Outgribe.com Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Reviews

SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With I

Ice Age (2002) NR

Genres: Ani F Kid

Watched: occasionally looked up as it played on the plane, with the sound turned off

It was shallow, predictable, and boring with the sound off. There's touchingly improbable friendships among various animals who are all going somewhere and come across a human baby and take it along for some reason, and it's apparently very cute and tasty and a constant temptation to bad sabertoothed tigers who follow the good animals trying to relieve them of it. There is a good sabertoothed tiger too. Because we don't want to imply there was discrimination against sabertoothed tigers in the ice age. That's the Hollywood formula -- if you have a bad guy of race X then you must also have a good sidekick of the same race. I don't know that I would have been willing to watch as much of it as I had if the sound were on -- I did not want to know more about what was going on.

Identity (2003)

Genres: Hor Mys Thr

It's a fairly entertaining thriller, with a sufficiency of nice killing, and unannoying despite some silliness. The laughable movie psychology doesn't even try not to be ridiculous, but eh, I don't really care; it's a minor point. It gives the movie's premise; so it's stupid, what did you expect anyhow. It's still pretty fun.

Idle Hands (1999)

Genres: Com Hor

Hee hee I liked this. Laid-back coolness amidst horror and hilarity.

Il Mare (2000 South Korea)

Genres: Rom SF

Watched: 30 min

He's a cute single construction worker architect chef with a cool house by the seashore which he names "Il Mare" . . . even though he's Korean and straight. He also has some time travel issues. I don't know which is less plausible.

Slow boring romantic crap like this always has insultingly terrible use of any SF element that's mixed up in it. Do these two morons conduct cool experiments with the shifted-in-time house? No. They use it to send each other inane messages and stupid knickknacks. But I realize that some people just don't get the coolness of time travel, same as I don't get this kind of BS, and in situations of extreme divergence of me from the intended audience I sometimes add a star if I'm not too annoyed.

In my Intro to Psychology class we had to participate in psychology experiments run by the Psych department. They were mostly pretty nutty, as you'd expect. One had a long list of multiple choice questions, where we had to circle the answer, A, B, C, or D, a really long list of questions, and not done by Scantron, which is really nutty. Anyway one of the questions was, what is your reaction if your boyfriend surprises you with a lovely dinner he cooked himself. All the choices were various positive reactions. I scratched them out and wrote in that I would probably dump him, because nothing vaguely like that has ever happened to me before and I'd be worried he was gay or something.

Turns out my sister's boyfriend serves her complicated sinful breakfasts in bed and the one before that specialized in impressive renditions of traditional American fare.

Sniff.

The Illusionist (2006)

Genres: F Rom Mys

Vulgar and tedious

Immortality (1998 UK)

Genres: F Rom

Watched: 30 min

Boring vampire romance

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Genres: SF

This is so devoid of B-ness it's surprising. It's stylish, with nice effects for the time, and good photography. The shrinking man faces a string of perils but it's not about these thrills. As the world the man had known falls away, his existence becomes both a struggle and a meditation. It's an allegorical story.

Well, it's about the thrills too. Being palatable to audience members of varying depths, that's success.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Genres: F Act Adv Com

We have an archaeologist, and Nazis, and a lost holy Christian relic that the Nazis want. What does this movie add to this idea? Sean Connery. There's nothing much wrong with Sean Connery aside from a tad too much body hair, but, this is such crap. I mean, the first movie was really nice. The second sucked so they figured they had to go back to exactly the same old formula to make the next one. Because, that is the only plot which might make sense for Indiana to be in. News flash: you have used that plot up. It is gone. I have already paid for seeing it.

Also, there's piles of annoying cuteness. There's all this stupid sit-com about the father-son relationship which they just hammer you with and I so don't care, these people are shallow and boring. So, I have little value for this movie.

I guess people like it because it's a rehashing of the beloved first movie, no matter how pointless. They know it, and want more of it, and are incapable of getting riled because the people who are supposed to reward them for this love and longing with more good product instead just screw them. Well, being loved vs being screwed -- it's often hard to tell the difference.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) NR

Genres: F Act Adv Com

Watched: I watched it all when I was much younger, but recently I couldn't get through much of it

The best thing I can say about this movie is that I like elephants.

Innocent Blood (1992)

Genres: F Act Rom Com

Cute, humorous, somewhat actiony and gory romance that pits a lovely girl vampire and a cop against colorful Italian mobsters. It's not scary or even very actiony because basically it's a girl-meets-boy story. The girl happens to be a vamp so it's going to be somewhat gory and actiony, but it's really about feelings. Feelings of a strong, independent, beautiful girl alone in the city. She's got her routine down but when bad things happen and she has to set it straight -- it's hard to do it alone, even for a strong independent experienced cute vampire. And she gets to feeling real down. Sure, you feel alone and different and like you're no good when you don't have a man of your own.

Inspector Gadget II (2003) NR

Genres: Act Adv Com F

Watched: video cover

The actors on the video cover look annoying.

Invaders From Mars (1953)

Genres: SF

An astronomy-enthusiast kid spies a flying saucer landing in a nearby field. His father goes out to investigate and returns a tad altered, so that the sensitive youngster can tell something's wrong. Well OK, it's more than a tad. It's fairly plain he's Evil now. He was a charming scientist but now he's like a drunken gangster back from a hit that backfired.

Then the kid sees his friend falling into an ant-lion alien trap and embarks on a quest to find some grown-ups who'll listen to him. After some misadventures with more alien-altered humans he comes upon a pair who are ready to listen -- a lady psychologist (duh) and another scientist who keeps a scrap-book of all reported UFO sightings. So far the dialogue's kinda dopey but bearable, but once these three get together, it kicks into an increasingly bizarre track. They go on and on about possible planets aliens might inhabit and possible trajectories they might use to get here and possible conditions on their home worlds, with the lady conveniently serving to ask questions -- just on and on. (Like: Scientist: "Here is an artist's rendition of the surface of Mars. Blah blah, the aliens might have come from there." Girl: "Oh, but it looks so bleak and empty." I guess he forgot to show her another artist's rendition where he drew in some aliens.) I mean here people are getting turned into alien zombies maybe, and these three are having a BS session about how the aliens might prefer to furnish their spaceships. I guess the poor scientist is just thrilled to have someone to talk to about his crazy theories. Or maybe he's thrilled to have a pretty girl to listen to him and so why change the track if she seems interested? Really this might be a good way to get to know chicks, if you're a hopeless nerd. Pay a kid to tell her some crazy crap about an alien invasion and get her all softened up and concerned, and then trap her in your observatory and tell her about aliens. Maybe between the worry and the novelty she'll agree to go for coffee.

This is such a silly and boring movie. Why were there these invaders, or more precisely, invader? I can't imagine they explained in the parts we fast-forwarded over but if they did it hardly counts because it was so boring. But it was all in all a pleasant experience because it's nice to know I didn't waste more than maybe half an hour on this drivel and I appreciate my boyfriend more for all the fast forwarding. It's so cute when boys are all cranky and decisive.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) NR

Genres: SF

Watched: 30 min

Boring aliens come to Earth to take over bodies of boring San Franciscans. It's like an action horror movie but there's no actual action or horror. It's so boring. So 70's; you could have your movie be boring then and nobody thought anything of it.

Jeff Goldblum is in it and so during the credits, which show these aliens back on their home planet (they look sort of like balloon animals) I was like, "Yeah, go balloon-animal aliens! Come kill Jeff Goldblum, he's so annoying!" But I stopped watching before they had a chance to. I hope they did.

The Iron Giant (1999)

Genres: Ani SF Kid

Stylish but slow and simplistic. The plot is quite Japanese -- little kid, giant robot, and militarism. It might have been better if the Japanese had developed this movie. Or worse. At least it would have been weirder and probably funnier.

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

Genres: F

It's a mega-hit with the public. They show it every Christmas. It targets the same segment of the population who religiously buy greeting cards for all occasions dictated by the greeting-card companies, which is an impressive segment indeed. In the drug store a whole isle is dedicated to greeting cards, but only a few feet of shelf-space to gum. I buy gum. Think how many flavors of gum there could be if there were a whole isle! Passion fruit, feijoa, caramel, cherimoya, pistachio -- I want all that. But, no. Instead we have all these greeting cards.

Small-town little man Jimmy Stewart contemplates suicide because a greedy rich jerk is making things bad for him, but an angel intervenes with emotional vignettes of what life for his family and friends would be like if he weren't ever born. In case you were wondering, everyone's life turns out to suck without his presence. There's an episode of The Simpsons like that (of course) except it's the opposite.

Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession (1973 USSR)

Genres: Com SF

I love this movie! All Russians love this move! If you find one who doesn't, move away slowly. He's insane. It is so totally hilarious. I watched it with an American but he didn't get much of the humor. So I can't say whether you'd like it. Indeed the subtitled translation isn't great. And how are Americans supposed to know what an upravdom is? (You've heard of a domovoi, right? Well this is sort of like that but much more annoying and dangerous, and used to be a Soviet institution.)

And also, the DVD gives the title as "Ivan Vasilievich Back to the Future" in a pathetic attempt to get stupid Americans to rent/buy because it's kind of like something they know. Well indeed Americans are like that and indeed it is about a couple of guys who use a time machine.

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