Day: January 27th, Movie: 28

Robert Pattinson is a very good actor. He has elevated his game in the years since Twilight, even though many still look at him with that film in their minds. Pattinson has taken some challenging films over the years to escape the shadow of Edward. High Life spotlights his capable skill as an actor.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Monte (Robert Pattinson) and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to the outer reaches of the solar system. They must now rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.”

As I mentioned in the opening, there is no denying what a strong performance Robert Pattinson gave in this movie. However, I struggled to follow the story. The story of High Life was told in a non-linear narrative structure that was, at the least, difficult to follow. The differing sections of the story felt separate from each other as well, calling the purpose of the narrative into question.

The film looked wonderful, taking the independent feel and making it appear even better.

The story included a plan which sent a group of criminals into space in a mission dealing with a black hole. There was also something dealing with artificial insemination, and there were some very weird and erotic scenes with the criminals and the lead, Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche). There were a couple of freaky moments in the film.

There were positives in the movie, but the story style felt too artsy for me and I had a tough time following it. I wanted more with the daughter and less with the criminals. High Life was intriguing, but lacked a few connections.

Day: January 26th, Movie: 27

Before there was InnerSpace. Before there was Rick and Morty. Before there was Osmosis Jones. There was the 1966 Fantastic Voyage, one of the first and most influential films to travel inside the human body.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “The brilliant scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) develops a way to shrink humans, and other objects, for brief periods of time. Benes, who is working in communist Russia, is transported by the CIA to America, but is attacked en route. In order to save the scientist, who has developed a blood clot in his brain, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into Benes’ body. They have a finite period of time to fix the clot and get out before the miniaturization wears off.“

There is no denying that this is a cool concept. Taking a submarine and a crew of specialists into the human body by shrinking it down is an amazing idea and Fantastic Voyage pulls it off remarkably well. Sure, the special effects do not hold up when compared to the more recent films, but this was 1966. What they had accomplished for the time period is sensational.

Stephen Boyd played CIA Agent Charles Grant, Raquel Welch played technical assistant Cora Peterson, Donald Pleasence played medical chief Dr. Michaels, William Redfield played US Navy officer Captain Bill Owens and Edmond O’Brien was General Alan Carter. The cast was good and did a nice job in the story that was certainly out there. It was fun to see Raquel Welch in a role that was not taking advantage of her looks.

One of the most fun part of the film was the scenes with Arthur O’Connell as Colonel Donald Reid which had to be the inspiration of the scenes with Lloyd Bridges in Airplane! It was a tad distracting and made me want to laugh every time.

I enjoyed the creativity of the film and the story. Fantastic Voyage was a quick watch and was paced beautifully. The special effects are not great for today, but were groundbreaking at the time. There is no denying that this film led to plenty of classic moments from other films.

Day: January 25th, Movie: 26

I had low expectations for this film as I played it on Prime. I had no specific reasons to think it was going to be bad, but I just had never heard anything about it. I’m not even sure how it wound up on the list to watch. However it happened, I am so glad that I saw this, because it is one of the best films that I have watched during this Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView.

A group of friends were getting together for a dinner party. With the inclusion of a party guest’s plus one, tensions were beginning to rise among the group. Discussion switched to Miller’s Comet which was going to pass overhead, very close to the earth, that night and how previous comets affected human behavior. When the neighborhood lost power, bizarre things began to happen and the group were tested with their friendship.

I loved the story of this movie. It was intelligent and creative. It kept you guessing as it slowly revealed certain details of what was going on. It balanced the weirdness with plenty of relationship drama and character interactions. The script was clever and well developed, keeping the audience uncertain about what was happening and how everything fit together.

It was great to see Nicholas Brendan (who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Brendan played Mike, an actor whose house was the location of the dinner party. All of these characters had personalities and were more than just taking up space. Time was given to the development of the characters which make us feel more for them than just a group of random people dealing with strange occurrences.

The main character involved was Em (Emily Baldoni), who was dating Kevin (Maury Sterling). Em was bright and inquisitive as things started to happen. She was one of the major people involved in determining what was happening and speculating on what they should do. She does a fantastic job of showing her confusion and uncertainty of the choices that they make. She also takes the biggest swing in the third act, which was truly unexpected.

The fact that this movie was made with such a low budget and limited effects and was still remarkably effective and filled with anxiety showed how successful director James Ward Byrkit was in, this, his directorial debut.

Coherence grabbed my attention immediately and never gave it up. The film ran for a wonderfully paced 88 minutes and every minute of it felt important and vital to either the development of the story or of the characters. The success of the film is that there was a balance between the character study and the sci-fi elements. I found this movie totally engaging and entertaining.

Day: January 24th, Movies: 25

Enemy Mine was a film that I was aware of, but that I never watched. There may have been a few scenes that I had seen before, but I remember never being that interested in it. This allowed me to watch it for the Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView.

According to IMDB, “At the height of the devastating intergalactic war between humans and the bipedal reptilian humanoids known as Dracs, the earthling single-seat fighter pilot, Willis Davidge (Dennis Quaid), and the saurian pilot, Jeriba Shigan (Louis Gossett Jr), engage in a furious dogfight. As both sworn enemies crash-land on the desolate, inhospitable planet, Fyrine IV, they will have to put aside their hatred for each other, share knowledge and experience to fight the forces of nature and, above all, work in unison to survive. Can their forced coexistence and uneasy camaraderie pave the way for a genuine inter-species friendship?”

The film feels as if it is split into two distinct sections. The first part is the relationship between Quaid and Gossett Jr. and the second part is with Quaid and Bumper Robison who played Zammis. The first part was decent as the chemistry between the two lead actors was strong. The second half became a bit messy as the story devolved into a series of plot contrivances.

I did like Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr and their characters. Both of them did a great job during the time when the two stranded pilots were slowly learning about each other and learning to trust each other.

Some of the passage of time felt inconsistent. I wasn’t sure how long they were together or how much time they actually spent with each other. Though it may not be the most important aspect of the story, it did had me thinking about it as I watched, which is not ideal.

The culture of the Dracs was fascinating and seemed to be laid out effectively. The strength of the race was important to make sure there was a contradiction to the human race. There was a lot of creativity in the development of the Dracs and that carried the film for the first section.

The second part felt rushed and was disappointing. I would have liked this story to move in a different direction than what they had chosen.

Overall, I found Enemy Mine to be a passable film that I enjoyed parts of. There was nothing that completely turned me off.

Day: January 23rd, Movie: 24

Today’s Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView is a film from 1972 featuring Bruce Dern in a futuristic tale.

There is definitely an environmental flare to the story of a future where plant life had got extinct on the earth and a company attempted to preserve as many species as possible on a space greenhouse attached to a cargo spaceship.

Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) was one of the four crewmen aboard the Valley Forge ship who was the main botanist and ecologist, was involved with the greenhouses. However, the people in charge decided that they could not afford to keep the greenhouses and they wanted the cargo ships running product instead. So they sent an order for the crew to destroy the greenhouse.

Lowell did not want this to happen so he wound up turning on the others, leading to their deaths and he kept a couple of the greenhouses active and he communicates with the mission control that he was lost in space.

Lowell then went ahead trying to keep the greenhouse alive as he reprogramed some droids to help him.

To be honest, I found this fairly dull for most of the film. I did like the wrap up of the film, but it felt very slow and I did not have much of a connection with Lowell. He was a murderer and I had issue with what he did.

Bruce Dern did a nice job. I do think he is a great actor and he had to do most of the work on his own. Lowell seemed as if he was slowly going crazy from the isolation. I mean, he named the three robots and started to treat them like children. He brought this crazed character to reality.

The film also seemed to dismiss the environmental angle after the first act of the movie.

Overall, while I appreciate the shot this took, I was not a fan of Silent Running. It had some moments, but I found it dull and I could not support the protagonist.

Day: January 22nd, Movie: 23

Science fiction works very well for the smaller, independent movies and Little Fish from 2021 is a good example of a movie that has a limited release and is looking to tell a story.

In the movie Little Fish, the world is suffering from a virus that has been spreading across the land that leads to those people who are infected to lose parts of, if not all of, their memory. The film focuses in on the life of a recently married couple, Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell) and the struggles of both individuals who had started to forget the important details of their lives.

There is an experimental cure for the virus as well and both partners debate whether or not the cure is worth the risks.

Little Fish is a heart-breaking film with two strong performances from the two lead actors.

The film did not spend much time on the actual virus and how it came to be. I think it is clearly a metaphor for anything that might come between a couple. There is plenty of ties to Alzheimer’s Disease as well. The virus was a tool to explore the relationships between people and see how the outside forces bring such a strain.

Little Fish is a lovely, small movie that is beautifully shot and exquisitely acted. It was a nice gem found on Hulu.

Day: January 21st, Movie: 22

Tonight was the first time during the Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView that I have watched more than one movie in a day. During the year-long DailyView I routinely watched multiple films on certain days and even in the June Swoon, I wound up watching one more movie than days in the month.

Last week, I started to fill out the schedule for the remainder of the month and I was noticing that there were more films on my planning sheet than I needed. That was the first time that I considered taking a Saturday or Sunday (or both) and doing more than one for that day.

Since I was already on HBO Max for Journey to the Center of the Earth, I figured this would be the opportune moment to watch another film that appeared on the streaming service. This was 1997’s Mimic, a sci-fi/horror film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro and involved the genetic engineered creation of an amalgam of a praying mantis and a termite into a creature known as the “Judas” breed to solve the deadly “Strickler’s disease” which was killing the children of the city.

Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) was responsible for the creation of the Judas breed, but since they were all female and should have had a lifespan of just a few months, she believed that they would just die out. But as Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park “Life will find a way.” The Judas breed began to evolve and a large colony of the insects lived in the subway station under New York City.

When Susan discovered the existence of the evolving Judas breed, she and her husband Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) began their search for the colony hoping to be able to cut the problem off before anything else happened.

Mimic is tense and suspenseful, showing how effective, once again, that Guillermo del Toro is with these types of creature features. The Judas breed bugs were remarkably gross and disgusting and there are scenes in Mimic that are difficult to stomach.

Insects, cockroaches, bugs are a naturally occurring fear among many people and make them the antagonists of this film as smart and frightening. There were some brutal moments during the movie that did not hold back.

There were some notable actors in supporting or smaller roles in Mimic that make the film better. This included Charles S. Dutton, Josh Brolin, Norman Reedus, Giancarlo Giannini, Doug Jones and F. Murray Abraham.

The film looked great for 1997 and the ending was dramatically done. On the whole, Mimic was an enjoyable horror/sci-fi movie that showed the skills at the time of a future Academy Award winning director. Mimic is a lot of horrifyingly gross fun.

Day: January 21st, Movie: 21

The sci-fi film tonight is the classic 1959 film Journey to the Center of the Earth. I started it off and I couldn’t believe that I saw one of the main character was being played by Pat Boone. Then he wound up in front of a piano and singing a song. Weird. It wasn’t the start that I was expecting.

Accordig to IMDB, “Edinburgh university professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook (James Mason) believes he has found an very old message from a long lost scientist who may have found the way to journey to the center of the Earth. With his assistant, student Alec McKuen (Pat Boone), he sets off for Iceland where an entrance in a volcanic range is to be found. They are soon joined by Carla Goetabaug (Arlene Dahl), whose scientist-husband was recently murdered, and Icelander Hans Belker (Peter Ronson) as they descend into the bowels of the Earth.“

This was a film definitely of its time. Some of the attitudes of the men in the party directed toward Carla was a bit archaic. Yet, she was fairly competent and not necessarily always a damsel in distress. It did happen a few times, but it was 1959, after all.

The ideas of what was found at the center of the earth was bizarre, yet cool in a “I don’t know anything about science” type of way. The interactions among the characters was decent and the best part was the duck, Gertrude. The end of Gertrude was a true tragedy.

The film had plenty of moments that were clear inspiration for other film-makers. There was a scene of them being chased by a giant rolling boulder which was an inspiration for Steven Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Some of the creatures that were found at the center of the earth reminded me of special effects in the original Clash of the Titans films.

This was a lot of fun and I am glad that I was able to watch this classic film on HBO Max. It feels like I was able to check off a box on that list by watching this.

Day: January 20th, Movie: 20

I’ve been scheduling the films that I will watch for Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView, and I had to delay watching this movie, The Hidden, a couple of times. There was no specific reason that sticks out in my memory outside of fitting in on the schedule. Tonight we the time to finally watch the film. I had it rented on Vudu to watch the film.

Kyle MacLachlan played FBI Agent Lloyd Gallagher, who came to Los Angeles in search of a killer who had killed his partner. He teamed up with police detective Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) to try and catch the killer, but everything started to become strange as we learn about the extra-terrestrial danger threatening the people.

I’m leaving a lot out of the film synopsis on purpose because I feel like some of the best parts of the film is not really knowing what you are watching. I’ll just say that there are some weird things happening.

Kyle MacLachlan playing an oddball FBI Agent? I wonder if this was one of the reasons why David Lynch eventually cast him as Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. Despite this character being clearly different than Agent Cooper, I can definitely see some similarities to how MacLachlan played them.

The sci-fi aspects of the film were well done and had some creepy moments. It had a campy feel to it and the story was surprisingly bright. I do have to say that I was not in love with the ending of the film. It did not take the safe way, but I’m not sure how I felt about it.

The Hidden was a decent film with an actor that I really enjoy. The story was fun though I am unsure about the wrap up.

Day: January 19th, Movie: 19

You could tell this movie was made in the 1980s.

While it did feel a little dated, and the film was much like a ton of other family friendly, action-adventure movies from the time frame, Batteries Not Included, from Amblin Entertainment, was a fun watch and had a couple of surprisingly deeper moments.

According to IMDB, “A group of tenants in an apartment block are being forced to move out so that it can be demolished. The tenants are reluctant to move, so the developers hire a local gang to ‘persuade’ them to leave. Fortunately, visiting alien mechanical life-forms come to town. When they befriend the tenants, the aliens use their extraterrestrial abilities to defeat the developers”

The older couple who worked in the café in the building, Frank and Faye, were played by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. This is one of the reasons why the film is able to succeed. You have to classic actors in the lead roles and you can make many stories watchable. They were even given a pretty surprisingly deep storyline to add to the trouble they faced with the developers. Frank and Faye had a child who had died and Faye was in denial, going as far as calling one of the gang members by their son’s name. It was an unexpected piece to the script that did to need to be included, but made the film for me.

The little robotic aliens were cute and helpful. I did not relate to them as much as I had done with other stranded aliens such as E.T. The lack of a speaking character did limit what could be done with the robots.

The cast included other stars such as Dennis Boutsikaris, Frank McRae, Elizabeth Peña, Doris Belack, Michael Carmine, John Pankow, Tom Aldridge, Wendy Schaal, MacIntyre Dixon, and Michael Greene.

Produced by Steven Spielberg, Batteries Not Included was much like a lot of Spielberg’s early films. It was a fine story with a few very notable moments and scenes. There was some good humor and Cronyn and Tandy were very charming and entertaining.

Day: January 18th, Movie: 18

Pedro Pascal is hot right now. Not only is he about to appear in the third season in The Mandalorian, but he is starring in HBO Max’s new video game drama, The Last of Us. Tonight, I watched Prospect, a sci-fi film on Hulu, for the Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView.

According the IMDB, “A teenage girl (Sophie Thatcher) and her father (Jay Duplass) travel to a remote alien moon, aiming to strike it rich. They’ve secured a contract to harvest a large deposit of the elusive gems hidden in the depths of the moon’s toxic forest. But there are others roving the wilderness and the job quickly devolves into a fight to survive. Forced to contend not only with the forest’s other ruthless inhabitants, but with her own father’s greed-addled judgment, the girl finds she must carve her own path to escape.”

There are some interesting moments between Sophie Thatcher and Pedro Pascal. The interactions with these two characters are one of the stronger aspects of the movie. Admittedly, their relationship was a little unwieldly to start with considering the circumstances. The partnership of necessity felt a little rushed, though it also provided us with some solid work,

The science fiction parts of the film worked well and I did like the fact that the typical alien lifeforms were kept to a minimum. When Pedro Pascal joined the film, things picked up drastically. The initial scene with Pascal and Duplass was fire and led to a situation where Thatcher had to work with Pascal.

Pascal with a younger character, almost the young cub mentality, seems to be one of his specialties.

There was one particularly brutal scene about midway through the film that was unexpected and was difficult to think about as I watched it. There was a THUD at the end of the scene that was especially troublesome.

However, I thought the choice of these characters having to wear these spacesuits, including the large helmets, was not the best choice. All we got was heavy breathing in them and they prevented some facial reactions. I understand the choice, but I would think that the film could have had a planet that had breathable oxygen just for the sake of the drama.

Prospect was fine. I loved Pedro Pascal, who seems to always be a special performer, and Sophie Thatcher was decent. The story may have been a touch slow and yet progressed quickly. I enjoyed watching this enough, but I probably will not remember much about it down the road.

Day: January 17th, Movie: 17

You’ve got to be kidding me.

When I was searching for possible sci-fi films, I came across Barbarella. I looked at Rotten Tomatoes scores to see if the films were worth watching. This had a 74% so I thought the odds of it being worthwhile increased.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Barbarella started off with Jane Fonda floating around as if in zero gravity, slowly doing a striptease as words floated around her body to cover her nudity (at least partially). From that point on, I knew what kind of film this was going to be.

I could not believe that this was Jane Fonda. She was beautiful, no doubt, but Barbarella was not what I had expected. Full of sex and exotica, Barbarella was not the feminist hero that I thought she might. Barbarella was in traps and dangers constantly and required plenty of rescue.

Barbarella was sent by the Earth’s president to retrieve Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea) from the Tau Ceti planetary system. She then spends the film in all sorts of compromising situations, with all sort of people, including a blind angel Pygar (John Phillip Law) that does not make love, but is love..

Marcel Marceau was here too, playing Professor Ping.

I’m not sure that I have seen a film more campy than this one. It was like a weird, psychedelic dream (particularly a dream that might be had by a teen boy).

This is another film that I would pay good money to see the RiffTrax crew riff on. It is utterly ridiculous.

The soundtrack was fun and the costuming was actually pretty good. Even the special effects for 1968 are not bad. However, the story and characters are thin and lacking any real cohesiveness to them. It is fun at times. Stupid, stupid fun.

Barbarella seemingly has inspired countless of people. It is considered a cult film, which in this case means a bad one. It reminded me of films like The Room or Manos: Hands of Fate in its badness. Those might be considered cult films too.

Day: January 16th, Movie: 16

Movies dealing with potential outbreaks are very relevant these days, perhaps too relevant considering what the world has gone through over the last few years. However, space outbreaks are a whole different thing. The Andromeda Strain from 1971, based on a Michael Crichton novel, makes the sci-fi element of this potential outbreak feel very real world.

According to IMDB, “A team of top scientists work feverishly in a secret, state-of-the-art laboratory to discover what has killed the citizens of a small town and learn how this deadly contagion can be stopped.”

This film was very much of a science film, where the top scientists would go through their tests and experiments, talk about them and then move along. Because of that, a lot of the film was a slow burn. That is not a bad thing as the scientific scenes worked well here. The four scientists, played by Arthur Hill, James Olson, David Wayne and Kate Reid, were interesting enough to bring their personalities into the scenes and help amplify the anxiety.

The final half hour or so of The Andromeda Strain was exciting and paid off the previous acts of the film. There were some scenes filled with tension and nerve-rattling events that kept me on the edge of my seat. It was in stark contrast to the slower parts of the earlier scenes.

The film felt almost like a mystery, with the four scientists trying to discover what the Andromeda Strain was spread and how it might grow.

There is an intelligence about the film and I love how this is shown. Could it have been shortened a little bit? Yes, However, building the tension through the initial scenes is a wonderful way to tell the story.

Compelling. Creative. Complex. Contemplative. At times, confusing. The epic sci-fi film Cloud Atlas can be described in all of these ways. For nearly three hours, I watched this film from directors Tom Tyker, Lana and Lilly Wachowski and I was completely swept up into the majestic, mishmash mosaic.

A plot synopsis is defeating the purpose for Cloud Atlas. It covers six different stories from six different timelines, ranging from an 1800s ship to a futuristic yet primitive Hawaii. Each of the six tales have a shared link somewhere within, whether directly or subtly. This is a movie that demands your attention. Cloud Atlas is not a film that you can put on in the background and hope to understand what was happening. In fact, I am sure that there are thigs that even I missed and I was watching closely.

The film featured several actors playing multiple roles, led by Tom Hanks who played seven different characters. The range among Hanks’ characters was varied as possible as he was a horribly greedy doctor up to a man tormented by the voices in his head. The cast of actors playing multiple roles included Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Bae Doona, Keith David, Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess, Zhao Xun, David Gyasi and Robert Fyfe.

Jim Broadbent stood out the most for me, especially as Timothy Cavendish. His expressive nature and facial expressions fit beautifully in with the movie was telling and he was, at many times, geniusly funny.

The narrative structure was unlike any film I have ever seen and its very nature will cause many people to be lost. Seeing the different stories all intertwined in the film was an amazing achievement in editing and direction. The soundtrack was a fantastic addition to the film and the use of the “Cloud Atlas” music piece was a rich moment from the story.

There were plenty of exciting and dramatic moments and several of intense hilarity as well. Easily my favorite moment in the film was when Tom Hanks’ character, author Dermot Hoggins took a book critic and tossed him off the roof of a building during a launch party.

Admittedly, I did have a bit of a struggle with the movie at the very beginning. I had trouble getting into the stories at first, but as the film progressed, I found myself engaged in every one and fascinated with the ideas and the acting presented by the talented cast. This feels like a film you would gather something new from after every subsequent viewings.

I had been extremely excited when I scheduled this movie among the Genre-ary Sci-Fi DailyView because it was a film that I had never seen, despite hearing about and I have usually enjoyed Tom Hanks films. This exceeded my expectations. I was not ready for the sweeping epic that Cloud Atlas was and was a masterpiece of technical and storytelling it truly is. It is my current favorite film among the Genre-ary. It may not be for everybody, but I found this to be exceptional.