It’s amazing what you can do with very little. Consider Loop, an amazing eight-minute short film from Argentina which has been shown at an incredible number of film festivals and is now available on YouTube. Pablo Polledri, a prolific Argentinian filmmaker, wrote and directed this stunning exercise in limited animation: Loop uses a driving score […]
Read more "Loop (2021)"(Literal Translation: The Time Breakdown) I haven’t seen too many Brazilian Science Fiction films. There have been more than you’d think, although the one which might have come to your attention was the excellent Indie comedy, The Man from the Future (2011), which got a little play here in the United States. Somehow or other, […]
Read more "A Repartição do Tempo [Punch the Clock] (2016)"Okay, it takes a while to get going. In fact, we are over a half an hour into the film before that monster finally makes an appearance. But it is not exactly wasted time as we learn a lot about the troubled relationship between Lizzy and her alcoholic mother Kathy. They are on a trip […]
Read more "The Monster (2016)"Honorable Mention There have been a lot of attempts to make scientifically plausible vampire stories. I’m sure you can probably think of some of the favorites: vampirism is a plague caused by a virus. Vampires are aliens. Vampires are mutants. Vampires are monsters who have existed alongside man since the beginning of time. And I’m […]
Read more "Thirst (1979)"Look, by now you know I love Czech Science Fiction comedies, particularly those made during the Czech New Wave. For that matter, I love even their more serious Science Fiction films from the same era. And yes, I also love just about every Czech comedy I’ve seen from the Sixties on. But for some time […]
Read more "Návstevníci [The Visitors] (1983)"It can be so hard to tell whether a zombie film is science fiction or not. Take The Return of the Living Dead: we have the usual government secret weapon, we have barrels full of zombies, and the usual accidental release. But this time around, those darn zombies don’t seem to have any physical constraints […]
Read more "The Return of the Living Dead (1985)"Honorable Mention File this one under “black and brutal.” It’s called “Ozploitation”: for an all too brief moment, Australia turned out a stream of raw horror, thriller and genre films, movies like Road Games, Turkey Shoot (1982), Razorback, Dead End Drive-In (1986), Encounter At Raven’s Gate [Incident at Raven’s Gate] (1988)] and many, many others. These […]
Read more "The Chain Reaction (1980)"Wow. That’s all I can say about this one. Wow. The Czech film industry made some of the best science fiction comedies ever made, and this is one of the best of those wonderful films. I can’t say it’s entirely a surprise, as Václav Vorlícek — the same man who gave us two incredible comedies, […]
Read more "Coz takhle dát si spenát [How About a Plate of Spinach?] (1977)"You never know what you’ll find next on Tubi. In this case, it was a very strange animated film which was almost entirely the work of a single — and singularly whacked out — creator, Frank Sudol. It’s quite difficult to explain his films. All but one of them were made in an odd but […]
Read more "Shock Invasion (2010)"What a strange film. Or is it better described as two strange films in one? After all it starts out a psychological drama about two convicts in a secret prison, forced to take part in a secret experiment, — which mostly seems to involve waiting around for something to happen and possibly trying to kill […]
Read more "Alive (2002)"
rivets on the poster 