Astronaut – The Last Push
I love space fiction. It’s the one genre or setting I never get tired of and is always in the mood for. Sadly there’s a great big lack of good space movies being made. It’s kind of starting to get better now with Gravity and the latest Riddick movie. There’s a couple of other movies in production right now that might be good and there’s even a couple of tv-shows being produced. I tend to always try to keep up with any piece of space fiction being made and then this movie pops up. It’s about an astronaut having to live alone in a capsule for over a year after an accident occurs killing his only other crewmember. It looks like a mix between the ‘europa report’ and ‘moon’ which is a mighty good combination.
It’s a really low budget film but I’ve heard it’s still pretty great much because of the lead actors performance.
Monsters 2: The Dark Continent
I was a big fan of the very low-key almost ”lost in translation”-esque monster movie ‘Monsters’ when it was released. It was about two westerners traveling through a Mexico ravaged by the sudden intrusion of strange alien creatures (some of which were gigantic). The movie really captured that feeling of traveling around in a foreign country and seeing beautiful things you’ve never seen before. So when I heard there was going to be a sequel that wasn’t by the same director/writer I was sceptical and I decided to ignore the whole thing. But then all of a sudden I stumbled onto the teaser for the sequel and I don’t know what, but something clicked.
The whole feel of the teaser feels right and I could see this being similar to the first movie but still going into totally different territory (quite literally as it’s set in africa this time). I’m interested now. Very interested.
Mood Indigo
Even though most of Michel Gondrys movies has been pretty uneven I’ve still really enjoyed them. Most of his movies still have a lot of really fun and creative stuff in them. I haven’t loved the movies but I sure as hell haven’t disliked them. So here’s Gondrys latest movie and thankfully he’s doing something original instead of an adaptation of something like ‘The Green Hornet’. Here’s something where his very french creative mind can frolic freely in the meadows of homecraft absurdity.
I don’t know what it’s about but ‘Mood Indigo’ sure looks quirky and most importantly fun.
Upstream Color
I remember watching the very low budget indie time travel movie ‘Primer’ in the living room of my parents place. People were all around me talking but I managed to keep up with the movie only for my father to ask me a quick question about something. This short moment of non-attention left me utterly confused for the remainder of the movie. I’ve been planning on watching it again as it seemed to be one of few time travel movies that kind of follows one of the few functioning time travel theorys out there.
‘Upstream Color’ is the second movie by Shane Carruth who made ‘Primer’ and it looks pretty great too. He has still made a smaller low budget movie but this time with some truly beautiful cinematography. Early reviews say ‘Upstream Color’ is as amazing if not better than Primer and this is enough for me to pay attention.
I don’t know much else about the movie but I plan to rewatch ‘Primer’ and then watch ‘Upstream Color’ after that to fully get into the Carruth-esque spirit.
Mad Max: Fury Road
I think I’ve mentioned it before that I used to be (and still somewhat are) a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. I have been into it ever since my childhood and the Mad Max movies has always been a big part of that. I love all of the the Mad Max movies for different reason (even Beyond Thunderdome). So when it was announced that there would be a fourth movie I was pretty happy. This was probably about 10 years ago though. There’s been so many problems in the production of this fourth movie and there’s always been something to stop production. After a while you sort of stopped expecting it to be finished. And then this year they suddenly released a trailer for it. And it looks amazing!
Mel Gibson has been replaced by actor Tom Hardy and I think he seems like a good fit. Unlike a lot of other Mad Max fans I feel replacing Mel Gibson was the right choice. We don’t want another Indiana Jones 4 here with old man Max running around making everyone aware of their mortality.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
So here’s a movie by another quirky french film director. It’s the latest movie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet who has previously made such classics as Amelie, City of Lost Children and Alien Resurrection (lol). He has now returned with an english language movie which is an adaptation of a book named ‘The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet’ by author Reif Larsen. The story is about a young boy who runs away and travels alone on an adventure to pick up an award at the Smithsonian Institute.
It looks quite lovely and Jeunet never disapoints in making atleast visually interesting films.
Soulkeeper
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a big fan of 80’s horror and sci-fi movies. There’s something about the movies from that era that is just plain unadulterated fun. And imagine my surprise when I discover an 80’s horror comedy which I had never heard of before. It’s called Soulkeeper and is about two thieves that steals some sort of ancient relic that has the power to return evil spirits back to earth. It has all those 80’s horror things I love like wonderful practical effects, nudity, gore and… What’s that, it’s from 2001?
What? No.
The Comedy
I’m a big fan of random, absurd and bizarre humor. And when a friend of mine showed me clips of the sketch comedy show ”Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Good Job!” I fell in love instantly. Granted I haven’t really been watching the show that much. I’ve just really enjoyed the clips I’ve stumbled upon and I also really liked their feature lenght movie of the show. ”The Comedy” is something entirely different. It stars both Tim and Eric but it’s written and directed by one Rick Alverson. And it’s not a comedy at all. I’m not really sure what it is. It kind of looks like a darkly absurdist tragic drama about fat white middle aged men who are still really lost in life.
It looks really fascinating and different.
Space Station 76
I’m a huge space movie fan. It always feels like there’s way too few space movies being made and as I mentioned earlier this post I tend to keep a pretty good track on any space movies that are being made. I was pretty surprised then when the sci-fi comedy ‘Space Station 76’ popped upp fully completed. Especially as it seems to be a celebration of one of my favourite space film eras the 1970’s.
I really love the aestetics of the space movies from that time (and into the 80’s). It’s sort of a practical and lived in style but also sort of visually simple and clean. I really like the feel of it. The movie ‘Moon’ did it really good and ‘Space Station 76’ as the name implies is going right into that as well as being a parody of the 1970’s itself.
If the comedy doesn’t hold up I’ll atleast enjoy the look of it.
Only Lovers Left Alive
Apart from every other genre apparently I also used to really love vampires. And even though it’s a seriously overdone genre I have always felt it’s still possible to make something interesting out of it. And in comes film auteur Jim Jarmusch and makes what looks like a very stylish and interesting vampire movie that still follows all the standard vampire styles and tropes. But just like his ‘Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” follows a lot of assassin-tropes ‘Only Lovers left Alive’ seems to have that amazing and special Jim Jarmusch feel. It’s stylish without being overblown, sort of this calm meditative almost dreamlike feel.
I love it and the style seems perfectly fused here with a proper supernatural vampire drama. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s a whole bunch of great actors like Tilda Swinton and John Hurt in it too.
Binary Regurgitations 