Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By John J. Joex

For those who have not been following our weekly column this Summer (and shame on you, but there’s always time to catch up), we define an Anti-Blockbuster as a film that bucked the Hollywood bloated-budget, cookie cutter blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. They may have had a respectable budget or a modest or even non-existent budget and they may have done well in the box office or flew under the radar and perhaps eventually found an audience in the video market. But the main factor is that they diverged from the typical, formulaic output we see all too often from Hollywood and they showed the potential of film-making when the creative team pushes the boundaries and tries something new and original. Beginning next week with our new column Blockbuster Overload, we will take the opposite approach and start looking at the blockbusters that ultimately collapsed under the weight of their production excesses. But before that, I will list off what I believe were the Top 10 Anti-Blockbusters that we covered over the Summer months. You can see my comments on each below and you can click through to read our full reviews of the films as well. And we will still be adding more to our Anti-Blockbuster reviews over the coming months, so be sure to check back on a regular basis. And also, go to this link to see all of the movies we reviewed in this column over the last few months.

1. The Man from Earth – Written by the late Jerome Bixby (a respected Science Fiction author who also penned several classic Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes), this movie has no special effects, no action scenes, no aliens, basically nothing you would expect from a Science Fiction film. Just a group of people sitting around talking. But it delivered a film that I would easily put on a Top 20 (maybe even Top 10) list of the all-time greatest Science Fiction films.
2. Primer – This film could likely find its way onto the same Top 20 list right alongside The Man from Earth. Produced on almost no budget and written and directed by a mathematician and former engineer, it gives us one the best (if not the best) Science Fiction films to deal with time travel. It’s a pretty intense movie and demands multiple viewings, but it’s worth the commitment.
3. Moon – This throwback to slow, intelligent Science Fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and The Andromeda Strain (all of which we have covered on our Must-Watch List) may not have filled many seats in theaters last Summer, but it quickly gained a reputation as an instant classic in the genre.
4. Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro had a decent budget to bring his dark fantasy to life, but he still did it at one third to one quarter of what it would have cost him in Hollywood. And if he had done it through that machine, he would have never had the freedom to tell the story the way he wanted and would probably been forced to tack on a more upbeat, less ambiguous ending.
5. Cube – This Science Fiction/Horror tale from Vincenzo Natali (Splice) delivered an engaging, claustrophobic, paranoid thriller following a group of people trying to escape from a bizarre prison they don’t understand.
6. They Live – Speaking of paranoia, this John Carpenter classic has it oozing from the seams. It gave us an 80’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, not because it followed the same plot but because it delved into the Id of that decade like the 50’s classic did with its era.
7. Beowulf and Grendel – You don’t have to have a bloated Hollywood budget and high-tech motion-capture animation (as we saw in the 2007 Robert Zemeckis directed Beowulf) to adapt this classic epic. Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson along with Gerard Butler in the lead role turn this Old English saga on its head and use it as a parable for our own times.
8. Night of the Living Dead – I consider this actually a proto-Anti-Blockbuster as it came out prior to the Blockbuster era that began a few years later with Jaws and Star Wars. But with only a tiny budget, George A. Romero delivered a seminal horror film that spawned a whole sub-genre of zombie-pocalypse movies, books, comics, games, etc.
9. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension – How much further from the Hollywood formula can you get than this genre-bending cult classic. It may take you a few viewings to catch everything, but you will enjoy it that much more each time around.
10. Ink – This trippy Science Fiction/Fantasy indie film almost defies description but I would tell you to expect to see something along the lines of Terry Gilliam doing a Disney film while partaking in large quantities of hallucinogenic substances. It’s a love it or hate it affair, but I truly loved it and give it a high recommendation for those who appreciate an off-the-wall movie experience.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars

Coming out in 1984 at a time when big budget, sfx-laden films were becoming more common at the Box Office, this film left a lot of people walking out of the theaters with their heads spinning and saying wtf! The movie starts out with Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) performing a surgical procedure after which he is rushed away to test out a new jet-propelled car which he has equipped with an oscillation overthruster and which he drives through a mountain and into another dimension. When he emerges on the other side, he finds a strange alien organism attached to the pod; proof that he travelled to the 8th Dimension. The mentally unstable Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) sees a report of Buckaroo’s successful experiment on the news which prompts him to escape from the institution where he is imprisoned so that he can steal the overthruster. Lizardo had previously done similar experiments through which he was possessed by Lord John Whorfin, an evil Red Lectroid from the 8th Dimension. The escaped Lizardo/Whorfin heads to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems in Grovers Mill, New Jersey (yes, the link to Orson Wells’ radio broadcast is intentional) where fellow Red Lectroids John Yaya, John Smallberries, and John Bigbooté (yes, the recurring Johns are intentional) head up a group of renegades planning to return to the 8th Dimension and conquer Planet 10 once they acquire the overthruster. Meanwhile, a Black Lectroid spaceship commanded by the female John Emdall (yes, another John and this time a woman) orbits the Earth monitoring the situation. Emdall sends a message to Buckaroo and demands that he stop John Whorfin otherwise she will trick the United States and Russia into launching nuclear strikes on one another. With no other choice, Buckaroo calls into action his rock band/super adventurers the Hong Kong Cavaliers along with his civilian backup the Blue Blaze Irregulars and jumps into the crisis with guns blaring.

If that synopsis left your head spinning, then know that I really only scraped the surface of the experience that is Buckaroo Banzai. This movie delivered a cross-genre satire that poked fun at its comic book/science fiction origins while also relishing in the excesses of both and finishing off with plenty of wit and hip posturing. Eschewing the more broad Airplane-style spoofs and maneuvering past the low-brow humor of Spaceballs, the movie walked that fine line between comedy and drama with plenty of winks to the well-versed sci fi fans sitting in the audience. It starts out by setting a breathless pace as it throws the viewer into the middle of the action and it never takes a break to let the audience catch up. And that’s part of its charm, even if it likely put off many viewers on its first go around. This gets the viewers immediately involved in the action, even if they do not necessarily understand everything passing by on the screen as it proceeds at light speed. The movie takes several passes to fully get your arms around it and each new viewing turns up yet another nugget that the screenwriters stashed away somewhere for the tenacious, curious fan to unveil later.

Buckaroo Banzai also managed to deliver a spirit of fun, adventure, and whim that the Hollywood machine had already started to squash in favor of cookie-cutter Blockbusters. Like a breath of fresh air, it departed from the more structured, formulaic cinematic output and verged on the anarchic. But it never got too brainy or geeky, either. It was not the type of movie that only the nerdiest of sci fi fans could get into, just anyone who appreciates a good amount of wit and angular story-telling. It also had a sense of hipness about it with its attractive, ultra-cool cast (was Buckaroo perhaps the first cool geek?) and its stylized look (that distinguished itself just enough from the fashion of the 80’s to create a timeless chic). In many ways, Buckaroo Banzai was a superhero movie with its action-star, renaissance man hero, and it also included some throwback references to earlier adventure serials as well as 50’s sci fi. And Peter Weller along with his supporting cast made this look cool and effortless. And that cast includes a who’s who of names that have since established themselves in movies and television such as John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and Clancy Brown.

Buckaroo Banzai was not a low-budget film with production costs coming in at $12 million. But it did veer to the lower side compared to other genre films that came out the same year like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($28 million budget) and Ghostbusters ($30 million budget) and it had a slightly lower price tag than 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ($16 million budget). But I count Buckaroo Banzai as an Anti-Blockbuster because of the way it thumbed its nose at Hollywood and delivered a completely unique film that defies easy categorization and that marketers found nearly impossible to promote (and thus they just chose not to). This resulted in a disastrous Box Office run (making back less than one fourth of its budget) when it was first released. The movie quickly caught on in the home video market, though, and has since become a cult hit. Unfortunately, the promised sequel (teased just prior to the ending credits as Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League) never surfaced because of the poor Box Office reception of this film. But the original creators did eventually carry on the story of Buckaroo in comics through several excellent mini-series put out by Blue Water Productions.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Cube is a quirky little sci fi/horror film that writer/director Vincenzo Natali (Splice) delivered to us back in 1997 as his feature-length directorial debut. It focuses on a group of people who find themselves trapped in a strange prison that consists of multiple, inter-linked cube-shaped rooms. They discover that some of the rooms have traps (like a razor-thin wire grate that will slice the unsuspecting wanderer into cubes) while others offer safe passage. None of the abductees know each other and none know how they arrived in this bizarre maze, though ultimately they determine that each serves a purpose in this maniacal exercise controlled by hidden forces. They decide that they must work together to succeed in escaping from their unjust incarceration and they start to find clues that help them determine whether a room is safe or trapped. The math genius Leaven determines that this appears to key off the serial numbers at the doors between rooms and whether one of these numbers is prime. Later, after barely escaping death in a seemingly safe room, they determine that answer lies in prime factorization of these numbers. This task at first seems impossible, but the autistic Kazan who has joined the party is a savant and has the ability to calculate the factors in his head. Leaven also determines that the numbers act as Cartesian coordinates which indicate where each room is within the overall structure and that these rooms move throughout the larger cube and eventually each will move to a location outside of it and act as a bridge to exit the prison. But because of their personality conflicts and mutual mistrust, the group begins to crumble from within before they can achieve their goal of escape.

Canadian director Natali managed to pull together this film, which he claims was inspired by the episode from the original Twilight Zone television series “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”, for about half a million dollars. And he made the most with his money by creating a creepy, claustrophobic, paranoia-drenched film following a small group of frantic people trying to understand their seemingly unmerited predicament. And he managed to maneuver past the expected pitfall of trying to make these people symbolic or representative of society in general. Instead, he created very real, believable characters, and each with apparently some function in this demented “game”. He did add one element, though, and that was a sense of guilt that each person felt for something they had done in the past (with the exception, we assume, of Kazan). This leads each of them to initially wonder, either overtly or subconsciously, if their past sins somehow lead to their imprisonment. This emphasizes that each of these people are not perfect, thus making them more human, and as we see their more sordid nature reveal itself as the film progress, the viewer almost wonders if they deserve their fate. But not to the point that we stop routing for them. We always want to see the abductees escape from this prison, even if our feelings shift from early in the film to later on which ones truly deserve to go free.

Natali sets up a Kafkaesque, Orwellian setting that immediately draws in the viewer and establishes a mood of tension and trepidation that carries the film to its bittersweet conclusion. And this is truly a Horror film, though with Science Fiction trappings, because of the threat from the traps throughout the maze as well as that unknown presence that must be controlling things from afar (the Saw film series would later follow a similar pattern, though with a much more exploitative bent emphasizing torture and gore).  And the fact that Cube never answers the questions of why this prison exists or why these people were brought here (though some hints seep through) gives the film that added dimension of despondency. Had this movie come out of the Hollywood machine, it would have never been allowed to go forward with its ambiguous conclusion. But since Natali did this as an indie, he had the creative control to follow that path, making this a much stronger film. And while the film plays out as a B-Movie and the actors sometimes fall short of the emotional range required of them, it still manages to stand out as a first rate B-Movie along the lines of other successful films in this milieu such as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Live.

Cube had only a limited release in the theaters Stateside, but it quickly caught on as a cult film and had a successful run when it hit the home video market. It has even spawned two follow-up films, the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube which delivered a better than expected continuation of the formula, and the prequel Cube Zero, which delves into the backstory of the Cube. But the original film is the one that captured the imaginations of Science Fiction and Horror fans alike and gave us a must-see, genre-crossing psychological thriller.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars

Pi is an odd and at times obtuse indie film that came out back in 1998 from writer/director Darren Aronofsky. It zeroes in on a reclusive man named Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) who is a number theorist and may have discovered a numerical sequence with great predictive power and that perhaps even has mystical origins. As the film starts, Max informs us through the voice-over narration that he believes everything in the universe can be understood with numbers and that if you graph these numbers then patterns will begin to emerge. He has created his own super-computer (named Euclid) and he is trying to unlock patterns that would predict the Stock Market (not for financial gain, though, just to prove it can be done). His computer melts down in the process, though not before spitting out an odd 216 digit sequence of numbers. He consults his mentor and former professor who tells him he needs to take a break because he has become obsessed with this pursuit and it is affecting his health (Max suffers from seizures and extreme headaches). The professor becomes even more concerned when Max tells him about the number his computer generated as this hearkens back to some of his own early research. Two parties are pursuing Max throughout all of this as well. One is a sinister corporation who hopes to use his findings to control the Stock Market (and they actually crash the market when they use a portion of the number he discovered). The other is a Hasidic Jewish group who believes that a particular 216 digit number could be a code to God’s name and could be the key to the beginning of the Messianic Age. Max is not particularly interested in helping either of these groups, though, as he follows his obsession to understand the number which he believes could unlock the mysteries of the universe.

This film, which Aronofsky filmed adeptly in grainy black and white, provides an intense, intricate Speculative Fiction tale, with a psychological twist, that grabs the viewers and draws them into the story. With its number theory based premise, it could easily fly quickly above the heads of most audiences, but the film never dwells on the more intricate details of number theory that could easily weigh it down. Instead, it focuses more on the psychological aspects of a man on the brink of revelation who may not be able to cope with the epiphany it will bring. Like Adam toying with the forbidden fruit, Max has already nearly succumbed to the perils of his quest for knowledge and clearing the final hurdle could push him over the edge.

Pi, Aronofsky’s first film, was made on the tiny budget (by the Hollywood scale) of $60,000, but it never looks cheap or like a homemade project. The black and white photography (an unfortunately under-utilized art in this day of CGI-bloated films) along with the close angles from the hand-held camera lend to the cramped, claustrophobic feel of the movie and emphasize the sense of urgency that permeates throughout film. This masterfully helps bridge the gap between the intellectual subject matter and the more psychological undercurrents that keep the audience engaged in the action even if it may leave their heads spinning at times.

Some may argue that this one does not really count as a Science Fiction film, and that it is nothing more than a psychological thriller. But it definitely works on the Speculative Fiction level as Max tries to comprehend the vast implications of the theoretical numbers that he tries to decode in order to unlock hidden mysteries. In either case, this is definitely an excellent film and one in which genre fans will find both alluring and engaging.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

This movie from horror/sci fi cult icon John Carpenter has flown mostly under the radar since it first hit theaters in the late 80’s, but it delivered an excellent paranoia-drenched action-flick then that still deserves attention today from genre fans. It takes place ostensibly in the 80’s, but definitely shows the underside of that decade and suggests a society at the point of severe deterioration, definitely a comment on the recession the country experienced at that time. The film focuses on a drifter who shows up in Los Angeles looking for working (we never learn his actual name, but he is referred to as Nada and is played by pro-wrestler Roddy Piper). He starts work at a construction site and hooks up with another worker (Frank Armitage played by Keith David who had previously worked with Carpenter on The Thing) who also brings him to a local shantytown where he can stay for the time being. Nada notices some strange activities in the church across the street (secret meetings covered by choir singing played on a tape recorder) then watches aghast as the police raid the church then destroy the shantytown. He also comes into possession of a strange pair of sunglasses and when he puts them on he sees a different world than the one that appears on the surface. On billboards and on television screens he sees hidden messages issuing commands like “Obey”, “Consume”, “Marry and Reproduce”, “No Independent Thought”, etc. He also sees that quite a number of people on the streets are really skull-headed aliens in disguise. As he learns more, he finds out that these aliens are controlling our world by establishing a privileged class among the humans who will cooperate with them and by transmitting the subliminal signals that control the minds of the rest of the population to keep them docile. He finds out that a signal from the TV Station Cable 54 is the source of the deception (at least locally) and seeks out Frank, as well as a woman working at the station, to help him destroy the antenna and reveal the truth about the aliens.

They Live is John Carpenter’s take on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers without retreading on the territory that movie already covered. He found inspiration from the short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson (as well as the comic book story “Nada” from Alien Encounters), but made the final film very much his own. Whereas in the Body Snatchers people were replaced by emotionless automatons generated from alien seed pods, in this movie the aliens turn people into docile servants through manipulation and consumerism. From this angle, the movie delivers a commentary on society in the 80’s similar to what Body Snatchers did for the 50’s (even though the producers of that film insist it had no underlying messages which you can read more about at this link). Whereas Body Snatchers keyed off the shallow conformity that the American ideal of suburban life offered in that decade, They Live takes aim (much more overtly) at the “me first” decade and the threat posed by the corporations that had begun to dominate and control our way of life. And Carpenter makes no qualms about the fact that he is delivering a scathing satire on his contemporary world, even if it does not quite follow through to the end.

Because even though Carpenter overlays social commentary on They Live, he also points the film in the action-movie direction which at times make it seem a bit schizophrenic. Interspersed with Kafkaesque, Orwellian imagery of a world controlled by alien directed subliminal commands, we also get your standard action-movie scenes with the lead characters blowing away aliens and spouting off Schwarzenegger-like quips such as “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum”. Sometimes these work, sometimes they just fall flat, but at least the action-movie angle never derails the film, it just keeps it from fully exploring its more subversive themes. And it also gives you a feeling at the end of wanting more in the way of story development.

Still, They Live gives us an enjoyable sci fi/horror film that rises above its B-Movie roots (it was made on a relatively skimpy budget of $3 million) and asks you to use your brain at least a bit between the shoot-outs and explosions. It did not do great at the Box Office when it was released (though not too shabby as it made back about four times its budget), and it has gone mostly unnoticed since then. I actually think this one would make a great premise for a television series and I’d much rather watch this than some of the shows we have to pick from like the insipid V remake ABC currently has filling up air time. If you have never seen this one, then it’s time to give it a shot and if you have not seen it in a while then it’s time to revisit the fun.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By Sam Christopher

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

This film is not connected in any way to the 1989 travesty of the same name which starred Dolph Lundgren, Louis Gossett, Jr., and a bunch of other people you’ve never heard of (although, in fairness, Gossett is a great actor). That first film, coming on the heels of Marvel’s extremely successful Mike Zeck-led Punisher mini-series, was doomed from the beginning in the eyes of the comics fans. The director, Mark Goldblatt, was quoted as saying the reason they wouldn’t be using the character’s trademark skull chest emblem on Lundgren’s chest was because “it makes him look too much like a comic book character”, leading most fans to wonder if the guy knew this was about a comic book character. Of course, we also wondered if he had ever seen Superman: The Movie or knew they were making a Batman film, cinematic displays in which the heroes had and surely would wear their costumes with pride. And star Lundgren didn’t help either, with his reported pronouncement that “there’s only so much you can do with this, it’s just a comic book character”. Then the film itself came out and all the fans’ worst fears were realized. A couple years ago a friend who’d never seen it found this version of The Punisher on DVD for a dollar. After he watched it he complained to me that he was overcharged.

Anyway, 15 years after the original debacle Marvel decided to make a new Punisher film, a complete reboot (on a modest budget of 16.5 million). The film starred Thomas Jane, a good actor with the physicality to play Frank Castle as the nuanced character he really needs to be. Castle is a man in pain. He is methodical while trying to hold back his rage at the senseless deaths of his family. It also had the talents of John Travolta to draw upon. Travolta plays Howard Saint, a man made rich through the laundering of drug money who also orders the execution of Castle and his entire family. Saint is a very good, very human, villain. He’s quirky and realistic, living in a world of self-imposed order before his destruction of the man Frank Castle was leads to the demise of his own world. The film is full of other quirky and strange characters: Saint’s head henchman Quentin, Castle’s “mole” Mickey, the people who live in the apartment building Castle moves into. Then there are the comic book touches, like the Russian, a huge behemoth who comes to the apartment building and spends what seems like an eternity throwing Castle through walls in an attempt to pummel him to death. Through it all part of the plan Castle employs to systematically destroy everything about Howard Saint before finally killing the man himself.

I saw this film and was stunned by it. It was so good, so well done. Yes, they changed some things about the character from the comics but I expected that, and these changes just weren’t that big a deal. I waited for the announced sequel. The next I heard, they were doing another Punisher origin story with another set of actors and still a third Frank Castle. I was told that Jane’s Punisher just wasn’t very commercially successful and that was the reason for the change. I have since learned that the film tripled its budget at the theaters and then did pretty well on DVD, and that there was going to be a sequel but Jane and the director quit over “creative differences” and that’s when the decision to start over was made. I also have read reviews of this picture that complain about the lack of humor in Jane’s demeanor, that Castle seems to get no enjoyment out of his exploits. This is The Punisher, folks, not Ambush Bug, The whole point is that Castle is not doing what he enjoys, only what he believes he has to do. Frank Castle would much rather be playing with his children and making love to his wife; instead, he has to be The Punisher and try and make sure fewer people have to experience what he has.

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Battle for Terra delivers a beautifully illustrated, engaging science fiction tale with a story similar to James Cameron’s Avatar but much better realized.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

As blockbusters like Star Trek, Transformers, and Harry Potter were preparing to assault the theaters at the beginning the Summer season last year, a rather unassuming little animated movie appeared and disappeared within about two weeks time. This movie, Battle for Terra, had been made back in 2007 at a very economical price for a CGI film (around $4 million originally though increased to $8 million with 3-D effects added), and had received some acclaim as it toured the film festival circuit and won the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival. I actually had this one on my Must-Watch list for the Summer, but it came and went so quickly that I never got the chance to see it in the theaters. But now the movie has made it to DVD and will hopefully earn some of the attention that the big studio releases of the Summer robbed from it.

The movie opens on a distant planet where a race of peaceful beings who have the ability to fly live an idyllic existence mostly at harmony with their world. However, an enormous space ship arrives carrying the last inhabitants of a destroyed Earth who plan to settle on this planet. The humans must terraform the planet to make the atmosphere breathable which in turn will make it poisonous to the natives. An initial confrontation with the humans and natives leads to one of the humans crashing on the planet and coming face to face with the people he would destroy. This plants the seeds which eventually lead to the beginning of a mutual understanding between the two races.

Battle for Terra is a beautifully illustrated CGI-animated movie that mixes science fiction with fantasy (though still sufficiently rooted in science) and even throws in a bit of steam-punk tech. And while the substance does not always match up to the style, Battle for Terra still delivers a more satisfying tale than the similarly themed Avatar from James Cameron which would follow this one at the Box Office with much more fanfare (and BoT had a much lower price tag than Avatar’s $240 million budget) . But while Terra’s story verges into the derivative at times with a hodgepodge of genre elements and some copy-and-paste dialogue, it presents a more genuine take on its subject matter than the much more calculated Avatar. And while it may not fully develop its characters and ideas, in part because of its rather brief 85 minute length, in the end the movie it manages to overcome most of its deficiencies and stand out as a notable genre entry.

And sparse though the plot may be, the writers resist the temptation to give us a simple tale of idealistic, pacifist aliens vs. imperialist, invading humans. Sure, it ventures in that direction with the central villain General Hemmer, but we see that the humans are primarily driven more by their desperation than anything else and we also see that the natives of Terra have the ability to defend themselves if necessary. This is where the movie diverges from the Disney-style kids-fare as it chooses not to present a conflict followed by a tidy wrap-up and happy ending. And this is probably what doomed the movie in the theaters.

Battle for Terra has the look of a fantasy movie aimed at the younger crowd, much like the Star Wars: The Clone Wars film and subsequent TV series. In fact, it seems quite merchandise friendly, with its cute aliens, adorable robots, sleek space ships and steam-punk alien airships. But the movie does not give us the simple tale of good vs. evil that you would expect from a film of this type. In fact, the apparent youthful target audience may have difficulty figuring out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The movie delivers more mature themes wrapped up in moral dilemmas, and in the final battle children may struggle with who exactly to route for and the film ends with the heart-rending sacrifice of one of the lead characters. For me, that makes for great story-telling. But since they decided to market the movie mostly toward children, that may have severely hampered its Box Office viability. Ultimately, it’s hard to really pin down this movie as it presents an exercise in contrast with its cute aliens and invading humans facing some very difficult moral decisions. But Science Fiction and Fantasy fans should appreciate it as a well done movie that rises above the expected family-friendly animated flick and delivers a superior genre tale.  If you missed this one in the theaters last year, do yourself a favor and skip the Avatar re-release coming this August and plunk down that money instead on the Battle for Terra DVD.  You should be pleasantly surprised by what you find there.

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By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

The names John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon ring familiar to most genre fans because of their involvement writing/directing/producing numerous Science Fiction and Horror classics such as Halloween, Alien, Escape from New York, Total Recall, The Thing, Blue Thunder, and many more. But these two genre outrés got their start together with a fun little film called Dark Star which came out in 1974. This movie, originally conceived as a film-school project, offers a spoof of sorts on science fiction standards like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek. It follows the crew of the space ship Dark Star whose mission it is to seek out and destroy unstable planets that may threaten human colonization, a counterpoint of sorts to the Trek mission to “seek out and find new life and civilizations”. They carry out their objective by launching “intelligent” bombs whose only purpose in life is explode once they reach their target. However, the ship passes through an asteroid storm which damages some of the internal systems and one of the bombs, after several false starts, insists on detonating even though it fails to launch and will destroy the ship. This forces the acting captain, the actual captain is mostly dead though kept in a state of limbo in suspended animation, into an existential conversation with the bomb to convince it not to detonate and destroy the ship and its crew.

Made in the early 70’s on a very slight budget (of around $60 thousand), this one obviously looks quite cheesy compared to the more polished product that comes out of Hollywood today, but the creative team makes the most of what they have and deliver an enjoyable romp that will generate more than a few well deserved laughs. Some may take issues with the acting, which includes Dan O’Bannon playing Sgt. Pinback (or liquid fuel specialist Bill Frug, depending on which story you believe) and which seems more than a bit unpolished at times. But then this also lends an air of authenticity to the film in its almost documentary style that tracks the tedium the ship’s crew must endure during their twenty year mission. Unlike Trek where the crew encounters a myriad of alien civilizations from week to week, the men aboard the Dark Star must deal with mundane problems like the storage locker self-destructing and destroying all of the ship’s toilet paper. Carpenter and O’Bannon key in on the fact that long distance space travel would be monotonous and dull and they derive much of the humor of the film from that. Nor does Dark Star try to deliver a broad send-up of the genre like Spaceballs, instead it taps into more subtle sources for its satire and delivers its humor mostly through dry wit. It does veer into slapstick a bit with the alien beach ball sequence (and if that seems like a comedy twist on Alien, remember who wrote both), but it succeeds best when focusing on the monotony of the day to day life on the ship and how the crew deals with it and also on how poorly prepared they are to deal with the crisis at the end of the film.

The film was originally shot as a 45 minute student production and made the rounds of several festivals before a financer decided to pick it up for release, though he wanted it extended to feature length. This resulted in the inclusion of the alien beach ball scene which has a tacked on feel to it and does not gel as well with the rest of the film. Of course neither does it sink the film and it adds a few laughs in the process. The movie also has a toned down Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy feel to it at times, especially during Doolittle’s conversation with the bomb, though it’s a bit less frenetic than that classic sci fi spoof. It’s definitely rough around the edges, considering its inauspicious beginnings, but still a must-see for Science Fiction fans.

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By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars

Moon, which hit theaters last summer, is a rarity in modern-day cinema. It is a Science Fiction movie, yet it has little action, no explosions, no space battles, no guns, no nail-biting down-to-the-wire endings, and a cast that you can count on one hand. What it does have, though, is a strong story bolstered by magnificent performances from its sparse set of performers. In that respect, it harkens back to classic examples of hard science fiction in the cinema like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, and Silent Running. And that is exactly what director and co-writer Duncan Jones wanted.

The entire movie takes place on the Moon as we follow Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) who is the sole human in charge of running a mining operation that extracts helium-3 from the lunar surface and sends it back to Earth where it provides the primary fuel source for the planet. His only companion is the robotic GERTY 3000 (Kevin Spacey) which has a voice similar to HAL 9000 and displays emoticons on its monitor to reflect its expressions. Sam is coming to the end of his three year contract on the Moon and eagerly awaits his return home. However, he starts to hallucinate and see people and transmissions that he knows cannot be real and this eventually causes him to have a live-threatening accident on the surface of the Moon.

Early on, you may start to question several aspects of the movie’s basic set-up. Why would the company send only one person at a time to spend a rather daunting three years in isolation? Why would they not fix the malfunctioning satellite that provides Sam’s only chance to have real time transmissions from home? After the accident, how did Sam get back to the base? But everything falls into place as the tight, focused script unfolds before us.

I’ll give no more information about the movie than that, because “that would be telling”, and it’s best to go into this one without any pre-conceived notions. What I will do is complement the cast and crew on pulling off what could have turned into a very dreary, plodding film in the wrong hands. Mind you, Moon does have a very slow pace, but it never drags or meanders because of its excellent script, spot-on performances by Rockwell and Spacey, and steady direction from Jones (who, by the way, is the son of David Bowie).

Visually, Moon succeeds as well, as it gives us a respite from the CGI-overload that Hollywood so often injects into genre films. Jones relies on model-work to depict the moonbase and the vehicles that interact with it. And despite the limited budget of the film (around $5 million) his special effects team delivers a realistic, almost flawless, depiction of Moon colonization that makes viewers like myself long for the lost art of model-derived special effects. This practice of course would not work as well in a more action-oriented film, but in this setting it provides the perfect visual realization to complement the story.

Moon compares quiet well to some of the classics of Science Fiction cinema that it invokes and deserves to stand right next to them when listing accomplished movies from the genre. While it lacks the grander statements of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, it does give us a more modest, personal statement about what it means to be human and to be in control of your own destiny. Also, it avoids some of the inconsistencies and leaps of logic of the two previously mentioned movies (i.e, you have to read the book to understand exactly why HAL goes berserk, and just why exactly did they put the forest domes in orbit around Saturn instead of the Sun?). Most importantly, the movie places story above spectacle and also manages to maneuver past the conceits that often afflict films of this ilk.

Moon did not do big Box Office business when released last Summer, in part because of its limited distribution and in part because of its lack of promotion. But it did gain immediate attention from critics and fans of the genre and quickly got pegged as an “instant classic”. Those who missed it in its truncated theatrical run should definitely check it out now that it has made it to DVD, and those that did catch it should watch it again because like most classics it stands up to multiple viewings.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)

Pan’s Labyrinth is a Spanish-language film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro which received exposures in the United States with a sub-titled release late in 2006. The movie merges a fairy tale with a more modern, quite bleak setting that juxtaposes fantasy with harsh reality and ultimately suggests a possible reason that we choose to retreat to imaginary realms. The film takes place in Spain in 1944 under the rule of the dictatorial Franco. It focuses on a young girl name Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who travels to the Spanish countryside with her ill, pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to live with her step-father (Sergi López i Ayats) who is a captain in the Spanish army tasked with rooting out a group of Spanish Maquis insurrectionists. While there, she encounters several fantasy creatures including fairies and a faun (Doug Jones) who explain to her that she is actually Princess Moanna of the Underground Realm and that she must pass several tests in order to return their and live with her real mother and father. She must then maneuver through the real world in which her cruel step-father deals harshly with the rebels, including several who have infiltrated his staff, while also trying to carry out the tasks set upon her by the creatures from the fantasy world.

While sitting through this film the first time, I found myself engaged by the dark fantasy world that del Toro created and interposed with the harsh real world, yet I also felt that it was a bit to linear and predictable. But ultimately, once they journey was complete I realized that this was likely del Toro’s intent from the beginning. Many things that occur throughout the film suggest their own resolutions or what will follow next. You know from the prologue that Ofelia will find her way back to her true mother and father in the fantasy world. You know that the vicious Captain Vidal will receive his comeuppance. You know that Ofelia will defy the orders given by the faun to eat nothing in the Pale Man’s room. You know that there is some significance to Mercedes’ paring knife and by the second time you see her stash it in her apron you realize she will eventually use it on Vidal. The foreshadowing in the movie is practically telegraphed, but then that harkens back to the simplistic story structure of the fairy tale which follows the same pattern. Fairy tales often deliver parables with simple messages on the consequences of actions and del Toro just overlaid that template on top of his grander story.

And in doing so, he may have hinted at least one of the origins of the fairy tale/fantasy story: as a means of escape from the harsher reality of the world. Throughout the movie, the fantasy characters seem part of the reality even if they spend their time mostly out of sight and lurking in the shadows. Only Ofelia actually interacts with them and eventually we receive the suggestion that they may exist only in her own imagination. Toward the end, when Vidal chases her through the labyrinth and encounters her talking to the faun, he sees only her, not the mythical creature. Does this mean that his disciplined, harsh, logical mind lacks the imagination to see these fantastical creatures? Or does this suggest that they only exist in Ofelia’s mind and that the final ending where she appears to be re-united with her family is just the place where her mind went in her dying moments? These possibilities leave the ending ambiguous and suggest that the purported fairy tale ending was nothing more than Ofelia’s means of escaping from the unforgiving world she lived in. And ultimately this is probably in part where many fairy tales and fantasy stories originated from. When you think of the harsh conditions that many people endured through the centuries, especially during the times that many fairy tales became well known such as the Dark Ages and Medieval Times, you can easily see where they may have provided a simplistic panacea to the bleakness of reality. And that definitely presents itself as one possible interpretation of Pan’s Labyrinth, though this multi-faceted movie has many other layers to its story as well.

Apart from the intricacies of the story, the movie delivers striking visuals that that at times contrast the real from the fantasy world while at other times bring the two uncomfortably close together. Del Toro uses a combination of animatronic creatures and CGI effects to bring to life his fantasy world which seems very real and at times somewhat terrifying. And he did the entire movie on budget of less than $20 million creating a product that would have cost three times that amount or more if produced by Hollywood. And had he gone that route, they would have almost certainly insisted on a more upbeat, less ambiguous ending. But since he did it outside of the Hollywood system, del Toro succeeded in conveying his vision and delivering an amazing, visually stunning, multi-layered film that succeeds on all counts on the artistic and stylistic levels.

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