Star Trek: Into Darkness

I feel like I've seen this before.  Oh yes, I have.  You know, I've had to endure many reboots in the last decade.  The Star Trek one, as mentioned in my previous review, was one of the better ones.  After this film, I may have to retract that.  I'm disappointed both in the parallelisms they choose to keep (come on, radiation from the warp core again?) and the continuity they choose to break (they can get to and from Klingon space in 10 minutes?).  All in all I'm glad I saved this for Netflix.

Star Trek: Into Darkness
2013, 132 minutes, directed by J. J. Abrams

Confetti of the Mind: The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo

Maudie's makes my favorite breakfast tacos.  Their salsa is okay, and Pete's tacos are pretty good, but when you put them together something magical happens and the result is delicious.  Having Fantastic Fest back at the Alamo South Lamar puts us again next to Maudie's, and it's good to taste the joy again.

Nacho Vigalondo makes some of my favorite Fantastic Fest films.  Normally, I'm not a huge fan of shorts.  I don't usually bother to review them, except when assembled together into a "feature", as these have been by Drafthouse Films, complete with director introductions and commentary.  Drafthouse Films itself has a pretty poor reputation for me.  They tend to buy films just on the wrong side of funny, the ones too /much/ of whatever they are, to the point that they're just not good any more, at least for those outside the Cult of Tim.

So when the Drafthouse assembles a compilation of Nacho's shorts, ranging from early experiments to his Oscar-nominated "7:35 in the Morning" to recent productions, something magical happens.  They're short films that are good, fit and tied together by narration and my warm history of his work, assembled by Drafthouse because of his relationship with the festival.  I'm happy Fantastic Fest has come home to Nacho Vigalondo and I can experience these shorts again.

Confetti of the Mind: The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo

2014 compilation, 57 minutes, directed by Nacho Vigalondo

El Incidente (The Incident)

Man I'm sad about this film.  One of the few sci fi films on the schedule, it plays really strongly for more than an hour.  Two groups of people are stuck in a loop, one in an infinite staircase, the other on a deserted stretch of road.  In each case, someone has been hurt, but there's no way to help.  Supplies (from a candy machine and convenience store, respectfully) continuously refill, but there's no escape.  There's great character development, it's going someplace.  Then, when it reaches climax - explanation montage doo wee doo.  And that's that.

What a disappointment.

El Incidente

2014, 100 minutes, directed by Isaac Ezban

Realiti

This film is a head trip.  Vic (Nathan Meister) is a former journalist and up-and-coming junior executive at Tri Media Corporation.  They're involved in something - Realiti - a drug in development - secret trials - espionage - consumer manipulation - hallucination.  The story feels like Descent Into Madness, but maybe that depends on where it picks up...

Realiti

2014, 95 minutes, directed by Jonathan King

District 9

I'm impressed that a South Africa production was so eloquently able to disguise apartheid critique under a thick gory blanket of sci fi, the way it's meant to be done.  Plus Wikus Van De Merwe is such an awesome action hero, it's hard to not root for him as both a speciesist mid-level manager and a blood-thirsty killing machine.

For more commentary see my original review from 2009.

District 9
2009, 112 minutes, directed by Neill Blomkamp

An Adventure in Space and Time

This made-for-TV BBC movie dramatizes the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who, from the creation of the series through his departure, primarily from the point of view of Verity Lambert, the show's original producer, and from the good Doctor himself.  I found the series surprisingly well done; they went to good effort to recreate the early sets, costumes, and looks, now cheesingly-shot in glorious HD.  If anything distracted me, it was the appearance of Matt Smith in one scene, which was simultaneously an anachronism for the 1960s and dating what would otherwise be a "timeless" story to the 2010s.  Obviously it's not interesting unless you're a fan of early Doctor Who, but if you are and want more meta in the stories, grab one of the many repeats and enjoy it.

An Adventure in Space and Time
2013, 90 minutes, directed by Terry McDonough

Alien Raiders

I almost saw the world premiere of this low-budget sci-fi action film back in 2008.  When I grabbed it off Showtime this summer, I had no recollection of seeing it before, but the first few scenes brought back memories.  I wish there were more films made like this - low budget, decent story, English, enough sci fi to make the action/horror stuff worthwhile.  It's a fun, if still predictable, ride.

Alien Raiders
2008, 85 minutes, directed by Ben Rock

The Zero Theorem

Closing out Fantastic Fest is the latest from Terry Gilliam, another somewhat existential tale of the odd and bizarre.  Qohen is a mathematician, tasked with calculating the meaning of existence, and yet his work is constantly interrupted by Management, who just can't seem to leave him alone.  As with many films of this genre, I'm left more scratching my head than satisfied.

The Zero Theorem
2013, 107 minutes, directed by Terry Gilliam

LFO

As with several other late-FF-2013 reviews, my original notes were lost and I'm writing this almost a year later.  I keep a film blog to help me remember the movies I've seen, and unfortunately without my notes I struggle for details.

I seem to recall liking this film.  Robert escapes life in his basement, experimenting with sound.  When he finds a frequency that gives him complete control over those who hear it, hilarity ensues as he lives out his fantasies, until he realizes just how far he can go.

LFO
2013,  94 minutes, directed by Antonio Tublen

The Congress

Somehow my reviews of the last days of Fantastic Fest 2013 weren't saved here.  I even recall going through my notes, determining they had all been posted, and consciously throwing them away.  C'est la vie.  This is from memory.

Anyway, The Congress started with a solid, sci-fi-worthy human dilemma.  Faced with her own aging body and marketability as an actress, Robin Wright (as a fiction version of herself) is offered one last role of a "lifetime".  She'll be digitally scanned - physically, mentally, emotionally - and "Robin Wright" the actress would officially become a separately-owned property from Robin Wright the person.  It's a dilemma to decide if one's identity, one's external "worth", should be sold at any cost, and one I thought the film would take much of its run time to explore.

Instead, faced with a sick child, Robin makes the decision relatively quickly.  Then the film devolves into an animated world, one where everyone takes pills to see the world as cartoon.  Twenty years later, as "her" star power peaks, she's invited to The Congress, a New World gathering, as a celebrity of sorts.  Not everyone desires such new world order, and the gathering devolves into anarchy and chaos.  Robin escapes, but is hurt and in a coma.

Much later, she wakes, this time to a cartoon world entirely whimsical, where everyone is whoever they want to be.  Her goal, though, is to find her son, and for that she must pierce the veil and see the world for the run-down ghettos it may actually be, and find a way to cycle around again.

As the film dove more and more into the surreal, it got harder and harder to follow.  I can picture the director of the film trying to explain his vision to a studio for funding, and everyone in the room gets so confused that they decide it must be brilliant.  I just thought it was confusing.

The Congress
2013, 122 minutes, directed by Ari Folman 

Coherence

I greatly enjoyed this film, despite having seeing it as a silly teen drama at SXSW a few months ago.  This time, though, the theme is wrapped into a legitimate sci-fi puzzler.  As a comet passes near Earth, reality shifts, throwing a dinner party into disarray.  That house down the block still has its light on - and wow, doesn't it look eerily familiar?

Here it is, the sci fi film of 2013.  Filmed with minimal script - just a note card with motivations - the actors didn't even know it was a sci fi film until days into shooting.  This shows what an excellent job you can do with a brilliant script, good actors, and - nothing else.

Coherence
2013, 89 minutes, directed by James Ward Byrkit

Impact

When this made-for-TV movie started a few nights ago, I had no idea Syfy would drag it out into a four-hour sap fest.  In this epic tale, an asteroid - a fragment of a brown dwarf star - has crashed into the moon, causing it to veer and swing towards Earth.  A team of scientists rush to find a solution before the moon impacts our planet, while meanwhile their families suffer the effects of the star's gravity and magnetism.

With a few adjustments and a different ending, I think I saw this in Melancholia a few years ago.  And I hated that film.  And this one was almost worse.

Impact
2008, 180 minutes, directed by Mike Rohl

Plus One

Just one year out of high school, Jill is diving into college life while her boyfriend David stayed behind. A stupid kiss is the impetus to tear them apart, and David thinks he has just one night - at the ultimate Spring party - to win her back. Thanks to extraterrestrial interference, though he may have more chances than he expects.

Meanwhile, Teddy is simply looking for the time of his life, and gets more than he bargains for. This is a story of understanding, of decisions, of consequences, of what it means to be you. All of which is set in the midst of young nudity and debauchery and a good bit of science fiction.

Plus One
2013, 95 minutes, directed by Dennis Iliadis

Looper

I skipped this during Fantastic Fest, preferring the world premiere of Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman over what was billed as an action shooter.  For the rest of the week everyone was telling me how wrong I was (or rather, how misguided the advertisements were) because Looper was a true sci fi film.

So what makes a film sci fi instead of action or horror?  Just because there's a piece of undeveloped technology that enables the plot doesn't make something a science fiction film.  True sci fi has on-the-horizon or pie-in-the-sky technology, sure, but it's not used to enable a shoot-em-up or some sort of slasher film.  Instead, sci fi uses the technology to poke and prod at the human condition, to see how human interaction and feelings react to new stimuli.  It's all about the people.

In these ways, Looper truly is sci fi.  Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an executioner, killing those sent back from the future who need to disappear.  When it's time for him to "close his loop" - killing his future self (Bruce Willis) - he hesitates and things go awry.  Much of what follows is action chase, sure, as Joe tries to fix his mistake while his older self hunts the future mob boss who sent him back for his death.  That the boss is a young boy is troubling, sure, but is this fate fixed or is there another way?  In the end, Joe just can't be sure, and has to take what can only be a leap of faith.  It is right here that the film cements itself as the best of 2012 sci fi.

Looper
2012, 119 minutes, directed by Rian Johnson

Johnny Mnemonic

Here we are, a few weeks after the end of Fantastic Fest, and I'm finally able to stomach watching a movie again.  This week's Netflix special is Johnny Mnemonic, a not-so-futuristic look at data smuggling in the head of one serious and pissed Keanu Reeves.  Overloaded with a whole 320 gigabytes of data (oh my!), Johnny has to find the pass code and get it out before it leaks into his brain, bursting it.  Meanwhile the Yakuza and various local scum (including a cyborg street preacher) a trying to hunt him down to "retrieve" the information, guillotine-style.

It's funny watching old sci fi action films try to be futuristic, but still mess up so many key things.  The sad part about this one is that it didn't come out in the 80s when such things were forgivable - it came out the year I graduated high school.  They should have known better and I feel old.

Johnny Mnemonic
1995, 103 minutes, directed by Robert Longo

Antiviral

Well, here it is, the end of another film festival.  This is my 34th screening including shorts series; it's my 35th event including the awards ceremony.  With a last-minute change to my planned film, I'm walking in mostly blind to Antiviral.

This film focuses on the cult of celebrity.  We (as a culture, not me) follow every moment of their lives, good and bad, desperate to grab at shoestrings and remnants of their lives.  Is celebrity mania so strong that people would pay to get celebrity diseases?  Would you eat celebrity cell steaks?  It's an interesting topic, and one delved into whole-heartedly by this story.  I find it refreshingly different that the lead actor must act sick for the entire film, as he falls deeper into the underworld of society.

Antiviral
2012, 108 minutes, directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Cloud Atlas

This epic, interwoven adventure tells not one, not two, but six stories across time.  Past lives, past loves, past loss.  It's all connected.  It's seriously the most epic film I've seen since The Fountain.  Alas, Cloud Atlas didn't touch me in the same way, but I appreciate everything the Wachowski's, Tykwer and the actors did to realize this on screen.  Unfortunately, given it's scope and very intellectual overriding motives, I doubt it will do well in mainstream American theaters.  I want to see more films like this made, even if this wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

Cloud Atlas
2012, 164 minutes, directed by Tom Tykwer, Lana Wakowski, and Andy Wakowski

Errors of the Human Body

Geoff (Michael Eklund) is a controversial geneticist due to his research into embryo screening, based on (and using) the death of his newborn son to a unique genetic defect.  Former student Rebekka (Karoline Herfurth) lures him to the Max Planck Institute in Dresden after he's forced out of work in the U.S.  Slowly he realizes that there's some Days-of-Our-Lives-style backstabbing and intrigue going on at the institute - I say slowly because it took me a while to realize that this was the real plot instead of more exposition - and he steps right into it, while also dealing with the loss of his ex-wife and rekindling of an old affair with Rebekka.  Then the plot wakes up and gets very personal for Geoff, and it seems like the climax has passed and the film will end.  Only at this point it doesn't; the denouement is stretched out for 30 minutes so the writers can make one final point before they let the film end.

There's very little sci fi at Fantastic Fest this year.  Vanishing Waves is the best of the two I've seen, with Errors of the Human Body a disappointing second due to pacing issues.  I shouldn't spend the first part of the film wondering when it will finally start, and the last part of the film wondering when it will finally end.  I totally wanted to love this film and I didn't.

Errors of the Human Body
2012, 100 minutes, directed by Eron Sheean 

Vanishing Waves

Lithuanian scientists experiment with brain-wave capture, in the hope of connecting human minds.  The first experiments with human-human contact find Lukas (Marius Jampolskis), a lead researcher, dropped in the dreams of coma patient Aurora (Jurga Jutaite), trapped since a car accident which took her husband.  Their immediate, deep connection troubles Lukas, who has to hide his experiences to dig deeper into Aurora's soul and bring her back from the depths.  It's such an intimate look into the woman's mind that I can overlook the story not going as I expected.

Vanishing Waves
2012, 124 minutes, directed by Kristina Buozyte

The Warped Forest

I'm not really sure what I just watched.  Even having seen Funky Forest, the weirdest thing on film, I'm at a complete loss for how that formed a coherent story in the mind of writer/producer/director's Shunichiro Miki's mind.  It's Japanese.  Picture strange creatures, unusual currency, and über technology.  For God's sake, don't let it splash the dumplings!

The Warped Forest
2011, 82 minutes, directed by Shunichiro Miki