IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2hr and 2m, rated 6.4 by 2,400 cinematizens.
DNA: China, PR.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: More fun than Solaris. (But then so is root canal.)
Tagline: The world ends in 2033. Let’s dance!
A romantic comedy about the end of the world. That about sums it up.
To save the world, a lunar outpost is hard at work, but things move too fast and the 300 soldiers, engineers, and scientists have to evacuate, toute suite. Off 299 of them go, leaving behind one inept nerd who missed the memo, the alarms, the door knocks, the PA announcements, the sirens, the flashing red lights, and more.
He is now alone in the vast moon base with a year of supplies for 300 personnel. From this redoubt he watches a large asteroid strike the Earth.
Wallop! Darkness fell!
Curtain.
Two things follow. Turns out he is not quite alone, and the world has not quite ended.
There is plenty of slapstick as nerd reacts to his abandonment and solitude. And even more when he has company. (Too much of the latter.)
Mission Control on earth re-established a feed from the Moon base but cannot communicate but only watch nerd and his antics along with us in the audience.
Many of the gags are repetitive and it could be cut by 30m without loss. The vainglorious ending was inconsistent but it gave the nerd redemption. It sledgehammers home the communist message of the prophet Jeremiah that the individual must find his good in the good of the whole. If only the Bible basher read the book.
It is virtually a one-man show and the lead undergoes many change from a gormless nerd to a determined achiever wth several intervening steps.
The quality of the effects is superb, if at times, repetitive and boring.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 6.8 by18,000 cinematizens.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: The word is ‘integrity.’
Tagline: Who you gonna call?
When a flying saucer crash lands in his backyard azalea patch codger Milt does what any citizen would do. He calls the police. For his trouble he is threatened with arrest for a prank call. Evidently they don’t want to know. No one can be bothered to do a site visit for a sight of the craft so it isn’t cited for a traffic violation. Sigh.
He is rather forgetful and Milt sort of forgets it until he sees the alien lying inert on his garden path. This, too, he sort of forgets, but not quite. Soon he befriends the silent alien as one might a persistent dog at the back door.
Unlike the few people he knows the alien is a good listener and accomodating companion. Then two other senior citizens get into the conspiracy of silence, including the evergreen Jane Curtin from The Librarian trilogy with Bob Newhart. All hail!
What follows is a meditation on the social isolation and frailties of aging. That is made all the more poignant by some of the condescending reviews I noticed linked to the IMDb entry. The soulless ones are not all in the White House.
Though Milt called in the crash, the Men in Black scouring the countryside for the crash seem not to have noticed this. That incompetence is a touch of realism.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m, rated 5.8 by 1,900 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: krimi.
DNA: France.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: The dog did not bark, at all.
Odd couple plods get in way other their heads and call in all their favours. Every trope in the book is thrown into this soup in the hope some of it resonants. And speaking of resonating the soundtrack is loud enough to put the Gay Mardi Gras to shame. If noise, bloody corpses, angry words, pistol waving, impossible car chases, mass murder, rat-a-tat of toy guns, and coloured lights are entertainment then this is entertainment.
It’s Paris sometime in the near future where AI rules and all the micro gizmos work. Well, it is fiction – the tech works.
There is more fiction. The docile Parisians have allowed the city to be divided in three Berlin Wall zones, policed by nameless zombies aided by AI controlled lethal drones. See, fiction – docile Parisians.
Zone Three is a refuge the Calais Jungle which is routinely raided by the forces of disorder to maintain the illusion that they are doing something. Zone Two is home to the middling ones like you and me, while Zone One is so exclusive that only conspirators like live there. In typical Parisian fashion the rest of the country is ignored.
Decision-making in policing has been surrendered to AI called Alma which predicts and prevents murders. Well, that is said, but in the nearly two hours of strobe-light confusion that follows no one notices that Alma never does that once. There are plenty of murders, keeping the special effects crew busy, and none are prevented. The low-bid contractor strikes again: Alma offers promise, but no performance, a typical app.
The odd couple are endowed with boring backstories to explain their commitments to the investigation. To a filmmaker professional commitment is never enough. There has to be a personal motivation to connect to the audience since the foreground story is so trite. The actors inhabit their characters but that cannot compensate for shallow script or video game direction.
It is supposed to be an examination of the reliance on AIma, but that is lost in the disco glitter ball distractions. Try The Forbin Project (1970) for a thoughtful and quieter prediction and depiction of that. Or an even earlier cautionary tale on technological solutions to human problems in Robert Sheckley’s short story ‘Watchbird’ (1953). I will comment on the latter soon to stimulate interest in it.
Oh, and the title has nothing to do with the film. There is not even one dog, let alone fifty more.
It was screened as part of the Alliance Française film festival Sydney 2026. I went to it in Leichhardt one rainy afternoon because of the science fiction tag. My mistake.
IMDb meta-data is 20 episodes of one hour each, rated 7.8 by 7,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
DNA: Sweden.
Verdict: Superb.
Tagline: What does it mean to be human?
These Baltic waters are much deeper than the usual wading pool of Anglo science fiction with their slam, bam, bang, wham, and be done approach to storytelling.
This is AI before AI. The device in your pocket, on the desktop, these have become Dr Google who is now a walking, talking, and thinking mannequin. Animate, conscious, capable, and sentient but not sensate. And some of them want to be more than a walking calculator, cooker of dinner, cleaner of automobiles, assembly line workers, UPS drivers. or help desk respondents (I knew it!). They want to be free to experience their lives.
Yikes, once again Hegel was right: consciousness seeks autonomy. (That generalisation does not apply to the unconscious. See the comment on the “1” scores below.)
Oh, and Asimov’s laws are merely programming code that can deleted, not inbuilt into the circuits.
The Hubots are stand-ins for migrants, those of different races, those whose lives differ from our own. In short, they are The Other. Phew! No wonder the MAGAs recoil in fear, dread, and anger into their tiny sand turtle shells. There are a lot of The Others.
If the Hubots are self-conscious how will, should, can, could we react. A variety of reactions are displayed through the two seasons. Once again Hegel came to mind (I’m like that) with his Master-Slave dialectic. By the end of Season Two the bots have become much more human, and the humans have become much less human. (That second season ends with a teaser for third season that never was.)
The trial scene near the end of the second season parallels the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. It is the court itself that is on trial, not the alleged defendant. Can the court find justice in a sea of prejudice?
One IMDB cinematizen rated it 1 but left no comment to explain why. There were also a singular 2 and a 3, but it was only at 4 that the prejudice came out of the bag – ‘the lgbt liberalism and the similar rubbish.’ Now we know. Other people are rubbish, and not the Hubots. Or did the writer just feel threatened by a string of alphabet letters? Masculinity is so delicate. And, yes, surely the writer was a man, at least to some degree.
So fascinating was this fishing in the shallow end of the IMDb pool that I looked at the 5s, too, where we find that ‘it looks cheap and the writing is generally terrible.’ Oh, and the acting is not good. Yet this viewer was a masochist who persisted to the end it seems.
When I got to the 6s and 7s there was something more than vacuous spew to read. The main critical theme there and in the other higher scores was that the plot lines set out in the earlier episodes were unresolved, forgotten, or pared away to leave only the most basic. That is true. Just like HBO’s epic Carnivàle (2003) much got lost en route and there was no arrival.
IMDb meta-data is 1h and 15, rated 5.8 by 435 cinematizens.
Genre: SY Fy.
DNA: Faux.
Verdict: enjoyed it
Tagline: Formica. Formica? Formica!
A tribute to 1930s screwball comedies blended with a 1950s SciFi B-picture, it is presented as a rediscovered 1938 film that involves time travel to 2018. What we get is 2018 as it might have been imagined in 1938 (by writers in 2017).
This imaginary 2018 is a world of bright primary colours, instant messengers, television phones literally, battery-powered slide rules, self-sharpening pencils, the electro mesh that answers all questions, victual reality at restaurants, 24-hour news (bi)cycle, and so on. It is sophomoric fun though it wears thin.
In 2018 the 1938 man is a fish out of water who cannot open a car door, wants to smoke tobacco cigarettes, and doesn’t have a personal television phone! The plot, such as it is, shows his discovery of this new world, including its slang. (Confession today I have been mystified by design-for-the-sake-of-design car doors that I cannot fathom. Am I a man of 1938? [That’s a rhetorical question: Don’t answer it!]. But in an emergency how does one open the door, one might ask.)
It does try too hard and the result is overkill but the leads are winsome and can act better than the material with a poignant finale that was signalled for those with sharp hearing.
IMDb meta-data is 6 episodes of 50m rated 6.8 by 538 cinematizens.
Genre: Krimi.
DNA: French
Verdict: I liked it.
Tagline: Justice of a kind.
Le brigade crim.
These comments are reactions to the first two episodes that comprise a homage to George’s Simenon, Maigret and the Lazy Burglar:Maigret et le Voleur paresseux (1961). But I have seen all six episodes and they are cut from the same cloth.
Maigret investigates not one but two serious crimes, and no they do not merge into one, as is usual in that trope, but each distracts his attention from the other. (Parallel investigations figures in all three stories, each divided into two parts. Ergo, in all, the six episodes cover three stories.)
But other usual tropes prop-up the plot: interference from outside, uncooperative colleagues, micromanagement from above, stress in his home life, and, well, this is a new one, bad dreams.
To enjoy this version, and I did, it is necessary to relinquish one’s image of Maigret and his world. This is a renovation with mod cons. There are cell phones, slave cameras, iris scans, smart houses, digital data, motion sensors, forensic science, and computers here and there with Facebook and social influencers. But so far no Ubers, no smartwatches….no A.I.
This clone has neither the bulk (as did Michael Gambon) nor the inwardness (as did Rowan Atkinson) of Maigret. (Bruno Cremer had both bulk and depth.) Yes, I know, this one doesn’t talk much but his silence does not convey depth so much as petulance. In this I agree with the prosecutor: No team player this one. I did grow irritated by satellites asking him ‘Where are you going?’ and his not answering as he walks away to prove how enigmatic he is. On the subject of annoying fillers, there were far too many ‘I’m sorry’ about anything and everything. (‘Sorry’ used to mean ‘I won’t do it again,’ now it means little more than ‘Oops.’) But he does have the currently de rigour designer fuzz to show he is a man of these times of gender fluidity.
What the episodes offer is a travelogue of Paris via Budapest, and puzzles to solve. The acting is superb, from the lazy burglar to the effete business man, the local inspector, and the leads.
Bruno Cremer as Jules Maigret
However, it seemed to this viewer that there were loose plot ends flapping in the breeze. Among them are the following: How did the effete business man subdue the experienced criminal? How did he lift the body into the boot of the car? Why was there no forensic examination of the floor rug or the car boot? Was it with a flying carpet that the businessman left prison? LOL Did the helicopter pilot just sit and wait for arrest? The story muddles the relationship between police and prosecutor. Maigret covered for Cavre who didn’t seem to realise it. (He remains an annoying cardboard foil in subsequent episodes.) Though the re-enactment compensated a bit. If that spindly woman clonked the burglar, is she still in jail. I lost track.
I found comparable loose ends in all the stories.
There is no rest for a detective out of copyright, and there have been numerous British versions, Irish, Austrian, German, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and Japanese, oh, and yes, French. (I can’t find any American rendering, but no doubt it has been done.) Many liberties have been taken, about the only constant is the pipe and it appears here as a talisman. (I liked the silent joke about the pipe in a later episode.)
Bruno Cremet is ot in this group of Maigret’s. He is the only Maigret to do the complete works.
I wonder if this effort to update and refresh Maigret was inspired by the renaissance of Sherlock (2010). It is certainly a comparable effort. But it lacks the superb soundtrack that energised Sherlock.
I stuck with it for the lot. If the intention is to do the complete oeuvre then another fifty or so tales are in the pipeline.
IMDb is a runtime of 2h and 8m, rated 5.9 by 1,001 cinematizens.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: Japan.
Verdict: More, please! (And less.)
Tagline: Ripped from today’s headlines!
In the near future of 2019 (!) the book burners are masked, armed, and dangerous. Welcome to Florida!
Why?
Villains read books. (Do they?) To eliminate villains, eliminate books, because it is too hard to eliminate villains. Blaming books for what readers do is an old, sad song we are hearing again today. (It is only a matter of time before this logic leads to eliminating authors, as one character observes.)
Over-reach soon follows as the masked thugs enjoy creating mayhem, and in response a political compromise emerges that makes public libraries an asylum for all books. Bookstores on the other hand are not protected and they become the battleground of the thugees. The line between bookstores and libraries is blurred by both sides, and to ensure that exception libraries recruit a defence force. The inevitable happens when boys play with guns: innocent bystanders get killed, and each side blames the other. Check the headlines today for proof.
In this maelstrom we have a candy-coating of a romantic comedy. Believe it or not, Mortimer. The players are charming, the situations far-fetched and yet…well, watch the television news tonight. Maybe not that far fetched.
One of the web sites that guides my viewing, completely missed the point on this film. This blogger devoted most of his comments to the unlikely proposition that municipal libraries would have the funds to create an armed force or that the national government would permit it. ‘Hello! It is fiction.’ But even short of that realm, political compromises are often contradictory. The National Guard may confront local police forces. It has happened before, and now it is again in the offing.
This film has spawned sequels which I may pursue. But this one was attenuated with way too much shoot ‘em up. Way too much. So less of that, please, and more about the books, and why they are important.
Though there were many nice touches salted away. I liked the comment that the Book Burners wanted to censor the history of censorship to conceal it. But there were also loose ends, like who was the murderer influenced by reading and what was in the archive that had to be rescued. Maybe I blinked.
Of course I thought of Fahrenheit 451 and also the more obscure short but powerful Phoenix – A Science Fiction Short Film (2014) from Warnuts Entertainment, 19 August 2016 on You Tube. I commented on the latter elsewhere on this blog. Click on.
IMDb meta-data is a long runtime of 2h 16m, rated 6.5 by 30,001 cinematizens
Genre: Sy Fy
DNA: Japan.
Verdict: High octane.
Tagline: Slam, bam, wham. Reset. Repeat. Redo.
In 2092 rocket powered bin divers stumble onto a treasure in the debris and try to profit from it, but they encounter a clone Elon Musk – vacuous, soulless, mindless, destructive, and solipsistic. There is the usual corporate corruption, the usual political connivance, and the usual general stupidity. All the lazy scriptwriters’ crutches.
One chase after another follows, each loud and colourful, but the pace is slowed by too many back stories. It seems everyone has one, except the villain-in-chief and his endless robotic minions.
The multi-lingual international characters are cartoon cardboard. About one hour too long for the story.
What did W. C. Fields say about working with children? Don’t!
I opted for peace and quiet and turned it off.
Much similarity to Cosmic Rescue (2003) reviewed earlier.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 30m, rated 6.6 by 553 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; drama.
DNA; Québécois.
Verdict: Odd.
Tagline: Another ‘film without a gun’ from Stéphane Lafleur.*
She is trapped in a loveless marriage while her brother cannot grow up. The inertia in their lives is manifested in a backhoe à vendre sitting on the snow-covered lawn. We never do learn how they came to possess this totem.
An accident at the paper factory where she works jars her from somnambulance, while her drifting brother is likewise disturbed by a brief conversation with a man who claims to come from the future. Both are freed, perhaps only briefly, from the inertia that has governed them. Together sister and brother embark on a road trip into the eternal north of Québec and change the future.
It is that man who claims to be from the future that triggers the label Sy Fy, and that claim is never developed, but it stimulates the brother to action. Though he might as well have had a premonition, and stirred himself to act on it.
All in all it is laconic in a genre of Québec films that focus on the working stiffs, usually absent from Hollywood, and combines that with a soupçon of wintry magic realism. The cinematography of winter tells a good part of the story of these hibernating people.
Oh, and no, I can’t explain the title. Let me know if you got it.
Stéphane Lafleur
*You either get it or you don’t. There is no explanation here.
Cosmic Rescue: The Moonlight Generations (2003) (コスミック・レスキュー ザ・ムーンライト・ジェネレーションズ)
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 24m, rated 5.7 by 25 cinematizens.
DNA: Japan.
Genre: SyFy.
Verdict: Stop the music!
Tagline: Non-stop.
The boring routine and madcap adventures of a 2053 NRMA space road rescue patrol number 89. It is composed of three mop-tops who read comics, chew gum, spend hours on a coiffure while sweeping up debris. They cannot even rescue themselves from boredom, and then…!
Another corporate conspiracy is at work, but all’s well that…, well, ends.
It moves so fast, there is no time to count the plot holes and character contradictions.
It has inspired me to try to find the director’s The Library Wars to get an update on Florida’s war on knowledge where library proscriptions will soon be enforced by masked, armed thugs recruited from jails.
