Back in the days before “Star Wars” and superhero movies transformed cinematic science fiction into gleaming toy commercials, science fiction cinema (with occasional exceptions) consisted largely of futuristic dystopias that were more like feature-length episodes of “The Twilight Zone” than today’s largely escapist entertainment. It’s far less common today to see a major studio offer up…
Hulu’s “The First” takes the long road to Mars…
I’ve just seen all 8 episodes of the first season of Hulu’s new streaming series, “The First” starring Sean Penn and Natascha McElhone (not to be confused with “First”, the upcoming Neil Armstrong movie). I have to admit that, while I eventually warmed up to this deeply angsty new series, a part of me initially…
Requiem for a nightmare; James Cameron’s “The Terminator” (1984)…
“What day is it? The date! What year?” October 26th, 1984. I still remember my sister coming home raving about a movie she saw with her then-boyfriend in the fall of 1984. It was a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and the next day she was telling me all about how truly good and scary it…
War and Remembrance: “The War of the Worlds”…
War Correspondent. It was over 120 years ago that Herbert George Wells first published the seminal alien invasion story, “The War of the Worlds.” Like so many of Wells’ works (“The Time Machine,” “The Invisible Man,” “The Shape of Things To Come”) WOTW became a template for many such alien invasion stories to come, such…
“Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” (1989): God only knows…
I’ve been a Star Trek fan for almost as long as I can remember, and one thing I’ve seen over the years is that there is rarely consensus on what constitutes good Star Trek. Even the best episodes & movies have their detractors, and the worst always have their champions. I myself have quite…
Logan’s Run: “Renew, renew…”
In the days before 1977’s “Star Wars” changed movies forever (at least for my generation), cinematic science fiction, with rare exceptions like “2001” and “Forbidden Planet,” consisted largely of cheapie monster flicks or dystopian nightmares. One of the more successful of the dystopian movies was “Logan’s Run” (1976), based a bit loosely on a novel…
1998’s Free Enterprise: “Don’t you understand? This is MY movie…”
The year I got married (the same year the moon was supposed to be blown out of Earth’s orbit in “Space: 1999”), I discovered a film that captured both my own bachelor years in the mid-1990s as well as my own experiences as a lifelong aficionado of all things geek. As I was thumbing through an…
“Demolition Man” inspires joy-joy feelings 25 years later…
It was an October evening some 25 years ago (checking my hands for liver spots) when a friend and I were up for a movie. We went to a theatre that wasn’t too far from my old apartment, and decided to check out the new Sylvester Stallone futuristic action opus, “Demolition Man.” I’d been…
Searching for Spock, and the issue of recasting…
News broke earlier this week that “Star Trek Discovery” has recast the role of “Spock” yet again, and the actor they’ve chosen is Ethan Peck (grandson of legendary actor Gregory Peck). This isn’t the first time “Star Trek: Discovery” has recast a previously established role for the new series. Mark Lenard was the original actor to play…
Marc Scott Zicree, “Mr. Sci-Fi” part 2: More from the Final Frontier, the new adventures of “Space Command” and beyond…
Here’s the link to part one of my two-part interview with “Mr. Sci-Fi” Marc Scott Zicree: Marc Scott Zicree, “Mr. Sci-Fi” part 1: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier… And now, part 2 picks up with Marc Zicree’s experiences making an exceptional episode of the online fan film series Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase…
“The Meg” is a big, silly, tongue-in-cheek fish tale…
I make no secret of the fact that I think 1975’s JAWS is one of the most perfect pieces of cinema ever stitched together in an editing bay. Even its imperfections add to its perfection. So yeah, I may be a teensy bit biased when it comes to reviewing shark movies, since every shark…
Marc Scott Zicree, “Mr. Sci-Fi” part 1: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier…
His YouTube channel is called “Mr. Sci-Fi”, and I can’t imagine a more apt nickname for author/television-writer/producer/director Marc Scott Zicree. Zicree started out, like so many of us, as a kid who really loved science fiction television and books. He grew up watching “The Twilight Zone,” “The Outer Limits” and the show the groundbreaking series that was like no…
