Shadows on the Wall (2015)

2004’s Primer launched an interesting sub-genre of SF films, featuring small teams of inventors developing some earth-shaking new invention in their garage (see my review of Love & Teleportation for another example). I have to admit, I’ve got a weakness for this sort of film, as they tend to emphasize story and ideas over flashy effects […]

Alternate Realities (2015)

(AKA, Flashes) The life of a successful young architect, John Rotit, is falling apart all around him because of the disturbing flashes he keeps having that send him to two other existences: one where he is a drug addicted and burnt out rock star and another so terrible he won’t tell anyone about it. He can’t do his […]

Outpost 11 (2012)

This is a strange one. Set in an alternate 1955, where the British Empire is in the midst of the Second Hundred Years war, it is a world where 1980s era computers and VHS decks exist side-by-side with Boer war era uniforms and zeppelins. Three men have been alone in a remote Arctic outpost for […]

Earthbound (2012)

It took several hours after I saw this one before it finally dawned on me that it resembled Martin Gooch’s 2013 comedy, The Search for Simon . After all, both deal with a young man obsessed with events from his childhood that connect him to aliens from outer space. And yet there is surprisingly little in common between these […]

The Rise of the Robots (2015)

This one starts so well. First we have the Voyager spacecraft, crashing on a planet of alien robots, who naturally interpret it as an attack from Earth. They take off in their fleet of flying saucers and begin their attack on us. Of course, the robots are silly and toy-like, the Earth is a plainly […]

Tartarus (2010)

There’s a moment in Tartarus – the first moment, in a sense, as it follows a brief outer space sequence and the opening credits – when it clearly defines it’s loyalties. We see a closeup shot of the burning embers of a small fire, and about half the face of the man lying on the ground […]

Preylien: Alien Predators (2004)

This is probably the best Polonia Brothers film I have ever seen. Okay, that’s not saying a lot. But it does help define exactly what kind of terrible we’re talking about. And, let’s face it, it’s an interesting kind of terrible. Yes, we know we’re talking about amateurish acting, silly props (come, on! we all know […]

Plan 9 (2015)

Director John Johnson somewhere commented that he’d thought about what it would be like if someone tried to remake Ed Wood’s “classic”, Plan 9 from Outer Space as a serious film. This isn’t that film. Although, let’s face it, it isn’t the laugh-a-minute romp the notion of a Plan 9 remake would suggest. In fact, […]

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012)

Okay, it’s your standard gritty space soldier story, sort of a Samuel Fuller ripoff by way of Starship Troopers, where we know the enemy is going kill our favorite characters and the hero will have to make tough choices. Of course, as a animated space soldier movie, we know those choices are going to be particularly […]

Plug (1998)

Back in 2000, the SciFi Network (yes, they spelled it right back then) had a short-lived short film show called Exposure. It showed a mixture of SF, horror, fantasy and experimental films. It was one of those shows I always taped because of the large amount of padding – and because there really weren’t a lot of good SF […]

rivets on the poster

“The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.” — Orson Scott Card

Month: December 2016