The Survivalist (now on video)

The SHOUT! Factory video release of Stephen Fingleton’s grim, minimalist dystopian drama-thriller is an item which actually works best in the DVD/Blu-ray format - not downloads, not on a big screen, not even on good old VHS. The menu presence of a handful of related Fingleton-scripted short subjects, clearly set in the same doomsday vein as the feature (one is, in fact, the prequel), makes the whole experience complete. That it's a complete feelbad mini-spectacle, well. that's for your individual tastes.

Some viewers may note a resemblance to Hollywood's film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, with its small cast's ground-zero-eye-view of the post-apocalypse. Only an opening graphic gives the backstory, that oil and electricity have run out for mankind, cueing a massive population die-off.

Now only remnants of humanity fight it out, these particular ones in some green part of the UK (the film was Northern Ireland production, and the milieu certainly does have a tragic aura).

Escape From New York (screens Oct.13 and Oct. 15 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK screens Friday October 13th at 7:30 pm and Sunday October 15th at 9:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinemathque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

All his career John Carpenter has told folks that he’s really only wanted to make “westerns.” Yet he has consistently delivered horror and science-fiction and the occasional one-off nonconformist like a good TV biopic of Elvis Presley (featuring Kurt Russell) or the police thriller ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which is regarded as a partial remake of RIO BRAVO. Okay, but not since his student-film days, if I’m not mistaken, has the dude actually delivered a genuine western.

Maybe he’s doing one of those things from The Little Prince, in which there’s a drawing of a lamb that is so perfect it’s just the box in which the lamb resides; you will never actually see a lamb, but you can still just imagine how the drawing is exactly right (sort of like my career). Same with John Carpenter and his “westerns.”

Carpenter’s 1981 flick ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, at least, does have the DNA of a proper Hollywood-studio western, in the Howard Hawks no-funny-business filmmaking style (most recently personified by Clint Eastwood’s work behind the cameras), hitched to a high-concept dystopia plot.

Repost: Jodorowsky's Dune (July 13th and 15th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[JODOROWSKY'S DUNE screens Thursday July 13th at 6:45 pm and Saturday July 15th at 8:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

One of the more famous movies never made was an adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune that was kicking around in the mid seventies. Cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote the screenplay and would have directed, with Michael Seydoux producing. It got pretty far along in pre-production, but ultimately no studio was willing to come up with the necessary budget to make the film and it fizzled out.

And yet the legend of the film persisted among science fiction fans and admirers of Jodorowsky. The idea of the man responsible for visually stunning acid-head epics like EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN tackling one of the avowed classics of science fiction literature is a tantalizing “what if?” that will never really be answered. Thanks to director Frank Pavich's documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE, however, we at least get some idea of what such a film might have been like.

Repost: Stalker (June 15th and 17th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[STALKER screens Thursday June 15th at 6:45 pm and Saturday June 17th at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Okay, this is emperor-has-no-clothes time. Where I must throw mud on some world-cinema masterpiece everyone else reveres. No wonder my rare job interviews never lead anywhere. All some venal boss or human-resource harridan has to do is Google my writing, see the evidence, and broadband their shocked verdict to the world: "CHARLES CASSADY THAT UGLY M*@%!KER DIDN'T LIKE TARKOVSKY'S STALKER THE F&^!@ING SON OF A WHORE! NOBODY F%@!*ING HIRE THE BASTARD FOR ANYTHING! THAT'S A F#%*!ING DIRECT ORDER." And that's just when I apply at the Catholic Diocese.

Alien: Covenant

Review by Bob Ignizio

Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS proved to be a divisive film for fans of the ALIEN franchise. Personally I liked it, but I get the criticisms. Despite a great cast and some interesting ideas, there were some definite problems with the film's script. And for many, it didn't help that there wasn't much alien for an ALIEN movie.  

For his follow up, ALIEN: COVENANT, it feels as if Scott has given in to the complaints and tried to "give the people what they want", while still indulging his thematic musings on the origins of intelligent life and the nature of good and evil.

The plot follows the titular spacecraft as it sets off to colonize a new world. After an accident, android Walter (Michael Fassbender) wakes the crew from their cryo sleep early. Sadly, he is unable to prevent the death of the expeidtion's commander and a few random colonists whose pods malfunction.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

By George M. Thomas

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens on screens Friday.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 earns a rare distinction.  It joins a list of films -  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE– that equals or outdoes a predecessor.

A myriad of reasons reveal themselves to bolster that assessment.  Guardians, however, has shown in two outings that it’s the one series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that can balance humor, action and heartfelt emotion into a charming, irresistible cinematic cocktail – one that’s easy to consume and say “Thank you, please, may I please have another.”

Repost: Donnie Darko (screens February 8th and 9th at The Nightlight Cinema in Akron)

[DONNIE DARKO: 15th ANNIVERSARY screens February 8th and 9th at The Nightlight Cinema in Akron]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Like all good cult movies (and DONNIE DARKO is a very, very good cult movie), Richard Kelly's mind-bending feature struck out in its initial theatrical release. I don't believe it even played Cleveland auditoriums at the time except for two days at the Cinematheque in University Circle in 2001. Ouch! But, in a rather remarkable development, a groundswell of support from critics and DONNIE DARKO fans compelled distribs to actually give the property a second chance and re-release DONNIE DARKO later in the decade with a higher-profile ad campaign. I don't think it hit big then either, but the point is...this you've gotta see.

Ghost in the Shell

Review by Bob Ignizio

In the near-future world of GHOST IN THE SHELL, mechanical augmentation is commonplace. However, The Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the only human to have had their brain transplanted into a completely robotic body. At least that's what she's been told. As she sets out to investigate a series of terrorist attacks on executives from the leading cybernetics company, The Major learns that there may have been earlier experiments. It also appears the story she was told about her body being damaged in a terrorist attack, thus necessitating her present condition, is not entirely factual.

That's the set-up for this live action adaptation of the Japanese manga and anime film of the same name. Although there are differences in each of the versions (not to mention the sequels and reboots the property has spawned in its native country), all iterations share similar themes about what it means to be human, the drive to achieve physical perfection at all costs, the impact of technology on society, and the ramifications of corporations having too much power.

Repost: Donnie Darko (opens March 31st at the Capitol Theatre for one week only)

[DONNIE DARKO: 15th ANNIVERSARY opens Friday March 31st at the Capitol Theatre for one week. ]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Like all good cult movies (and DONNIE DARKO is a very, very good cult movie), Richard Kelly's mind-bending feature struck out in its initial theatrical release. I don't believe it even played Cleveland auditoriums at the time except for two days at the Cinematheque in University Circle in 2001. Ouch! But, in a rather remarkable development, a groundswell of support from critics and DONNIE DARKO fans compelled distribs to actually give the property a second chance and re-release DONNIE DARKO later in the decade with a higher-profile ad campaign. I don't think it hit big then either, but the point is...this you've gotta see.

Power Rangers

Review by Bob Ignizio

Even if you believe that an edgy, more mature take on the nineties kid's TV show Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers is a good idea (it isn't), the execution in director Dean Israelite's POWER RANGERS is terrible. We're barely five minutes into the film before we get a gag about giving a bull a handjob. That was funny the first time I saw it in KINGPIN, but it seems kind of inappropriate for a movie that's aiming for a family audience. Not to mention the execution of the gag pales in comparison to the way the Farrelly's did it.

That's your first indication that this film is going to be a horrible misfire.

Angel Grove High's star football player Jason (Dacre Montgomery) is given extended detention and house arrest after stealing a rival school's mascot (the aforementioned bull). There he meets autistic genius Billy (RJ Cyler) and Kimberly (Naomi Scott), a cheerleader with anger issues. The final two rangers are Zack (Ludi Lin), a kid who skips school a lot and lives in a trailer with his sick mom, and "new girl" Trini (Becky G), who is wary of getting too close to anyone.

Counter Clockwise (now on video)

[COUNTER CLOCKWISE is no available on home video and VOD.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Filmmaker George Moise' agreeably low-budget time-travel yarn had me for while…then lost me…then had me…then lost me etc. I suppose on balance it’s pretty good, aspiring essentially to being a cause-effect teaser in the tradition of 12 MONKEYS and DONNIE DARKO (other stated inspirations were the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy and an indie I never saw, TIMECRIMES). I might even throw in there local writer James Renner’s novel The Man From Primrose Lane (even though that’s a bit of a spoiler).

These are not bad associates, at least when things stay fairly cerebral. Which is about more than half the time in COUNTER CLOCKWISE. Nebbishy inventor Ethan (Michael Kopelow) working in a private lab on platforms that, a la THE FLY, teleport living things (there’s a one-eyed dog he uses as a test animal), crosses the wrong wire and ends up with a time machine instead.

Experimenting on himself, he zaps himself into his lab a months into the future - to find the complex closed down, his beloved wife murdered, his mother institutionalized, and himself a notorious fugitive, object of a manhunt as a brutal mass-murderer.

Uncle Kent 2 (March 2nd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[UNCLE KENT 2 screens Thursday March 2nd at 8:25 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

From the beginning, UNCLE KENT 2 is about as "meta" as it gets. Ostensibly a sequel to Joe Swanberg's 2011 mumblecore film UNCLE KENT, this film begins with writer Kent Osborne (playing himself) writing the script to the very movie we're watching. A significantly stoned Kent rides his bike over to Swanberg's home to try and convince the director to collaborate with him again, but Swanberg has no interest in sequels. However, he suggests that Kent find another director, as he feels the "character" of Uncle Kent belongs to Kent and not him.

So ends the first 12 minutes of UNCLE KENT 2, which were directed by Swanberg. And so begins the movie proper, directed by Todd Rohal. There are animated kitties. And a post apocalyptic riff that reminds one of Bob and Doug McKenzie's movie-within-a-movie in STRANGE BREW. Kent reads Ray Kurzweil's book 'The Singularity is Near' as he travels to San Diego Comic Con, and the movie eventually turns into a sci-fi comedy depiction of  "simulation theory" (the notion that what we think of as reality is really just a computer simulation).

We Are the Flesh (February 2nd and 5th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[WE ARE THE FLESH screens Thursday February 2nd at 8:25 pm and Sunday February 5th at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Eric Sever

When the apocalypse happens, why not indulge every twisted fantasy you may have? I mean, the world's over, so what have you got to lose?

WE ARE THE FLESH rather gleefully explores incest, rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, and even hints at pedophilia. Yet, this is no straightforward "Walking Dead"-style narrative about a crumbled society where people do nasty things to each other.

Writer/director Emiliano Rocha Minter has created a more slippery, metaphysical meditation on human sexuality. In short, it's more like an hallucinatory fever dream from inside the womb.

A dirt-stained man (Noe Hernandez) tries to exist in a decrepit warehouse by making gas and bartering through a mysterious hole in the wall. When a teenage brother and sister (Maria Evoli and Diego Gamaliel) arrive, the three slowly begin a seemingly nonsensical project, building a giant structure from salvaged wood and cardboard.

Evolution (January 28th and 29th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[EVOLUTION screens Saturday January 28th at 9:00 pm and Sunday January 29th at 6:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

The French have a term: fantastique. It refers to a genre where horror, science fiction, and fantasy intersect. A genre in which the outré intrudes into an otherwise grounded, realistic narrative, generally without explanation. That quite nicely describes the general tenor and tone of Lucile Hadžihalilović's film EVOLUTION.

From the start, the viewer is simply dropped into the film's bizarre world and asked to accept what they see at face value, just as the characters do. What that entails is a small seaside village where a young boy, Nicolas (Max Brebant), is shocked to discover the body of a boy with a red starfish on his stomach while swimming in the ocean. His mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) tries to reassure Nicolas that there was no body, only the starfish. But later, we see her bring the corpse to a mysterious cabal of women at night.

The CWRU Sci-Fi Marathon, making American college great again, January 20-21

Either scenes from METROPOLIS or Hillary Clinton leading angry audiences members to Strosacker Auditorum for the Sci Fi Marathon.

This weekend a brave group of college-campus student-activists and progressive community members will participate in the most COURAGEOUS act of protest-art against TRUMP yet conceivable! They will sequester themselves in Strosacker Auditorium and force themselves to endure a torturous 36 hours (estimated) of nonstop science fiction and fantasy and horror features, short subjects, cartoons, trailers, TV episodes or whatever, not ending the ordeal until early hours of Sunday morning.

In the spirit of high-profile hunger strikes by Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi and Aung San Su Kii that brought down other TYRANNICAL DICTATORSHIP REGIMES, this act of pure SUFFERING and RESOLUTE MASOCHISM in plain view of the EYES OF THE WORLD will undoubtedly inflame the country to RISE UP together against the villain TRUMP at his very inauguration, overthrowing the EVIL FASCIST REPUBLICAN and instill HILLARY CLINTON as the rightfully elected ABSOLUTE EMPRESS OF THE GALAXY!

...Or, it's just another installment of the CWRU Sci-Fi Marathon. Whatever way the liberal media elites want to spin it.

Passengers

Review by Bob Ignizio

A spaceship filled with colonists from Earth is en route to a new planet. The voyage will take 120 years, so the passengers and crew are kept in suspended animation, with the ship's computer running things while they sleep. But when a meteor gets through the shields and causes systemic damage to the ship, one of the passengers is awakened from his slumber 90 years too soon. This is the promising set-up for the science fiction drama PASSENGERS, directed by Morten Tyldum from a script by Jon Spaihts.

The early riser is engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt). Jim quickly finds that the ship's computer is no help, and there's no way for him to go back to sleep. He tries to make the best of things, taking advantage of the ship's amenities and chatting with android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen). But after about a year of this, Jim's at the end of his rope.

Delicatessen (December 10 at 9:20 p.m. and December 11 at 8 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

I was recently wondering what the year 1991 was good for (most of the early 90s, for that matter). Oh yes, I started with an interesting new movie-review publisher – who immediately went out of business. Later, I found out they had started up again and neglected to tell me. When I finally tracked them down and re-introduced myself, the reaction was more or less, “yes, you still work for us. We’ve been waiting to hear from you - what took so long?” Believe it or not, they weren’t even a Cleveland publisher, despite that management style, a bit too familiar in my flatlining career.

But 1991 also stands out, for many other moviegoers, for when the international release (pushed heavily by Terry Gilliam; I remember the Cleveland International Film Festival premiering it here) of the French science-fiction satire hit DELICATESSEN. It brought to wide attention the filmmaking duo of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, who went for some time simply by the tandem credit Jeaunet-Caro, with their Tim Burton-esque (or Gilliamesque) eye for grotesque fantasy, but in a mildly European fairy-tale/fantasy vein, mixing menace with whimsy and a hint of the unspeakable in a recipe that is all their own.

Arrival

Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner in ARRIVAL.

By George M. Thomas

First thought regarding sci-fi thriller ARRIVAL when reading its synopsis:  this should be a summer movie.

After watching ARRIVAL, there’s no way this elegant, intelligent film should have been abandoned to the morass of air conditioned multiplexes where those younger than 13-years-old get to decide its fate.

Because ARRIVAL deserves a far better one than the season of explosions could ever give it.   Written by Eric Heisserer from a short story by Ted Chiang and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario), ARRIVAL possesses the wonder and whimsy of the Steven Spielberg classic CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, the intellectual heft of the underappreciated CONTACT, and the emotional resonance of both.

Yet, ARRIVAL is completely unique and stands on its own as a revealing piece of sci-fi cinema. The last time I remember feeling this way after a movie in this genre was walking out of the screening of CONTACT, which was based on a Carl Sagan’s book.

Shouldn’t Trump have accepted the nomination here as well? MonsterFestMania, July 29 and 30 in Akron

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

San Diego Comic-con is in full swing right now. But if you are reading this, you're probably not there. You're probably still stuck in the Cleveland area, with your own lonely action-figure collection and Hollywood fantasy/sci-fi/horror discs, and VHS tapes. Airfare to San Diego Comic-Con is quite outside your budget - not to mention admission at the door. You probably can barely afford to leave your parents' basement where you've been living for the last 30 years, like a forgotten Ariel Castro hostage in a state of Rust Belt permanent-recession squalor and minimum-wage poverty. A life in which the louche thrills of scary movies and canonical Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff B-programmers emceed by Big Chuck were the only reliable escape.

No, even if you did sell a kidney or something to get money, San Diego Comic-Con would probably turn you away at the door anyway, just for being a homely Ohioan, not worthy of entry in a southern California public event. That Wonder Woman cosplay outfit is not fooling anybody.

But wait! There is a ray of hope for lonely genre fans here in flyover-land, and it resides in Akron.

Star Trek Beyond

By George M. Thomas

Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine), center, Ensign Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Lt. Sulu 

fight a mysterious alien in STAR TREK BEYOND.

STAR TREK BEYOND is a straight forward, thrilling action adventure featuring gorgeous visuals and very little of what made original fans of the TREK series geek out.

Directed by Justin Lin, who helmed several of the FAST AND FURIOUS films, from a script by Simon Pegg (who also plays engineer Montgomery Scott) and Don Jung, it possesses its own charms that those who hold a blasé attitude about this iconic franchise that is currently celebrating year 50 will find attractive.

First of all it gushes with action, with few moments bogging it down and it deftly balances it with humor. It’s by far the most balanced Star Trek film since STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME in that every character is given something substantive to do.