Having recently read (and reviewed) the book, the last part (lucratively split into two films) of the Katniss Everdeen story was still pretty fresh in my mind when I went to see the movie. I knew to expect that the saga that began with a teenage girl bravely competing in a dystopian to-the-death competition has…
Category: Sci-fi
Big Hero 6 – Movie Review
Big Hero 6 represents the true coming-together of Disney and Marvel universes (even moreso than being able to play The Hulk alongside snow-queen Elsa in the videogame world of Disney Infinity). Disney animators (with no small influence from their Pixar brethren) have taken an obscure Marvel Comics super-team and brought them to cute, plastic life…
Capsule Book Review Catchup
Now that I am listening to audiobooks on my commute to and from work, I’m catching up on so many books that I’ve got a backlog of books to write about on my blog. Of course, this is all thanks to Audible.com (Free credits for the plug, please!) which has been a great way for…
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins – Book Review
Featured image is The Mockingjay and the Rebels by Samuel Teixeira. With the third movie in the Hunger Games series not far away, you just know I’ve got to prep myself by catching up on the books. Despite the dramatic cliffhanger at the end of Catching Fire, I was able to hold off reading the…
Movie #17: Robocop
I was 16 when the original Robocop movie came out, but I can’t say that I remember it too well. One of the things I do recall about the Paul Verhoeven directed movie was that it was satirically tongue-in-cheek (which was kind of new for sci-fi). For a teenager in the audience, it wasn’t totally…
Movie #16: Coherence
First off, this sci-fi film is not the second in the Divergent trilogy. Rather, it’s a head-scratching indie-sci-fi (a growing sub-genre that I’ve loved ever since I discovered the movie Primer — check it out if you like tying your brain in knots). Anyway, set mostly over the course of a single evening’s dinner party,…
Movie #15: Amazing Spider-Man 2
I had really loved the first instalment of this latest reboot of the Spider-man series on the big screen. I thought the combination of director Marc Webb, along with lead actors Andrew Garfield (as Peter Parker/Spider-man) and Emma Stone (as Gwen Stacey) gave an indie-film freshness to the non-superhuman parts of the story. While all…
Movie #10: The Congress
I guess it’s not surprising, but so often with independent films with sci-fi themes, you are never quite sure what you’re going to get. Being science fiction gives them the license to go almost anywhere with story and character because the anchoring concept can be something totally out-there. The Congress is an odd blend to…
Movie #9: Divergent
Riding on the dystopian, young-adult coattails of The Hunger Games, Divergent was another series to make it to the ranks of blockbuster movie adaptation. Even before reading the book, I was skeptical of the premise. In a future-Chicago, society has split everyone into factions based on individual ideals (e.g. the selfless belong to the Abnegation…
