I shouldn’t be surprised when I look back at the year overall, but in
terms of sci-fi movies and TV there was a lot going on. Some things
weren’t good, but an awful lot were, or at least they were interesting. I
keep thinking back to years ago when we’d be lucky to have one or two
interesting sci-fi movies a year and a handful of TV shows. Nowadays
there seems to be a sci-fi movie coming out once every few weeks, and
that’s not including superhero things since while I think they’re sci-fi
I’m not counting them here, and there are loads of sci-fi series on TV.
Random thoughts…
BBC America really killed it in 2018 as being the home for all things Doctor Who, The X-Files and classic Star Trek TV.
And let’s give props to TNT/TBS as well for airing marathons of Star Wars every few weeks. Have I see every episode of Star Wars many, many times before? Yep! Do I watch them again every time they show up on TNT/TBS? You bet’cha!
Along those lines… We now live in a world where there is a brand new Star Wars movie being released each and every year, this year was Star Wars: A Solo Story, which is always something to be happy about.
While BBC America was the home for sci-fi in 2018, Syfy, the old
SCI-FI Channel, was not. That network which barely airs any sci-fi
anymore actually cancelled the one great sci-fi show they had The Expanse.
That being said Amazon Prime picked up The Expanse where it will air a fourth season in alongside The Man in the High Castle, another sci-fi show on that platform.
Netflix released a whole bunch of sci-fi movies in 2018 including good ones like The Cloverfield Paradox and not so good ones like Mute. Hey, they can’t all be winners.
The sci-fi/horror film A Quiet Place did what not a lot of
sci-fi/horror movies have done in the past; it was very successful as
well as gained lots of critical acclaim.
That being said not everything sci-fi at the box office worked, both Pacific Rim: Uprising and Overlord underperformed here in the US, though Uprising did great business overseas.
While I absolutely did not understand the ending of the second season of Westworld, I have to say that the ride getting there was a lot of fun.
I mentioned that BBC America was the home for all things classic Star Trek, but there’s also new episodes being added to the Trek canon every year with Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access.
Okay, okay, okay, I like to rag on Syfy a lot, but I do have to give
them props for taking a big chance on the decent ten episode limited
sci-fi/horror series Nightflyers a few weeks back. It wasn’t great, but at least it was science fiction.
Even though I watch a couple of movies a week, I don’t watch enough
of them. Lemme explain that. The movies I tend to watch are ones I’ve
already seen and fall under the same umbrella; sci-fi, horror and
action-adventure. So while I might stop and watch Suicide Squad on TNT if I’m flipping around the dial, that also means that I’m not
watching other movies of different genres I haven’t seen yet. Other
people might go out to the theater and expand their filmic horizons every week, but at best I might venture out to checkout The Predator or stay at home and watch Star Wars for the 900th time.
Regardless, here’s every new movie I saw in 2018.
The Cloverfield Paradox ⭐⭐
Cloverfiend Paradox
In an era when surprise in pop-culture is practically impossible because of the internet and social media, the release of The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix was a pretty big surprise as the movie was first advertised
on the Super Bowl last winter and premiered on the streaming service
immediately afterwards.
Mute ⭐
Mute
Mute, by writer/director Duncan Jones, takes place in the same cinematic universe as his wonderful Moon film. But whereas I greatly enjoyed Moon, I thought Mute was a bit long and overly serious.
Black Panther ⭐⭐
Black Panther
I dug Black Panther if I didn’t see what all the hype was about. It seemed to me Black Panther was a well-constructed Marvel film that I enjoyed, but I didn’t think
it was much different then what had come before. But I was in the
minority as the film went onto become one of the most successful movies ever earning more than $1.5 billion at the box office.
Avengers: Infinity War ⭐⭐
Avengers: Infinity War
I liked Avengers: Infinity War but found it hard to take
seriously. I mean the movie (spoilers) features half of the universe
being wiped out when evil villain Thanos get all the power in the
universe, snaps his fingers and literally makes it so. But does anyone
really believe that when the sequel is released next summer in theaters,
that by the end of that movie all of this will be undone with order
restored with the good-guys winning?
Deadpool 2 ⭐⭐⭐
Deadpool 2
The movie I had the most fun at last summer was Deadpool 2.
While I didn’t think it was as good as the first one, I really dug this
sequel that introduced a few of my favorite characters to the Deadpool
universe, namely Cable and Domino.
Solo: A Star Wars Story ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Solo: A Star Wars Story
My favorite movie of 2018 had to be Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Derided before it was even released, this movie that follows a young
Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he goes from street urchin to
intergalactic smuggler is a lot fo fun. Solo is the one movie this year that I’ve actually seen more than once.
Ant-Man and the Wasp ⭐
Ant Man and the Wasp
I really liked the first Ant Man movie, but I really disliked the sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp. There were so many plot-holes here that things started to get to MST3K territory. In fact, I got so sick of this one that towards the end I started fast forwarding just to get through it.
Annihilation ⭐
Annihilation
The movie I was most disappointed with this year was Annihilation. It was written and directed by Alex Garland who also wrote the brilliant 28 Days Later and both wrote and directed Ex Machina, as well as being based on a series of interesting novels by Jeff VanderMeer, I found Annihilation to be dull and confusing. So much so that I didn’t even bother fast
forwarding through this one, I turned it off before making it to the
end.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout ⭐⭐
Mission: Impossible: Fallout
Another fun movie was the sixth, and so far most successful, Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
I’ll admit this one doesn’t have much going on in the story department,
I saw it in the theater and four months later can’t remember the story,
but the action scenes in Mission: Impossible – Fallout are worth the price of admission alone.
The Predator ⭐⭐
The Predator
Here’s what I tell anyone thinking about seeing the latest movie in the Predator franchise — if you’re into sci-fi and movies that feature the Predator, you’re probably going to dig The Predator. If you’re not, then you might want to steer clear of this one.
I’ve been thinking a bit lately about sci-fi films in the late 1970s
and early 1980s and I came up with a theory: for a time every sci-fi
movie back then either wanted to be the next Star Wars or Alien. Released in 1977 Star Wars would quickly become one of the most influential movies ever, and while Alien didn’t do quite as well at the box office in 1979, it too would go onto
become one of the most influential sci-fi movies in cinema history.
In 1978 there were such films as the dreadful Starcrash that was an Italian version of Star Wars and Battlestar Galacticawhich was the TV version of Star Wars that aired as a feature film in some countries. In 1979 Disney released their version of Star Wars with The Black Hole.
1980 saw the released of The Empire Strikes Back along with movies like Flash Gordon which, ironically, the source material from was influential to the creation of Star Wars while equally Star Wars was influential to the creation of the film version of Flash Gordon, as well as Battle Beyond the Stars which was Roger Corman’s low-budget version of Star Wars.
Alien
In 1981 there was Outland that was basically Alien minus the monster set on a mining colony and Galaxy of Terror that was Corman’s low-budget version of Alien.
Much like with Outland, Blade Runner from 1982 was essentially Alien minus the monster but set in a dystopian Los Angeles while The Thing also from that year was Alien only not on a futuristic spaceship but instead an Antarctic research station present day. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was more Star Wars than classic Star Trek in many regards with gigantic spaceships zapping each other while Disney’s Tron that year also owed a lot to Star Wars as well.
I think what changed things that year was the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that was a huge box office hit in 1982. That movie broke the mold as it
was a sci-fi flick set present day about a nice alien visiting nice
people on the sometimes not-so-nice Earth and, other than special
effects wizardry, didn’t owe a thing to either Star Wars or Alien.
After 1982 there would be a much more diverse group of sci-fi movies like Terminator, Dune and Enemy Mine to be released. While there were still movies like The Last Starfighter that were essentially versions of Star Wars and Creature that was essentially a clone of Alien, for the most part filmmakers were done with trying to make new versions of Alien and Star Wars.
For a while, at least.
The one major sci-fi movie from the late 1970s that doesn’t fit the “clone” mold was Star Trek: The Motion Picture from 1979. While that film relies on the special effects revolution created with Star Wars, in no way shape or form did Star Trek: The Motion Picture want to be Star Wars. I think that’s because Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was helming this first feature film version of
the TV series and seemed to be an individual with a strong sense of how
he wanted Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be. While I think he was fine with utilizing the special effects wizards that came out of Star Wars, at the same time he wanted his Star Trek to be something entirely different that Star Wars. Which, for better or worse it is.
Dark Horse Comics is releasing an adaptation of William Gibson’s script to Alien 3 in comic form starting this week. Gibson’s version would’ve been more of a direct sequel to Aliens than the theatrical Alien 3 was and would’ve featured both Hicks and Newt as well as Ripley and is
considered by many to be one of the great unmade films of all-time.
After the deadly events of the film Aliens, the spaceship Sulaco
carrying the sleeping bodies of Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop is
intercepted by the Union of Progressive Peoples. What the UPP forces
don’t expect is another deadly passenger that is about to unleash chaos
between two governmental titans intent on developing the ultimate Cold
War weapon of mass destruction.
What To Watch This Week
The Girl in the Spider’s Web
Out this Friday are two new films in theaters. First up is the fifth
film to bring anti-social anti-hero Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) to the
big-screen The Girl in the Spider’s Web whileOverlord features American paratroopers battling it out with Nazi zombies during World War 2 in a horror/action flick.
I’m a little conflicted over the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House.
Part of it is really good but part of it is just okay. But I could
easily see the “okay” part turning good if given enough time.
Based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name that was turned
into two films, one in 1963 and one in 1999, this new ten episode
version takes place over two time periods. The first looks to be about
25 years ago when a family moves into renovate and flip a large manor
house named “Hill House.” Father (Henry Thomas), mother (Carla Gugino)
and five kids are living at the house during the renovation when weird
things start happening. Doors are locked and refuse to open, youngest
son Luke draws a woman he sees everyone assumes is an invisible friend
while youngest daughter Nell is haunted by an apparition at night.
Cut to present day where the family, now grown adults, have adult
problems and don’t quite get along. Especially Nell (Victoria Pedretti)
who seems unstable and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who’s in rehab.
Nell’s never quite gotten over her experiences at the house, which
present day and past with the family at the house are flashed back and
forth quite a bit, and begins losing her grip on reality when the
apparition that haunted her as a little girl returns to her as an adult.
The part of The Haunting of Hill House I really liked was
all the stuff set in the past. Everything there from the acting to the
color choices to the design was really top notch, and scary too. I think
where things falter a bit in the first episode comes when the story is
set in modern times. To me that had the vibe of Six Feet Under: Paranormal Activity where a few of the characters were a bit too over the top for the
reality of the show that was set in the past. Of course Luke is addicted
to drugs and sister Theo (Kate Siegel) wears gloves all the time
because she’s a germaphobe — even if she doesn’t have problems bringing a
date home for a one-night-stand when we first meet her.
Present day in The Haunting of Hill House
It doesn’t help matters that all the time shifting in the episode got
to be a little confusing. At one point the family goes running out of
the house in the past when it seems as if things have gone all Amityville Horror on them one night and it’s either get out or die. But in the next scene
the family are back at the house and everything’s normal again since
that scene takes place sometime before the previous one. Even worse is
when part of the episode set present day flashes back a few years in
time, which left me scratching my head a minute until I was able to
figure out what was going on and play catch up with the scene.
I’m assuming this is done since this is how the characters in the
present are remembering what all happened in the past, which makes
sense. I just wish it had come off a little less confusing. My biggest
concern for the The Haunting of Hill House is that I’m not sure how they’re going to sustain the story over ten episodes and not slow things down too much?
Still, I can’t get over how effective and scary some scenes in the
first episode were or how good the stuff set in the past was. I also
liked how effetely darkness was handled in the episode. Here, the dark
is like a fog where things are clear close but lose detail and shape in
the distance which I really liked.
At the end of the episode something happens that I don’t want to
spoil that seems to indicate that the story set in the present might be
more than people just sitting around complaining about their lives.
Doctor Who ⭐⭐
The cast of Doctor Who
The eleventh modern, 38th overall, season of Doctor Who debuted last week on BBC America here in the US. For the first time in
55 years the Doctor is being played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker and
because this current season of the show has a new executive producer
with Chris Chibnall, Stephen Moffat left the series last season after
having produced it since 2010, in many ways this new season of Doctor Who feels like a fresh, new start.
My question is, is this new Doctor Who too fresh and new?
If memory serves me correctly always before whenever the Doctor would
“regenerate*” his companions, essentially side-characters who travel
the universe with the Doctor, would remain between the seasons. So
whereas the face of the lead character would change, the side ones would
stay the same giving the audience at least some continuity between lead
actor switches in the show. But this time everything’s new, from the
Doctor to the companions to the series’ look and feel and the producer
as well.
In this first episode the Doctor comes literally crashing down to
Earth and into a train after having been dumped out of her Tardis at the
end of the last episode that aired way back at Christmas.
She’s confused from having regenerated and finds herself in the middle
of an intergalactic hunt where a random unsuspecting person is picked to
be stalked by a clad-in-black armored wearing alien. Helping the Doctor
are four people she meets on the train. Much like with just about every
other companion the Doctor’s ever had, these individuals go from
skeptical to helping someone they’ve just met on an adventure in no time
flat.
Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor
If there’s anything that hurts the first episode it’s this lack of
anything connecting it to the past seasons. It’s almost like when Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston in the title role.
That show was an almost total reinvention of the series, updated for a
21st century audience and the 2018 Doctor Who feels very much
the same way. It’s not as a severe a change as the 2005 one was with the
classic series, but there’s certainly a change present in the 2018 one
from what’s come before.
Still, while I noticed this I don’t seriously think this is going to
affect the quality of the show in a real, meaningful way. The latest
season of Doctor Who is different, but Whittaker is a lot of
fun in the title role and I love it when every so often TV series change
things around, tries something new and shake things up a bit. Shows
that rely on the same formula over and over again can get a bit boring
and sometimes changes like those made on Doctor Who can keep them feeling fresh and new.
*Regeneration is a brilliant ploy by the producers of the Doctor Who to keep the series going whenever the lead wanted to leave the show. He’d regenerate and a new face would take his place.
Better Call Saul ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul
Most TV dramas these days have stories that wash over the characters
like the sea does over the shore. The story is the thing that moves
around and acts upon the characters who mostly remain unchanged. And the
characters are just that, characters. They are archetypes — the doctor
who’s biggest flaw is that she cares too much about her job, the cop
who’s out of control, the scientist who’s brilliant but lacking social
skills — and don’t feel like people whatsoever.
I think that’s why I love the AMC series Better Call Saul so
much. In that show it’s not the story that interacts on the characters,
it’s the character interacting between each other that generates the
story. And the characters in Better Call Saul don’t feel like TV characters, they feel like real people.
This fourth season of Better Call Saul has been a series in
flux. We all know that eventually the character of Jimmy McGill (Bob
Odenkirk) will one day morph into the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman who was
a part of the series Breaking Bad. And I think everyone,
myself included, thought this transformation would’ve taken place by the
end of the first season, only it didn’t. What we got instead was a slow
burn of Jimmy, who’s spent his life trying not to disappoint big
brother Chuck (Michael McKean) but failing miserably while also trying
to keep his relationship with girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) from
crumbling. And with each and every failure and misstep throughout the
seasons Jimmy draws closer and closer to down the path to Saulhood.
Looking back over the season(s) I think I know what went wrong with Jimmy, why he became a “bad guy” in Breaking Bad.
He always took the wrong lessons from his failures. Last season he
ended up losing his law license and rather than buckling down and doing
the right thing to wait out the mandatory period before he can get it
back by getting a normal job, he got a job at a cell phone store where
he realized the best way to make a little money was to sell “burners,”
disposable phones, to criminals for a markup.
If he’d only done the right thing I don’t think Jimmy would’ve ever
become Saul. Again and again Jimmy does the wrong thing, even if it’s
little wrong things, and because of this he edges closers and closer to
becoming the person from Breaking Bad.
Jonathan Banks
And that’s not to mention the wonderful Jonathan Banks as Mike
Ehrmantraut (I love that name) who’s going down a slippery-slope of his
own. He started out as a retired cop working as a parking lot attendant
and then graduated to becoming a member of a criminal organization led
by Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). He’s a guy who’s great on details and
the small stuff and genuinely loves figuring things out for Fring. But
in the final episode of the season he’s asked to do something to someone
he genuinely likes which will cement his place in the organization and
get his nickname from Breaking Bad as the “Cleaner.”
Star Wars Resistance ⭐
Star Wars Resistance
The new Star Wars Resistance show on Disney Channel is a fun series that’s set right before the events of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Fighter pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean) joins the Resistance and
becomes an undercover racing pilot in order to spy on the First Order.
Unfortunately, whereas the last Star Wars series, Star Wars Rebels,
had a lot of depth in terms of story and characters, even if it also
had elements that would appeal to the younger generation, Star Wars Resistance is a show meant to appeal to kids and not really adults. Which is fine, not everything Star Wars has to appeal to middle-aged men. But at the same time I really can’t see myself investing much time in something as lite as Star Wars Resistance in the long-run.
Mr Inbetween ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scott Ryan in Mr Inbetween
The wonderful “blink and you’ll miss it because we’re gonna air two
episodes back to back at 11:30PM and blow through this one in less than a
month” series Mr Inbetween wrapped up its first season last
week after having debuted just a few weeks ago on FX. This Australian
show, written by and starring Scott Ryan, is about Ray Shoesmith who
does unsavory things for unsavory people and is quite good at his job.
While this sounds like a lot of other shows out there, especially ones on FX that’s a network know for over-the-top dramas, Mr Inbetween doesn’t feel like the typical FX show. To me the series it matches the most is Breakind Bad but through the lens of an Australian. Ray feels like a real person,
with problems, an ex-wife, daughter and girlfriend. And for the most
part he’s a guy who, other than some anger issues, is pretty normal.
It’s just that every so often he’s called on to hurt someone who owes
someone money, or even sometimes kill.
He’s a complex character and Mr Inbetween is a complex show I don’t think FX has ever seen the likes of.
The first season, just six episodes long, was mostly about Ray
dealing with his screwed up life. Be it explaining to a girlfriend why
he bashed two guys during a road-rage incident or stringing along two
hitmen out to kill him. It’s not really about any season-long story like
is in vogue with so many shows these days. Instead, Mr Inbetween is about characters first and story second.
Because this show was so different and so off-brand for FX, and since
they seemed to be trying their hardest to burn this one off as quickly
as possible, I figured Mr Inbetween was going to be one of
those “one and done” series that are here today and forgotten tomorrow.
But surprisingly it did okay for FX considering they didn’t air new
episodes until after 11PM and they decided to renew the show for a
second season.
Horray! Sometimes the good-guys do win, even if they’re bad-guys.
Deutschland 86 TV commercial
Movies
Pet Sematary trailer
Glass trailer
What To Watch This Week
The Old Dark House
Sunday
The follow-up to last winter’s James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction is the new Eli Roth’s History of Horror that premiers on AMC tonight.
After airing on CBS for a season before moving to The CW where it became one of their more-popular series, Supergirl begins its fourth season today.
The new HBO series Camping about a family forced to get along together on a vacation to the outdoors debuts this week.
Monday
The only sci-fi movie to star Pee-Wee Herman, even if he’s listed in the credits as Paul Mall, Flight of the Navigator airs tonight on TCM.
Tuesday
Insomniac Theater: The mostly forgotten 1979 post-Star Wars Disney gem The Black Hole airs on TCM very early today.
Roseanne minus Roseanne The Conners premiers tonight on ABC.
Wednesday
TCM is set to air a whole slew of horror movies starring Boris Karloff including one of my favorites The Old Dark House tonight.
Friday
The third season of the Netflix hit Daredevil drops today.
Set 40 years after the original, Halloween premiers in theaters today. Though if we’re really picking up 40 years
after the original, wouldn’t that make Michael Myers a 60 to 70 years
old dude?
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: The totally trippy Dreamscape from 1984 about people traveling within other people’s dreams airs very
early Saturday morning on TCM. DVR this one for the “Snake Man” scene
alone!
