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IO (2019)
A crime upon my time
Get away as fast as you can from this movie. Do anything else, just stare to the wall, you will benefit more. I guess the most stupid scenario I have ever seen, from the premise to the end. Low budget is not an excuse for ultra-low quality. No chance that a fragile new born child will survive where only microbes and a single bee managed to adapt. Eve and Adam, mother and sun will repopulate the Earth? Not quite a moral conclusion, neither genetic diversity.
But if you look into the history of the director it's understandable: 2 short movies and another Sci-Fi flop before this one. Reading the Trivia you find out that Elle Fanning and Diego Luna were both previously cast before dropping out. I guess after first lecture of the script.
Vesper (2022)
Bravo!
I'm amazed about the low score of this movie. In fact it's full of wonderful and unexpected cinema, gothic and grotesque, kindness and evil masterfully mixed.
It's original and refreshing after a ton of linear scripts with recipes based on cinema stars and copy-paste CGI. This one brings fresh faces and amazing CGI like you have never seen. For Marvel addicts it lacks "action", but in fact the action is very well dosed.
It's an European movie. More than that - an EAST European movie. Compared with commercial USA made it's like from another world. Fascinating world,
intriguing story I would very much like to see continuing.
For All Mankind (2019)
A tribute to the genre
I don't know why alternate history Sci-Fi movies are so rare. The genre is fun. I found the Amazon "Man In The High Castle" adaptation of the classic novel of Philip K. Dick disappointing. This one with an original script is really good. Tragic how the Soviet characters seem completely credible in their monstrous behavior now, in the light of the horrors revealed by the war in Ukraine.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Good comedy is back!
This film is so brilliant in it's grotesque characters that is bizarrely funny and scarry in the same time. Stirring waves of critique from stupid people, while it it is flawless both in its intent and artistry.
Foundation (2021)
As expected, not up to the task
What a lost chance! And probably nobody will remake it as it should have been.
Isac Asimov's masterpiece is so beloved because of the fast pace and the twists in which the action unfolds, a detective novel in spirit.
As many expected, the reproduction on screen of the real story would have been very difficult due to the many reshuffles of the main characters the story knows developing over centurie and millennia. What was unexpected is that 10 episodes would drag on practically in the same generation. They just stole the characters and the title. Isac is now twisting in it's grave.
Sibir. Monamur (2011)
Hollywood could never make this
Siberia is the place were the going gets tough. That's why Russia will never be Europe. Nor Asia. It's a continent apart.
After seeing this film I feel a kind of guilt that I enjoyed watching The Avengers.
Inside the infinite drama of the story lays a spark of infinite humor of just a a couple of seconds that made me laugh aloud. I wont spoil to tell the scene, it's brilliant.
And than it's the ending. So full of emotion and unexpected, human kindness wining against the odds.
Extant (2014)
A well deserved mark for low quality
Refurbished theme from Sci-fi tool box of alien invasion. Sub-mediocre scenario with a contorted story. Halle Berry on high heels climbing on an escalator pit. The alien prospective suggested through a fuzzy image.
On the positive note, if you get to the second season you will not have to endure the lamentable acting of Goran Visnjic (John Woods).
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Papas' and granpapas' hate this !
Contrary of what you might believe from the title and the rate, I'm 60 and a papa and grandpa too. I just did not got ossified as all the 1 star reviewers.
Original Star Trek was great, I loved it. But times are a-changing, people, can't you get it? The original was moral, altruistic, positive and projecting such a idyllic future of mankind!
Think of it, a United Earth! What has it to do with Real Earth today? What has happen in the mean time? USSR exploding in pieces, Yugoslavia shredded, Sudan, Iraq, Syria in shambles, Catalonia braking from Spain, Brexit and Scotland on the path of secession. People are more divided and full of hate inside the same nation, look at USA split in 2 tribes, radicalization of parties and political opinions, alt-right and alt-left replacing the traditional right & left.
The allegory of the ST Discovery is brilliant in this respect: an alternate universe where Terrans are the mean guys. Mean, nasty murderers. In opposition to the "real" Universe where humans are so weak in containing the enemy that they rely on a captain with a serious deficit of character and a mutineer as their last chance of survival.
Not without flaws: the "black matters" approach is an unnecessary concession, especially when the actress chosen for the main character is not rising to the task. Zoe Saldana was too expensive I guess or too busy with Avatar 2 and anyway would have been dissonant with the rest of the casting, which is mediocre. The homosexual couple is more in place, with unexpected credibility added by the fact that the scientist was in the real life the object of the scandalous behavior of Kevin Spacey.
The story is good though an deserves the time to watch it unfolding. Michael just found out that the man she loves is the mortal enemy submitted to an atrocious plastic surgery to transform him from Klingon and implant him a false personality. Brilliant, the Manchurian Candidate in an original interpretation!
Salyut-7 (2017)
Soviet Leadership would rather have shot them down!
Soviets had their Apollo 13 story too, if you have not known until now, see? Not quite so spectacular, they were not coming back from the Moon. They have good special effects too.
And that's about all you could say about the story and the artistry of this movie.
Except one important detail: the Soviet bosses were ready to kill their cosmonauts rather than let them be saved by an American shuttle. Was it true? I guess it was, Soviet secrecy paranoia would have blinded them to see that the worldwide media effect would have been catastrophic if they carried out this decision. What would have been the reason to shoot down the station? What kind of super-technology was there that America would be so desperate to get to not only sacrifice the life of two wonderful men, but also spread such a quantity of debris that it would make space missions impossible for everyone for 10 years, as one of the protagonists is warning?
Obliviously nothing. It would have been of course a very nice propaganda show for USA to rescue 2 Soviets, that's true. But the reverse outcome would have been a much worse blow for the image of the USSR.
An here begins the dilemma for me: was this aspect put in the script intentionally to show how horrible the Soviet regime was? Or is it still seen by most of the Russians as the right thing to do? As the movie goes, I would vote for the last scenario. Which is frightening.
Blade Runner (1982)
The best fusion of music, script, visual, directing and acting that I ever seen
It's not by accident that I put first the music. Vangelis artistry is so amazing that the cinema seems to revolve around his score. Try imagine watching it without the music and you will understand what I mean.
It's surprising and well beyond the normal variation of taste to see how polarising the rating is. It's a love or hate. Much more love than hate, true. Same thing on the Metascore: all but praise and than bam! 38%. Some critic from Christian Science Monitor. No coincidence, Christian and Science don't go along too well these days.
I'm not a cultist of any sort, but this movie is a "cult film" in all the meanings. It's a cultural masterpiece as well as a magnet for fandoms. It's so hauntingly beautiful that I can replay it in my mind. Music and all.
Ignore the "best of the SF genre" - it has it's well deserved place in any top best movies of all times.
Across the Universe (2007)
All you need is Beatles!
Just opening the page I saw an outraged dad let down by the performance of this movie in his endeavour to convert his son to the music of his youth. So he gave it 1 star.
This is not a masterpiece for sure from the point of view of script, directing or acting. With one exception for acting: Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite, but who would expect other than excellence from such a mature and gifted showman?
But this not a bad movie and while I generally dislike musicals as genre, I find the rearrangements of songs and their insertion in the story quite inspired so I enjoyed watching it and waiting for those moments when Beatles musical genius takes over.
Belyy tigr (2012)
Moby Dick theme treated by a clumsy director after a bad written script
Someone recommended it yo me, I will not do it. Looks like Russian cinema lost it's artistry completely. Russia lost it's artist soul together with the USSR. Not that USSR was something to mourn after. Where are the Tarkowskies, Mihalkovskies or Koncelakovskies of this time? Together with Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Essenin, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and many others. Lost, completely lost. This great country stopped producing something beautiful or useful for the humankind as it used to do once. Only fear among it's neighbors, that stays. Misplaced mysticism in a nonsense story telling, amateur acting, awkward scenery, lousy pyrotechnics, you will find all of it inside. A theme with immense potential wasted by pathetic imitators.
Kill Command (2016)
Average film if you have low expectancy
"Take a B Sci-Fi movie theme and recycle it with something added and stay within the budget we gave you" - that seems to be the specification the director and the producer of the film received from the Studio. What you will find if you are accustomed with the genre is that the theme is way too washed out to be recycled (those bloody AI military machines that turn rogue and start killing people, variation of the HAL 9000 from 2001 - Space Odyssey)) and the one added element (an AI augmented human in the center of the plot) is not enough to make the reshuffle interesting. The script? You will finish the movie not understanding the input - why these guys were sent there in the first place? The output is lamentably standard: the devil is not quite dead, he transgressed the physical termination by a download operation. Since computer processes imagery is becoming apparently cheaper and cheaper these days, there is a lot of it, but not of the more complex or impressive kind.Music is also boringly standard, with low frequency humming for the "suspense" and trumpets coming in when situation gets hot. I'm giving it a 5 because acting is not so bad and so often B movies are straight awful. Not this one. I'm a fan of the genre and once in a while even a B movie could be fun. Not this one.
Ostrov (2006)
Not so good as you might expect according ranking
The story seems original, but at the end it's just a variation of the Greek classic tragedy theme extended over time. It's the eternal crime and punishment, sin and redemption story. Nothing against to recycle this theme if you do it in a proper way. In writing it's more difficult to do it, you will be instantly compared to Dostoevsky - which novel, by the way, I find more and more hard to be considered as a masterpiece by the present and future generations. What many of the younger generation will find hard to swallow from the story of this film - as I also do find, while being in my late 50's - is the explicit, direct, high level miracles performed by the main character. No mystery, no doubt, no effort, the present and the future is just unfolding on front of him, healing the suffering and exorcising the devil is just a matter of a 1 minute prayer and it's done! It's erratic behavior is not convincing, the script-writer seems to have just looked hard to find something to put into the story. Now about the filming. Black and white somehow becomes the boring norm for this kind of films. Long shots of water rippling along the shore is so unoriginal after Tarkovsky's masterpiece "Stalker". All in all is not a movie hard to watch, just that at the end you have the feeling of an under-accomplished work, a strain with mediocre result.
95ers: Time Runners (2013)
Not so bad after all
As a fan of SciFi I have to admit a real good movie of the genre is so rare that I feel the urge to raise a bit the average for this one. Not to the extent to give it a 10 for this purpose. It's a low budget film, so actors are not top-notch, quite the opposite. And Time Travel a worn out theme. But there is certain skill in it. A good pace of the action and a natural dialogue. Human emotion well driven in the twisted love story between a scientist and a police officer. The story is not explanatory, so many found it confusing, although there are some elements of guessing like the link between the title and short sequences where 95 appears to be a road. I give credit to the Director to be a woman obsessed with the genre, and not without talent. Maybe next time she will find the Finance to make a good one.