Futuristic Dystopias are exciting to imagine, and there’s a certain thrill to seeing filmmakers execute a vision of what could be. Alfonso Cuarón, however, ruins all that fun in “Children of Men.” The world in 2027 is bleak, chaotic and hopeless, and the Mexican-born, London-based director puts us in the thick of the mayhem. Based […]

A winning concept can completely carry a genre film, and “A Quiet Place” has exactly that. Bryan Woods and Scott Beck’s idea of a family that must live in total silence in order to survive a monster/alien threat is the rare seed for a story that can blossom into an enthralling moviegoing experience. John Krasinski, […]

Among other things, Steven Spielberg is known for transporting audiences into brave new worlds, and in “Ready Player One,” based on the novel by Ernest Cline, that world is the massive virtual simulation of the OASIS, where humans in a broken world plug in and become anything they want to be. A master at stoking […]

Netflix’s huge swoop up and surprise Super Bowl release of the newest film in the “Cloverfield” film universe should prove to be a daring stroke of movie-distributing genius – if for no other reason than it should help generate big ratings for a film that would’ve otherwise been killed by bad word of mouth.

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” reacclimatized fans to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away by paying homage to decades of tradition, reuniting us with old friends and building a foundation for “the next generation.” This blueprint presented Lucasfilm and “Episode VIII” filmmaker Rian Johnson (“Brick,” “Looper”) with an opportunity in “Star […]

Like a madman creator trying to play God, Ridley Scott and the team behind the “Alien” prequels “Prometheus” and now “Alien: Covenant” keep running the same experiment with slight variations, never quite able to replicate the excitement of that initial moment of creation (1979’s “Alien”). There’s nothing wrong or bad about either these precursor films, […]

“Blade Runner 2049” is not a conventional sequel. The 1982 original failed to reach commercial success despite being a sci-fi film released during the years of the original “Star Wars” trilogy and starring Harrison Ford (and coming from acclaimed “Alien” director Ridley Scott). So there was not a lot of financial incentive to revisit this […]

A teenage girl wants nothing more than to remain with her lifelong pet and companion – the super pig Okja – in Korean auteur Bong Joon- ho’s latest film. Everything else is just stuff that gets in the way.

The third mission of the U.S.S Enterprise in the rebooted alternative timeline version of the original “Star Trek” goes a little less boldly than its two predecessors, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“Rogue One” is the first “Star Wars” film without the word “episode” in the title, but other than not following the main characters or narrative arc of those previous installments, what does that really mean? This was LucasFilm’s chance to set the tone for what the “A Star Wars Story” movies could be. So far, […]

Science fiction might have a reputation as a niche genre, but sci-fi movies have also proved, over the course of film history, to be among the most socially important. It’s not often that those important ones come along, but time could prove “Arrival” to be one of them.

As he did with his Oscar-nominated foreign film “Dogtooth,” Lanthimos builds a concept- driven story in “The Lobster” that explores the possibilities of how humans would react to well-intentioned extremism.

There are few under-the-radar writer/directors as hot as Jeff Nichols. The “Mud” and “Take Shelter” filmmaker is an extraordinary visual storyteller, and his streak continues in “Midnight Special,” a family drama dressed as a sci-fi thriller.

The Force has indeed awakened, “Star Wars” fans. Thanks to Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm we have been gifted a new movie and all the excitement and anxiousness that comes with it. And while it has only been 10 years since the last new “Star Wars,” it has been more than 30 years of wondering what […]

I was 12 years old in 1999 when the “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” was released. So, in many ways, I was at the perfect age for this movie – squarely in the crosshairs of the marketing’s target demographic. I had been harvested, in a way, since my true love of the original […]