Ad Astra (2019)

17 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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(For Day 17 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to write a poem about the moon, which is galling since I had a movie that was all about the moon just TWO DAYS AGO! So I went with a different movie partially set on the moon, because of course I had another in reserve.)

Space is a nothing, a vacuum complete,
With planetoid motes spinning round in the void.
Yet we on our mote have a course we repeat:
To find and expand, be diffused or destroyed.

But distances mock us, too deadly and vast
For Earth to consider a visit or leap.
We have but one friend in our orbital caste,
A lunar companion whose slope is less steep.

The moon in its course is our first rung to climb,
The first stepping stone, Tenerife to our Spain,
From which human hordes, in a matter of time,
Can strike at the void with one win to their name.
____________________________________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Ad Astra (Latin for To the Stars) is the kind of movie I wanted to like, just as I wanted to enjoy First Man, but once again a plodding pace and stoic protagonist upend what could have been so much better. In a future where mankind has settled on the moon and Mars and extended a mission as far as Neptune, Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is an astronaut famed for controlling his emotions under pressure; he is told that his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who disappeared on that Neptune mission, may be alive and perhaps is responsible for some dangerous energy surges threatening Earth. That setup has enormous potential, but Roy has basically buried those emotions so deep that only a trip across the solar system rife with metaphysical introspection can help him overcome his daddy issues.

There are interesting sci-fi concepts, like how the moon has been as commercialized as Earth, reminiscent of Futurama to be honest, but they’re kept to the background. There are moments of action spectacle that instantly boost viewer interest, such as a rover chase on the moon or the film’s incredible opening where Roy falls off a space antenna, but the plot quickly dips back into monotony as Roy narrates every stray thought. Some of it really is deep, paired with visually striking imagery, and certainly better explored than the wordlessness of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it also feels pretentious and suffers from not really going anywhere, since the result of Roy’s journey isn’t particularly enlightening. I’m not naturally drawn to Brad Pitt like I am to space movies, so Ad Astra is a mixed bag to say the least, a film with a lot on its mind and something missing to make it compelling. In different hands, it might have been epic; as it is, it’s rather forgettable but for its best scenes.

Rank: Honorable Mention

VC Pick: Cocoon (1985)

13 Tuesday Apr 2021

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Comedy, Drama, Sci-fi, VC Pick

(For Day 12 of NaPoWriMo, the suggested prompt was a poem using words from a classical dictionary and sci-fi dictionary, but time ran a bit short so I went off-prompt.)

My hair is gray; my back is bent;
My skin is furrowed, eyes are dim.
The man I was has long been spent,
From youthful peak to swift descent,
Till now I can’t remember him.

Your skin has sagged on weakened knees;
Your teeth come out and barely chew.
And yet you make me feel at ease.
Despite our awful memories,
I still can see the girl I knew.

Imagine if, somehow, some way,
We could reclaim our fire before.
No matter what the toll to pay,
I’d spurn the world that very day
If you and I could skip once more.
______________________________

MPA rating: PG-13

It’s a shame upon my blog, but it’s been nearly a year since I afforded my dear VC (Viewing Companion) the chance to choose a movie to watch and review. One more thing to blame on school…. I am rectifying that egregious oversight by highlighting one of her picks, the classic Ron Howard sci-fi Cocoon. Winner of two Oscars (Supporting Actor and Visual Effects), the film is unusual in that it centers upon a Florida retirement home, whose apathetic residents discover an alien secret in a nearby swimming pool.

The cast is especially great, with veterans like Don Ameche, Jessica Tandy, and Wilford Brimley (playing much older than he was at the time) sharing the screen with younger talent like Steve Guttenberg and Brian Dennehy, who plays the nicest, most forgiving alien in movie history. While often warm and humorous, the story successfully humanizes its elderly characters with foibles and tragedies and achieves a unique balance between grim and hopeful subject matter. It’s a shame that the climax drags on too long trying to up the drama, and I tend to think that Don Ameche’s win for Best Supporting Actor was a bit undeserved for this role. Still, Cocoon is otherwise a charming alternative to other first contact films.

Best line: (Ben Luckett, played by Brimley) “So you think it’s like Bernie said? We’re cheating nature?”
(Mary, his wife) “Yes.”
(Ben) “Well, I’ll tell ya, with the way nature’s been cheating us, I don’t mind cheating her a little.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

10 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Action, Comedy, Family, Sci-fi

(For Day 9 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to write a to-do list for an unusual character, so I wrote one for Sonic himself as he hides away in a small town at the start of this movie.)

Let me review
My daily to-do:
I’ll watch the sun rising at 7:02.
I’ll scarf down some breakfast by 7:03,
Then on to a new day of being 3D.
I’ll challenge myself to ping pong yet again;
I do always win, but I’m bored by point ten.
I’ll watch the town sheriff eat donuts and sit
And wait for a car driving past the limit.
I’ll watch as the Little League team has a game
And hide in the shadows to cheer every name.
I’ll watch the town crazy go still unbelieved
As he tells of the spiky blue beast he’s perceived.
I’ll watch the schoolchildren, the farmers and vets,
All living their lives with no sign of regrets.
I wish I could join them and just coexist.
Perhaps I’ll add that to tomorrow’s new list.
_________________________

MPA rating: PG

I don’t know that anyone really expected Sonic the Hedgehog to be good. Not only are video game movies rarely successful, but backlash against Sonic’s initial appearance in the first released trailer prompted a swift redesign and a three-month delay, which is rarely a good sign. Those low expectations only make the finished product an even more pleasant surprise. Sonic the Hedgehog is better, funnier, and far more likable than it has any right to be.

I played and enjoyed one Sonic Game Boy game back in my golden tween years, but I’d never say that I was as invested in the Sega franchise as, say, the fans who expressed such strong opinions about that creepy version of the character from the first trailer. Yet this film does a marvelous job at fitting in plentiful fan service that never detracts from telling an entertaining story accessible to non-fans as well. Sonic himself is something of a refugee from another dimension/planet, possessing super speedy power for which he must keep himself secret. Thus, he hides out in a small town in Montana, forming a one-sided relationship with local sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) and his wife (Tika Sumpter), but the fun-loving hedgehog eventually draws the attention of the government and mad scientist Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and must rely on Tom for help.

I’ll freely agree that Sonic’s more cartoonish design is far better than the realistic one that fed people’s nightmares, but, as top-notch as the animation is, that still seems secondary to Ben Schwartz’s outstanding vocal performance of the character, which sometimes seems like he’s trying to emulate Robin Williams as the Genie. Likewise, James Marsden’s talent for acting opposite CGI animals has apparently become a calling card of his, and he serves as a straight man to Sonic’s antics as they embark on a road trip to get the alien to safety. And then there’s Jim Carrey, who hams it up as Sonic’s iconic robot-loving nemesis. Honestly, Robotnik is amusing, but anyone else would have been just too campy; Carrey fits the insane character into the over-the-top schtick that made him a star in the ‘90s, and he really is a hoot chewing the scenery, such as during a dance sequence to The Poppy Family’s 1971 song “Where Evil Grows.”

Sonic the Hedgehog doesn’t always seem very original, such as during super-speed sequences directly recalling Quicksilver’s best moments in the X-Men prequels, yet it has an overall likability and a great sense of self-aware humor. Moments that seem hackneyed don’t always play out as expected, and the product placement is so blatant that they actually work it into the film’s jokes. It subverts the expectations for a corporate cash-grab and works just as well as a family-friendly adventure extolling friendship as it does a potential starter for a cinematic universe. Plus, it had the advantage of coming out right before the COVID pandemic hit, making it the sixth highest-grossing film of 2020 and the most successful video game film yet. Based on the numbers alone, I’d say there’s a market for films like this that can please fans and non-fans alike.

Best line: (Sonic, hidden inside a duffel bag) “How much longer? I can’t breathe in here!”
(a bystander) “Do you have your child in that bag?”
(Tom, nonchalantly) “No…. I mean, yes, it’s a child, but it’s not mine.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

The Vast of Night (2020)

05 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Drama, Mystery, Sci-fi

(Happy belated Easter! Yesterday was sadly my first missed day of the month, beset by end-of-term homework. Even so, I am back for Day 5 of NaPoWriMo, for which the prompt suggested writing a poem in the same shape as another and with the same first letters of each line. I chose the tranquil “Pippa’s Song” by Robert Browning and gave it a dark mirror image.)

The hour is late,
And morning still far;
Mute are the breezes,
The crickets stock still.
The hush is a weight,
The wait black as tar.
Gently it freezes
And swallows the will.
___________________

MPA rating: PG-13

For every special-effects-laden blockbuster in the science fiction genre, there is a small-scale gem waiting to be discovered. Directed and self-financed by first-time filmmaker Andrew Patterson, The Vast of Night feels like the type of modest genre piece that Spielberg might have made in his early days. Two 1950s teenagers, the switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and radio disc jockey Everett (Jake Horowitz), go about their jobs one night in small-town New Mexico but are intrigued by a mysterious sound picked up by their equipment, leading them to a potentially extraterrestrial source.

Even apart from the supernatural elements, there’s so much to love about the look and feel of The Vast of Night, from its tightly written script and smooth direction (including an awe-inspiring tracking shot to rival much bigger budgets) to the quaint period detail and dark atmospheric lighting. It treads carefully around the idea of aliens, its protagonists curious but skeptical along the way, as if the strangeness they encounter truly is bewildering rather than just a movie plot point. The film stumbles a bit toward the end with its unfortunate lack of closure, but the Twilight Zone-ish story is still a highly engrossing watch.

Best line: (Mabel Blanche, an alien believer) “I think at the lowest level they send people on errands and play with people’s minds. They sway people to do things and think certain ways – so that we stay in conflict, focused on ourself – so that we’re always… cleaning house, or losing weight, or dressing up for other people. I think they get inside our heads and make us do destructive things, like drink and over-eat. I’ve seen good people go bad, and smart people go mad.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

2020 Blindspot Pick #10: Primer (2004)

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by sgliput in Blindspot, Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Drama, Sci-fi

Time is a string,
A straight line following
Every inch with the next,
And no one expects
That line to turn back
In its infinite track
Or be wrinkled or folded
Or otherwise molded
To anything but
A straight line, never cut,
For if that occurs,
Men are mere amateurs
In the Pandora’s boxes
Of time paradoxes,
And no one is certain
What’s under the curtain,
The dreadful reveal
Of sci-fi-made-real.
_________________________

Rating: PG-13 (though Netflix shows it as R, which is odd since there is nothing objectionable)

I suppose I never appreciated how much free time I possessed when I had just school or just work taking up the bulk of my day. Now that I have both, it seems like everything else has been sliding to a lower priority level, including this blog sadly. Nevertheless, I have not forgotten it! Speaking of time, it’s time now to check another entry from my Blindspot list, a film about time travel that has earned a reputation for being intractably complex. Indeed, Primer is the kind of movie, like last year’s Tenet, that doesn’t just benefit from but needs a diagram or outside explanation to fully grasp it, which makes it a hard sell for people who enjoy understanding what they watch.

Made on an extreme shoestring budget (about $7000), Primer is not your typical time travel flick; there are no flashes of lightning or fancy special effects to adorn its bare-bones tale of accidental scientific discovery. Its two main characters, Abe and Aaron, are a couple of moonlighting engineers who share resources with other small-time inventors; there’s no attempt at making them personable for the audience or even translating the scientific jargon that makes up much of the dialogue. A weight-reduction experiment somehow results in an unusual small-scale time loop, and the two inventors realize they’ve stumbled onto something big when its application for humans becomes clear.

Many a time travel movie tries to pass itself off as “realistic,” even though the paradoxes involved with the ever-cool concept make it inherently not; Primer attempts this through its low-key, unglamorous style and how it injects actual science into the dialogue. I liked the idea of discovering time travel by accident, similar to the excellent anime/game Steins;Gate, and I was preparing my thinking cap as the characters figured out how to make it work. The concept of entering a box where time is reversed and exiting at a point in the past, keeping yourself isolated beforehand to avoid interacting with your double, made sense for the most part, and I started thinking, “This isn’t so complex.” And then the plot went off the deep end….

I have read the description and rewatched parts of the movie to try to wrap my head around the story, and I can honestly say that I believe I understand most of it (which is more than I can say for Tenet), but not without a good amount of mental effort. I don’t mind films that make you think, but I find it a bit annoying when a film throws a wrench in the plot and doesn’t even care to give the audience a shred of time to decipher its meaning. There’s a running narration, but the language used seems intentionally vague, and certain plot points are dropped without any explanation whatsoever. And this was on purpose, according to Shane Carruth, who served as director, actor (as Aaron), composer, writer, and editor, a true auteur like Jamin Winans. Carruth wanted this sense of bewilderment to stress the confusion of time travel for the characters, and he succeeded, though whether that is a good thing is debatable.

Primer is a puzzle-box movie if ever there was one. The puzzle is the reason for its existence, with things like character development or eye-catching visuals pushed to the background. I enjoyed that moment of “eureka, I think I get it,” which only happened after the credits rolled a second time, but the intentional opacity of the plot certainly doesn’t equate to entertainment value. Whether the appeal of the former outweighs the latter is entirely subjective and dependent on each person’s capacity for wondering what the heck is going on. I would agree that Primer is a required watch for anyone seeking a comprehensive view of time travel in cinema, but I don’t consider it a positive that the main reason to see it again is to gain a semblance of understanding as to what you just saw.

Best line: (Aaron, to Abe) “Man, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.”

Rank: Dishonorable Mention (That seems harsh, but I doubt I’ll watch it again.)

Tenet (2020)

13 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Action, Drama, Sci-fi

If I were to live my life backwards in time,
Would it be hellish or sublime?
I’d walk and babble in reverse
And watch my history recurse.
To see the end before the start
To know both part and counterpart,
Is it a blessing or a curse,
Upstream against the universe?
Is it a blessing or a curse,
To know both part and counterpart,
To see the end before the start
And watch my history recurse.
I’d walk and babble in reverse.
Would it be hellish or sublime
If I were to live my life backwards in time?
_______________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Tenet was an interesting theater-going experience, mainly because it looks like it will be the only 2020 film I actually get to see in a theater. (I did see Weathering with You and Ride Your Wave pre-pandemic, but those were both from 2019.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but I learned that the local theater where I watched Tenet planned to shut down the very next day. The theater was completely empty, so it was like a private screening. There were hopes that Tenet might kick off a resurgence of theater-going, which sadly didn’t happen, but it’s the kind of film that could have under different circumstances. Action films get labelled “dumb” more often than not, but Christopher Nolan once more proves that the genre can reward and require intelligence, sometimes more than the audience wants to spare.

Nolan specializes in bending time, expanding it across nested dreamscapes, jumping around between different perspectives of Dunkirk, and now reversing it entirely. John David Washington plays a man with no name, labeled the Protagonist but never actually referenced in the film, a CIA agent who sees a bullet seem to move in reverse during a thrilling extraction at an opera house. After proving his loyalty, he is initiated into the organization called Tenet, which seeks to prevent a coming catastrophe evidenced by the existence of objects moving backwards in time, such as the reversing bullet. From there, it’s a globe-hopping spy caper as the Protagonist makes allies to take down a Russian oligarch named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who has knowledge of the future.

I loved Inception and still think that it is Nolan’s best film; with his latest film’s incoming hype as a mind-bender, I was hoping for lightning to strike again. While I still enjoyed Tenet, it’s more like thunder. Tenet is a puzzle for puzzle-lovers, thriving on unique backwards action and a purposefully constant pace that encourages viewers to accept what’s going on whether they understand it or not. And that’s where Tenet struggles. No matter how much Nolan or the film’s characters believe that the reversed time concept makes sense, I remain unconvinced. It makes for some utterly cool and compelling visuals, but there’s always a nagging feeling of doubt about how items/characters moving backwards in time actually interact with forward-moving items/characters. In that opening opera house scene, an “inverted” bullet goes from a bullet hole in the wall backwards into someone’s gun, but I’m left with the question of how it got into the wall in the first place. The idea is fascinating in short bursts, but over longer stretches of interaction, a disconnect grows between how inverted characters experience time forward (from their perspective) while the non-inverted characters observe them as “reactions.” If that doesn’t make sense, I don’t blame you. I’m sure someone could try to explain these apparent inconsistencies, and it would make some semblance of sense, but the effort to understand dwarfs what Inception required.

Washington’s Protagonist doesn’t have an abundance of personality, but he has just enough swagger and uber-competence to be an engaging audience surrogate thrust into an even stranger spy life than he led before. The rest of the cast always live up to their talent, from Robert Pattinson’s secretive ally to Branagh’s brutal Russian villain, who might as well be his character from Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. However, Nolan’s best films also have an underlying heart to complement the mind-twisting, typically in the form of parental love for children, like in The Prestige and Inception. Tenet tries similarly with the excellent Elizabeth Debicki as Branagh’s long-suffering hostage/wife, but, with the plot being the real focus, the attempted emotional beats were overshadowed by the cold big-concept narrative.

Ultimately, Tenet revels in its high-minded theories and spy antics punctuated by sci-fi coolness, but casual viewers shouldn’t expect a straightforward James Bond-style story. I appreciate Inception the more I think about it; with Tenet, I get more confused, though I’m sure it will reward repeat viewings. I admire Tenet in many ways, from the audacity of its concept to the Easter eggs sprinkled throughout (look up the Sator square), but maybe turning your brain off for an action movie isn’t such a bad thing.

Best line: (Andrei Sator) “How would you like to die?” (The Protagonist) “Old.” (Sator) “You chose the wrong profession.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

What Happened to Monday (2017)

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, TV, Writing

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Action, Drama, Mystery, Netflix, Sci-fi, Thriller

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about a letter of the alphabet, so I went through the week and compiled couplets for each day.)

The M in Monday dips and dives
And puts a strain on all our lives.

The T is Tuesday’s cruciform,
The closest shelter from the storm.

The W is Wednesday’s smile,
As crooked as a crocodile.

The T in Thursday spreads each arm
In peace, surrender, and alarm.

The F in Friday has buck teeth
That shield a smile underneath.

The S is Saturday’s great treble,
Quite the sinner, saint, and rebel.

The S in Sunday tries to swerve,
But hits Monday and hits a nerve.
__________________________

MPA rating: TV-MA (strong R)

Netflix films can be hit-or-miss, but when a good one comes along, its relegation to a single TV streaming service makes it feel perhaps more underrated than if it had received a theatrical release. Released to theaters in Europe and Asia but to Netflix elsewhere, What Happened to Monday falls somewhere between hit and miss, but it still feels underrated for the things it does well. The dystopian thriller takes a familiar dystopian threat like overpopulation and runs with it in a way not seen before.

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Actors seem to enjoy the test of inhabiting multiple characters and playing off themselves, but Noomi Rapace snagged a special challenge here, playing seven identical sisters raised in secret to protect them from the government’s rigidly enforced one-child policy. Although siblings are simply put into cryostasis, the septet’s grandfather (Willem Dafoe) kept them off the books entirely and fashioned a singular identity of Karen Settman; each girl is named after a day of the week and takes turns going out as Karen Settman on the day of their name: Sunday on Sunday, Monday on Monday, etc. However, when Monday doesn’t return at the end of her day, the other sisters find themselves in danger and must figure out what happened to her and her ties to the politician who first advocated the one-child policy (Glenn Close).

It’s no secret that I love science fiction, and What Happened to Monday is the kind of unique genre tale I enjoy, usually more than the critics do. The plot zips along without a moment of boredom, and Rapace does wonders with a script that doesn’t quite manage to make each of the Settman sisters stand out. Some are easy to pick out (Saturday has blonde hair, Friday is mousy and wears a knit cap), while others don’t really distinguish themselves much (Tuesday and Wednesday). Nevertheless, Rapace breathes personality into the ones that matter most, and the effects allowing her to interact with her doubles are top-notch.

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Many films on Netflix don’t seem to bother holding back on their TV-MA ratings, and sadly the same is true for What Happened to Monday, marred by several bloody deaths and a gratuitous sex scene. It’s really a shame because the film otherwise warrants repeat viewings. Some twists are hardly surprising to anyone familiar with the dystopian genre, but it still holds plenty of mystery and thrills to overcome the occasionally thin characterization. It even ends up with a surprisingly pro-life sentiment by the end. It’s far better than its mixed reviews indicate, and if you can overcome the R-rated content, it’s one more what-if example of why I love sci-fi.

Best line: (Sunday, quoting their father) “Seven minds are better than one.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

Riddick (2013)

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem phonetically similar to a poem in another language, which was harder than it sounded. I chose the first four stanzas of the Welsh “Stone Poem” by Menna Elfyn. I tried to get it to make sense, but that might depend on the reader’s interpretation.)

Caring draws in foolishness,
While lacking love is power.

Men are gargoyles founded
On cruelty’s fear of cowards.
‘Tis rare, but some have sounded

Warnings, dim and heaved,
Pleading, “These rascals are not ours,”
But they’re demeaned and unbelieved.

The docile manners man the laws,
Which mold the many to the hour.
But men are sure to linger in man’s hardest flaws.
______________________

MPA rating: R

Last year, I ventured into the cutthroat world of Richard B. Riddick, Vin Diesel’s iconic anti-hero from Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. Considering the latter’s less than favorable reception from critics (I rather liked it myself), it feels like a small miracle that creator David Twohy was able to gain enough traction for a third film nine years later, and indeed he manages to round out the trilogy with possibly its strongest installment.

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The Chronicles of Riddick was both enhanced and muddled by a huge surge of world-building: invading death cult armies, ethereal air people, and the like. Riddick turns its back on all that right from the beginning, and, aside from a cameo from Karl Urban, it might as well have never happened once Riddick is again stranded on an inhospitable alien world. In that sense, it’s practically an alternate version of Pitch Black, except with two shipfuls of disposable bounty hunters (including Matt Nable and Dave Bautista) after Riddick instead of just one man. Oh, and the swarms of killer aliens come out when it rains rather than when night falls.

In some ways, Riddick feels like the franchise treading water, but in others, it’s exactly what made it cool to begin with. Diesel gets to add plenty of badassery to his resumé, from clever survivalist skills to inventive killing methods, and the story lends itself to his laconic character’s show-don’t-tell approach. I also liked how it built upon what happened in Pitch Black and chose an ideal ending, not giving in to the previous films’ tendency of no one but Riddick having a chance at ultimate survival.

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Returning to its franchise’s roots, Riddick is an entertaining, frequently brutal improvement, though I’m disappointed the second film’s PG-13 rating had to be bumped up to an R for this one. There are still rumblings of a fourth film called Furya and a TV series called Merc City in the works, so time will tell what’s left of Riddick’s story. The harsh universe he inhabits certainly seems to have more stories to tell.

Best line: (Consort) “So what is the best way to a man’s heart?” (Riddick) “Between the fourth and fifth rib. That’s where I usually go. I’ll put a twist at the end if I wanna make sure.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

The Wandering Earth (2019)

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, TV, Writing

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Action, Drama, Foreign, Netflix, Sci-fi, Thriller

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write about items gathered during a walk. In my house, I latched onto a nearby globe and decided to write about the planet at large, even though the film is more about disaster than discovery.)

What ancient cartographer could have imagined
A world as small as this?
Back then, the maps ended without a true edge
In blurry oblivion. One would allege
A brand new discovery, and they would wedge
The new land upon the abyss.

And now we know everything, satellite-view;
No land is left to miss.
But now we look upward and see a frontier,
More blurry oblivion. Scorning the fear,
We still must endeavor to find what’s not here.
We just can’t abide an abyss.
___________________________

MPA rating: TV-MA (it’s a PG-13-level movie, but the English subtitles have more F words than the original Chinese for some reason)

When you think of Chinese films, science fiction isn’t a genre that immediately comes to mind, but The Wandering Earth might change that. Based on a 2000 novella and released through Netflix outside of China, this big-budget blockbuster is like Asia’s answer to Michael Bay, a solar-system-spanning disaster flick that is just over-the-top enough to work.

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Anyone remember the Spongebob episode with the Alaskan bull worm threatening the town, where Patrick says they should just take Bikini Bottom and push it someplace else? Well, that’s the brilliant idea the future world leaders in this film came up with to escape an expanding sun. Studding the earth’s surface with enormous rocket engines, they push the planet out of its orbit toward a safer system while most of the population retreats underground to escape the freezing surface. Years into the journey, the roaming planet gets caught in Jupiter’s gravity, forcing young adult Liu Qi (Chuxiao Qu), his sister, and their accomplices to fix one of the failing engines and save the world, while his father (Jing Wu) on a space station tries to do the same.

With tiny people causing planet-level effects, everything in The Wandering Earth is on such a humongous scale that even its semi-plausible elements seem utterly ridiculous, yet the earnestness of the characters and coolness of the visuals make the suspension of disbelief possible. In creating China’s first big sci-fi movie, the filmmakers certainly went all out with their emulation of similar Hollywood blockbusters: collapsing ice towers, a single-minded AI to fight, huge explosions, questions about saving the many vs. the few, last-minute heroics and touching sacrifices.

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There’s a reason it made $700 million, making it the third highest-grossing non-English film ever. (Netflix has an English dub, but I’d only watch it if you absolutely can’t stand subtitles or want fewer obscenities.) I don’t know how the current pandemic will affect China’s film industry, but The Wandering Earth is proof that it can compete with Hollywood on special-effects extravaganzas. I wouldn’t say it’s better than films like Armageddon or Sunshine, but it’s certainly bigger.

Rank: List Runner-Up

Time Trap (2017)

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Drama, Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a “concrete” poem, where the lines and words form an image that reflects the poem’s theme. That theme for me being time, I chose a fitting hourglass shape.)

Time in the moment drips by like molasses,

A thick atmosphere that encloses the masses.

The teenagers wish it would hurry on by,

While grandparents issue a sigh,

And then all at once

Time is starting

To fly

By,

And only

At long last

When time has complied

Do former teenagers see time’s other side

And wish that molasses could slow down its stride.

________________________

MPA rating: Not Rated (deserves a PG-13)

“Time-bending mystery” is a genre that I feel I am inherently destined to love. It’s not often that a film plays with the notion of time without involving out-and-out time travel, but Time Trap manages to pull it off in a fascinating way, despite its limited budget.

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Andrew Wilson (who looks a lot like Dennis Quaid) plays Hopper, an archaeology professor investigating the disappearance of some hippies from the ‘70s, and when he doesn’t return, two of his students (Reiley McClendon, Brianne Howey) and their friends go after him into the Southwest desert. Not realizing the danger of “looking for somebody who went missing while he was looking for somebody that went missing,” the group venture into a cave system and become trapped when their ropes break. Eventually, they realize that time is passing differently inside the cave than it is on the surface and… that’s all I’m going to say.

This kind of film benefits greatly from not knowing what’s going to happen, which means stay away from the trailer. There are times when you can tell the filmmakers considered making this as a found-footage film, and I’m glad they only employed that technique occasionally. Despite some so-so acting and dialogue, the way the story plays out is rather ingenious, slowly revealing things to the audience as the characters learn them. You might pick up on what’s happening before they do, but there are further twists that take the story in unexpected directions.

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Time Trap won’t necessarily revolutionize your notion of time and space, but it’s entertaining and short, too short in fact, ending right when things take a left turn I would have liked to explore more. It’s proof that high sci-fi concepts don’t need a blockbuster budget.

Best line: (Hopper) “Well, my grandfather used to tell me the future can give you anything you want. If you wait long enough, the future will create it. Maybe through technology, or maybe just by making you not want it anymore. Either way, the answer’s in the future.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

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Rhyme and Reason

~ Poetry Meets Film Reviews

Tag Archives: Sci-fi

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Time Trap (2017)