Either I’ve been staying on top of my homework or 2015 has been an exceptionally strong year for film scores already. From blockbuster disappointments to indie oddities and mindless action sequels, film music has once again shown it can transcend its respective dreck just as much as it can enhance the cinematic experience. With film festival season …
Every decade has their cinematic science fiction obsessions which speak to its concerns of the age; in the 1950s films such as Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and Them! capitalised on fears of alien invasion and nuclear proliferation. In the 1960s films like Barbarella and Ikarie XB-1 captured the hopes and dangers of space exploration …
“For our policemen, we created a race of robots,” the Alien Klaatu tells a crowd of fear-stricken earthlings in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Robots like “Gort,” we are told, were made to patrol the galaxy to preserve civility. “Your choice is simple,” Klaatu tells us. “Join us, and live in peace…or pursue your present course, and face …
Writer-director Neill Blomkamp pushes all his chips onto the table with this fascinating sci-fi gamble that dares you not to be entertained. Derivative, ultra-violent, and completely baffling, Chappie also manages to be insightful and sweet at times. This technically-accomplished and thematically-suspect robot melodrama has something for everyone to love (and hate). Mostly, it offers the giddy exhilaration of a movie that’s determined to tell its story, no matter how bat-shit crazy it is.
Most of the most anticipated movies of the year, quite frankly, don’t need any more hype than they already have. You’re probably reading this very article nestled in your Avengers: Age of Ultron officially silenced snuggy (“there are no loose threads on meeee…”) or standing in the obsidian-dark shadow of a three-story Jurassic World banner ad. So in the name of shedding more light on those 2015 cinematic hopefuls that don’t have marketing budgets so well funded that they could stage a coup in a small Latin-American country, we’re taking a look at some of 2015’s lesser-hyped blockbusters.