Film and Sci-Fi

Death Watch

Well-deserved re-issue of Bertrand Tavernier's prescient Glasgow-set sci-fi thriller

16 May 2012

Its plot is a credibility stretch even in these days of de rigueur media paranoia, and its relentlessly murky, moody tone might raise the odd giggle, but Tavernier’s long-neglected sci-fi curiosity is compelling nonetheless. Romy Schneider plays…

New Prometheus viral features Michael Fassbender as 'David'

Fassbender plays the robotic David in Ridley Scott's upcoming sci-fi blockbuster

17 Apr 2012

Following on from their previous viral clip - a futuristic TED talk delivered by Weyland Industries founder Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) - the folks behind Prometheus have delivered this clip of Michael Fassbender in character as David, a robot built by…

Battleship

Michael Bay-inspired blockbuster burdened by bog-standard plot and uneven tone

11 Apr 2012

(12A) 131mins Inspired by the Hasbro board-game, Battleship is part Michael Bay-inspired planet-trashing mayhem and part love letter to the US Navy, with whom director Peter Berg shares an intimate family history (his father was both a former Marine…

Colin Farrell kicks ass in new Total Recall trailer

Updated CGI, a Biel v Beckinsale punch-up and Bill Nighy among the trailer highlights

2 Apr 2012

Fans of 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall have had little reason to be impressed by the forthcoming remake of Arnie's second best film (it’s not a patch on T2): casting Colin Farrell in the lead alongside almost forgotten female leads…

The Hunger Games

Adaptation that successfully transcends its teen-fiction origins, with excellent cast and direction

21 Mar 2012

(12A) 142min A dystopian thriller with cross-generational appeal, The Hunger Games is an adaptation of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy. From writer and director Gary Ross (Pleasantville) and co-written by Collins herself, it’s set in…

Iron Sky

Finland's so-so sci-fi comedy could actually benefit from an American remake

19 Mar 2012

Six years in the making, Iron Sky arrives in a blaze of pre-release publicity. Finland’s first blockbuster, partly funded by fans, you certainly can’t quibble with its killer pitch: Nazis on the moon. It’s just a pity that director Timo Vuorensola’s…

John Carter

Visually impressive epic adventure suffers by prepping for sequels

8 Mar 2012

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 creation finally hits the screen after 79 years of development hell, with pre-production on an animated feature originally scheduled for 1931. Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, has…

Avengers Assemble in latest trailer

Trailer for superhero movie with Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow

1 Mar 2012

It’s the moment comic book and action movie fans have been waiting for as we get our first good look at all six members of the superhero team, The Avengers, in the latest trailer. The hype has been building for this massive blockbuster with Iron Man…

Guy Pearce delivers futuristic TED talk for Ridley Scott's Prometheus

Pearce stars as the founder of Weyland Industries

29 Feb 2012

We appreciate a well-thought out viral online campaign here at List HQ. We're also fans of the inspirational TED talks, where the leading lights of culture, technology and industry come together to deliver talks based on their chosen field of expertise.

GFF 2012 - Mark Millar interview

The comic book creator of Kick-Ass and Wanted tells us about his role at the Glasgow Film Festival

13 Feb 2012

Mark Millar has written some of the biggest comics of the last 20 years. He’s tackled the X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman and Fantastic Four alongside...

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

6 Feb 2012

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

Another Earth

Indie hit with science fiction premise explores complexities of flawed human interaction

9 Nov 2011

(12A) 92min Indie hit Another Earth belongs to a microscopic subgenre of love stories revolving around parallel universes; in this case, a planet hidden by the sun which is an exact mirror image of our own planet, right down to the names of the…

Melancholia

Lars von Trier's sci-fi drama features star turns from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg

21 Sep 2011

(15) 135min Melancholia is like the inversion of TS Elliot’s much quoted dictum. Is this how the world will end? With a bang not a whimper. Lars Von Trier’s curious, enigmatic and deterministic film seeks to equate the black dog of depression with an…

Perfect Sense

Dark yet sentimental romance set in an apocalyptic world

14 Sep 2011

(15) 92min David Mackenzie’s seventh feature is, superficially, his most disturbing yet. That’s saying something given the Scottish filmmaker introduced himself and his penchant for dark psychosexual drama with his grim and gritty adaptation of…

Profile: Andre Ovredal

Writer and director of Troll Hunter

24 Aug 2011

Born 1973, Norway Background After studying at Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute, where he made his first film, Future Murder (2001), Ovredal established himself as a successful director of commercials in Norway. What’s he up to now? He’s written and…

The Troll Hunter

'Found footage' mock doc ends up somewhere between horror and comedy

24 Aug 2011

This monster movie was an unqualified box office hit in its native Norway, and has picked up dozens of rave reviews on the worldwide festival circuit, but aside from a couple of good jokes and a handful of impressive visual effects sequences, there’s…

Bikini Machine compose a 'cinéconcert' score for Desperado

24 Jun 2011

Each year, the French Institute for Scotland takes part in the Edinburgh International Film Festival and strives to bring the media of music and film together to form one piece of intercontinental art. This year, the Institute have invited five…

Phase 7 (Fase 7)

Dark pandemic tale from Argentina

16 Jun 2011

There’s a vague ‘pandemic’ theme in this year’s EIFF programme (with talks and screenings of the likes of 28 Days Later, The Divide and Panic in the Streets) and Phase 7 is the first to raise its diseased head above the parapet. As a global epidemic…

Kaboom

Cult director Gregg Araki returns to his B-movie roots with comedy-sci-fi-horror

23 May 2011

(15) 86min Cult director Gregg Araki (The Living End, Mysterious Skin), one of the leading figures in the New Queer Cinema of the 90s, returns to the style of his earlier work for Kaboom, a gloriously trashy, insane ride of a film that wears its…

Attack the Block

Plays for scares more than laughs, and succeeds admirably

25 Apr 2011

(15) 87min Coming from the same production team as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, this confident debut from Joe Cornish (one half of duo Adam and Joe) is much less a comedy than might have been expected. Rather it’s a…

Source Code

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan star in body-swapping thriller

18 Mar 2011

Duncan Jones’ dazzling debut Moon is, by any standard, a tough act to follow, but while sophomore effort Source Code can’t quite match up, it does ensure the director’s career remains on the right track. The film is an intriguing race-against-time…

Top 5: Philip K Dick adaptations

Featuring Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and The Adjustment Bureau

10 Mar 2011

Philip K Dick (fun fact: the K stands for Kindred) is hailed as one of the finest science fiction writers in history. He never achieved commercial success in his lifetime: he died following a stroke in 1982, three months before Blade Runner - the first…

Buried, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Shock Labyrinth released on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

2 Mar 2011

Over the years some of the greatest horror films have found love and longevity amongst the classics of the genre despite their direct-to-video origins. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as The Open Door (Second Sight) ● proves. Taking the vague…

The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K Dick-inspired sci-fi thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt

2 Mar 2011

The work of Philip K Dick has inspired some of cinema’s great sci-fi films, from Blade Runner to Minority Report via Total Recall. The Adjustment Bureau, which is derived from one of the author’s short stories, doesn’t quite measure up to the former or…

GFF blog: Bruce Goldstein talks The Tingler

The Vincent Price-starring, William Castle-directed gimmick fest gets a new lease of life at the GFF

22 Feb 2011

Bruce Goldstein is not happy about his official job description at the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘I’m not a film historian – well, I guess I am, of a sort – but primarily, I’m a film distributor, and I run a cinema. Most successful repertory stream in the…

Monsters

Astonishing science fiction thriller betters both Cloverfield and District 9

30 Nov 2010

(12A) 94min Young British filmmaker Gareth Edwards’ astonishing science fiction thriller combines the immersive excitement of Cloverfield with the astute political allegory of Distrtict 9, and, far from being a rip-off, is actually a much better film…

Monsters reclaims visual effects from the blockbusters - Gareth Edwards interview

Paul Gallagher talks to the director and stars of brilliant new sci-fi horror Monsters

30 Nov 2010

‘Doing visual effects for a living is like being a gynaecologist’, says Gareth Edwards, ‘when you do it every day at work, it doesn’t turn you on any more.’ So he decided to stop staring at pixels and pick up a camera. The result is Monsters, one of the…

World on a Wire

18 May 2010

(15) 204min (Second Sight) What a beautiful world we live in. This is the restored, pristine digital print of little seen two-part 1973 German TV sci-fi drama directed by the great Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Even better it turns out it’s actually a…

Toy Story 3 and The Illusionist among Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 highlights

5 May 2010

With The Edinburgh Film Festival 2010, which runs between 16-27 June, only a matter of weeks away, the red carpets are getting waterproofed and the popcorn machines are getting serviced. Now in its 64th year, the twelve day festival, packed with…

Hipsters, Bad Lieutenant and a Frightfest at GFF

Glasgow Film Festival blog

1 Mar 2010

Friday afternoon. I decide to brave the vertiginous screens at Glasgow’s Cineworld Renfrew Street where some festival films are also showing. I make the perverse choice of Hipsters, a Russian film with no current UK distributor about a group of post…

Battle For Terra 3D

29 Jan 2010

(PG) 78min Having festered on the shelf since its April 2009 US release, Battle For Terra 3D arrives in our cinemas to cash in on the current wave of enthusiasm for three-dimensional cinema, and specifically Avatar, although Canadian director…

Moon

19 Jan 2010

Catch Duncan Jones’ smart, impressive debut on the big screen one last time. Showing as part of season celebrating ten great films from 2009. Filmhouse, Edinburgh on Mon 1 Feb.

Night of The Comet

5 Jan 2010

(15) 91min (Optimum) Cult classic alert! This 1985 sci-fi horror parody benefits from just the right combination of genre knowing and lightness of comic touch. Its apocalyptic storyline has the Earth pass through the path of the titular celestial…

District 9

21 Aug 2009

(15) 112min Under the guiding hand of producer Peter Jackson, South African writer/director Neill Blomkamp has expanded his 2005 Alive In Joberg short to feature length for this dazzling sci-fi thriller. Set in 2010, District 9 takes place on an…

Cult Fiction Movies shop opens in Edinburgh

6 Aug 2009

To a certain type of movie fan, Newington’s newly-opened Cult Fiction Movies is a magical store where a litany of grindhouse double features, BFI Classics and films from America’s Criterion Collection which remain currently unavailable on this side of…

Moon: interview with director Duncan Jones

9 Jul 2009

Cerebral science fiction thriller Moon heralds the arrival of an impressive new filmmaking talent in Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie. Miles Fielder meets him.

Moon

9 Jul 2009

Cleverly conceived, evenly paced and consistently intriguing, this old-school science fiction thriller is a very welcome repost to the numbing spectacle of what passes for sci-fi these days. Taking his cue from genre classics from the late 1960s through…

Terminator Salvation

28 May 2009

With a track record that includes Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and the straight-to-DVD We Are Marshall, McG was always going to have his work cut out proving he was the right man to reboot the Terminator franchise. Now his judgment day has arrived…

DVD Box Set Round-up

28 May 2009

Film historian, writer, avant-garde underground filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger is one of the more interesting individuals to have emerged from California’s Santa Monica hills in the second half of the 20th century. Anger and his work were…

Star Trek

30 Apr 2009

There’s an old Star Trek salutation – to live long and prosper. But not even original series creator Gene Roddenberry could have imagined just how long and prosperous Star Trek would be. Since airing on American TV in 1966, the show has spawned six…

Outlander

16 Apr 2009

The latest (if not the only) entry in the oft-neglected Viking/alien crossover subgenre is about space pilot Kainan (Jim Caviezel) who crash lands on earth circa 709AD and finds he’s not alone. A strange and terrifying monster escapes and attacks the…

Monsters VS Aliens

2 Apr 2009

ANIMATION/SCI-FI As with the cheerfully vacuous Bolt, Monsters vs Aliens exemplifies the virtues of today’s 3D cinema – eye-popping to watch, leavened with self-referential humour that makes it easy to digest, but also playing things so painstakingly…

Also Released - Film

19 Mar 2009

Barry Lyndon (PG) 187min ●●●●● Kubrick’s epic adaptation of William Makepeace Thackery’s picaresque novel about the attempts of an Irish upstart to become a member of the English aristocracy in the 18th century re-emerges for re-evaluation on a…

Watchmen

5 Mar 2009

SCI FI/THRILLER Considering that Alan Moore’s Watchmen was believed unfilmmable. Director Zach Snyder has done a sterling job in bringing Moore’s influential graphic novel to the big screen. Snyder worked with comic book scribe Frank Miller on 300…

The Survivor

21 Jan 2009

HORROR Somehow I first saw The Survivor on TV round my gran’s house when I was about seven-years-old, and it terrified me to my core. I don’t think I even made the end of the film. Now, this 1981 adaptation of James Herbert’s book is getting a…

Audio: Fear in Lothian - Special effects exhibition

19 Dec 2008

Fear in Lothian is an exhibition in The Cameo Cinema bar, Edinburgh which showcases some of the the models used by Gibbet Studios, a company who provide special effects services for film shoots. Here Calum MacDonald talks to Paul Dale from The List…

Film - Also Released

11 Dec 2008

White Christmas (U) 120min New digital print of this Christmas staple. GFT, Glasgow and Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 12-Wed 24 Dec. North Face (12A) 121min Exciting historical adventure recounting the dangerous ascent of the Eiger in 1936 by two…

The Day the Earth Stood Still

11 Dec 2008

(12A) 105min As remakes go, Scott Derrickson’s re-imagining of Robert Wise’s 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still has more contemporary resonance than most. By substituting the threat of nuclear war for that posed by global warming, the…

Summer scoops top prize at Bafta Scotland awards

10 Nov 2008

Summer, Grand Theft Auto, Gary’s Wrr and Lorraine Kelly were amongst the winners last night at the Lloyds TSB BAFTA Scotland Awards. The ceremony, at Glasgow’s City Halls with an audience of over 800, was broadcast live online worldwide.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

31 Jul 2008

MYSTERY/SCI-FI (15) 104min Ten years after the first X-Files film, and six years after the end of the series, Mulder and Scully are back and they are together-together. When Scully persuades Mulder to get involved in a case involving psychic priest…

Flash Gordon

31 Jul 2008

SCI-FI/ADVENTURE (PG) 106min (Optimum DVD retail) Given director Mike Hodges once admitted to an Edinburgh International Film Festival audience that his 1980 blockbuster version of Alex Raymond’s comic strip was made up as he went along, it’s all the…

WALL-E

17 Jul 2008

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

Meet Dave

17 Jul 2008

CHILDREN’S SCI-FI FANTASY MEET DAVE (PG) 90mins The last time Eddie Murphy united with director Brian Robbins, audiences got Norbit as a result. Now, one of the least eagerly anticipated reunions in cinema history invites us to Meet Dave. The result…

The new X-Files film

17 Jul 2008

The new X-Files film continued to be shrouded in mystery last week, with all the actors publically refusing to reveal the plot. Billy Connolly will star as Father Joe alongside David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s Mulder and Scully, in the…

The Mist

3 Jul 2008

HORROR/SCI-FI (15) 126min After The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer/director Frank Darabont continues his one-man championing of the Stephen King estate with an adaptation of novella The Mist. After a thunderstorm in an isolated rural…

The Happening

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA/SCI-FI (15) 90min The best and worst of M Night Shyamalan’s questionable talents are on display in The Happening, but after The Village and the dire Lady in The Water, it’s good to see Shyamalan hitting any sort of form at all. The apocalyptic…

I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Ok

24 Apr 2008

SCI-FI (15) 105 min Korean director Park Chan-wook burst onto the international film scene with the ferocious Oldboy in 2003. The bleak and violent study of revenge was very publicly championed by Quentin Tarantino. However, after the unrelenting…

Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine

28 Feb 2008

SCI-FI/HORROR (18) 60min (Third Window DVD rental/retail) This low budget Korean entry is certainly an oddity, and has to garner bonus points as one of the most garishly outrageous film titles in many a year. The teenage hooker of the title is hacked…

Aliens Vs Predator – Requiem

17 Jan 2008

SCI-FI/HORROR (15) 86min In the ongoing saga of a faceless corporation which creates a monster it doesn’t know how to handle, there are obvious parallels between the universe featured in the Alien films and Fox’s treatment of the franchise itself.

Southland Tales

29 Nov 2007

SCI FI/COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 144min Los Angeles, 4 July 2008. Society is on the brink of social, economic and environmental collapse and an action star/boxer, a porn star and a police officer are making a last stand. Writer/director Richard Kelly’s…

Blade Runner: Final Cut

29 Nov 2007

Some filmmakers just love to fiddle, and Ridley Scott is one of the worst fiddlers in the business. This is (allegedly) the final, definitive cut of his already near iconic 1982 sci fi classic. In any version this great movie is well worth catching on…

Highly illogical? Winona Ryder as Spock’s mother

13 Nov 2007

Winona Ryder has signed up to the latest installment of the Star Trek franchise - as the Vulcan mother of a young Spock. Directed by Lost creator JJ Abrams, the film will chart the Starship Enterprise crew’s early days as they embark on their first…

Star Trek film scouting for ‘odd’ extras

8 Nov 2007

The new Star Trek movie is recruiting people with odd features to appear as extras. Anyone who is the proud owner of bug eyes, large foreheads or oversized ears will also have to agree to have their eyebrows shaved to appear Vulcan-like. The…

Star Wars spin off series gets underway

18 Oct 2007

A television spin-off of sci-fi franchise Star Wars is getting underway, said creator George Lucas, with the main characters conspicuous by their absence. The film director admitted he was ‘taking chances’ by leaving out the likes of Darth Vadar and…

Bit early in the Star Trek universe for kung fu isn’t it?

11 Oct 2007

Unless you’ve seen Chopper, that headline will mean nothing. If you have seen Chopper, it’ll remind you of the finest single line in film history. All that wittering will eventually lead us to a point where I can reveal that Eric Bana has signed on…

Terminator: I’ll be back, then again and once again

11 Oct 2007

I’ve never really seen the attraction of the Terminator - it’s alright but it’s no Turner and Hooch - so you’ll forgive me for not getting too excited at the news we are to be treated to a further trilogy of the franchise. First out of the blocks…

All aboard the good ship Emmerich for a Fantastic Voyage

27 Sep 2007

What we really need in this age of terrorism, blue tongues and crunchy credit is a remake of 70’s camp-a-thon Fantastic Voyage. Thank the lord then that Roland Emmerich has stepped up to the plate to bring us just such a wonder. The Independence…

Star Trek secures an Uhura

20 Sep 2007

The geek on the street will be turning weak cordial cartwheels at the news that JJ Abrams’ Star Trek movie is continuing apace with its casting decisions. The latest to sign up for the sort of revisionist/prequel/depressing remake is Zoe Saldana…

Transformers

16 Jul 2007

ACTION/ADVENTURE/SCI-FI TRANSFORMERS (12A) 144min In 1984 toy manufacturer Hasbro released the Transformers, and as part of its marketing strategy, commissioned a Marvel comic strip and an animated TV series that became an instant…

DVD - Forbidden Planet

4 Jun 2007

SCI FI/ADAPTATION The best screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (although Derek Jarman’s punk opera 1979 version comes a close second) finally gets a decent DVD transfer with some formidable extras. Made in 1956, Fred M Wilcox’s (Lassie…

28 Weeks Later …

7 May 2007

As voracious as their flesh-eating antagonists, zombie movies can’t help coming back for more until a franchise has been picked clean. In order to maintain some semblance of fine dining from their 2003 sleeper hit 28 Days Later... director Danny Boyle…

Sunshine

(15) 107min

26 Mar 2007

Trainspotting director Danny Boyle enters a whole new dimension with this retina-ravishing, mind-bending sci-fi epic. Scripted, like 28 Days Later … by Alex Garland, it blends the intimate intensity of an ensemble drama with grand images and topical…

The Fountain

15 Jan 2007

Plagued with production problems - most infamously star Brad Pitt exiting over creative differences, causing the film to close down - Darren Aronofsky’s labour of love has been a long time coming. Before rewriting the script and recasting a scaled down…

Deja Vu

(12A) 126min

11 Dec 2006

SCI FI/ADVENTURE/THRILLER A massive explosion, a slow-mo on our hero arriving on the scene of a terrorist attack, and within the first ten minutes it’s clear that we’ve entered the destructive cinematic world of Tony Scott. But, unlike with the…