SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With A
The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996) NR
Genres: Adv F Kid
Watched: 10 min
The script is dumb and boring but that is eclipsed by the dreadfulness of the CGI. Oh man does it stink. Even Martin Landau looks not so freaky in comparison with the wooden CGI boy (and Landau is acting hard too, because it's a children's story so you have to go all out when expressing Papa Gepetto's tender feelings toward the wooden CGI boy). The movie would have been much better if they used a wooden puppet. But then it would have been more obvious how bad the script is.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926 Germany) 
Genres: Ani F Rom
Watched: 17 min
Germany was extremely cultured before the Nazis took over. You've seen Cabaret, of course. Incidentally in that case don't miss Something For Everyone, I can't even tell you which I prefer. Anyway Achmed is terribly cultured and lovely, like a ballet. Too much so for some. Specifically for my nerdy boyfriend. And really this is the sort of thing which cries out for being watched in a romantic situation. What can you do if your S.O. doesn't appreciate such sentiments? Well, you're pretty well screwed then. I expect the only way you could enjoy this is if you're still in the courtship phase. Don't give it up too soon, ladies, because never again afterwards will you be able to enforce this kind of sublime romantic past-time. And here the review must end, because I can't finish watching the movie. It would be too sad to do so by myself.
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)
Genres: Com Adv F
Boring. The cartoons were better.
Aeon Flux (2005)
Genres: SF Act
It doesn't keep much from the feel of the animated series. Perhaps the dialogue comes closest. It's simplistic, and therefore often pretty silly. But, I wasn't much bothered by its silliness because all movies have silly dialogue, and at least this isn't as pretentious as it might have been, and more importantly, in some ways this reminded me of the series' dialogue. The series' dialogue is sparse and cryptic. The movie's dialogue isn't sparse or cryptic, but it kind of harks back to that feel, of poor communication. Critics who will harp on the crappiness of the dialogue will be displaying poor artistic sensitivity.
The plot is not bad. They use the silly old trope that impossible memory effects result from the technology that is central to the plot, but that's how tropes work. Once a silly trope is allowed to establish itself, it may be used until there's a significant cultural shake-up, like a successful revolution or a new religion. This isn't necessarily unfair. Historically, literary tropes have been allowed to flourish for centuries, lending the corresponding literatures their distinctive groundings. These days technology moves very fast. SF tropes' timespans must be quite short to stay un-silly, and that's just not how tropes are designed to work.
It's somewhat fun, but not much. Aeon's stunts worked nicely in warped fifteen-minute animated episodes, but in the much more mundane and full-length movie, they get old.
Also, I didn't care about the characters. I kind of liked that black modified killer girl, but felt no connection to anyone else. The limited dialogue has a lot to do with it, but also I felt cheated of the romantic relationship between the protagonists as it's implied in the series. This is where this movie really drops the ball . . . the series was way more sexual. In the movie Aeon's boyfriend is such a wet rag, so little hate is retained from their cool love-hate relationship as depicted in the series, and what there is of love is covered up as chastely as Aeon's butt. Which is covered up by a freaking full body suit, instead of that little black dominatrix leotard number. You know there ain't gonna be any bondaged-up-male nipple sucking happening. (I mean the male is bondaged up and getting his nipple sucked; I couldn't figure out how to convey that properly with hyphenation.)
I can't say I approve of Hitler mustaches on women. I know it's the future and all, but it's just wrong.
AI Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genres: Adv Dra SF
The title puts it very well -- don't expect a movie for people who know what "AI" means. Sure, it is in many ways silly. Spielberg SF is this way -- he uses ideas that are not too weird, that are in the back of the public consciousness when they think about SF, even if these ideas are silly and simple and poorly articulated. He gives them the professional glamorous treatment, including effective emotional hooks. So you know it will be pushing some obvious buttons, tugging at the heartstrings with cheap empathy to poor robots and how they're mistreated despite seeming to display plenty of human emotions. But the result is quite enjoyable.
It is good to see an optimistic vision of the future, you know? I mean there's all this stupid post-apocalyptic dark whining that's so popular. It's certainly been pounded into the public consciousness. Geez, whenever my mom mentions some SF story she'd read it's always like that. She thinks the point of SF is that people will ruin the world. In this movie's future you can hire a perfectly groomed, presumably perfectly sanitary Jude Law robot by the half-hour. Can't wait. Law does a very nice job in this film. He's such a cute sex robot. Presumably when sex robots become available for real this will be one of the first models.
A.I. Assault (2005) NR
Genres: SF Act
Guest review: It has nailed every single trope of a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie:
-- bitchy lady scientist
-- pointless bickering among the characters to build drama
-- angry swaggering military people
-- piles of out-of-work stars from sci-fi TV shows! Michael Dorn (ST: TNG)! The psycho blond chick from Xena (Hudson Leick)! The doctor from ST: Voyager (Robert Picardo)! Bill Mumy (Babylon V)! Anyhow, IMDB says it's Bill Mumy, but it looks like Mark Hamill to me, and Mark Hamill is always in these movies so I'm going to say . . . Mark Hamill!
-- the evil robots have the legs and heat rays of the tripods from War of the Worlds, the spinning chopper hands of the robot from Red Planet, and the human-incorporating abilities of the alien meme from Virus!
-- also, it needed an environment, so it used the island from Jurassic Park, with a storm even.
In one early scene, the evil robots carried off the helicopter belonging to the people. The people were mystified where they carried it off to, because the camera decided not to track the robots any more. I guess the stage directions said "exeunt, stage left, with helicopter" and so the cameraman damn well let them exeunt.
Also, the humans run away like my cat: they run twenty feet and then sit down and see if the monster is still chasing them. The-psycho-chick-from-Xena was actually trying to seriously run away, but one of the men decided to help her run away (she was in heels) by grabbing her and forcibly sitting her down after twenty feet. Then he sat down with her.
Then I wrote this review instead of paying more attention to the movie, but I did come back just in time to see Mark Hamill/Bill Mumy throwing away some money and then the credits roll. Now THAT'S irony.
Aladdin's Magic Lamp (1966 USSR)
Genres: F Rom Kid
Nothing is lost in translation, dubbed or subtitled (as always, there's fewer words in the subtitles). That's something; I've seen too many botched jobs. Of course the script lends itself to being easily translated: it is, while fun for adults, aimed at children and so the dialogue is simple. Simple, but not bone-headed. The words are simple so a child can easily follow along, but the script is imaginative, funny, and charming. The sets are pretty and whimsical as well, a stylized East, all these whites and blues outside the palace but colorful inside, because it's all opulent. Well, there is a cute touch you do lose if you don't speak Russian, which is the accents. Everyone except Aladdin (who is a Slavic pretty-boy) is Armenian, and they have cute Armenian accents that you may imagine are some sort of exotic Eastern accents.
Perhaps the best recommendation is that I have a thumbs-up on this one from an adult American male who is usually far less enthusiastic about nice Russian movies than I am. J said it's really nice and the princess is really cute.
Alice (1990)
Genres: F Com Dra Rom
The point here is obvious from the start: Mia Farrow is surrounded by annoying New Yorkers and should go someplace else. She is also annoying, in a nebbishy way, as opposed to her hollow, self-centered friends and husband. Of course she is; every Woody Allen movie has to have a Woody Allen character, and if he himself isn't in it then the protagonist becomes the surrogate Allen. Thus, there are no sympathetic characters. It's sophisticated that way.
Me, I find Mia Farrow's husband sympathetic enough. He's a slick opportunist who plays tennis with lawyers and probably (gulp) golf too! He's sooo bad! But women like bad men. It's totally awesome to reform them . . . or mock them . . . or punish them . . . the possibilities are delicious. If the woman isn't a nebbish.
Women desire a bit of beast in their man, so they can tame him with their feminine charms (check the romance literature). Men are the same way: in men's literature, women often come with certain clichéd feminine flaws, and the man with his manliness deals with them.
I feel that similarly it could be piquant to have a bit of the slick golf-paying type in the man. Well, more piquant actually; it's a beastlier sort of thing. This is a logical extension of the generic desire, rather than a perversion, I think . . .
In conclusion: Mia Farrow sucks.
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Genres: F Ani Kid
Lewis Carroll's book was very subversive, mocking the didactic conventions of contemporaneous children's literature. His heroine forms her own opinions, questions authority, and refuses to conform to rules she finds ridiculous. The young reader is expected to identify with her as well as cheer her on, but Alice is also an ideal who goes beyond what the average proper girl dares to do. She's somewhat of an empowered super-girl, like Pippi Longstocking.
The movie came out 86 years after the book. In the meantime, standards of children's literature and behavior altered considerably. What was subversive then became merely lively. Therefore, Disney's young audience would not quite have gotten Carroll's message if Alice were adapted faithfully.
Whether Disney considered this problem I don't know. But it's plain that Disney had their own reasons for not adapting it faithfully. As always, they aimed for a crowd-pleaser. The protagonist had to be a girl that the audience members could identify with. All kids are under pressure to conform to both their peers' mannerisms and adult statues. Instead of rebelling, Alice enthusiastically espouses behaviors that girls of her age are under pressure to espouse. She is a boring, mincing, and to anyone old enough to appreciate the original, unsympathetic little girl. Much like Peter Pan's Wendy, although thankfully a tad less prissy.
All of the movie's good points are from the book. Some things aren't screwed up, like the Queen, but so much sucks. They obviously had little respect for the source material. All their respect was for the studio's culture of the moment. That is of course no more than can be expected, but the movie shouldn't get any credit for the good stuff.
The musical numbers certainly suck. Disney can do good surreal musical numbers, e.g. "Pink Elephants" from Dumbo, but they decided to go with the overall theme of suck for Alice.
Another thing that sucks is Disneyland's shoddy Alice in Wonderland ride.
Alien (1979)
Genres: Hor SF
I didn't enjoy this much. The plot is too simple and there is too much suspense, or at least what is supposed to be suspense but is nothing-happening boredom to me. This is a big reason why I don't like horror movies.
It doesn't help that the astronauts act stupidly. I imagine this is a big reason why some people don't like SF movies -- stupidity is de rigueur in them, these days anyway. I wonder whether NASA trains its astronauts on how not to be stupid in alien situations: if you see scary alien pods don't go sticking your face in them, etc. You know, there's an old joke -- we could save a lot of money if we turn over space exploration to the movie industry: with their technical wizardry and capitalistic drive, we'd be on Mars in no time. Well, this is an old joke. I don't know that it makes sense anymore. For example, the astronauts would be stupid and get killed a lot. But on the other hand, they'd be good-looking and dramatic. Real astronauts aren't dramatic at all: they never have conflict of any kind among themselves or any other excitement like that; whenever they're shown on TV in their native environment they're happily cavorting in zero-G and waving. That's really boring, no wonder no-one wants to fund space exploration anymore. What people want is dramatic reality shows. What a great opportunity NASA is missing -- the reality show of astronauts forced to get along on a little ship in zero-G! So yeah, space exploration should be coordinated by Hollywood after all.
Alien Apocalypse (2005) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 30 min
Can it be that this SciFi Channel original doesn't suck real bad, because Bruce Campbell is in it and he wouldn't do it if it did? Sadly no, he's proven he will star in really sucky crap, e.g. Mikhail's Navy.
Will the SciFi Channel offerings never end? It's like an epidemic.
Alien Express (2005) NR!!!
Genres: SF Act
Watched: 10 min
The hero and another guy ask the train HQ collision-prevention operator, "How long before our train collides with the other train?"
The train HQ operator says, "Two trains are moving in the same direction, train A at 70 mph, train B at 15 mph. They are 100 miles apart."
You weren't expecting that, were you? Well, why not? Math is a fine thing to take one's mind off distressing circumstances. But the hero and the other guy just stand there looking stunned, and eventually ask, "So how long do we have??"
Gosh but I like that train operator, I also would have told them "You have 58 minutes" if I'd a thought of it.
This is a heartening story. In school they tell you all kinds of saccharine BS. "You can be anything you want to be," remember that one? At least I thought it was BS then. But this one is apparently not. Who doesn't want to be a cinematographer, a Hollywood scriptwriter, or movie actor?? All these glamorous professions apparently require that you flunk remedial math.
At the risk of spoiling your show business career, I can't stop myself from pointing out that (100 mi / (70 mph - 15 mph)) * 60 min/hr = 109 minutes.
On the plus side, the obverse of the piece of paper I grabbed to write review notes had some old notes J took at a work meeting around the time he was going to quit:
Notes from Development Meeting
we will have a CIO for several months to facilitate
bonus program that cannot be gamed
more processes
six peas
everybody does weekly reports
we should write down what needs to be done
X has not signed up to be here 24-7
We are not interested in the fact that we had a number of CTO-types cycle through.
Y says implementation guys can purchase development effort from development guys (or vice versa?)
J misses some of his coworkers but . . . well for a start, one of his new coworkers is a chow. It just gets better from there.
Alien Hunter (2003) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 30 min
This has the blond guy from Stargate and a bunch of people you've never seen before.
Movie-people are often mindlessly hostile to generate dialogue, but here the scientists (everybody's scientists here) are extremely unpleasant characters indeed. Their aggressiveness isn't ordinary movie aggressiveness; they are incredibly aggressive. And they jibe at each other like 3rd-graders, as far as the level of jokes they're making. Maybe the movie writers were juvenile delinquents.
I have no idea what these scientists' researches are. They don't know what each other's are and don't ask. Well, at one point the blond guy sort of does ask the girl. And she says something like "I do corn genetics." He's standing next to a big beeping and flashing box which is presumably an integral part of this research. He looks at it and says, "Impressive." Then he pulls her hair and steals her cookies.
It's also heavy on the "Lick it!" cliché. They all go poke the weird scary stuff, because scientists never lose their child-like sense of wonder.
And there's no special effects in the first 30 minutes.
Alien Nation (1988)
Genres: Act Det SF
Watched: 15 min
The point of this movie is that racial discrimination is bad. They chose the buddy-cop-with-aliens genre to illustrate this message so that it's palatable to the yahoo audience, exactly the sort who need to heed it. This led to the script being a bunch of stupid clichés and stupid tactics because cop movies are easy to write, being just a bunch of dumb running around and the addition of the aliens means the audience is that much less mature. Certainly the sort of people who don't have a discrimination problem are too discriminating to watch a buddy-cop movie with aliens, yet.
Alien Planet (2005)
Genres: SF Doc
Watched: most of it
This documentary chronicles the first success in our efforts in the search for extraterrestrial life. Our unmanned ship takes 40 years to reach a life-rich planet six light years away. I was confused at first why both ship-borne probes land in the same general area. But this is explained: one is safety-conscious and the other inquisitive; they must find each other, because they're designed to work together. It is also mentioned that "their artificial IQs are those of four-year-old children." And they can create holograms, as you might expect. So yes, they are pretty charismatic.
The planet of Randomia is inhabited by creatures designed by Wayne Barlowe, the genre illustrator with definite preferences in alien design: he likes his aliens pointy on both ends and eyeless. Unless an SF/F author specifically says his aliens aren't pointy on both ends and eyeless that's what he gets on the cover. And so the aliens largely are here, however they still look nothing like each other. There's something with jets, and mushrooms which have lightning, and here's another alien which looks totally different from the others -- completely different symmetry, with a three-prong head . . . Things don't have three-prong heads. There's intelligent creatures on the planet. They also look nothing like any of the other creatures.
This thing didn't offend me but it's fairly worthless.
All That Jazz (1979)
Genres: Dra F Mus
Gorgeous, sad musical about a messed-up choreographer. By Bob Fosse and supposedly semi-autobiographical. The fantasy is limited to the protagonist's hallucination sequences, but that counts if I like the movie. I could have done with more dance numbers, but his personal problems are pretty interesting too.
Who knew that the shark-fighting Roy Scheider was so hot? He sure didn't turn me on in Jaws. Maybe Jaws should have been a musical. Update: it is.
An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Genres: Act Com Hor
Good plot, good action, cute jokes, non-annoying actors. The werewolves are both scary and cute -- perfect. Tres amusant.
There is a really scary scene where the decrepit werewolf goes after the protagonist's friend! When healthy werewolves attack people it is mostly action and less so scary. But when this sickly werewolf shuffles after the guy in that basement, that's really scary. Like a nightmare. (Maybe they were inspired by that Jack London story with the sickly wolf? The French are so cultured, and London was a liberal so they maybe wouldn't be prejudiced against his manly adventure stories.)
The Amityville Horror (2005) NR
Genres: Hor
Watched: trailer
There's lately been a recurrence of these movies about evil houses. Could be because housing prices have gone way up in the whole LA area and people are worried. Or because in Hollywood, no-one says "don't scratch that rash or it'll spread" -- rather the opposite. No, in Hollywood, no-one wants to be in the situation of "Everybody Got Some But Me"! The present paroxysm appears very much of the standard strain -- family moves in, bad things happen, they don't move out because they just don't (shut up), and then more bad things happen to them (no it's not no more than they deserve for not moving out, shut up).
My sources tell me that the Salon reviewer walked out of this one! So I am having an impact. I rock. How much money I will save the economy! Let's calculate:
* Critics won't have to watch the whole movie anymore, and often won't need to attend.
* Everyone else will start imitating them, saving tremendous piles of time. They'll commune with their friends on how they all didn't see a movie rather than on how they all did.
* Eventually people will stop going to movies altogether because that's a stupid waste of time and money, and you have to rub shoulders with repulsive commoners. It's much much more efficient to get them through netflix and use the saved money and time to get a bigger TV. Better yet, buy a treadmill and use it while you watch the old set.
* Movie theaters will close down and then you won't have to buy $5 Cokes and $5 pop corns and get fat. People will just stay at home and eat carrots and walk on their treadmills and watch good movies from netflix.
* The barbarians will come to decimate our civilization because we'll have become too cultured, lacking in stupid mainstream mass-produced vulgar culture. But we'll be in good shape so we'll run away.
* Then as the barbarians settle down to watch stupid movies and eat popcorn we'll come running back and kick them a lot, because we've also been inspired to learn kung-fu from watching all those great Hong Kong martial arts comedies instead of stupid American comedies. See, last item when we ran away, that was just a trick to get the barbarians all full of toxic Coke and artery-clogging buttered popcorn. We'll kick them, they'll explode -- it'll be gross but really funny.
* Hurray!
Animal Farm (1999) NR
Genres: Ani Dra F
Watched: 13 min
Orwell's
Orwell doesn't just lambaste the USSR in his book. In the farm, he picked the perfect illustration of the scope of his criticism. He criticizes both the greedy immoral Communist leaders and the greedy immoral Capitalists. His vision explains the movie's artistic sensibility: everybody's making successful family movies about talking animals on farms (e.g. Babe).
Antz (1998)
Genres: Ani F Com Adv
That the protagonist ant is whiny is no surprise because he's Woody Allen, but it's surprising and disconcerting to see the Woody Allen ant be so actiony. Because creative whiny little Jews and ants are so unlike. That one should play the other seems as incongruous as the idea of individual freedoms among ants, which is what the Allen ant aspires to. Actually the character works out fine; the effect is pretty cute. And the question is: Could an anthill be made to reverse its political philosophy? Given that the agitator is actually a creative whiny Jew?
Armageddon (1998) NR
Genres: Act SF Thr
Watched: trailer
The premise is that a huge asteroid is hurtling toward Earth and so a team of oil drillers (???) is sent in a spaceship in order to land on this thing, drill into it, and set off a big bomb inside it. Thus creating a bunch of smaller and radioactive chunks of crap, some of which would continue hurtling toward Earth? Holy cow, doesn't anyone check the most basic facts before spending a bunch of money making an SF movie? If there were such a thing hurtling toward Earth then a number of unmanned craft would (hopefully) be sent toward it and detonate bombs near it, not in it, thus jogging its trajectory away from Earth to avoid collision.
It isn't as though it would take any effort or money to speak of to check these basic facts. Respectable universities are bursting with science fiction fans with more than plentiful credentials to happily provide advice, free even. I have to assume that the Hollywood types have zero value for scientific and technological plausibility. Perhaps the number is even less than zero. Yes, there are certain irrefutable indications that they are disposed to such matters with distaste and even hostility. Science bad.
Armitage III: Poly-Matrix (1996 Japan)
Genres: SF Ani Det
Watched: 30 min
Violent buddy-cop detective story exploring human-robot issues. Cheapo animation, boring silly dialogue, boring plot details . . . but Armitage is intriguing. Why is she inhumanly strong and so touchy when robots are maligned? It's not as if she's a robot herself. They didn't say she was. It might be worth watching the rest to find out.
Army of Darkness (1993)
Genres: Act Com Hor F
Cute funny monster action fantasy with the cute funny actiony Bruce Campbell. Mmm. He makes such a darling schmuck. He's a fine actor and so does a believable schmuck but also so innately darling and hot that it's not totally believable either. Uh, I think I'm just babbling. Because, Bruce Campbell . . .
It's good but not necessary to first watch the preceding movie, Evil Dead 2.
The Arrival (1996) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 10 min
Unpalatable dialogue.
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001 Canada)
Genres: Adv F
Terrific Inuit traditional epic fantasy. The beginning confused me a bit but then everything became clear and the grand adventure was on! And trust a great folk epic to have everything: drama, romance, adventure, action, magic, betrayal, anything and everything that humans love to hear about.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Genres: Ani SF F Adv Kid
eh
Austin Powers Goldmember (2002) NR
Genres: Com SF
Watched: 20 min
It's a repeated cycle in history that when a civilization gets too rarefied and its art gets too good and it gets all decadent, the barbarians come and wipe it all away. The abundance of this sort of movie in America makes me feel safe, because it means we have vast hordes of barbarians of our own so we'll be able to withstand such a thing if it were to happen.
It's also good that Mr. Myers channels money away from barbarians because they'd just buy tasteless stuff with it. Instead he and his clever cadre will spend it, and I'm sure their tastes are much more sophisticated. Thus promoting higher standards in art. It's a vicious cycle.
My boyfriend says the one I saw the piece of on TV wasn't Goldmember but one of the other ones in this series. This one has time travel.
The Avenging Fist (2001 Hong Kong)
Genres: SF Act
This is maybe the most enjoyment I ever got from the first twenty seconds of a movie. There's this standard wrong idea that 90% of the brain isn't used. This movie takes it much much further, and attaches a funny tacky name to it: The Forbidden Zone (tan Tan TAN)! My hopes of this movie actually being about a disembodied fist soared!
Turns out it's not about a disembodied fist :( but a futuristic gizmo called Power Glove, which taps into The Forbidden Zone. Its downsides are that it might make you evil or it might make you fat, but it does make you totally kick ass. Someone pointed out to the director that the 90% dormant thing is crap, but the director jumped 10 feet in the air and kicked him 500 feet so he exploded into a nuclear blast and destroyed Tokyo! (If you object to the mixed metaphors, I obliterate you with Power Glove!)
This movie is kind of like The Matrix, with the black leather coats and the flying around and hyper fighting and silly premise, but has less whining, but also nobody in it is as pretty as Keanu Reeves. Not that that's their fault -- it's impossible, by several orders of magnitude.
I love the stupid camera work during the fights. The director's looked at Western movies and said, "Stupid camera work is where it's at!" His stupid camera work reaches levels never dreamed of before, so it's back into the range of good again.
There's all kinds of neat future stuff. The anime-haired protagonist and his teen pals race around in flying cars and attend virtual fighting arenas. Sammo Hung has a stupid futuristic hat. It's nice to see movie-makers taking joy in SF like that. They're still allowed to overseas.
The ending is not one of the highlights. It's like: And then there is a big explosion. But then, there is an even bigger explosion! And then the bad guys have a really big explosion.
Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie.
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