, a visual framework and asthetic that the rest of the movie (cinematography, costume, set design, directing) will follow to create a cohesive and moving story.

    Based on his incredible portfolio, I can’t think of a better send-up for the Star Wars finale. JJ Abrams will be directing and other details on the film are scarce at this moment – but this will be one of the most highly anticipated movies of all time.

  • Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

    Nobody was going to give this movie a chance because we (America) aren’t familiar with the source material that this Sci-Fi Epic is based on. Valerian is a long-running series of Sci-Fi comics in France from 1967 to 2010. Writer-Director Luc Besson took this cinematic endeavor under his wings because he grew up reading the comics and was a huge fan of the franchise, which is popular in Europe but never quite took hold across the ocean.

    Luc Besson is perhaps best known for giving us The Fifth Element, which also was considered a commercial flop in theaters until it grew legs upon release to home video, and is now widely considered to be a classic. Valerian may be destined to the same fate, although it certainly lacks some of the charms that Besson’s previous hit held. Perhaps it’s just the difference in the late 90s grungy CG vs today’s high-level effects, but I think it comes down more to differences in casting and acting performance.

    The movie is set in a late stage of the comic series – an intentional move after a lot of backstories has already been created to create a compelling action-filled film for audiences unfamiliar with the Valerian saga (think Star Wars dropping us in at Episode 4 instead of going in chronological order). Set in the 28th century, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a duo of special operatives tasked with keeping human affairs and relations intact alongside the multitude of other sentient beings that co-exist across the galaxy. The mission takes them to Alpha, a conglomerate space station that has grown exponentially to serve as a galactic ‘united nations’ over centuries, nicknamed “The City of A Thousand Planets”. A sacred, world-building device has gone missing and must be recovered before it falls into the wrong hands. Throughout the chase to regain possession of the ‘pearl’, the duo stumbles through the underworld of the station, meeting new friends, making new enemies, and revealing deep-seated rifts of bigotry and mistrust between humankind and other species. It turns out that the sides aren’t quite as cut and dry as they were made out to be in the beginning – Valerian and Laureline will have to choose between duty and honor.

    Visually, this movie was incredible. Beautiful vistas, realistic technologies, fantastic alien designs, and concepts. The entire setting had a distinct “lived-in but still futuristic” feel. Luc Besson created a fun, colorful, and frantic future fraught with danger but also full of whimsy that helps drive the story and emphasize the wondrous properties of the ‘Alpha’ station and its many diverse inhabitants.

    Where Valerian fell short was in the acting and storytelling departments respectively. I personally didn’t hate the acting, but Cara Delevingne & Dane DeHaan are relatively new actors and haven’t really found an audience in Hollywood yet. They are paired as Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline, both partners in fighting crime and corruption for the Human Federation as well as love. Rhianna has a gem of a role as the shapeshifting and seductive alien, Bubble. The movie is playful and silly but lacks some teeth when it comes to making a statement. There are a lot of good veins to tap in the story – government corruption, the covering up of genocide and collateral damage of galactic warfare, the need for empathy and understanding, a strained dynamic between serial dater Valerian and Laureline’s desire to be something more than his latest ‘girl’ – but somehow the film just doesn’t seem to cash in on some emotional checks it writes.

    It’s a stunning visual experience, with some holes in the story and some soft acting from the lead roles. I would love to see more from the franchise, but thanks to the lackluster response from audiences, this story is all but over – which is a shame.

    Trailer:

  • The Dark Tower

    One of the largest-scale works in Stephen King’s massive catalog has received a proper, feature length film treatment with real star power – but is it enough to win over franchise fans and create new ones in the process? The results are mixed.

    “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

    Unfortunately, the writers and production staff weren’t paying attention.

    I am a Dark Tower and King fan. I do need to refresh my knowledge of the series as it has been some time since my initial read through of the source material, so I am by no means an expert on the ‘Tower Universe’ but I will say that I know more background than the average theater-goer will have about The Dark Tower.

    On paper, this was going to be a tough one to sell to audiences. I think it was cast phenomenally well, with Matthew McConaughey as the antagonist ‘Man in Black’ and Idris Elba as his rival and only true match, the protagonist ‘Gunslinger’

    The premise of the books pits the Man in Black, an evil sorcerer who is trying to acquire enough ‘shine’ to break through the supernatural barrier that keeps inter-dimensional evil out of the plane of the living. The books underpin the dimensions that connect a lot of King’s other works in a complete universe. The problem with this movie is that it faced a tough choice – adapt from a set of dense, mythology-heavy novels that would almost certainly be an incoherent mess, or attempt to create a new story for the screen based on the events and characters from the books. Unfortunately, the attempt fell flat, and the series probably cannot be recovered.

    In summation, there are seven novels in the Dark Tower saga, and this movie managed to skip a lot of great material. It cut out so much in order to create so many convenient shortcuts that it crippled the potential stories that could be told in future movies. I think this hampers the audience’s ability to appreciate how truly impossible the task that the Gunslinger faces to protect all realms from the evil of the Man in Black and his boss, the Crimson King. The movie focuses and combines elements from the second and last three novels, essentially lifting the climax of the saga out of the source material and re-configuring the plot to make it fit in a linear fashion.

    I really wanted to like this, and there was a lot that I did enjoy – particularly the casting. I think Elba and McConaughey are perfect opposing forces in this fantasy epic. The series is just so difficult to translate from novel to screen, and that’s nobody’s fault. It is a thankless and nearly impossible task for writers, and they get disparaged more often than praised. I don’t want to come off as jaded toward their efforts because of the nature of this story doesn’t lend itself well to brevity, and that usually means it wont translate well to the screen. With the resounding commercial failure of this jumping off point, we aren’t likely to see another attempt with this universe for some time. I’m hoping they find a way to salvage this story, because a lot of King’s works have made incredible moves on to film – IT (both the original TV movie (1990) and 2017’s smash-hit R-rated reboot), The Shining, Cat’s Eye – just to name a few.

    The problem with The Dark Tower is that they tried to reformulate and truncate a compelling and deep source material. While the casting was strong, the effects were excellent and the movie is watchable, you aren’t left on the edge of your seat waiting for more, and for someone who knows how far the Gunslinger’s story goes, it’s disappointing. There’s an excellent article on i09 that describes the changes in greater detail for those who are inclined – spoilers within.

    It would seem that the folks in charge have forgotten the faces of their fathers, to borrow a phrase from Roland, the lone gunslinger. Objectively the movie is passable but as a fan I am not pleased.

    3/5
    Squid Rating
    A missed opportunity but watchable epic

    Trailer:

  • Rogue One

    Now that Disney owns the Star Wars franchise, they are rapidly ramping up the production schedule for new film entries – this should come as no surprise given this is the exact same way the Marvel movie universe has expanded almost exponentially over the past few years. As a Star Wars fan, I am excited with the prospect of more frequent entries in the universe, but that can be a double edged sword. December 2015 was the first big test – Episode 7. The main story line has been progressed and the story arc had a distinct vintage feel to it despite some new faces and places. It truly felt like Episode 4 (A New Hope) was reborn, kick-starting the final trilogy in the saga of the Skywalker clan. Following up on that nostalgic effort (and box office phenom) is Rogue One. This is the first ‘spinoff’ in the ‘new’ Star Wars cinematic universe, a place where more experimentation and tweaking of the traditional format is to be expected.

    Rogue One focuses on the lead up to the events in A New Hope, the incredible story of how the plans for the Empire’s great weapon, the Death Star, fall into Rebel hands. It features the tale of Jyn Urso (Felicity Jones) and her journey to reconcile the fact that her estranged father, Galen, was the reluctant but willing master architect of the Empire’s engine of genocide. The silver lining is that he also intentionally designed it’s greatest vulnerability, leaving a chance for the Rebellion to strike a painful blow to the tyrannical war machine. She was a rebel without cause, a true renegade neutral actor who decided to find personal redemption and purpose when anyone else would have just given up and sulked. (more…)

  • Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

    And so does the box office. This review is spoiler-free!

    So, after much waiting, and uncertainty of what the Disney purchase of the Star Wars franchise would bring, I have to say I am pleased overall. Now granted, I am not a mega fan. I don’t obsess over every detail and I don’t know every aspect of the Expanded Universe (which has been scrapped by Disney in order to retain canon rights with their revitalization of the franchise) but I have played a lot of Star Wars games (KOTOR, Jedi Outcast series, Rogue Leader), I’ve watched and re-watched all the movies, and I’ve even watched the Clone Wars animated series that was on Cartoon Network. That means I have some vested interest in Star Wars, and I do have some walking around knowledge above the average movie goer.

    (more…)

  • First Look – Alien: Covenant

    I’m super excited! We have a lot to look forward to from Ridley Scott in 2017 – A sequel to Blade Runner, and the latest entry in the Alien saga, Alien Covenant. I hope you’ve prepared yourselves for the latest Weyland-Yutani Corporation disaster!

  • Full Moon Friday: “Full Moon Fright Night” Retrospective

    FRIGHTNIGHT-LOGO

    Zacherley, Elvira, Svengoolie, Joe Bob Briggs, MST3K. These are only a few of the dozens of horror hosts that have graced our TV screens over the past 50 years. The concept of the horror host isn’t complex, nor is it one that requires you to reinvent the wheel. (more…)

  • Full Moon Friday: “Trancers” Blu-Ray Review

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    The early 1980s were filled with fantastic futuristic sci-fi films.  Terminator & Blade Runner set the tone for many many films but Empire Pictures took the best of both worlds and combined them in the 1984 release of “Trancers.”  To celebrate the 30th anniversary of this sci-fi cult classic, Full Moon released the definitive edition of “Trancers” on Blu-Ray.  (more…)

  • 2014: A Sci-Fi Odyssey?

    HAL_9000It’s that time of the year when all the major movie studios begin pushing out teasers and trailers that will compete for the coveted role of summer blockbuster. The well executed summer film becomes legendary, a fixture in pop culture, and is of course extremely profitable. While action films particularly reign supreme as the classic summer blockbuster, there should be some stiff competition for moviegoers dollars in 2014 and beyond. So far, Warner Bros. has released trailers for three potentially powerful hits: A re-imagining of Godzilla, yet another Tom Cruise future-film (Edge of Tomorrow), and a comic adaptation (Jupiter Rising). All three have star potential, but there are some other gems lurking on the horizon for 2014.

    I am particularly excited about Interstellar. If you know me, I am also pretty pumped about Mad Max: Fury Road, which is slated to finally be done in 2015. A detailed list of trailers lies below! (more…)