rmd: (sweeney)
[personal profile] rmd
So, the 41st annual Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon happened the other week, and so Claudia and I saw a whole lot of movies.

Sunday:
Polder - Virtual reality mixing with the real world in a big augmented reality mish-mash. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how many layers of illusion were going on. The end made it clear, but hey, we're gamifying everything!

We caught the tail end of the second shorts program for Sunday after Polder. An amusing 'predator taking out other predators' film was the only one I saw in its entirety.

Monday:
I missed the set of local short films and the locally made movie "Merge", but did catch "Space People", another local movie. Once I figured out that it was more the "we moved the cow out of the barn and made this for $10" kind of movie, it was fun. Silly stuff.

Tuesday
The Tuesday shorts program had a few standouts. A different adaptation of Terry Bisson's "They're made of meat" than the one I've previously seen, some good animation. And an Aussie short "The Man Who Caught a Mermaid" that got sort of twitchily unpleasant because delusional people are bad, mmmkay?

The feature length thing we saw Tuesday was "Vintage Tomorrows", a documentary about steampunk. Reasonably well put together.

Wednesday:
Wednesday's feature length movies were the vintage Warner Bros movies "Attack of the 50' Woman" and "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". Turn your tv to channel 56 and get read for the Creature Double Feature! We watched the two shorts programs that night instead. Equilibrium Effervescent had a standout variation on the 'gremlin on the wing' Twilight Zone episode. Very fun. Some other good shorts. The Cepheids 'R Us shorts program had another Terry Bisson adaptation, "Bears Discover Fire", as well as some other solid shorts and a silly musical in French.

Thursday:
Alienated - I was hesitant about this movie after seeing the trailer. The high level overview is that a guy sees a UFO and his wife doesn't believe him. Which is a plot line with high potential to have gender dynamics that piss me the hell off. Instead, both characters are flawed and annoying and it was more along the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" kind of savage knives-out arguing couple who are arguing about everything except the thing they're actually talking about. I enjoyed it. I think it's got some kind of on-demand or streaming deal coming around. Two of the creators were there and gave Q&A.

The Phoenix Incident - written and directed by one of the guys behind the Call of Duty video games, it's a fake=found-footage look at an alternate explanation for the Phoenix lights incident in 1997, and it got to use lots of real footage of people discussing the real incident. In this, it really was flares dropped from airplanes, but that was done to distract everyone from the actual battle with aliens going on nearby. It's pretty well put together, and I rather enjoyed it. There were only one or two things that broke the "this is all from found footage" disbelief for me, and the movie got even more fun when Claudia finally recognized two of the main actors as being guys from Geek and Sundry's Critical Role. I think this has some kind of distribution deal in the works, and there's apparently a very deep ARG associated with the movie. Another Q&A.

Mafia: Survival Game - Very pretty looking - the production design is clearly influenced by that same Mobius aesthetic that permeated The Matrix movies. The plot, well, uh, it's a bit nonsensical in places. I suspect it would've come through better if the dubbed performances were better, but even so, the plot is kind of incoherent.

Friday:
This Giant Papier Mache Boulder Is Really Heavy - fresh from New Zealand, this was the first time the director had shown the movie to people he didn't know. It was very GalaxyQuest in mood and ambiance. Going into the movie theater sucks you into the world of low budget scifi movies and tv series. The title is a line that does appear. It was very silly and very fun. The director and a couple of other folks were there and talked about it after.

Project-M - Quebecois movie that felt very "Europa Report" to me. A team of 4 Quebecois astronauts are on a space station nearing the end of their 1000 day mission to test out how people would deal with extended space flight. The only really annoying thing is that the station wasn't rotating but they had gravity. Kept annoying me whenever I noticed it. Aside from that, it was really quite good. Very good performances and the movie unfolded well.

Recconoiter - This movie was 80m long, and I think it could've been edited down to a kick ass half hour or hour long Twilight Zone episode. Instead, I found it too slow, particularly given the "gotcha" moments it has part way through. Also, there's the plotwise irritation of "Wait, what? you have a super awesome first trip through something and you send just one guy? Not even a pair of people in case one of them has a sudden stroke?"

Saturday:
Somnio - this was not the easiest film to come into late as it had a lot of repetetive looping going on. Our main character is a prisoner being interrogated by an AI system but it's entirely possible that there's nobody left outside. But once I figured out what was going on, it was quite good.

Native - And here, I think "why did they only send two people when you need both of them and now you have no spares??" Aliens on their way to earth deal with separation from their homeworld and interactions with the strange signal (music) they heard from Earth. Rupert Graves and the girl who played Jorjen's sister on Game of Thrones.

Tale of Tales - I expected this movie to be better. Selma Hayek and John Reilly are in it, so I was surprised to really not be enjoying it very much. Work ended up texting me and so I left early to go fix a thing.

Then, Sunday, The Thon!
I got there just slightly late because I had to blow dry my kitchen pipes and deal with stuff before I left home. But I made it before Duck Dodgers blew up Planet X.

Gremlins - I don't think I'd seen this since it was in the theaters, and it's still a silly fun movie.

Starman - in 70mm, no less. Still a good solid movie.

Himmelskibet - a nearly 100 year old Danish movie recently restored. Subtitles were in Danish and English and we had a live organist accompanying it. Intrepid adventure scientists go to Mars and find vegetarian pacifists. Space opera with a side order of "wow, WWI sucked. Let's not do that again."

Bladerunner, the Final Cut - Final, dammit! That's it for cuts we swear until next time. No voiceover, a couple of odd audio things I don't remember from previous cuts, and it was digital projection but oh my god this movie is still gorgeous. It brought the cyberpunk aesthetic into the mainstream fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead.

High Treason - British film from 1929, apparently somewhat intended as a British equivalent of "Metropollis". Set in the far future of 1940, the International Peace League is trying to keep everyone at peace and the secret organization of weapons manufacturers and other sketchy folks are trying to manipulate people towards war.

Ex Machina - My opinion of this movie is, itself, kind of a turing test. More details below in case you want to avoid spoilers.

The Man Who Fell to Earth - I saw this once, years and years ago, but had forgotten much of it. Oh, my goodness. 1970's cinema, you wacky drug snorting fool. Interesting to watch it through the lens of CTan's piece recently about Bowie's space alien thing as a metaphor for fame.

Idiocracy - Better than I expected. Admittedly, my expectations were low, but it was reasonably fun for what it was.

The Bride of Finklestein (short film) - A modern short film that is pretending to be a 1930's short, and it nails some of the real stylistic things you expect from, say, an old 3 stooges short. Partway through, I had forgotten the "actually from the 21st century" part of it and was really disoriented when there was a gag where a doorbell noise was the Wilhelm Scream. (which is much later than the 1930's)

Pitch Black - Vin Diesel plays a great badass.

Never Let Me Go - I want to see this movie while I'm awake. I kept dozing off and then would wake up and think "hey, this is interesting" and then doze off again.

Big Ass Spider! - It was no Tremors, but this movie knew exactly what it was and did a good job of it. Light, trivial, fun, and silly.

Donovan's Brain - that Donovan's brain is sneakier and more powerful and more evil than this Donovan's brain. Also starring First Lady Nancy Reagan.

They Live - The economic downturn in the late 80's! Roddy Piper beating people up! When I'd seen the movie previously, I'd missed that the church the resistance works out of is an African Methodist Episcopalian, which added class and race overtones to our struggle with the alien oppressors for me this time around. Also, I was reminded that I had a crush on Meg Foster back in the day ever since seeing her in an adaptation of "The Scarlet Letter" because she has remarkable eyes.

We opted to leave a bit early rather than stay late to watch the original 1950's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". So, that was our Thon.


More on Ex Machina (INCLUDES SPOILERS):
So... my opinion of it really depends on whether I think Ava is sentient and a person. If Ava is a "person" and is actually having desires and needs and emotions, then leaving Caleb to die of thirst is harsh, but on the other hand, he appeared to be passively accepting of - if not complicit in - the torturous conditions these artificial people were going through. And the film ends with a sort-of subversion of the male gaze and a shift in the film where we discover that our protagonist character is not who we thought it was.

But if Ava is not a person, if she's not actually feeling things or wanting things or having that empathic experience of interacting with other sentient beings, then how does her mistreatment compare with mistreatment of any other mechanical device? It's kind of unfortunate Caleb got locked in a room to have a horrible death, but it's unfortunately in the same way that it's a shame that table saw malfunctioned and cut your arms off.

So the whole movie is a Turing test. Is she a slave or a Real Doll? And also, wow, that little sequence where we see the other brides of Bluebeard freaking out... that's some disturbing footage.


They announced the awards for the Fest and I agree with them all or, at least, can find no fault with any of the choices at first glance. A pretty solid lineup and a good time.

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