Category: Film Review

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. 

Future ‘38 (2017)

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.  

Maigret (2025)

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.

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. 

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.)

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. 

The Library Wars (2013) Toshokan sensô 

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.

By the way an abridged version of the statement on intellectual freedom figures in the story. For the complete text click here: https://www.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/assets/faife/statements/jlastat.pdf 

This statement forbidden in much of the world.  

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.

Space Sweepers (2012) Seunriho

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.

En terrains connus (2011) Familiar Ground

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. 

*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.      

Arctic Convoy (2023) Konvoi

Internet Movie Data base meta-data is a runtime of 1h 48m rated 6.5 by 4,400 cinemazitens. 

Genre: War.

DNA: Norsk.

Verdict: Makes its point.

Tagline: Waiting is hard.

After mid-1941 much of the Battle of the Atlantic was fought in the far north, including the Arctic Ocean. That latter was the lifeline for the Soviet Union. This is the story of one lone Norwegian cargo vessel bound for Murmansk.   

‘Norwegian?’  Yes, Mortimer (he’s back!).  In April 1940 Norway had the fourth largest merchant marine and many of them had the most modern equipment (cranes, elevators, radar, and radios). The Norwegian Government in exile with King Hakkon directed its ships to make for British ports, and nearly one thousand did so. By fiat this government declared their crews ‘war sailors,’ conscripted for the duration of the war. They numbered about 30,000. The ships and men were incorporated as Nortraship which became the largest mercantile shipping company at the time.  

I said 30,000 men above, but let it be note that more than 200 women were included on the ships, radio operators, doctors, or navigators. The presence of a woman in the crew in this film has driven a few opinionators ballistic on the IMDb reviews, but it is true to life as five minutes of internet investigation revealed.  (The tired Hollywood trope of men fighting over her is completely absent. Fear does dampen the libido.)

The tankers of the Norwegian fleet had earlier fuelled the Spitfires during the Battle of Britain as they crossed the North Atlantic with Texas oil.  Later its ships stood off Normandy with supplies and evacuated wounded and prisoners.

The price was high: More than 10% of the sailors died, i.e., 3,700 including 25 women.  When an oil tanker blows up, everyone dies.  

In this story a series of mishaps (faulty intelligence, disrupted communication, equipment failure) heighten the latent personality conflicts within the crew of one ship.  The ‘Convoy’ of the title is scattered and we follow one crew of about twenty. When the British escort is withdrawn (in anticipation of attacking German surface ships that in fact did not materialise) tension among the crew increases and increases, because they are now even more vulnerable to German U-Boats and aircraft.   

The Captain is determined to complete the mission to help win the war, while the first officer (and the engineer) would like to retreat against the impossible odds they will now face alone. Dissension follows.  No one ever says the obvious, even if the ship reverses course to Iceland, the Germans may still attack.  

An air attack follows and damages the ship and wounds the captain, the weather worsens which is good (keeps the German planes down and the ice floes deter submarines) and is bad (ice threatens the ship). One crewman is killed in an attack, and another dies avoiding floating mines.  

None of the characters is Hollywood cardboard.  Each has reasons that make some sense, as even the Captain admits at the end.  

The outstanding performance is by the bug-eyed Swede (the only volunteer in the crew) as the gunner on the lone anti-aircraft weapon on the ship.  But the fear and trepidation among the crew is palpable, and, indeed, hard to watch.  

IMDb is a runtime of 17m, rated by 0.

Genre: SyFy.

DNA: Italy.

Verdict: Lost in space.

Tagline:  [ … ]

IMDb summary: ‘After thousands of years since the extinction of the human race on Earth, an astronaut named Gladia lands on the now uninhabited Third Rock. Gladia comes from a distant planet where the last terrestrial settlers found refuge, before forgetting their planet of origin forever. She finds one inhabitant, a robot that has inherited all of human knowledge has evolved and developed a consciousness. The two will fight each other first but then they will realise that they are more similar than they thought.’

Gladia makes a crash-landing that destroys her vehicle so she calls for road service only to be told that there is none from the low-bid contractor.  Ergo, no rescue but over the hologram communication Gladia is thanked for the service.  A typical corporate dismissal.  She is now abandoned by the company. Full marks for realism.

We begin to realise Gladia is being watched, and Gladia then becomes aware of it.  

I have nothing more to add.  If there is more, I missed it. Nor did I notice much stargazing, literal minded as I am. The titular ‘Blue Dot’ brings to mind Carl Sagan and that must have had a purpose.  But what it is I cannot say.

Will Earth be repopulated by Gladia and the Robot?  That should be interesting!  But we’ll never know.  

PS I wondered if that ‘all knowledge’ included the locale of all the missing socks from laundry.