The Avatar film franchise, which depicts the battle between the giant blue indigenous Na’vi people of the planet Pandora and us greedy humans, holds the number one and three positions on the list of highest grossing films of all time. This is a remarkable feat that seems due to a combination of a novel science fiction concept (in this case
Read moreAny long-time ‘Built For Speed’ listeners will know I’m not a big fan of director George Miller’s Mad Max films. Of the entire franchise, I prefer Mad Max 2 as it had genuine otherworldliness and atmosphere. Many raved about 2015’s Fury Road but I was only mildly impressed by that return to Max’s post-apocalyptic world. The cinematography was undeniably terrific
Read moreIn 2021, Denis Villeneuve’s first instalment in his cinematic version of Frank Herbert’s iconic 1965 science fiction novel Dune saw young, floppy-haired Duke, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) battle the invading armies of the nefarious Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) before becoming a desert dwelling, giant sand worm-loving freedom fighter. It was essentially a sci fi Lawrence of Arabia. While technically impressive
Read moreThe dystopian sci-fi film series, The Hunger Games was hugely successful and a cultural touchstone for many young cinema goers (but not so much this reviewer). Through those films, Jennifer Lawrence established herself as a major star playing heroine, Katniss Everdeen who, in a post-apocalyptic future, competed in the eponymous televised teen gladiator death matches and battled the fictional nation
Read moreFrench film, After Blue is one of the weirdest movies of the year and one that shows that weirdness alone does not necessarily equal fascinating art or entertainment. In what might be glibly dubbed eco-feminist science fiction, it’s set in a future where humanity has fled an environmentally devastated Earth to the planet, After Blue where only women have survived
Read moreJurassic Park was one of the event films of the 1990s and a movie many would recall as fondly as ET or Star Wars. Based on the excellent Michael Crichton novel, the film combined revelatory photorealistic dinosaur special effects with a mostly exciting, if at times, cheesy adventure story built around revolutionary science and technology concepts. Although not as rigorously
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