Tag: Sci Fi

Movie Review: LET’S BE EVIL – low budget sci-fi “horror” with a death scene SO BAD it needs to be seen to be believed

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews7 Comments

lets_be_evil

Last night I was cramped for time, so I had to pick a short movie.  Let’s Be Evil had been sent to me a few weeks ago, and it was 82 minutes long – perfect!  Not quite.  Turns out there are many other things that would have been more worthwhile than watching this low budget sci-fi/horror.  Directed by Martin Owen, and co-written by Owen and leading actress Elizabeth Morris, Let’s Be Evil tells the story of three broke young people (Morris, Kara Tointon, and Elliot James Langridge) who take a side gig as chaperones to a group of child geniuises enrolled in a mysterious project.  Naturally, things go wrong, and the lives of the three protagonists are placed in peril.

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Movie Review: SciFi thriller MORGAN is a mostly dull and poorly written retread of other movies.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

morgan

Have you heard of the Black List?  I don’t mean the James Spader TV show, I’m referring to the list of great, unproduced screenplays of the year.  Being on the annual black list is something most would-be screenwriters dream of.  It generally leads to a big money sale, and knocks down the doors of the movie industry.  It includes some really good movies – Arrival in 2012, Spotlight in 2013, Manchester By The Sea in 2014, etc.  But it also lists screenplays that went on to be critical and commercial duds: The Johnny Depp scifi thriller Transcendence, and the Naomi Watt starrer Shut In from 2012, and 2013’s Pan that’s best left forgotten.  The 2014 list also includes Morgan, the movie I watched last night.

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Movie Review: THE SIGNAL – Sci Fi with a story too ambitious for its budget

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie ReviewsLeave a comment

thesignal

After watching The Signal, I was left with much the same feeling of frustration I had with Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color, with the only real difference being that I didn’t hate the latter.  What these movies had in common for me was a self-indulgent disregard for the audience.  I’ve been watching movies long enough to understand and appreciate filmmakers that don’t spoonfeed the audience what their movies are about, and I think I have a good nose for self-indulgence in movies, which I define as movies that throw a lot of disparate elements into the screenwriting blender, except for a payoff that’s either meaningful or logical.

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