It’s hard to believe that Posrednik was based on a children’s novel. The book in question was Main Noon, by Aleksandr Mirer, which was apparently a fairly popular Soviet novel about children encountering aliens capable of taking over people’s bodies. But by all accounts, this three part miniseries adaptation doesn’t have much in common with […]
Read more "Posrednik [The Mediator] (1990)"(aka, Mr. MacKinley’s Flight) This is a strange, strange film. I mean, really, really strange. And in all the best ways. Poor Mr. MacKinley. He’s about as grey and average a guy as you could hope to find in the advertising industry. Except that he dreams of one day having lots and lots of children […]
Read more "Begstvo mistera Mak-Kinli [Escape of Mr. McKinley] (1975)"(aka; Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg; U.F.O. Boy Abdulladzhan) “I watched a movie yesterday. It’s called “Stalker”. Andrei Tarkovsky made it. “I understood nothing. “But I liked it” And perhaps it will give you a clue to the gentle humor and keen understanding of film underlying Abdullajon if I point out that our unseen […]
Read more "Abdulladzhan, ili posvyashchaetsya Stivenu Spilbergu [Abdullajon] (1991)"As you may have noticed, I have an affection for those films made behind the Iron Curtain during the days of the former Soviet Union. There are a lot of reasons — and one of the main ones is that there still are neglected gems out there just waiting to be seen. And you really […]
Read more "Vlci bouda [Wolf’s Hole] (1987)"Look, this one is strange. Mind-bending poetic French Art Film strange. Which means it is very strange by anyone’s standards. And yet, in its own elusive and somewhat hypnotic way, I found that I quite liked this one., It’s hard to summarize this one as there is so much plot and so many characters with […]
Read more "Le trésor des îles chiennes [Treasure of the Bitch Islands] (1990)"It’s a classic mathematical problem, one which has defied every attempt to resolve it. And, what’s more, it is a problem which has some very important consequences for the computer industry, for cryptography, or national defense should anyone ever solve it. Let’s suppose you have a vast number of alternatives — like a gold coin […]
Read more "Travelling Salesman (2012)"Noise. Little sounds, rustling, rattling, the constant chatter and tympani of the world around you, distorted, amplified, harshened, suddenly unfamiliar. Music. Sharp, discordant chords, rasping and buzzing. Images. Strange and disconnected; city streets, bustling people, and a young woman wandering through it all alone. There have been a few films which tried to give us […]
Read more "Under the Skin (2013)"(Warning: Spoilers ahead!) Phantasm would seem to be the Platonic ideal of a movie — or a movie franchise — that was exactly the sort of borderline, off-beat, non-traditional science fiction film this site is always looking for. And yet I have never reviewed any of the films in the series. Until now, that is. […]
Read more "Phantasm: Ravager (2016)"Gaurav Seth came to my attention a few years ago with a very clever time travel film, Prisoner X, which combined a truly unique take on a familiar SF trope with a deft touch. So the announcement that he was working on a second SF film came as a pleasant surprise. After all, Seth, who […]
Read more "Entangled (2019)"(aka Dies Irae) One of the great joys of the endless search for interesting SF films is the accidental finds, those moments when a few odd comments or a stray reference send you after something you never suspected was out there. In this case it was an oddly out of place recommendation from IMDB and […]
Read more "Den gneva [Day of Wrath] (1985)"
rivets on the poster 