Collision With Andromeda
The Milky Way is conscious and has a plan that humanity is part of. Seventeen million years, one family, and a galaxy whose good intentions arrive at galactic scale.
Tag: Science Fiction (Page 19)
BureaucracyFilms With the Best Worldbuilding
Twenty films that build worlds you believe in before anyone explains them — from Blade Runner's environmental history to Princess Mononoke's moral complexity. Six core worldbuilding techniques extracted from the best in cinema, with craft lessons fiction writers can apply…
1970sFutureworld (1976) – Review
Futureworld (1976) earns its 7 as a lean 1970s paranoid thriller. Cheesy, dated, and genuinely unsettling.
AmbiguityWestworld Series – Review
Westworld Season 1 is near-perfect science fiction television. The other three seasons are a masterclass in how prestige TV destroys itself.
1970sStar Wars: A New Hope (1977) Review
A New Hope is the film that created modern blockbuster cinema, and it did so by being something very specific: a myth engine. Lucas wasn't writing charact.
1980sRoboCop (1987) Review
RoboCop is a better film than its premise suggests and a more subversive one than its marketing implied. Paul Verhoeven made a corporate satire inside a violent action film, and the two registers enhance each other instead of competing.
2010sThe Adjustment Bureau (2011) Review
The Adjustment Bureau earns its 9 by doing something most high-concept films fail at completely: it makes the concept personal without letting the concept. The idea, that a bureaucracy of angelic agents manages human fate, adjusting events whenever people deviate…
2000sMinority Report (2002) Review
Minority Report is a Spielberg film arguing against surveillance and predictive control while being too Spielberg to commit fully to the darkness its premise requires. Dick's source material was about the arbitrary nature of certainty, and Spielberg captures that element…
1990sTotal Recall (1990) Review
Total Recall is one of the great entertainments in science fiction cinema, and its pleasures are specific instead of generic. The women around him are sharply written and sharply performed.
1980sThe Abyss (1989) Review
The production achievement of The Abyss is extraordinary even by Cameron's standards. The Deepcore rig is a superbly designed setting, confined, functional, full of the specific texture of working machinery that Cameron consistently brings to his industrial environments.
1990sStar Trek: First Contact (1996) Review
First Contact is the best Star Trek film after Wrath of Khan, and that's a significant statement given how many entries the franchise has produced. What separates it from the rest is a structural decision that most franchise filmmaking refuses…
2010sEx Machina (2014) Review
Garland built Ex Machina to be precise, controlled, and unsettling in a register that keeps the audience at analytical distance instead of pulling them into emotional investment. The performances are strong.