Too Late to Be Afraid: Denis Villeneuve on ‘Dune’
Denis Villeneuve talks about how fear can “mind kill” directors. But creating the epic Dune for cinema wasn’t scary at all — that’s just creative pressure.
sci-fi
Fantastic Fest 2021: Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Glasshouse’ Questions Our Purpose without Memory
Sci-fi thriller Glasshouse (Fantastic Fest 2021), forces us to confront our collective vulnerability and the reality that we might not survive as a species.
Venice 2021: Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ Stirs up the Grit
Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ (Venice International Film Festival 2021) looks the part and will not disappoint fans, but it groans under the weight of its world-building.
FrightFest: Horror Sci-Fi ‘The Changed’ Burrows into Your Head
Director Michael Mongillo’s The Changed, premiering at FrightFest, plays with genre tradition to convey innocence amidst darker tones.
Buckle-up for a Retro Future in ’50s Sci-Fi Film ‘Flight to Mars’
Philosophical, rich with eye candy, and powered by historical context, ‘Flight to Mars’ is an orphan amid an army of sci-fi films blasting out of 1950s Hollywood.
Tribeca 2021: ‘Settlers’ Thrills But Blunts Its Message
Wyatt Rockefeller’s sci-fi/western drama about a Martian settlement, Settlers, undercuts its allegory about Western colonization.
The Martian Chronicles: A Tale of Two Apocalypses
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles calls out from the past to our time of pandemic and NASA’s Mars Space Rover: however far our reach may be there is no escape for humankind from humankind.
The Strange and the Disturbingly Familiar in Sci-Fi Graphic Fiction, ‘Peepers’
Even the scenery in sci-fi graphic fiction ‘Peepers’ looks like the lucid dreams of a Fauvist painter on acid.
‘Little Fish’ Director on Love and Loss During Pandemic
Little Fish director Chad Hartigan talks with PopMatters about his fascination with love, memory, and losing the ability to remember.
The Mandalorian’s Political Allegory: Diversity Is the Way
When the president of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy announced there will be more than 10 Star Wars shows and films coming out, she declared that popular culture is a space of diversity. All stories can and should be told simultaneously and adjacently.
Exploring the Sci-fi Worlds of Ishirō Honda in 3 Films
The devastating power of the atomic bomb casts a long shadow over Ishiro Honda's The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space, and Mothra, now available on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment.