Showing Tag: " futuristic" (Show all posts)

REVIEW: Tomorrowland Is Full of Dreamers Who Try to Feed the Right Wolf

Posted by James Brown on Saturday, May 23, 2015, In : 0.09% Cocktails

Tomorrowland

Directed By: Brad Bird

Starring: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, and Keegan-Michael Key

Summer 2015 has brought with it a strong run at the box office so far. Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pitch Perfect 2, and Mad Max: Fury Road have all made loads of cash at the box office. As we kick off Memorial Day weekend, I believe we've found our first duds of the summer movie season. Interestingly enough, one of them comes from Disney, on...
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REVIEW: Ex Machina's Turing Test of Magician's Assistant Ava & Her Bluebook Software Boasts One Intriguing Chess Match With No Power Cuts

Posted by James Brown on Sunday, April 19, 2015, In : 0.00% Water

Ex Machina

Directed By: Alex Garland

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, and Oscar Isaac

There are many themes that have come to define the science fiction genre over the years. Space travel, time travel, and aliens are just a few that pervade the genre. One particular theme has stood out prominently in the last several decades, namely the battle of man versus machine. It's mankind against the artificially intelligent beings we've created. With films like The Terminator and The Matr...
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REVIEW: No Longer Tetravaal's Scout 22, Black Sheep Chappie Becomes the Conscious RoboCop Copycat of 2015

Posted by James Brown on Sunday, March 8, 2015, In : 0.06% Beer or Wine

Chappie

Directed By: Neill Blomkamp

Starring: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Watkin Tudor Jones, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, and Hugh Jackman

There's a fine line between a director utilizing recurring stylistic flourishes throughout his or her filmography and a director doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same success time and time again. Neill Blomkamp is flirting with this line. His first film District 9 focused on aliens living in the slums of a fut...
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REVIEW: With Your Majesty Jupiter Ascending to Entitled Royalty, Aegis, Stinger & Splice Caine Wise Begin Hunting the Abrasax Siblings

Posted by James Brown on Saturday, February 7, 2015, In : 0.09% Cocktails

Jupiter Ascending

Directed By: Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski

Starring: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I always look forward to films from Lana and Andy Wachowski. Whether they succeed or fail, they always put forth one hell of a production. All of their movies are intriguing, thought-provoking cinema consistently marked by ambition. No matter what, they go for it all in grand style each and every time they're up at bat. Cloud Atl...
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REVIEW: Using My Precise Language, Thank You to The Giver & Jonas The Receiver of Memories For Your Childhood & Lack of Sameness

Posted by James Brown on Wednesday, August 13, 2014, In : 0.03% Wine Coolers

The Giver

Directed By: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, Odeya Rush, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift, Cameron Monaghan, Jordan Nicholas Smal, and Saige Fernandes

Though the Chief Elder is preparing to thank the members of the Community for their childhood when The Giver arrives in theaters later this week, I want to take a moment to thank a special someone for my childhood. I will forever remember that I was at a screening of The Giver when I...
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REVIEW: In Australian Western The Rover, Three Robbers Get a Bloody Lesson in Why Not to Steal Another Man's Car

Posted by James Brown on Sunday, June 22, 2014, In : 0.06% Beer or Wine

The Rover

Directed By: David Michôd

Starring: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, and Scoot McNairy

I've been begging for something fresh and original over the last several weeks. In my reviews of The Signal, The Grand Seduction, and Think Like a Man Too, I've been critical of filmmakers for not taking the road less traveled and offering up the same old predictable, formulaic stuff. Well, my wish is apparently director David Michôd's command. His latest film, The Rover is unlike anything I've seen...
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REVIEW: In Edge of Tomorrow, Major William Cage & Angel of Verdun Rita Vrataski Lead UDF's Operation Downfall Against Omega & Its Mimics #LiveDieRepeat

Posted by James Brown on Saturday, June 7, 2014, In : 0.03% Wine Coolers

Edge of Tomorrow

Directed By: Doug Liman

Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, and Brendan Gleeson

"Battle’s the great redeemer. A fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged."
-Master Sergeant Farrell Bartolome (Bill Paxton)

The age of movie stardom may be long dead, but Tom Cruise's career on the big screen is quite far from it. After a career full of ups and downs in this risky business, the timeless actor still remains willing to take a gamble at the box office. Whil...
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REVIEW: Creating a R.I.F.T. in Academia with the Artificial Intelligence Pinn, Will & Evelyn Caster Don’t Take Transcendence to the Next Level at Brightwood

Posted by James Brown on Friday, April 18, 2014, In : 0.09% Cocktails

Transcendence

Directed By: Wally Pfister

Starring: Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, and Paul Bettany

The last couple of years haven't been terribly awesome for iconic movie star Johnny Depp. Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger weren't exactly box office successes beloved by audiences worldwide. In fact, they were duds that cost their respective studios hundreds of millions of dollars. With this in mind, I wouldn't exactly have high box office hop...
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REVIEW: In Her, Operating System 1 Samantha Learns to Love Letter Writer Theodore Twombly

Posted by James Brown on Thursday, December 26, 2013, In : 0.03% Wine Coolers

Her

Directed By: Spike Jonze

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johannson, Chris Pratt, and Kristen Wiig

Man falls in love with his personal assistant. Stranger things have happened in human history. When that personal assistant is digital and can take no physical form whatsoever, things get a little more interesting. This is exactly the situation with which we're presented in Spike Jonze's Her. With the advent of Siri and other technologies in recent y...
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REVIEW: Meerkat Frey Forever Grabs All the Fruit She Can From Elysium While Standing on Hippo Max

Posted by James Brown on Friday, August 9, 2013, In : 0.03% Wine Coolers

Elysium

Directed By: Neill Blomkamp

Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner

2013 has been a pretty good year for sci-fi lovers. We've had plenty of fun with movies like Oblivion, Star Trek Into Darkness, and even Pacific Rim. If District 9 director Neil Blomkamp has anything to say about it, we're not done quite yet. Hitting theaters this weekend, his latest film Elysium is the last big science fiction film until the like...
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REVIEW: Blessed Be the New Founding Fathers of America, a Nation Reborn With One Big Moral Dilemma Called The Purge

Posted by James Brown on Friday, June 7, 2013, In : 0.06% Beer or Wine

The Purge

Directed By: James DeMonaco

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, and Max Burkholder

America is the poster child for gun-loving nations across the globe. I'm not going to delve too deep into the divisive, often illogical misconceptions that are floating around the web about whether or not we should arm ourselves to death, but I can't deny that this has been a hot button issue this year. What I will delve into are the many, many victims of gun violence and some of the mal...
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REVIEW: In Upside Down, Pink Bees and TransWorld's Inverse Matter Are the Cure to All Adam and Eden's Double Gravity Woes

Posted by James Brown on Sunday, March 17, 2013, In : 0.06% Beer or Wine

Upside Down

Directed By: Juan Diego Solanas

Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst, and Timothy Spall

Originality is something that's desperately missing from movies these days. Everything is a sequel, a remake, an adaptation, or a true story. This is a sad state of affairs for cinema today, but the blame cannot be totally hoisted upon the shoulders of studio execs in Hollywood. We as moviegoers share a good chunk of that blame as well. We buy into it. Of the highest-grossing movies of 2012,...
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REVIEW: Looper Closes the Loop. Bruce Willis is Killing It!

Posted by James Brown on Saturday, September 29, 2012, In : 0.00% Water

Looper

Directed By: Rian Johnson

Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, and Jeff Daniels

Time travel is quintessentially sci-fi. Some of the greatest sci-fi flicks have turned the time and space continuum on its head. What would cinema be like today if Marty McFly never went back to 1955 or if the Terminator never went back in time to kill John Connor? Time travel is a cornerstone of the science fiction genre, and Rian Johnson decid...

REVIEW: When the Rat Becomes the Unit of Currency, a Specter by the Name of Robert Pattinson Haunts Cosmopolis

Posted by James Brown on Sunday, August 26, 2012, In : 0.09% Cocktails

Cosmopolis

Directed By: David Cronenberg

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, and Kevin Durand

As I mentioned in my review of Robot & Frank, the other futuristic movie this weekend is David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis. Before I began writing this review, I did something I rarely do. I went to Rotten Tomatoes to check out the Tomatometer, and I was thoroughly disappointed. Apparently, Cosmopolis has a rating of 64% on RT. That...
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REVIEW: With Memory Problems, Gardening, and Theft, Robot & Frank Showcases How Old People are Sharper Than You Think

Posted by James Brown on Saturday, August 25, 2012, In : 0.03% Wine Coolers

Robot & Frank

Directed By: Jake Schreier

Starring: Frank Langella, Peter Sarsgaard, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, and Susan Sarandon

Indie cinema is all about the future this weekend. With David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis and Jake Schreier's Robot & Frank, we've got two different movies at the indie box office that look ahead to what’s next for mankind. While I'll talk about Cosmopolis later this weekend, I'd like to take a little time to talk about the futuristic comedy-drama Robot & Frank and how...
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