Professor Shanku O El Dorado [Professor Shanku and El Dorado] (2019)

You probably have never heard of Professor Shanku. However, in his native India, the famed Bengali director, Satyajit Ray, was not merely known for his movies, but for the many short stories he wrote. This included a lot of children’s stories, including the series starring the private detective, Feluda, and a series of science fiction […]

Promare [Puromea] (2019)

(aka,Promare: Puromea, Promare 4D, Puromea 4D) I know, I know. I keep grumbling that all the animation out there looks like Pixar-lite. Unless it is anime, and then it looks like Miyazaki-lite. Yeah, yeah, there are quite a few animated films which break from these molds, but they are sadly rare. However, anime isn’t quite […]

Snow Monster [Daxue guai] (2019)

I always wonder why I watch these things. I suppose it’s because they sound so good, but darn it, most of them sort of fall flat, and a lot of the time I’m not exactly sure just why that is. In fact, I can only remember one of them that proved memorably good — the […]

Abigail (2019)

There are moments when the movie you are watching seems to eerily predict future events. Consider Abigail: here we have a Russian film released in 2019, set in an alternate, locked-in world, where everyone goes in terror of a mysterious disease which shows no symptoms in the infected. Not in its earliest stage, at least. […]

Atakku obu za jaianto tîchâ [Attack of the Giant Teacher] (2019)

I will point out that the title of this film is truth in advertising. There is a giant teacher, and he does attack a giant monster. Mind you, that only takes up a small part at the end of the film. And I really have to emphasize that because I know that many of you […]

As the Earth Turns (1938)

Look, I’m not sure I believe it either. But everything I can find says that this is, in fact, a lost Independent short film from 1938, a silent film made almost a decade into the sound era. The story is that Richard Lyford was an independent playwright and screenwriter who made nine award-winning Independent films […]

Howl from Beyond the Fog (2019)

(aka Sagiri no Kuni) It’s amazing. A truly remarkable development. I suppose it has to do with the rise of streaming video and the need to provide vast amounts of content to a hungry audience. But films which I once merely heard about but had little chance of ever seeing can now be found on […]

Invasion Planet Earth (2019)

There’s a remarkable story behind this one. It’s writer/director Simon Cox wrote the script back in 1993 and spent years trying to get it produced. He even tried to shoot it as a super-low budget DIY film before he finally got his funding. In fact, his DIY efforts were so good that the scenes he […]

Monster Force Zero (2019)

Fanboys. This is a movie for Fanboys, about Fanboys and by Fanboys. And it never really tries to be much more than that. It is every fanboys dream: “A.I” Cashill created his own self-published comic book with the help of his friends, and they’ve all gone to a big Sci Fi convention to promote their […]

Automation (2019)

Poor Auto. He’s not working as well as he used to. His battery is failing and a lot of his functions aren’t available any more. It needs replaced and he’s been promised a new one, but it never seems to come. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that there is no battery coming. He’s now obsolete and […]

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

2019