Upgrade is the offspring of a lot of other movies. It’s primarily a cross between Death Wish and Robocop, but there are elements (either in terms of plot or aesthetics) of Blade Runner, 2001 and Ex Machina. With those kinds of influences, its also a movie that I wanted to like more than I […]
The original Alien is one of the greatest horror films ever made. Aliens is one of the best sequels ever made. Then they made more movies that ranged from awful to merely forgettable. Alien: Covenant falls into the merely forgettable category. It is not an awful movie. But considering that the idea of Ridley […]
The original Blade Runner is one of the greatest science fiction films ever made. It is a brilliant blend of sci-fi and noir with a style that has been copied countless times since the film was released in 1982. Creating a sequel to it is a monumental task and, frankly, I didn’t have high […]
Yes, this will be spoiler-free. I generally avoid reading reviews of a film before I have seen it myself and written my own review. The most that I will do, when I’m particularly curious, is scroll through the blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes when I’m having my pre-movie burger and beer. But, this being Star […]
The Dark Tower is Stephen King’s magnum opus, an eight-volume sprawling epic that spans thousands of pages, connects in some way with most of his other novels and makes The Lord of the Rings look like a short story. It is also a very complex story that crosses into multiple worlds, timelines and perspectives […]
So these things are still being made. The sixth film in the series adapting the classic video game franchise, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter has us again following our hero Alice (who isn’t in the games) as she returns to the Hive (which isn’t in the games) for a final battle with Dr. Isaacs […]
Life sucks. Now that I’ve gotten that obvious line out of the way, let’s get something else out of the way: Life is an Alien ripoff. A damn blatant one too. Now, I’m not particularly averse to ripoffs. I love slasher movies and they are all ripoffs of Black Christmas. I rented many […]
Transformers: The Last Knight is a giant middle finger to filmmaking and the whole of human civilization. I have never walked out of a movie, but this joins a very short list of films that made me seriously consider doing so. Not everyone in my theater made it to the end. We lost some […]
I was looking forward to Valerian. Not because I found it particularly appealing, but just because it is the unicorn of the modern film industry: a big-budget original movie. Yeah, it’s based on some old French comics, but that’s close enough to original in a year when I’ve seen the 8th Fast & Furious, […]
This being the 9th Planet of the Apes film, I’m continually amazed by the mileage that 20th Century Fox has squeezed out of this concept. However, this is a rare instance when I prefer the reboot series over the original series. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is my favorite of the franchise […]