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…

Outcasts moved to Sunday night slot

TV Gossip

16 Feb 2011

BBC One sci-fi drama 'Outcasts' is being moved to a late-night Sunday slot after failing to attract viewers. The show was launched last Monday (07.02.11) at 9pm with ratings of 4.4 million, but viewing figures have dropped in the three episodes which…

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…

Jeff Lemire - Sweet Tooth

29 Jul 2010

(Titan/Vertigo) It’s hardly surprising that Jeff Lemire’s current ongoing series (the first five issues of which are collected here) should be a bleak, post-apocalyptic yarn that recalls, among other precedents, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Lemire…

Red Dwarf to return

TV Gossip

7 Jun 2010

Red Dwarf is returning to the TV. Two new series of the British sci-fi comedy series - which is known for its much-loved characters Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) and Dave Lister (Craig Charles) - will start filming early…

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…

Heavy Metal Dredd by John Wagner, Alan Grant and various

A collection of Judge Dredd's most exteme adventures

3 Sep 2009

More from your favourite ultra hard-line future lawman in this collection of some of Judge Dredd’s most extreme stories. First printed in Rock Power and the Judge Dredd Megazine, these are stories with no limits, going for bloody slapstick comedy with a…

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…

Pat Mills and Various - ABC Warriors: The Meknificent Seven / The Shadow Warriors

2 Apr 2009

(Rebellion) SCI-FI COMIC More British sci-fi action from 2000AD with the ‘Atomic’, ‘Bacterial’, ‘Chemical’ robot warriors, built to withstand any crisis. Going right back to their debut in 1979, The Meknificent Seven shows the formation of the…

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…

Toby Litt - Journey into Space

5 Mar 2009

LITERARY SCI-FI There’s a good track record of literary writers dabbling in science fiction, from Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood to Iain Banks, and we can add to that fine company this remarkable and moving offering from Toby Litt. Having long…

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…