Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 4

Spoilers, mmkay?

Avengers: Endgame
I’m leading off with this for obvious reasons. A capstone to a good run of movies that were very precise and intentional in their cinematic aesthetic and marketing. All of the movies took very few narrative chances, except for this one and its prequel, Infinity War. Nearly ruined by the most ridiculously shoehorned girl power scene I’ve ever witnessed, at the arc’s climax, which also featured a deus ex machina from an overpowered character. This character that could’ve resolved much of the film’s conflicts, but the plot’s reasons were literally because this person had to be elsewhere “for a while.” Killed off two of the franchise’s most popular moneymakers, and one of them was really the most interesting and complex, and probably the best actor. Despite all this, a good send off. Expecting much more ultra-PC casting for future installments.

Synchronicity
This may have been good, but I didn’t finish it because I couldn’t see. Literally, every scene was too dark to be comfortable. The things that were lit were fine, but there wasn’t enough of it. I can’t cross that believability divide when you depict scientists working in near darkness. And a character mentioned the Edison and Tesla debate. Can you guess which one she sided with?

Curvature
A woman travels back in time to stop a murder. I feel like I should remember more of this than I should because the premise was pretty good, but I don’t remember its execution beyond the first few scenes, where the protag has a conversation over the phone with a different timeline version of herself in order to escape a killer breaking into her home. I suppose that means the movie fell apart after that scene.

The Osiris Child
A hospital worker has inside information that the planet he works on is being nukes by its bureaucracy, and he attempts to rescue his daughter and skedaddle. Interesting pacing and some weird characterizations. I would’ve pegged this as “pretty good” but it was ruined at the end by a young girl who ended up acting like a hardened, edgy assassin instead of how young kids actually act. The believability chasm sometimes has a broken bridge, but this one didn’t start constructing one.

The Martian
Astronaut Mark Watney is accidentally left behind on Mars after a botched mission. Felt like really well-done NASA propaganda; if NASA was named something else it would still be a great movie without that. Matt Damon used a few too many Gen Z colloquialisms, but his lighthearted attitude throughout the whole movie, as well as the disco soundtrack, made for a unique narrative.

Interstellar
Probably my favorite out of the entire group in this post. A quintessential Christopher Nolan film, even down to the voiceover at the end. A little too excruciatingly humanist in its outlook, but the realism of future tech and astrophysics make up for that. TARS is so likable that I would willingly be a slave in his robot colony.

Transformers (1986)
The only Transformers movie. Michael Bay’s modern reboot has some decent moments, but they’re just space robots, barely Transformers. Watched this in the theaters, and over 100 times as a kid, so I would hold on to this movie no matter what. Fun fact: the director intentionally put a very obvious “shit” in the movie (very appropriate to the scene, however) to push it to PG-13 rating, which would increase the potential theater showings. G rated movies back then had more limited releases.

A Quiet Place
A family tries to keep their household together, post-apocalypse, in a world dominated by monsters that are attracted to sound. I would’ve liked it more if the ending didn’t have the surviving family members figure out how to actually kill the beasts; that seems a little too convenient, but that’s modern cinema for you. Not a lot of dialogue, obviously. Some heartwarming scenes if you’re a parent or can relate to parents in general.

Psycho-Pass
Excellent future crime series; Ghost in the Shell meets Minority Report. Explores some ethical and political philosophy questions without giving definite answers. My only qualm was the end of the first episode, where the main protag did something that would’ve gotten her immediately fired and litigated in the real world, but this is the future on the other side of the planet.

Edge of Tomorrow
Gosh darn near perfect action sci-fi, based on the manga All You Need Is Kill. A soldier starts the same day over again after being killed in battle with an overpowering alien species. Tom Cruise, the poor bastard, dies countless times and learns to figure it all out.