Summer SciFi Thread

[Kyriakos]

Into The Storm (aka; Black Sky)

Opening August 8th.

Directed by Steven Quale (Final Destination 5)
Richard Armitage
Jeremy Sumpter
Sarah Wayne Callies
Nathan Kress
Matt Walsh

In the span of a single day, the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run towards the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Trailer

From the director of... Final Destination 5?

 

[BenitoChavez]

For a brief, slightly disturbing moment, I thought it said "erotic and deadly cyclones."

They can resemble a phallic shape.

 

[Kyriakos]

They can resemble a phallic shape.

That is twisted.

 

[Glassfan]

Coherence

Opens today!

Directed by James Ward Byrkit
Emily Baldoni,
Maury Sterling,
Nicholas Brendon

On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events. Part cerebral sci-fi and part relationship drama, COHERENCE is a tightly focused, intimately shot film whose tension intensely ratchets up as its numerous complex mysteries unfold.

Trailer

Spoiler :

This movie was screened last year at several film festivals (wiki) and won some awards, but it's public premiere is today (June 20th). It appears to be a low-budget but well-acted short.

Teaser

Spoiler :

Guess who those other people are...

 

[Glassfan]

Snowpiercer

Opening June 27th.

Directed by Bong Joon-ho (The Host)
Chris Evans
Kang-ho Song
Go Ah-sung
Jamie Bell
Alison Pill
John Hurt
Tilda Swinton
Octavia Spencer
Ed Harris

In 2014, an experiment to counteract global warming causes an ice age that kills nearly all life on Earth. The only survivors are the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a massive train, powered by a perpetual-motion engine, that travels on a globe-spanning track. A class system is installed, with the elites inhabiting the front of the train and poor inhabiting the tail. When cryptic messages incite the passengers to revolt, the train thrusts full-throttle towards disaster.

Trailer

Spoiler :

For a movie with such a peculiar and unlikely premise, some serious actors have come to play.

 

[Cutlass]

Spoiler :

For a movie with such a peculiar and unlikely premise, some serious actors have come to play.

Serious actors don't make a good movie. Or a movie good, for that matter. With the number of movies Hollyweird makes, and the fact that even top actors usually prefer to work as much as they can, A list actors often work awful movies.

Of course, you can't always tell that a movie will be awful reading the script, and then doing the work of making it. And the awfulness only shows up in the finished product. One memorable movie that was so bad that I couldn't even finish watching it had a cast lead by Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter, and Kirsten Dunst.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I really like John Hurt, but his other main movie this year is Hercules

 

[Glassfan]

Yeah, John Hurt is the new John Mills.

 

[Glassfan]

Radio Free Albemuth (aka, VALIS)

Opens June 27th.

Directed by John Alan Simon
Alanis Morissette
Jonathan Scarfe
Shea Whigham
Katheryn Winnick

Berkeley record store clerk Nick Brady (Jonathan Scarfe) begins to experience strange visions from an entity he calls VALIS that cause him to uproot his family and move to Los Angeles where he becomes a successful music company executive. With the help of best friend, science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick himself (Shea Whigham) and a mysterious woman named Silvia (Alanis Morissette), Nick finds himself drawn into a dangerous political-mystical conspiracy of cosmic proportions. The story is set in an alternate reality America circa 1985 under the authoritarian control of President Fremont (Scott Wilson), in the mold of Richard Nixon.

YouTube Trailer

 

[Kyriakos]

^WHY?

I had read a bit on this author, and his Valis story. Why did they cast those actors (along with Alanis Morissette??? Isn't it ironic? ) for a movie supposedly based on a cool concept?

 

[Kyriakos]

So... this is the new Shredder:

This movie looks like a horrible idea

 

[Glassfan]

So... this is the new Shredder:

This movie looks like a horrible idea

He looks like he's 20cm tall, about to attack a mouse!

 

[Tarquelne]

Radio Free Albemuth (aka, VALIS)

VALIS is a book I've both longed to see as a movie, and dreaded to see as a movie.
RFA ... I don't mind them messing with it. More like messing with a sketch, something inherently mutable, than a masterwork.

Personally, I think "Radio Free Albemuth" is a great title for a movie. (Especially if that's the book they tried following for the movie! Arg!)

If a "VALIS 2" that's the actual VALIS is made ... oh, I hope it's done right. Somehow. (Can I have a mini-series instead? So, like, there's room for the actual book?)

I wouldn't mind this all so much if it wasn't for the "[Author Name]'s [Book Title]!" stuff. The movie so often just isn't. They've already ripped off the book for the movie ... do they have to rub it in like that?

 

[Tarquelne]

He looks like he's 20cm tall, about to attack a mouse!

Ooo! Base it off that Futurama where Bender goes nano.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Ex Machina

Caleb, a 24 year old coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

Snowpiercer

Opening June 27th.

Btw i saw that film. It was decent, but (in my view) nothing out of the ordinary. Something like a 7/10, cool movie to see once, not really much more to it.

Good cinematography given it was based on a comic or what those are called nowdays

 

[Kyriakos]

The Signal

Opening June 13th.

Directed by William Eubank
Laurence Fishburne
Brenton Thwaites
Olivia Cooke
Lin Shaye

Three college students on a road trip across the Southwest experience a detour: the tracking of a computer genius who has already hacked into MIT and exposed security faults. The trio find themselves drawn to an eerily isolated area. Suddenly everything goes dark. When one of the students, Nic (Brenton Thwaites of The Giver and Maleficent), regains consciousness, he is in a waking nightmare...

Trailer

Saw this too.

Hm...

I think it could have been a lot better, even if keeping the same budget.

Not sure how they got Fishburne to be in it, but he is always very cool

I expected (and was hoping for) a different 'explanation' than the one it seems was given in the end. It is still somewhat ambiguous, but i suppose most people would view it as a given explanation, and the one i did not want to see...

Overall a cool movie, but suffers from budget issues and somewhat of a 'action-adventure computer game level' feel. 7/10 to 7,5/10