A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Alex Cox, “Repo Man” (1984) Dare I say that with the passage of time, this little cult science fiction comedy thriller film will come to be…
Andrei Tarkovsky, “Solaris” (1972) The great Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky was nothing if not consistent: he made beautiful, artistic, slow-burning films that are an immersive experience…
Richard Fleischer, “Fantastic Voyage” (1966) Set during the Cold War in the 1960s – or was it the 1990s? – “Fantastic Voyage” has a wonderful premise…
George Lucas, “Electronic Labyrinth THX1138 4EB” (1967) Precursor to “THX1138”, this short film was made by Lucas while he was a student at the University of…
George Lucas, “THX1138” (1971) Before he became famous for his “Star Wars” series of films, George Lucas was noted chiefly for his dystopian sci-fi flick “THX1138”…
Robert Wise, “The Day the Earth stood Still” (1951) Yesterday a meteor and its debris struck an area in the Urals in Russia and the planet…
Andy and Larry Wachowski, “Matrix Revolutions” (2003) Beneath layers of computer-generated pyrotechnics, film noir homage and stylistic posing, the story is fairly basic: it’s a celebration…
Italian and Italian-language Films
Michele Botticelli, “At the Mountains of Madness” (2011) With the release of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” in 2012 and Guillermo del Toro’s resumption of the movie project…
Lindsay Harris and Stuart Leach, “Unearthed” (2011) On the edge of the known universe, a mining spacecraft The Ezekiel discovers an uncharted barren planet that may…
German and German-language Films, North American Films
Ryan Nagata, “1945A” (2010) Carl Erik Rinsch, “The Gift” (2010) Kaleb Lechowski, “R-Ha” (2012) These films have a few things in common: they’re very short science…