Monsters Movie

I watched Monsters the other day and expected another alien invasion thriller with the usual constant explosions and multicolored blood flying in all directions.  Needless to say I was quite incorrect in my initial impression of the film. While not being a traditional alien invasion flick, it seems that Monsters is something better.  The setting is in Mexico several years after a NASA probe introduced extraterrestrial life the Central American environment.  Rather than being shoot em up, the movie turns out to be a Motorcycle Diaries-esque journey of two Americans through the infected zone.  The movie focuses not so much on the fight against the invasive animal like aliens, but more so on the adaptations of ordinary people to their new neighbors. The atmosphere is best described as surreal.  Instead of seeing massive engagements, you see the occasional destroyed tank, an obliterated train, a lone USAF jet engine, as well as the omnipresent military presence that is just barely audible or visible in the distance.  The film uses largely improvised dialogue and locals for the actors, giving the movie a very real and genuine feeling, something that is usually lacking in your standard alien invasion flick. While some will be dissapointed to find that this is not the extraterrestrial bloodbath that the trailer implies, I was completely pleased with the more subtle human drama that is the driving force behind Monsters.

Awesome Science Fiction Movies, part 1

 This list is in no way a ranking of Science Fiction movies, but rather a series of lists made up of ones I think are worthy of SciFi legend.  Perhaps in the future I can sort through all the greats to come up with ten best list, but for now I'll stick to posting ones that are necessities for any SciFi nerd like me to watch.

1. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Yeah, I realize that I might be a bit of a fanboy, but this movie is without a doubt my favorite science fiction movie out there.  It's the introduction to one of the greatest universes known to fiction of all genres.  It's a space epic at its finest, you have the pretty girl, the powerful rookie trying to figure out his past, the lowlife smuggler hero, the seemingly invincible Empire; all the workings of an epic that's not likely to fall out of SciFi stardom any time soon.

2. Blade Runner, dark, confusing, gritty, and pure excellence.  Most of my friends that have watched this movie don't really like it, say its boring, or are too confused too realize the depth and eeriness of this near-future classic.  The Los Angeles of the movie is the perfect typical dirty city of 80's sci fi.  The idea that LA might actually resemble the city in the film crossed my mind a few times, and who knows, it just might.  The movie demands the viewer to ask deep questions about just what does make something human, memories, feelings, experiences?  The death scene towards the end of the movie has perhaps one of the most chilling dialogues I've watched.  Not for the faint of heart or intelligence, Blade runner stands among the best of modern SciFi.

3.Terminator. Terminator might be a shoot em up of epic proportions, but its also a SciFi legend.  The introduction of a universe where robots have not YET taken over the world combined with time traveling assassins is fascinating.  The Terminator series is one of the best known series in mainstream media, but that should not stop it from being among a SciFi geek's favorites.

4.Serenity, the summation of the Firefly series, probibly one of the best and shortest lived SciFi television shows out there.  One of the most captivating things about Serenity/Firefly is the setting.  In the movie and series, the ultra modern core worlds have in the recent past put down a rebellion among the rougher, more primitive outlying planets.  On the outlying planets, the settings resemble the wild west, with horses, cows, and 19th century style dialogue on occasion.  The cannibalistic and mysterious revers add another surreal aspect to the universe.  The story line is sound and the characters engaging.   But really, people in spaceships having 19th century style gun fights should be more than enough to create an epic SciFi adventure.

5. Pandorum. This film blends SciFi and horror perfectly, creating an engaging and very stressful storyline. I went into the film not having really researched it, and realized that the less you know of the events in the film, the better the experience.  The setting has all the key fixtures of epic SciFi; a dying earth, one last chance at human survival, and the helplessness of being light-years from...anything.