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science fiction

Sphere – Barry Levinson (1998)

The film is based on a book by Michael Crichton. It starts interestingly.

A UFO was found deep in the ocean an different kinds of scientists are called to investigate. They are taken down to an underwater base and enter the craft. There they encounter a mysterious sphere.

As soon as the sphere is discovered, the story becomes less interesting. Of course the scientists get stuck under water. Of course there is a psychological play ‘who is the bad guy?’, etc.

After a promising start “Sphere” is but an alright science fiction film.

Landscape With Invisible Hand – Cory Finley (2023)

A rather amusing absurdistic sci-fi comedy.

Earth has been taken over by a supreme intelligence which set out to save the planet. Their bureaucracy is so efficient that most people are poor, unemployed and living on earth, while the elite lives in large cities floating above the surface.

We follow one family on earth which is doing relatively fine. The son invites another family into their basement which slowly starts to cause tensions.

The alien occupiers are cubes with legs who speak by rubbing their paws.

Anyway, weird situations, strange dialogues and a bit of a message.

Mickey 17 – Bong Joon Ho (2025)

In some future Mickey decides that he is better off away from earth. He volunteers for quite an odd function. He will be a tester in some space colony and after every test he will be dead and reprinted.

The idea itself is already not too interesting and it also is not worked out too way. Of course it can be used to make jokes and add some drama, but the story develops in quite a predictable way. The result is unconvincing.

Tron: Legacy – Joseph Kosinski (2010)

Only when i was reviewing the latest “Tron” did I learn that there was another film, series too, computer games, animation. This 2010 version is not of the least director either.

“Tron: Legacy” is the least of the three (1982, 2025 and 2010), but still an enjoyable movie. This time the son of the creator of “the grid” accidentally ends up in that grid himself. What starts as a common action film, then becomes a more interesting computer game science-fiction film with 1980’ies music, like its counterparts. Also recognisable elements such as the motorcycles, the rings on the backs, etc.

The latest “Tron” film has a few elements that make more sense when you saw this 2010 film first, so I would advice to watch them in the order they came out.

Tron: Ares – Joachim Rønning (2025)

I remember liking the original, but apparently I do not remember much of it. I had to get into “Tron: Ares”, but I highly enjoyed it once I did.

We watch the battle between two computer game giants, one of which built a “grid” that is protected by the application Ares. I mostly had to get used to the applications being portrayed as people.

The son of the family behind one of the companies, has the power he wields rise to his head. A sort of 3D printing technique was created to put things in the software and the other way around, pieces from the software in the real world.

Ares starts to rebel against his creator and while given the order to find a woman from the other camp who found some super-code, he concocts his own plan.

The result is quite the scifi spectacle, but most interesting are the (1980’ies) computer like environments and the music giving a vibe of the same era. And indeed, when you know the original, you will see many references. Perhaps I will watch the old one again some time. That one I rated four starts in 2011. This time I come to the same rating.

The Vast Of Night – Andrew Patterson (2019)

1950’ies New Mexico. The whole of the small town is at a basketball game. Everybody, but Fay who mans the telephone switchboard, and Everett who hosts his weekly radio show.

A strange sound is heard and Everett asks his listeners. Two callers have more information and Fay and Everett set out to investigate. Something is in the sky over the town and it is not the first time that there are visitors.

An alright drama.

Alien: Romulus – Fede Alvarez (2024)

In 2024 two “Alien” films have been released. There is also “Alien: Rubicon” (Adrian Avila).

I was a bit disappointed that there is no Sigourny here, but I now see that she was also already not in Jeunet’s version of 2017. The story remains roughly the same though.

Some youngsters work in a mining colony basically as slaves. They find an abandonned spaceship nearby and fly up to use it to fly to better worlds. Needless to say that they run into parasitic aliens.

The film is not boring, but neither is it very interesting.

Species – Roger Donaldson (1995)

The death of an actor can be a reason to look up a film. Michael Madsen passed away, so last weekend we watched “Die Another Day” and “Species”. Madsen played in a lot of film with very low IMDb ratings, “Species” is rated 5.9. I may have seen it before.

In a laboratorium an alien is bred who is human-looking. When it proves to be dangerous, the child-like-looking alien is about to be gassed, but she gets away. Growing quickly, the alien soon is a sexy full grown woman looking to create offspring.

A bit of action, a bit of thriller, sex scenes as they were always in movies of these days. Quite a stack of actors too, such as Ben Kingsley and Forest Witaker (in a weak role). Not a great film. The IMDb rating is even a bit high.

Dark Matter (series) – Mallozzi & Mullie (2015-7)

A scifi series that made it to three seasons, 39 episodes and then suddenly stops with a couple of very loose ends. It was either cut abruptly or there are still plans for a new season.

A group of people wakes up in a spaceship with no recollection how they got there. It appears that their memories have been erased and they have been put into “stasis”. Naming each other in the order in which they woke up (“one”, “two”, etc.) the people, for better or worse, decide to team up and find out what happened.

Learning tiny bits about their pasts, trust-issues come and go. Also their past as the crew of the Raza, the ship they woke up on, catches up. This is the basis of a massive series of events in which the crew became better people than they used to be, built trust, friendship, occasionally help people, etc. The crew grows and shrinks, new characters and story lines are introduced and as the series go on, their are also ‘stand alone episodes’.

All in all the series are alright with better and poorer episodes.