Kin (2018) - Trailer

This might be interesting. Saw a trailer and left intrigued.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

I wanted to like this movie.  I’m all for homage sequels that elevate the original art! I liked the first Blade Runner when I watched it. All the technical skill and high-quality effects in the world couldn’t make up for a weak and ponderous plot. Like many, I’m of the school of thought that Science Fiction comments on the present—often with smarter commentary than books set in the present because of the different setting. I say all this because I feel the need to prove myself as a SciFi nerd.

Ryan Gosling plays K, a new kind of Blade Runner who knows he is a replicant but kills old model replicants because he follows orders. While on a case, K discovers a replicant that dies in childbirth—which would destroy the world’s logic justifying slavery. K is told to destroy all the evidence, but while on his journey he takes on his own questions of identity and memory. That’s all a perfectly fine premise and the cinematography is truly beautiful. Denis Villeneuve was true to the vision of the world and didn’t try to do a revisionist history of a past future. 

But despite the huge budget and great acting,  Blade Runner 2049 is the perfect example of why we need diversity in filmmaking. The sexism in this movie was so bad that about halfway through I exclaimed, “I fucking hate men.” And it’s not like the first one was a paragon of feminist ideas..... 

K has a holographic girlfriend named Joi. Much like replicants are servants to humans, Joi is a servant to K. Except, she changes her clothes to be sexy, pretends to be a 50′s housewife, and literally “says what you want to hear.” Unlike replicants in the original and this movie, she has no interior life that could be anything other than people pleasing. 

This character is pretty unforgivable however you spin it, but it’s not like there was any other complex female character to make you think someone in this movie saw women as people. There was the prostitute replicant who was comforting; there was the replicant who just killed people. Lutenient Joshi was less extremely bad, but she wasn’t multifaceted either, her only quality was that she trusted K. There are sexist ads everywhere in the world-- gigantic naked women projections; not naked women still posing in designs meant to be alluring for random products (or sex), the world is just dripping in misogyny everywhere you look. 

I’m not done. 

Replicant mogul Niander Wallace (Jared Letto) wants to create replicants that can reproduce and just casually makes a female presenting replicant, gropes her genitals while she’s still naked in womb-like fluid, decides she’s not fertile and stabs her to death. That’s all. It doesn’t really expand his character, or plot, he just assaulted and killed her because he could. 

I’ve mentioned a lot about birth and wombs, and that’s because, in this version, it couldn’t be more clear that’s what questions of morality are based on. A random woman replicant explains towards the end of the movie, “wait, if we can give birth then maybe we ARE people.” 

THERE HAVE NOT OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN’S ACTIVISM TO SUDDENLY HAVE THE EPIPHANY OF A FUTURISTIC WOLD THAT GIVING BIRTH IS HOW WE’RE GOING TO DEFINE PERSONHOOD BECAUSE OF THE VALUE OF THE SPAWN. 

Not only is this idea less nuanced than the original’s moral dilemma regarding killing, guilt, empathy, and choice through the existence of memories, it’s just so blatantly inconsiderate it pulled me out of a well-crafted movie like little else before it. 

This movie also briefly and fleetingly tries to address the issue of racial prejudice. We hear “skin-job” thrown around a couple times and negative stereotypes about replicants. It was almost an interesting racial allegory. Except this ambiguous “Asian” land was labeled as LA, and had no Asians, but spoke and un-identified Asian language in addition to Engish. If this definitively a “post-racial society” that had been made all white because of a mass ethnic cleansing during the data purge or something, the obsession with tagging replicants as other would have been a very interesting statement on white fragility. But we didn’t get that. Instead, we get a loose floating reference to discrimination presumably because it seems topical when the filmmakers can’t see their own discrimination in casting a very large all-white cast. 

This movie is also very long. I’m all for contemplative, but two hours and forty-three minutes is a long time for a movie to be contemplative when so much of the plot rests on convenient discoveries and has a weak moral question overall. I like taking the time to world-build and sit with the majesty of a previously un-depicted world aesthetic. I even like watching people make decisions more than I enjoy explosions. But it was too long, and the length was made more noticeable by a weak third act, which sucks because Harrison Ford did a good job reprising his role! 

There was much that was good in this movie, and all I can say is what a waste of acting talent, and film craft talent. I think Denis Villeneuve is a talented director. I have respected everything he’s worked on up until now.  

If this is the future of science fiction I have to put up with. Burn it all down (but take a cool radioactive pic like Las Vegas in act III).

Some casting news. 

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

I have not necessarily been a fan of the most recent reboots of the Star Trek film series. Here’s my deal: I feel like the attempts to make the series more popular has resulted in a lot of “pew-pew” space fights. This was especially true in the first two reboot films that I would refer to friends derisively as “2 Fast 2 Trek” because they really didn’t look anything like the show I loved growing up.

But maybe that’s okay.

In Star Trek Beyond, it was supposed to be a reboot back to the Trek that fans loved and closer to the core of what the philosophy of the entire series is about - Utopian belief in the diversity and collective strength of a group triumphing over evil. 

It’s all a little hokey in the world with diverse threats, porous borders and a world full of chaos politically. And yet, Star Trek Beyond did a good job in my mind of getting us back to its roots.

The story goes like this: An alien named Krall threatens all of Starfleet, as he seeks a bioweapon that would destroy planets, consuming them to provide its host with extended life. There are plot twists throughout, but it felt as episodic and complete as you’d expect a Star Trek movie to be.

How’d I walk away feeling? Pretty good. As usual, the film was well acted and I believe do a great job of carrying on the baton of the previous crews that have inhabited the USS Enterprise. I think what separate Star Trek from other sci-fi in that way -- at least in the mainstream -- is this link to the past that always manages to get brought up. Star Trek isn’t afraid to bring old characters back, dredge up old stories and rather than forget that things happened, we’re always trying to fill in the blanks of timelines while moving forward all the same.

Over 50 years after the show first aired, to see that it has life in big budget films with a crew that wear the uniforms well, makes me surprised but happy. Not for nostalgia, but for what the future of the series could be.

Star Trek Beyond is a visually appealing, entertaining romp through deep space. If you’re a fan of the genre or the series, it’s entirely worth your time.

-Ron

New Star Trek TV teaser

Is Ron the only Trekkie among us?

The best Star Trek you’re not following is @holodexmachina. Like, do it now. Well-thought retort and surely the most critically feminist critique of Star Trek characters ever. 

Here’s a tie-in for you. 

The Martian (2015) - Trailer

This is the first book adaptation movie I’ve been waiting for in a while. I read too much non-fiction, but flew through this audiobook in a few days in the winter. 

Anyone else here read the book?

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Dude, I don't really know what you want me to say about this that hasn't already been said already. Not sure how to avoid spoilers. Sorry in advance.

You already know the premise - Jupiter Jones is the 1/4th British 3/4th Russian illegal immigrant to the US daughter of a family who clean for a living. Umm...apparently she always looks really great at dinner despite cleaning all day and one day, one of her clients gets visited by aliens, she snaps a photo of it and somehow manages not to post it to Facebook or tweet it.

Oh and then she goes to sell her eggs because her cousin told her to, because he wants to buy a TV and a new XBox and convinces her to give him more of the money than she'll make despite the fact that he's not actually doing anything. She shows up to sell her eggs and turns out, these aliens were really after her and have come to take a sample of her DNA to find out if she's really a clone of the matron of an intergalatic drug ring that harvest humans so people around the galaxy can live forever, thanks to superior technology developed tens of thousands of years ago.

Also these people killed the dinosaurs indirectly.

So yeah, I dunno. Channing Tatum plays a genetically modified space human who has wolf DNA and somehow he falls in love with cleaning lady turned true owner of Earth. I'd call it Space Cinderella except that's not really what it is. It's so much more than that.

I finally went to see it mostly because of timing and the fact that I didn't have a lot else going on tonight. I'm a lover of sci-fi the way some people love other film genres and so, if there's space involved and any kind of politics at all, then I'm probably going to be able to sit through it. This had all of that and more. I'd say that Jupiter Ascending has cult classic fingerprints all over it -- in fact, it seems clear that's what they were after -- but there's not enough here to make you want to pile all your friends up and make them watch. 

Not enough laughs. This story can't tell whether it wants to be in on the joke or not. At times it is, in the same way that Guardians of the Galaxy was for the entire movie. (Which frankly, made it hard for me to take it seriously) But Jupiter Ascending wants to be The Fifth Element, Total Recall and Blade Runner melded together in a 21st century sheen. In that sense, it almost does that.

Props to the Wachowskis for creating an original story, but they don't get full points for creating a messy slapstick science fiction movie that doesn't really take its audience seriously. I mean, what are we supposed to do with all of this stuff? Maybe that's the point? We're supposed to watch and just make up our own minds about all of it?

The worst part is really the ending. I mean, after ALL that she went through to retain her rightful inheritance of Earth, she ends up returning home to be with her family and continues cleaning things. She and the bounty hunter that was sent to protect her and bring her back to space where her space heirs -- oh, you didn't know, she's actually the clone of their mother -- were all fighting to have her on their side or killed or well....we're not even sure.

So in all, Jupiter Ascending as bad as everyone is making it out to be. It's somehow better and worse than that all at once. There were times that I wanted to watch it and be like "ok, I get it now." Or where I thought, "there's something here that you could use," and even parts (the whole bureaucracy of getting her title to the throne) where I literally guffawed and appreciated what they were trying to do.

But to have to sit through all of the really awful stuff for a few morsels of goodness wasn't ultimately worth it. I don't regret seeing it in the movies -- it'd have been worse at home where I could pause and really hate it -- but I'm just disappointed they didn't just make one decent movies rather than try to crap three or four bad movies into one subpar film.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Trailer

Snowpiercer (2013)

All of the hoopla about Snowpiercer, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller which features Chris Evans made me want to see it.  The synopsis is the world freezes over thanks to a bunch of countries releasing a gas into the atmosphere that freezes the planet and kills everyone on it. 

Except for the people on a train line built by a wealthy visionary who saw all of this coming. Akin to class systems, the train has been separated into castes based on the original ticket people purchased, with the folks in the back being refugees who were picked up. In the front? The wealthy benefactor. 

The whole thing obviously requires a suspension of disbelief to not ask questions about the different things going on. If you can do that, what you see on the screen recollects the spirit of V for Vendetta mixed with 1984, but the whole thing fits in the pantheon of political dystopian cinema along with other films like Code 46, Gattaca, Serenity and the Canadian television show Continuum.

If you like the intersection of politics with your sci-fi, Snowpiercer will delight you despite its darkness. 

Elysium (2013)

While some might think that we're past the whole 99% movie drama, Neill Blomkamp's latest offering is a similar-type of fare of haves vs. have-nots that we saw in District 9 only with different players and a bit different storyline.

Matt Damon plays a reformed criminal who gets injured on the job. In this new dystopian future, you're giving some pills and sent home to die. Seems cruel, but in this world, the haves live off earth on a paradise -- that's unarmed -- and the rest live on Earth to basically figure out how to survive on scraps.

I love science fiction, so I'm always trying to figure out things other people don't care about like how stuff gets done on Earth and how the best on Earth must live if they're not able to make it to Elysium. But we don't explore any of that here.

Instead, we just see the gilded luxury class and the rest on Earth are basically ferreted through poverty.

Damon takes on a savior like stance early in the movie and realize he's probably going to be special. The CGI overload was done okay and if you're not a huge sci-fi nerd who appreciates campy, but relatively solid action then you'll find Elysium to your liking. Most directors would've massacred this into a gore-fest and while there's far too much gratuitous blood, I presume to appeal to a teenage demographic, I thought the overall story was done okay and redeemed itself well enough to merit seeing in the theater. 

Continuum (Season 2 Finale) Season 2, Episode 13

Contiuum got really dark, really fast in this last episode of Season 2. You have to give the writers credit for taking the story in really deep places, with all of the existential storylines that weave, wind and wander through a variety of complex issues. Not many people watch this show, but if you like police procedurals with a bit of time travel and sci-fi on the side, you'll enjoy Continuum a lot. 

Here's a review from our TV correspondent Vanessa

All season nearly every episode opens up during Kiera's time in 2077 and tonight's season finale is no different.