Category: Science Fiction

Nothing There

Nope -2022-R

“Jordan Peele is so amazing and edgy and inspiring! His new film defies description, amazing on multiple levels, creative and so sophisticated that Nope is impossible to quantify! Perhaps the best film EVER! I can’t wait to see it!” —Voice from the Peele Herd-
Nope, not me. Sorry to claim lone dissenter status but Nope is a film equivalent of the ageless folktale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone is impressed with well, nothing. The foolish, royal dude is proudly parading naked. Nothing on. That’s how I felt leaving the theater, reflecting on multiple layers of nothing. Here’s my summary: A fist-bumping chimp who whacks out and chews the faces off a few studio hosts was the horror. Check. A floating, mattress-like alien spacecraft was the sci-fi. Check. A quick witted, smack talking, wannabe rapper sister teamed with a stoic, single utterance, wannabe Clint Eastwood cowboy brother and a bored, techno savvy rough-and-ready Fry’s guy were the combined weird Peele deal. Yep. Check. Check. Check. But, I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Coherent? Nope. Scary? Nope. Captivating, spellbinding, riveting? Nope, nope nope! A group of 20 somethings grabbed their popcorn and walked-out sometime between the marauding monkey and the mystifying mattress. More followed. I stayed. Regrettably. But hey it’s Jordan Awesome Peele! Maybe you will spot the invisible clothes that I missed. So have a go and let me know. 


The End of an Epic

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – 2019 – PG13

All good things must come to an end. It’s been 42 years since Han, Leia and Luke, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 launched a cultural phenomenon that to this day sees closet shelves and dresser drawers across America stuffed with lightsabers, stormtroopers and droids. Collectibles! Some day, we all hope, they will be worth a fortune and augment our retirement. My son, born in 1977, grew up paralleling the Star Wars universe. Remember Boba Fett?  The most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy once went missing in our household. To restore order to our universe we immediately went shopping. Being the pre-Amazon Prime era, it required firing the car up and ransacking Wards, Sears, Mervyn’s and Toys “R” Us until we finally lucked out at a K-Mart 20 miles away! The force was with us.

Star Wars ultimate finale, The Rise of Skywalker, concludes the epic triple trilogy that started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Jedi Rey and First Order Commander Kylo Ren (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver) Resistance fighter pilot Poe and Stormtrooper drop-out Finn (Oscar Isaac, John Boyega) wage a winner-take-all intergalactic scavenger hunt, the prize, a free universe. Rey and Ren dominate the film, blasting and battling each other (to the point of tedium) across the galaxy. Ren was not as maniacal as in the Force Awakens. I spotted a soft spot early on but had to wait until the finale of the finale to see if my hunch would bear fruit, last man standing, Ben or Ren? Redemption or revenge? No spoiler here but you won’t be disappointed. Rey matches Ren’s zealotry, lightsabership and scowls from dunes to oceans, islands to planets. Their ocean battle alone incredible. Death Stars rise and fall but worth the wait is when the most famous X-Wing in Star Wars lore makes a majestic reappearance. Just wow! Bringing a roar from my theater crowd is the scene following Poe’s reassurance, “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.” Look up! The Resistance meets the Empire, once and for all. For me, the absolute best moment of the movie. 

There are lots of loose ends left for Star Wars aficionados to debate for years. The Rise of Skywalker couldn’t possibly get it all figured out or the movie would play more as exhausting eulogy than culminating trilogy. To love this four decade saga is to live comfortably with ambiguity. A blockbuster’s impact on pop culture is measured by the millions of water cooler arguments, opinions and observations that fill social media and social gatherings for common consideration and consumption. That’s the fun of it. Let’s test it out. I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, but then I’m a biology matters kind of person. Luke (Skywalker himself) disagrees, “Some things are stronger than blood.” What do you think? Let it rip. Above all else, yesterday, tomorrow and four decades hence, let’s lay claim to what’s most important, “The Force brought us together.” Thanks for that reminder Finn. And may the force be with you all!

Getting the Willies

Gemini Man – 2019


Will Smith carved a forever fan heart into my movie loving spirit with his “Welcome to earth” alien knockout scene in 1996’s ID4 Independence Day. Happily in Gemini Man I get not one, but two Wills, 23-year old cloned Junior, the top gun mercenary of the bad guys, and 51-year Harry Brogan, the top gun assassin of the good guys. A third Will crops up later but doesn’t get much air time before a newly united Harry and Junior snuff him out. Shades of Whack-a-Will. Junior, the bad guys’ mercenary is sent on a mission to kill his DNA donor dad, Harry. Of course, neither donor nor son know this test tube genesis story at the first or second round of assassin mayhem as the Wills chase and fight each other across three continents. Then the good guys and bad guys switch roles asking the audience to entertain a philosophic interlude between popcorn refills: What if it were possible to breed emotionless, conscious-free, combat-perfect clones in order to save the lives of American servicemen and women? The august and dignified UK, we’re reminded, started it all with Dolly the cloned sheep. Why stop at sheep or pigs, why not create the flawless soldier? All heads turn to Junior. What about him? Well? Well? Fortunately we weren’t held captive in the philosophy of ethics movie class for too long before we were back dodging grenades, reloading Uzis, and careening, cartwheeling and somersaulting across sky, earth and water, finally plummeting to the catacomb depths landing in skull piles. It is the face-to-face, mano-a-clono encounter that pivots the story from science to humanity, from head to heart. The last 30 minutes of this nearly two hour film presents haunting moments of moral decision and indecision, choices between loyalty and integrity, duty and decency. Don’t worry, the human insights are framed in the midst of a barrage of clever special effects and tumultuous action. No softness dare compromise blazing bullets and broken glass. No sir! But, trust me, the deeper questions don’t fade away in the grenade smoke. You be the Gemini judge. 

Cosmos Heart of Darkness

Ad Astra – 2019

Ad Astra, Latin “to the stars” foreshadows the celestial ambitions of a film aiming for the stars but in celluloid reality, is locked into our gravity-bound solar system, destination Neptune. Brad Pitt, suiting up as stoic (wooden), impassive (dull), invincible astronaut, Major Roy McBride, ditched his charm and traded in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood charisma for monotone utterances and blank, vacant stares in this sci fi version of Apocalypse Now. Roy is a troubled, solitary man on a perilous interplanetary journey to eradicate a madman, Captain Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), Roy’s estranged father. Earth is edging dangerously close to doomsday and the senior McBride, who disappeared into deep space years before on the Lima Project, a mission seeking intelligent life, is identified as the mad mastermind. Cue the son to undertake a classified bounty hunter journey from Earth to the Moon to Mars to Neptune to find his father and save the planet.  Captain McBride goes from fallen hero to celestial villain. We the audience hitch a ride on this laborious journey where we witness crowded shopping moon malls, space punk pirates, a catapulting lunar rover chase, a deranged attack baboon, gaudy interstellar “Comfort Rooms,” meteorite dodge ball and a Neptune nuclear tsunami. Choose your thrill. Strapped in between the malls and meteorites is a tedious storyline stab at deconstructing the psychological baggage Roy is packing from planet to planet. Oh, ok, got it. It’s about father-son stuff. Oh, wait. It’s about husband-wife stuff. No, no. It’s about self and soul and spirit stuff. It’s about love. It’s about life. Oh, good grief! Stop already! Can we just rewind to the killer baboon? For a sci fi space thriller, it’s stodgy and slow. For a relational drama, it’s thin on insights and thick on “stuff.” For an inspirational message about human transformation, it’s not. It is meandering, dry, dreary and dark. The film tried too hard to be a monumental, profound, psychological, sensory odyssey through time, space and self.  But, instead it spiraled out of control, coming off as so dense and opaque, that it dimmed any hope I had to engage. Consequently, I was neither disturbed nor inspired. I didn’t care. Myself, I suggest skipping Ad Astra and renting Apocalypse Now.