The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Sci-Fi
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There’s something real strange about Trancers. It’s not the film’s obvious references to early 1980s sci-fi successes, Blade Runner and The Terminator (cop travels back in time to fight zombie bad guys who look like regular people). It’s certainly not the direction–while Trancers is incredibly low budget, $400,000 still was a few bucks in 1985,…
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I rented Conquest of Space because–according to IMDb, Kubrick credited it as a 2001 influence. There are a handful of visual elements I noticed, one as obvious as the rotating space station, one I might be making up (repairing of the antenna tower). Besides looking for these visuals, there’s not much else to engage with.…
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Now, who exactly thought a film entitled Alien vs. Predator could be good? I mean… just from the title, it’s obvious there’s a fairly low potential for the film. As such, Alien vs. Predator is fine. It’s wholly watchable. It’s stupid and there are some enormous plot holes–not just in the established Alien or Predator…
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I was trying, while watching Phase IV, to think of some way to put a positive spin on the film. The film stars Michael Murphy–and I’m a big Michael Murphy fan–so I was hoping for some Murphy-goodness. He’s fine and has a couple good moments, but there’s really nothing he could do to combat the…
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For a while–during the film–A Scanner Darkly is a great film. It sets itself up as a significant examination of man’s identity and its relation to the people around him. It’s based on Philip K. Dick and that theme is one Dick used at least one other time (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). When…
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I actually had some hopes for the Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the last film in the series, mostly because J. Lee Thompson did such a good job directing the previous entry. Except for not knowing when he’s getting boring, it doesn’t seem like the same J. Lee Thompson directed both films, however.…
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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is about a bunch of ape slaves overpowering their human masters. Any film with a thirty second recap of the previous sequel by Ricardo Montalban has to be at least amusing, but Conquest is actually better than amusing (until the actual revolt begins). Since the film didn’t have…
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I occasionally–or often, depending on the films I’m going through–start a post saying how much I was dreading the film and how well it turned out. Usually, these are films I used to love and haven’t seen in ten years and was worried about them. I wasn’t dreading Escape from the Planet of the Apes,…
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On rare occasion, I watch (and on even rarer occasion, finish watching) an utter dreg of a film. A film so bad I misuse the word dregs, which apparently–since it refers to a liquid form–must be used as a plural. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is just such a film. Immediately, with its use…
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Planet of the Apes is, I’m fairly sure, the first film I’ve ever watched and known the director started in television. Franklin J. Schaffner has a lot of dynamic shots–helicopter shots, three dimensional motion and camera movement (which is rarer than one would think)–but none of them go together. It’s like watching a different movie…
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My expectations for Superman Returns were incredibly high (especially since everything Bryan Singer’s done since The Usual Suspects with the exception of the “House” pilot has been dreck). Three stars. I don’t bother putting star ratings on The Stop Button, since whenever I see them in reviews, I look at them and then at not…
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I’m not sure the British are really suited for giant monster movies. No offense to the Brits, but watching a bunch of folks stand around and keep the stiff upper lip while radioactive monsters from the deep attack London isn’t too much fun. Behemoth might be unique in the giant monster genre in that respect–it’s…
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For well over an hour of Nineteen Eighty-Four, nothing much happens. John Hurt edits articles, writes in his journal, does his exercises, talks to people, meets a girl… I suppose the romance should have accelerated Nineteen Eighty-Four’s pace or gotten it moving, but it really didn’t. Instead, the film just continued on its gradual pace.…
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Dark Star is probably John Carpenter’s second finest film (after The Thing). It’s the John Carpenter film I’ve always been saying he should make–a funny one. I have seen Dark Star before, probably nine years ago, back when it was somewhat rare (it got picked up, a year after I saw it, by a video…
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Fairly awful sci-fi adventure picture about a scientist and his sidekicks discovering Atlantis; along the way there are sea monsters and other such things–if you’ve ever wanted to see John Ratzenberger fight a giant octopus, here’s you go. The Atlantians are fascists so the explorers aren’t just trying to save themselves, they’re trying to save…
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Apparently, all Kevin Connor needs–besides a decently concocted screenplay–is location shooting and a good score. The People That Time Forgot–around the halfway point–became a movie I found myself enjoying too much. I got self-conscious about it, questioning its quality even more than usual, just because it seemed so good. It’s an adventure film, one told…
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Inoffensively bad–but still real bad–adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s novel about Victorian-era scientists Doug McClure and Peter Cushing (both are terrible but Cushing is much worse) drilling into the Earth and finding it hollow. Hollow earth has cavemen, dinosaur monsters, and scantily clad Caroline Munro. Will McClure stop being a disaffected blue blood and become…
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Okay Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation about a WWI German submarine–but one taken over by Allied sailors, including American Doug McClure–gets lost at sea and finds its way to a lost eighth continent, where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The dinosaur effects aren’t great but they’re not distracting and they work in favor of the story.…
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Ninety-six minutes of dumb fun involving an sea monster terrorizing an underwater mining operation. Great cast of recognizable eighties supporting players like Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern, and Meg Foster. Peter Weller’s a good lead, Amanda Pays is good as his love interest; really good performance from Crenna too. Despite the prestigious screenwriters (David…
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Bland but pretty sci-fi adventure epic about the aliens who built the pyramids coming back with a vengeance and only Egyptologist James Spader and Special Forces G.I. Joe Kurt Russell being able to save the planet. Spader’s fine, Russell’s iffy but has his moments; the script–by director Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin–is crap but not…
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Two hours of glorious, unrelenting sci-fi adventure as desert planet orphan Mark Hamill discovers he’s really a space wizard and teams up with interstellar smuggler Harrison Ford and old man space wizard Alec Guinness to save princess Carrie Fisher from the evil Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones). Revolutionary special effects, an…
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Well-made but problematically scripted sequel has William Shatner and the gang gallivanting across the galaxy to try to resurrect a fallen comrade. Along the way, the Klingons (led by an enthusiastic but underwhelming Christopher Lloyd) go after Shatner’s kid (Merritt Butrick, back from II) and Robin Curtis (taking over from II’s Kirstie Alley). It’s a…
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Layered, complex TREK outing has William Shatner and company dealing with aging in the 23rd century, but also with Ricardo Montalban returning (from the original show) and going after the good guys. Beautifully produced, with fantastic direction, and a gorgeous James Horner score. Excellent acting from pretty much everyone. DVD, Blu-ray.Continue reading →
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Outstanding sci-fi set in nearish future when eugenics is the norm. Uma Thurman and Jude Law are perfectly bred humans, Ethan Hawke’s a genetically inferior love child. Thanks to tragedy, Hawke’s able to pose as Law, but then his true (genetic) self becomes a murder suspect. Great direction, awesome production design (by Jan Roelfs) and…
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I read about the Superman II restored international cut (RIC)–a fan effort to compile all the extra Superman II footage from various television prints, mostly from foreign markets–in Entertainment Weekly. It said to head over to Superman Cinema to get a free copy, just so long as you provide free copies. By that time, however,…
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So, I guess David Fincher wasn’t that upset about the “Assembly Cut” Fox did of Alien³ for their moronically-titled “Alien Quadrilogy” DVD set a few years ago, because he left his name on it. Fincher’s always badmouthing Alien³ but hasn’t got the balls needed to Alan Smithee a film (like Michael Mann has). Now, was…
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