weekend watchlist: when the ghosts won’t shut up
Plus sci-fi noir, sun-fueled madness, and more. (First published August 12th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Gattaca
Maze Runner: The Death Cure movie review: cute boys at the end of the world
The Auto-Tuned boy-band version of the apocalypse. You will forgive that every plot point that isn’t a cliché is in fact a plot hole because the hero is so dreamy and impossibly perfect, right?
Good Kill movie review: American droner
There are important issues running through this, but the film forgets to be sufficiently engaging in the course of being Significant.
Stephenie Meyer has found a whole new way for teen girls to be conflicted about sex (The Host review)
Did Neo come to see that the Agents had the right way of things? Did Luke eventually realize that the Empire was a stabilizing force in the galaxy? But poor Melanie is suffering from the ultimate case of Stockholm Syndrome.
In Time (review)
I’m starting to worry that Andrew Niccol has already said, with Gattaca and The Truman Show, all he has to say.
In Time (trailer)
I’ve been waiting a long time for another Andrew Niccol movie that felt like Gattaca or The Truman Show…
January 8: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, except you’re way too scared to actually ask out the girl you like. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you see Youth … more…
Lord of War movie review: sympathy for the devil?
Funny? Sure, *Lord of War* is funny. Funny like how you’re not sure whether that headline is from Reuters or The Onion. Funny like how Jon Stewart has to insist that what he’s about to tell you really happened and is not the invention of his team of political wagsters. Satirical? Sure, *Lord of War* is satirical. Satirical like the front page of *The New York Times* is satirical. Satirical like how, at the end of Andrew Niccol’s black comedy about a relatively small-time freelance arms dealer, he tells us that the biggest arms dealers in the world are the nations that are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The Island (review)
Welcome to *THX 11-Michael Bay*! It’s not a science fiction movie, but an incredible simulation!
Gattaca movie review: and you thought political correctness was annoying
If Shakespeare was alive today and writing science fiction, he might come up with something like the distopian GATTACA. GATTACA is real SF, not to be confused with the likes of Armageddon — GATTACA uses the conceits of science fiction not as an excuse for some really cool explosions but to explore what it means to be human.
