mon 28/10/2024

sci-fi

Things Will Be Different review - lost in the past

Time-travel is a trap in debutante Michael Felker’s tender sf two-hander, whose title’s grim irony becomes gradually apparent.There’s golden American promise in the sun and shadow of the diner where Joseph (Adam David Thompson) meets sister Sidney (...

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Alien: Romulus review - game over for the adults

In space no one can hear you scream, but they usually can in a cinema. Wednesday night’s gala launch of Alien: Romulus was awash with the gussied-up cast and writer-director Fede Álvarez, alongside assorted Olympians and influencers walking the red...

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Borderlands review - the end of a universe?

So, it falls to me to review perhaps the least-anticipated film of the year. Borderlands is based on an admired video game, and there may be nothing more hostile than pissed-off video-gamers.The tsunami of online negativity aimed for weeks at merely...

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Sky Peals review - a parable of alienation in a motorway service station

“I think my dad might have been an alien,” Adam (Faraz Ayub; Line of Duty; Screw) tells a self-help group he wanders into. What does that make him? He doesn’t feel at home anywhere – not with his family or, perhaps not surprisingly, at his job in a...

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradise

Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences...

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Minority Report, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre review - ill-judged sci-fi

Towards the end of David Haig’s new adaptation of Philip K Dick’s 1956 science fiction short story, someone asks if three humans who have been symbiotically connected to a massive AI computer for a decade can survive the experience.Yes, she’s told...

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I.S.S. review - sci-fi with a sting in the tail

Earthrise, the 1968 Apollo 8 photograph of our small island of a planet, taken from the Moon’s surface, transformed our vision of our fragile home world. “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it...

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3 Body Problem, Netflix review - life, the universe and everything (and a bit more)

From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring attempt to dramatise Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem. A mind-bending sci-fi epic spanning multiple decades, while...

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Album: Bolis Pupul - Letter to Yu

This album starts on an extremely literal note. The whole record is themed around Belgian born-and-raised Bolis Pupul’s explorations of the Chinese side of his heritage after his mother’s death in 2008, and his regrets at not having done so when she...

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Dune: Part 2 review - sombre space opera

Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune sequel is a sombre science-fiction spectacle that insists on the scale of cinema: erupting sandworms are Cecil B. DeMille colossal, the sound design centred on Hans Zimmer’s score thunderously enveloping. In a genre once...

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The Time Traveller's Wife, Apollo Theatre review - blockbuster 2003 novel does not quite land as blockbuster 2023 musical

You really don’t want to pick up The Time Traveller’s Wife in a game of charades. Half the clock would be run down just showing that it’s a novel, a film, a TV series and a musical. That spawning of spin-offs over the last two decades is a testament...

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Hypnotic review - a riotously enjoyable thriller

Masterminded by writer-director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids etc), Hypnotic is a speedy, twisty, riotously enjoyable thriller that seeks to bend your mind into impossible shapes while also delivering more than a few droll wisecracks. Ben...

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