Movie #18: Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

As a kid, I grew up hearing Chinese folk tales as bedtime stories. The most well-known of them all is the Journey to the West: the story of the trickster-god Monkey King and his companions as they travel across an ancient China plagued by demons. When I heard that Stephen Chow, writer and director of…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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Movie #14: Knights of Badassdom

I do love a good genre spoof. There are often a lot of inside jokes (most of which I actually get) and fun cameos. Often the plot is nothing too original, but that’s OK. In the case of Knights of Badassdom, the genre is fantasy role-play — specifically LARP (or live-action role-play) — where players…

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Movie #13: Ragnarok

It is hardly surprising that people compare Norwegian director Mikkel Brænne Sandemose’s movie Ragnarok to something by Steven Spielberg (most obviously Jurassic Park). Once again we have a scientist (this time an archaelogist rather than a paleontologist) looking to prove his wildly dismissed theories about the past (in this case it’s about the site where…

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Movie #12: Noah

I was pleasantly surprised by Noah, partly because director Darren Aronofsky was able to bring a new take on a story that is so familiar that it’s primal. In fact, this epic retelling of the story of Noah (played by Russell Crowe) may not be totally true to the account found in the Bible (or…

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Movie #11: Muppets Most Wanted

While I was OK with the previous Muppet Movie (which was a much-needed re-energizing of the franchise), I loved this Muppets take on the spy-fi genre. Coming as kind of a direct sequel to the previous movie, the Muppets decide to keep the momentum going on their celebrity by staging a world tour. This idea…

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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…

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