Science Fiction - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the seventh feature length film in this seminal sci-fi franchise, has the distinction of being the first of the series to be made without any involvement from the creator of the whole thing, George Lucas. And the irony is that director J.J. Abrams et. al. tried their absolute damnedest to make this movie feel as much like the original 1975 film as possible.

The story very simply involves an underground resistance group waging political (and actual) battles against a large evil force determined to take control of the whole galaxy. Some young rag tag folks meet up with an older wise man with a history against the bad guys, lead by a shadowy figure who communicates with his minions via hologram, one of whom is a fella dressed all in black with a black mask and a distorted voice whom every one else fears due to his Force powers. The rebels and the bad guys race against each other to get the same piece of information, which leads to a big space battle at the end involving a large planet-like space station slash world-destroying weapon. Also there is a stop at a cantina-like establishment filled with all sorts of aliens and creatures as well as a live band, and there are cute android antics.

Review: ‘The Martian’

“The Martian” is a movie about hope and survival, both from the perspective of a lone person and that of an entire community, banding together for a common goal, for a common good. It is not too much to say that this is a movie about the better, more positive aspects of humanity. Instead of focusing on our differences and our foibles, it is a story about setting that all aside to achieve something seemingly impossible. There is no “bad guy,” though there is still plenty of drama. Continuing on in the face of impossible odds and unbelievable circumstances, the power of human connections, this is one of the most positive, life affirming movies to come out this year.

It is the near future, and NASA has already completed a couple of manned missions to Mars, and this story starts with the third mission being scrubbed just a couple of weeks in because of unforseen inclement Martian weather. During the evacuation, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is lost and presumed dead, as the crew leaves him behind in order to keep all of them from dying as well. But lo, Mark is not dead, but alive. Injured, but alive. He makes his way back to the habitat they have set up and he starts taking steps to stay alive as long as possible until he find a way off the planet, or until a rescue mission can be mounted back on Earth, which would take four years to complete. In the meantime, Mark is all alone on a desolate planet in which nothing grows. And he wants to live. Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Tomorrowland’

“Tomorrowland” arrived with much promise – a wholly original sci-fi film starring George Clooney and more importantly developed by a wondrous filmmaker by the name of Brad Bird, he of “The Iron Giant” and “The Incredibles” fame. His second live-action film after the hugely entertaining “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” this was supposed to be the antithesis to the same old, same old, an antidote to the parade of boring installments of mega franchises that regularly populate the multiplexes this time of year (and now seemingly year round). Tired of comic book movies and film adaptations of old television shows and remakes of movies that were perfectly fine to begin with? Then “Tomorrowland” is supposed to be your answer. So why did it just land with the most resounding of thuds?

“Tomorrowland” is the story of Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), who lives in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is trying her best to fight against the dismantling of the space program which employed her father for many years and which inspired her long ago to look up at a starry night with wonder. This determination and hopeless optimism gets her on the short list of people who are granted access to Tomorrowland, a sort of alternate dimension place designed by geniuses and meant for society’s best and brightest, a place for them to experiment and develop their radical ideas and attempt to make the world a better place. She spends a short amount of time in Tomorrowland, which looks mostly like The Airport of The Future, and then spends most of the rest of the movie trying to get back there. In order to get back, she is introduced to Frank (George Clooney), who was a citizen of Tomorrowland when it was first conceived, but found himself excommunicated from the place for reasons not made entirely clear outside of “ideological differences.” Frank is a total grump, but he reluctantly agrees to help Casey go back to Tomorrowland in an attempt to “save the world.”Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Ex Machina’

As humans we have been obsessed with the idea of artificial intelligence for a very long time, and we are closer now to true artificial intelligence than we have ever been, to the point where some of our top minds have felt the need to warn everyone about the dangerous pitfalls of a future in which we are ruled by our robot overlords. This has been shown in our art, as we have seen movies about robots with A.I. that are both benevolent and malevolent, but with “Ex Machina,” it is not the intent of the A.I. that is at question but that of the creator.

Caleb (Dohmnall Gleeson, son of Brendan) wins a contest in which he is allowed to work side by side for one week with his company’s boss, who is this fella named Nathan (Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis). Nathan is a weird one; having invented a Google-like search engine at the age of 13 that has gone on to be the number one used search engine in the world, Nathan became a billionaire and has chosen to live in isolation, hundreds of miles from anyone else, in a state of art home that also acts as his private research facility. When Caleb shows up, Nathan tells him that he is there to give a Turing test to one of Nathan’s creations, which is to say, a robot with artificial intelligence.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Chappie’

“Chappie” is an update on the “Pinocchio as a robot” story, the sentient cyborg wants to be real sort of thing, a kind of South African “Short Circuit” blended with a little “Robocop.” With a mix of comedy, science fiction, action and a bit of social satire, “Chappie” is a good movie blending some cool ideas and featuring incredible special effects, and would have been great if the story itself was just a little more developed.

It is the very near future and things, as always in these kinds of movie, have gone to complete shit. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the police have contracted a weapons company to provide hundreds of drone cops, robots that accompany the police officers and are helping to drop crime rates everywhere. Engineer Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the creator of these robots called Scouts, yet he himself just is a worker drone within the massive weapons company anyway. On the side he’s managed to create an artifical intelligence program that he could install into a robot to test out, but when his boss (Sigourney Weaver) refuses to give him a discarded robot to work with, he ends up stealing it so he could do the A.I. testing on the down low. But wouldn’t you know it, Deon gets kidnapped himself by a trio of gangsters who then end up stealing his robot with the brand new A.I. program, and they name is Chappie (Sharlto Copley) and teach it to gangsta lean, curse and throw ninja stars, all so they can use it in a heist to make a bunch of money.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Jupiter Ascending’

“Jupiter Ascending” feels like an accidental cousin to other recent movies featuring female leads who have been chosen to change their world. Whether it be “The Hunger Games” or “Divergent,” movies in which entire worlds are built with their own rules, in which a hero is picked seemingly at random, and for whom a greater purpose is revealed. It’s like a young adult version of “The Matrix” but with way more space travel and alien creatures.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is an illegal Russian immigrant, having been brought over by her single mom and extended family, and she is unfortunately in the family business, which is to say, she’s a housekeeper, going around to rich peoples’ homes all around Chicago and being envious of their possessions between breaks from cleaning toilets. She misses her father, whom she never met, and she says more than once that she hates her life, which is understandable because it looks like a pretty miserable existence. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, there is a royal family in outer space known as the Abrasax family, and they are having themselves a little land rights dispute, with the argument centering around Earth and its resources. And thanks to reincarnation, they know that the true heir to Earth is actually on Earth, and they want to find this person, with each family member having their own reasons for wanting to do so. So there is a race to see who finds her first so she can be brought to the family.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Interstellar’

BOOM! CRASH! POW! OUTER SPACE! SILENCE! WORMHOLES! ALIEN PLANETS! DANGER! BLACK HOLES! BLARING MUSIC! RUMBLING BASS! MCCONAUGHEY!

“Interstellar.”

That’s the first impression that this movie leaves you with, as it is 169 minutes of bombast, big scientific ideas, huge human emotions and visual depictions of space and space travel never been seen in a movie (or anywhere else really). This is a huge movie in scope and size, earnest in its emotional, very human story but also desiring to leave the audience in awe of the breadth of vision of the film makers as well as the magnitude of the ideas that have been bandied about by the characters. After all, it’s not every $160 million dollar budgeted movie that has major plot points revolving around the relative nature of time throughout the cosmos and the existence of dimensions beyond the three that we as humans and observers of the world around us can even understand.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’

Look this one is pretty obvious thematically speaking, amiright? We can all agree on this much. As a continuing allegory for the age old inability of the human race to work together in peace and harmony and without hurting each other, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” hits all the most obvious albeit important notes over and over, those about the importance of family and the duality of man and the conundrum of how our survival instinct can lead to our own downfall. In the most simplest of terms, after everything is left in shambles and on fire and smoldering with the specter of violence of death draped over the world, the most important question is asked: Can’t we all just get along?

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is not an excellent movie because of the top notch and often stunning visual effects or because of the well crafted and interesting action scenes but instead it is excellent because of how the movie is properly made from start to finish, with each scene moving the story forward, either via advancing the plot, the themes or the characters, often times simultaneously, and it makes for a fast moving, engaging and interesting summer blockbuster. Entire scenes consist only of computer generated characters, communicating often in soft grunts and sign language, yet thanks to some bold yet beautiful strokes, so much information is given that it allows us to actually get to KNOW these characters, and to understand their wants and needs, and this is a beautiful thing.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Earth to Echo’

In the grand tradition of movies about kids biting off more than they can chew a la “E.T.” or “The Goonies” or “The Sandlot,” here comes “Earth to Echo” a movie about some kids biting off more than they can chew, but this time in the form of a found footage movie. Oh how simple it is to update age old tropes to modern standards.

“Earth to Echo” starts with three kids who are friends but who find their friendship threatened by the spectre of Big Brother, as eminent domain forces them to move out of their neighborhood so a freeway can be built through the area. On their last night together, these three kids decide to investigate some random map zapped on to their cell phones, mostly in an effort to try to do something memorable with their last night together. And sure enough, when the map leads them to a cute tiny little alien, they find themselves on a mission to help this little alien guy find his spaceship so he can go home.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Snowpiercer’

After a global experiment to reverse the trend of global warming goes horribly wrong and plunges the entire Earth into a modern ice age, killing practically all life on the planet in the process, a single bullet train carrying the world’s survivors makes a year-long loop around the world, preserving what is left of mankind, in a daily struggle to keep humans from becoming extinct. This is the set up for the most expensive South Korean film ever made, “Snowpiercer,” and this movie is pretty much as good as it gets, proof that high-concept fare and action-filled science fiction can also be thoughtful and smart and above all else well made.

The story of “Snowpiercer” starts up 17-18 years after the failed experiment pretty much destroyed the world, and the people who were all able to climb aboard the train find that not only were they preserving humanity, they were also preserving humanity’s main mode of existence, which seems to be centered on class division and the concept of the strong eating the weak. The poorest of people who still managed to get on the train were relegated to the very back of the train, where their quarters were overly populated and extremely cramped, as well as very dirty and lacking in basic necessities. Forced to fend for themselves, the people in the tail end of the train grew to resent the people in the front of the train, and over the years a few revolutions and uprisings have flared up, only to be beaten back by those who run the train, using armed guards and a prison system to keep people in line.Continue Reading …