Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Looker (1981)
Here’s another sci-fi movie I think is cool. If you’re a fan of Michael Crichton’s concepts but not his writing, this one is both hit and miss. It feels like a slower version of Timeline (2003). Watch it. It’s good.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Trancers (1984)
Enter a better time: a vision of the future from the past. 1980s grunge meets pseudo-cyberpunk. It is the future foretold by video games, whose sensibilities are industrial brutalism of metal and stone, a world where might makes right and even Klingon weaponry cannot compete with the ultimate weapon from the great halls of science: time. Yes, time, the final frontier.
Trancers is an interesting artifact. It comes from Empire Pictures (Full Moon Video’s theatrical predecessor), which Chuck Band sold to MGM in 2020. This means MGM owns Trancers. All business aside, the chemistry between stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt is so beautiful that even the questionable sequels have sublime moments. No matter how stupid the scripts got, the above-average cast always gave it their all. The series as a whole is highly recommended.
Saturday, April 3, 2021
Cosmopolis (2011)
The core of the film is the star traveling to his haircut. He knows a barber that gives a certain honest kind of haircut that he can’t find on his end of town, and not even riots nor the president’s motorcade will stop him from getting that haircut. Because he’s Robert Pattinson.
It all sounds familiar, doesn’t it? You might think (as people often do) that Cronenberg saw the future, but in this case, the film was based on a 2003 novel. I can’t speak for the book, but the film is worth watching, and then watching again, and again.