Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 6

Spoilers, etc.

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, Godzilla: The Planet Eater
These weren’t as well received as the first film in the series. I think people were still looking for a big Godzilla defeat, which didn’t happen. I like the idea of a tribal human remnant that just lives their lives and presumes Godzilla is a part of the earth, no need to fight back.

Hellboy (2004)
One of the better comic book movies from the 90s, despite having (sigh) Nazis in the prologue. Guillermo de Toro’s signature colorful visuals, decent CGI, and a surly Ron Perlman as the protag.

F.R.E.D.I.
This was kind of a bad movie, but it was cute. I felt like it was trying to revive the slapstick adventure types of kid friendly films of the mid 1980s and 90s. There was a really pretty outdoor chapel they used as a setting for a few scenes.

Hancock
A drunk jerk of a superhero tries to revive his public image. This wasn’t liked because…I don’t know. There wasn’t a Big Bad in it, maybe? Had one of the greatest mid-rising-action twists I’ve ever seen on film; it takes you off guard in many ways. Usually movies save twists until the climax, or right near it.

Battle: Los Angeles
This was good as a slice of life, if you can call it that, film about a Marine squad trying to evac some civilians at the start of an alien invasion. It received some praise for its accurate portrayal of Marines.

Colony (TV Series, 2016–2018)
Aliens take over the world, wall off some major metro areas, and conscript some humans to establish rule via martial law. If I had an award, I’d give it to Peter Jacobson for making the skeevy bureaucrat Alan Snyder likeable, and showing some genuine struggle as he’s kinda sorta trying to do the right thing.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
Choose your own adventure movie. It wasn’t bad, but all the meta-narratives made it rather overly complicated.

April and the Extraordinary World
A young woman searches for her disappeared scientist parents. Steampunk, pre-WWII France, Napoleon-centric alt-history with electricity as an emerging technology. More or less a kid’s movie (it was marketed by GKids), but it thankfully doesn’t include a lot of the insulting silliness or pandering you get with that genre. The animation style switches from really stiff and low-budget to bio-mechanical realism; I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, just something to adapt to. It’s worth a few rewatches to catch everything.

Bird Box
An unseen (sort of) force causes mass suicides worldwide. Some genuinely scary moments. Of course, lots of folks want to attach a political message to it because that’s all some people will ever see, and opposing political interpretations are just out of the question.

Knights of Sidonia
Attack on Titan in space. People live in a coasting, gigantic, brutalist metal rod. Talking bear chef. The CGI animation is okay but you can lose some of the visual humor that 2D delivers quite nicely.

Lost in Space
An okay reboot, but stuff to the gills with every cliche and trope you could imagine. The writers are hell bent on putting the characters through every conceivable disaster. One character, when launching some type of weather balloon, gets her leg pant caught on part of the device and it drags her nearly off a cliff edge. It gets taxing after a while because it’s so endless. Parker Posey wins at playing a character whose main purpose is to be the worst full-throttle scumbag to ever have existed.

Stargate
Finally, a good explanation for the ancient Egyptian civilization. I remember seeing this in theaters, because the trailer looked so bonkers to me. Weirdest bit of trivia: James Brown’s scream from “I Feel Good” was used during a scene where an alien takes control of a young man’s body.