Who could have guessed that a Swedish science fiction film would turn out as bleak and troubled as every other genre of Swedish cinema? Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja’s 2018 film Aniara is based, on all things, on a 1956 … Continue reading REVIEW: Aniara (2018)
Voice-overs hardly ever work. They crop up in films from time to time: usually with the protagonist narrating events and providing backstory. They were particularly popular in the first few decades of talking pictures, and then gradually fell out of … Continue reading REVIEW: Ad Astra (2019)
There is now a decades-long relationship between Hollywood and videogames. It has been clear since the early 1990s that the production design, settings, and characters of the most popular videogames have the potential to be transformed into commercial hits. In … Continue reading REVIEW: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
In 1979, Paramount Pictures brought back the cult TV series Star Trek in the form of a large-scale feature film. The film under-performed against the studio’s expectations, and a sequel – Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – was only put into production … Continue reading REVIEW: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
I want to tell you about In the Dust of the Stars, known in its original German as Im Staub der Sterne. It is a relatively obscure science fiction film produced in 1976. The film is many things. It is odd. It … Continue reading “What kind of help do you need?” | In the Dust of the Stars (1976)
2020 has been one hell of a year, with the world facing an ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It seems either fitting, then – or perhaps deeply inappropriate – to revisit Robert Wise’s 1971 science fiction thriller The Andromeda Strain. Based on … Continue reading REVIEW: The Andromeda Strain (1971)
This is one of the more unusual feature film projects that I have seen. In the mid-1980s the independent movie studio New World Pictures, run by the legendary low budget film producer Roger Corman, acquired the American rights to the … Continue reading REVIEW: In the Aftermath (1988)
A mysterious signal leads two exploratory space vehicles to the fog-covered planet of Aura. While attempting to land one ship crashes with the loss of all hands, while the crew of the other start attacking one another while under some … Continue reading REVIEW: Planet of the Vampires (1965)
Saul Bass is a legend of American cinema. As a designer of opening title sequences and promotional posters he worked with some of the very best filmmakers Hollywood ever had: Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Robert … Continue reading REVIEW: Phase IV (1974)
‘When the original Disney Black Hole movie came out,’ said astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, ‘I was in graduate school. I was so disappointed in that film. Black holes were my favourite subject coming out of the Seventies. The movie was … Continue reading “More light…” | The Black Hole (1979)
