Recent theatrical viewing has included some very dark comedies and fantasies, but the real horrors were supplied by the faceless corporate types who have transformed movie going into an unpleasant ordeal.
Recent theatrical viewing
Tag: Science Fiction
Recent viewing: March-April 2018, Part Two
More eclectic recent viewing, from 1970s detective noir to an Italian anthology from the ’60s to Japanese horror and classic ’50s sci-fi.
Miscellaneous viewing – March 2018
Recent viewing includes a range of genre movies, from bloated big-budget international productions to scrappy low-budget independents, from large-scale fantasies to lo-fi science fiction, from horror remakes and sequels … all available on Blu-ray.
Ishiro Honda: Father of Godzilla … and more
A recent biography of Godzilla-director Ishiro Honda reveals far more facets than his image as a creator of giant monster rampages.
Year End 2017
Some comments about the past year’s DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Speed reviewing: 50 Capsule Comments
Very brief comments on several dozen disks viewed over the past few months.
You can’t go home again
Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 attempts to be a respectful follow-up to Ridley Scott’s ground-breaking original, but it ends up long, drab and ultimately unmemorable.
A mixed bag from Screen Archives
The discovery of a previously unknown documentary, Robert Kaylor’s Derby (1971), plus a Blu-ray edition of Stephanie Rothman’s Terminal Island (1973), a rough-and-ready exploitation B-movie, are of much greater interest than Jack Cardiff’s Holiday in Spain (1960), a bloated mainstream Cinerama showcase which dresses its travelogue in a tissue-thin “mystery” plot.
Pulp Epics
Big budgets don’t necessarily guarantee success in genre filmmaking; in fact, the bigger the budget the more likely a genre movie will be met with derision which is often undeserved.
Summer viewing: science fiction
Technical accuracy is not necessarily what makes science fiction satisfying; more important is storytelling, as illustrated by two older, and one recent, movies released on Blu-ray: Byron Haskin’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016)..
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