Category: Sci-fi
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The Running Man
4 outta 5 The Running Man is the 2nd adaptation of a Stephen King novel about a dystopian game released in the last few months, the first being The Long Walk, and both novels were published under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym. Running Man was famously adapted as an ‘80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that…
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Predator: Badlands
4 outta 5 Predator films have been going through many installments, with the latest Predator: Badlands taking the series into the future and featuring some light crossover with the Alien franchise. It actually takes one of the meanest villains in sci-fi and makes him a likeable protagonist, which is probably helped by giving him a…
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Tron: Ares
4 outta 5 Every decade or two, Disney diligently tries to make Tron a thing. The 1982 original tried to capture the Star Wars audience, then 2010’s Tron: Legacy expanded the visuals and lore of Tron. Now there’s Tron: Ares which doesn’t really build off what happened in Legacy, but this is more about moving…
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Tron: Legacy (2010 review)
4 out of 5 Generally, movies that are considered failures don’t get sequels almost 30 years afterwards. Yet such is the legacy of Tron, which came out in 1982, gained a fanatical cult following, and now there’s the 200 million dollar Tron: Legacy. Like the original, it has stunning FX for its time. Probably also…
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The Long Walk
4 outta 5 The Long Walk is a gritty grind of a movie. Directed by Francis Lawrence, who specializes in dystopian grind having directed multiple Hunger Games movies and I Am Legend, this is one of his better entries in that genre due to extreme violence giving it bite. This isn’t exactly hopeful; it’s of…
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Predator: Killer of Killers
4 outta 5 Predator: Killer of Killers is an awesomely gnarly addition to the Predator franchise. As an animated film, it allows for extreme camera angles and action that wouldn’t necessarily work in live action but looks dang cool in animation. As an anthology film, each story skips across the centuries of Predators enacting carnage…
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Mickey 17
5 outta 5 Writer and director Bong Joon Ho, who won Best Director and Best Picture for Parasite, has a very diverse set of films. He is interested in themes like class struggle, environmental challenges, and settings like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, action and monsters like his movies The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. So as wild and…
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Companion
4 outta 5 Companion is a clever and subversive sci-fi horror thriller about romance, robots, murder and software manipulation. While the notion of someone falling in love with a robotic artificial intelligence has been done in films like Her or Ex Machina, this is still a distinct take. Companion is less about potential robotic apocalypse…
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Transformers One
4 outta 5 After several “live action” installments of the Transformers franchise, the series returns to its animated roots with Transformers One. However, there was so much CGI animation in the series’ previous films, that it’s hard to make much of a distinction between live action and animation by now. Which isn’t a bad thing.…
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Uglies
2 outta 5 Uglies is a YA novel adaptation that really doesn’t offer anything particularly good. It feels cobbled together from other sci-fi dystopian franchises and that bubble burst a few years ago. The central hook, that people in a dystopian future society undergo mandatory, mind-controlling cosmetic surgery, feels basic. Even the action, such as…
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