Because Everybody Else Has One

I can't remember the last Ridley Scott film to feel this assured. Well, okay, yes, I can, but that was American Gangster in 2007 and who the hell can remember that far back. Welcome back, Sir Ridley, it's been way too bloody long! The Martian tells the story of the first manned mission to mars (to be clear, the fictional story - but, um, you do know that, right?) and of the astronaut who is accidentally left for dead by his crewmembers and is forced to fend for himself on the inhospitable Red Planet until NASA send their next mission some four years hence. However, rather than going the more obvious route of a gritty, or at least more lonesome and meditative, survivalist story, it plays out like Apollo 13 on steroids - and it really is all the better for it. This means that though it does lack the depth of something like Duncan Jones' beautiful indie sci-fi flick, Moon, it more than makes up for it in terms of sheer, unfiltered enjoyment. And, frankly, after the un...

Neill Blomkamp is clearly a very talented director and he undoubtedly has at least one truly great film in him. Sadly, Elysium ain't it.. It's not just because of the sorry state of the rest of the South African film industry that South Africans - and the rest of the world - reacted so warmly to Neill Blomkamp's first feature film, District 9. It was, to be sure, a fairly flawed film but it wasn't only a well handled piece of science fiction and a smart allegory for apartheid - it also heralded a fresh new voice in genre filmmaking. Blomkamp and its star, Sharlto Copley, may be South African but bigger things clearly awaited them both. Sadly, bigger doesn't always mean better and Blomkamp and Copley's second film together may have a significantly bigger budget than its predecessor and a number of A-list Hollywood actors but it has little of District 9's charm, smarts and ingenuity. Again, Blomkamp turns his attention to allegorical science fiction but...

Starting off the weekend with a film whose mixture of science fiction, theology, chase-thriller and romance totally won me over. I should say, though, that at least in comparison to most other critics, I have responded better to it than most. As such, more than ever, take that 9 star rating as a very subjective rating of a film whose very definite flaws did little to lessen my enjoyment of the overall package. You might be less charitable. From Channel24 (Originally posted 8 June 2011) What it's about: A young politician (Matt Damon) stumbles across a conspiracy that changes everything he knew about the world. But when that conspiracy does everything it can to keep him apart from a woman  with whom he has an obvious and immediate connection (Emily Blunt), he sees no choice but to fight back. What we thought: For a science fiction author whose work is as challenging as Philip K Dick's is, it's amazing how many films have been made of his work. From Blade...