Bryan Fuller’s debut film,Dust Bunny, is a highly stylish (or stylized) family horror* with lots of flashy visuals, humor, and a monster under the bed. After a monster eats both of her parents, a young girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) tries to hire her across-the-hall neighbor to kill it (this is Mads Mikkelsen, who refers to himself throughout the movie as Resident 5 but is credited as…Read More

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

-William Gibson,Count Zero

Bugoniaby Yorgos Lanthimos is a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’sSave the Green Planet!and, while I haven’t seen the original version and cannot compare, I can at least attest thatBugoniais a sad,…Read More

Tron: Ares, the new Nine Inch Nails visual album, is best experienced on the biggest screen with the loudest sound system available. You want to feel it throbbing in your brain, you want to feel it shaking your seat. The visual extravaganza is of the type usually enjoyed under pharmacological influence, but you’ll receive enough sensory overstimulation in any case. Fans of either of the previousTronfilms will…Read More

Ew, kissing,is what my youngest says whenever he sees it happening in front of him. Oh yeah, buddy, you think that’s gross? Wait till you’re old enough to watch this movie; it’ll give you something to reallyewabout.

Togetherstars Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Millie and Tim, a long-term couple facing the monster of codependency. Moving from the city (I assume Seattle) to a rural…Read More

David Cronenberg returns to what he does best-uncomfortable medical procedures and filming in Toronto-for his latest scifi horror,The Shrouds. A quieter, more somber affair than his earlier movies: there are no exploding heads or maggot babies here but still plenty of unsettling images and concepts that most of us would rather not dwell on for too long. Fans of the director and/or Philip K. Dick are certain to get…Read More

Amazing action, convoluted writing. Recommended for the spectacle and the stunts, just don’t expect anything to make much sense.

Though the franchise started out as spy-action, over the decades it has featured increasingly improbable villains, vehicles, superweapons, and MacGuffins until here we are now at full-on science fictionMission: Impossible, with a malevolent AI threatening to take over the world’s nuclear arsenals and Skynet the human race out of existence.…Read More

Death of a Unicorn blends fantasy and horror with a weird monster movie twist, but is it enough to refresh a somewhat stale fantasy trope? Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, this A24’s genre-crossing film stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as the father-daughter duo of the story along with a talented cast of supporting actors including Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni, and Steve Park among others. A24 is known…Read More

Capitalism, in fictionandin real life, depends on expendable (that is, cheap) labor. Slaves, serfs, indentured servants, children, undocumented migrants, gig workers, (now science fiction and real life start to blur) robots, assembly-line automation, AI.Mickey 17extends logically next to clones, which are worked literally to death and then simply reprinted in fresh bodies for their next job.

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) signs on to a colony ship…Read More

Salem’s Lot is the latest entry to the already extensive set of remakes, revisitations, spin-offs, and so on that are based on decades-old Stephen King stories. The list of these kinds of titles is substantial, and it includes 2017 filmIt with 2019 filmIt Chapter Two followed by upcoming prequelIt: Welcome to Derry; 2019 filmPet Sematary and 2023 filmPet Sematary: Bloodlines; the admittedly very creative and…Read More

Cuckoois an indie horror creature feature, relying heavily on its isolated location and small cast to effectively create an atmosphere of paranoia and dread. A teenager named Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves to a German mountain resort town with her father, stepmother, and stepsister where she meets an eclectic collection of characters-including the owner of the hotel, Herr König; a physician at the nearby hospital, Dr. Bonomo; several half-dressed, vomiting…Read More

Joker: Folie à Deux starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga follows up the 2019 smash hitJoker. The film was easily one of the most anticipated movies of 2024, which automatically puts it at a disadvantage when trying to meet the audience’s expectations. However, Joker: Folie à Deux just might be a prime example of why studios need to rethink their current approach to filmmaking when a film that should…Read More

Tim Burton returns to directBeetlejuice 2 (2024), also known asBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, in this wickedly wild sequel that takes on the 1988 classic, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Jenna Ortega. Since so many remakes and sequels this year have fallen flat, despite media buzz and excitement, it was easy to be skeptical about this film. Could it live up to the original? With Tim Burton, most of the…Read More

AsAlien: Romulus opens on a stunning starscape and clever title sequence, the Weyland-Yutani corporation is up to its usual tricks, recovering something foreboding from deep space and whisking it away for further study/experimentation.

Sometime later, a mix of six friends and family conspire to escape the dismal conditions of a company-controlled mining colony. Unable to break their employment contracts with Weyland-Yutani, and facing deadly work environments, they hatch a…Read More

Josh: First off, holy shit.

Arley: I agree. This movie was GREAT. They started with unusual characters. You don’t see a lot of movies where the star is a disgraced suicide pilot, for example. Grounding the story with in interesting, relatable characters makes it so that you can actually capitalize on the horror aspects of Godzilla. Viewers can get engaged with the horror that is Godzilla, rather than just…Read More

Since their inception in the ’80s theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have seen many iterations, most of them unremarkable. This one is more than a basic rehash or cash grab; it is, perhaps, a geek love letter, wearing a spike belt and a chain necklace. The broad strokes are familiar (you know: turtles, radiation, mutation, and villains). But these strokes are rendered with interesting details that infuse what could have…Read More

There have been some excellent science fiction movies that feature a single, isolated character, like Sam Rockwell inMoon. There have also been some pretty good ones, such asGravity with Sandra Bullock-and others, not-so-great, like the Brad Pitt-centricAd Astra. Here we have an entry that falls near the upper end of that scale:No One Will Save You is a one-woman show, focused almost exclusively on Bryn (Kaitlyn…Read More

If you’re looking for a high-production, visually slick science fiction movie that isn’t tied to an existing IP monstrosity,The Creator might be the film for you. However, if you’re tired of machine uprisings and AI paranoia, you might want to skip this one.

Broadly,The Creator follows Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) on a near-future journey through New Asia. The Americans want to kill or capture Nirmata, the…Read More

Kids these days! With their loud music and TikToks and demonic possession!Talk to Me, an Australian horror movie, focuses on a group of teens who use a talisman (supposedly a psychic’s amputated hand) to summon the dead and invite them to take over their bodies. It’s a neat party trick and, apparently, quite a rush.

Arley: I found this to be very effective, like probably one of the most…Read More

Imagine a mix ofUs andSorry to Bother You – a movie where you’re not sure at first where things are going, and then suddenly you take a left turn and find yourself in the middle of (literal) underground government experiments. That’sThey Cloned Tyrone. The cloning isn’t a surprise – it’s in the title, after all – but it’s also not the end of the science fiction rabbit…Read More

Miles Morales aka Spider-Man (aka Shameik Moore) is back! He’s a little bit older, and this means he’s developed his spider skills a bit more. It also means he’s dealing with a lot of the issues kids his age deal with, like figuring out his place in the world, and navigating the shifts in his relationship with his parents. When a new villain named Spot (Jason Schwartzman) pops up, Spider-Man…Read More

The usual suspects assemble for another adventure: Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) are hanging out in their space pirate cove within the hollowed-out skull of a dead celestial being. Everything’s been going great lately. They’ve redecorated, they’re enjoying music, and they’ve made a bunch of new friends including a telekinetic Soviet…Read More

Sword-and-sorcery fantasy is on an upswing. TV series, movies, and spin-offs of multiple properties are everywhere:Game of Thrones,Lord of the Rings,The Witcher, andThe Wheel of Time all have recent (and future) adaptations, so it’s no surprise thatDungeons & Dragons– a name that everyone recognizes, whether they’ve played it or not – struck while the iron’s hot.

And this time they did it right! Unlike…Read More

Jung E frontloads a pile of fairly unnecessary background worldbuilding, but the important bits are that they’ve developed the means to put human brains into robots, and that two major factions have been at war for 80 years. When Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-Joo), one of the best, most inspiring fighters gets killed in action, of course they build a robot that looks exactly like her: Jung E; and of course…Read More

Plenty of other killer robot and creepy doll movies to make comparisons to-take your pick-and from the trailer you can pretty much predict the arc of the plot. But there’s something aboutM3GAN. It seems to have taken on a life of its own.

M3GANis constructed from very basic building blocks: Orphaned girl’s (Violet McGraw) aunt (Allison Williams) gives her a robot (Amie Donald/Jenna Davis) as a replacement for…Read More

Actor, poet, activist, and musician Saul Williams writes and co-directs (with Rwandan filmmaker Anisia Uzeyman)Neptune Frost. Variously described as an Afrofuturist-cyberpunk-scifi-musical*, the film certainly defies expectations and easy categorization.

Neptune Frost connects to Williams’s Martyr Loser King multimedia project-originally envisioned as a graphic novel and stage play-which also includes his 2016 studio album. The plot centers on Burundi coltan miner Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse), who forms a romantic relationship and…Read More

Wakanda Forever follows the events of the originalBlack Panther as well as some of the other Marvel titles, but importantly, it also follows the real-life event of Chadwick Boseman’s death – the actor who played Black Panther/T’Challa. The opening of the film is a tribute to Boseman, as well as the way he embodied the title character. Making effective use of silence, sound, imagery, and the raw emotions of…Read More

Today’s major-brand superheroes have an onscreen lineage going back at least to the ’40s, including iconic serials starring Superman, Batman, and Captain America. But Marvel and DC aren’t the only cinematic superhuman universes. During the great superhero revival of the 1980s, wedged between memorable Christopher Reeves filmsSuperman andSuperman II, came 1981 television seriesThe Greatest American Hero. Standing alongside the tradition of filmmakers and TV showrunners dabbling in…Read More

This South Korean movie blends magic, time travel, robots, aliens, alien robots, spaceships, and shapeshifting cats all into 140 minutes of action, comedy, horror, and even a lil bit o’ luv. Something for everyone! In fact, it’s hard to take any two still frames fromAlienoid and believe that they’re from the same movie, but the fun is in the bridging of genres. Not to give too much away, but…Read More

Josh: I hyped up the previous Predator movie because it was so over-the-top and ridiculous, just straight out campy fun.Preyis a completely different pace, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more.

Arley: We were talking about howNope is a departure in vibe from Jordan Peele’s previous movies, and I felt like this was a departure in vibe from the usual Predator movie. Especially the first third…Read More

When was the last time we had a properly decent UFO movie? Was itThe X-Filesmovie from 1998?Close Encounters of the Third Kind? All the way back to 1953’sThe War of the Worlds? It’s hard to imagine anyone coming up with a fresh take on such an old trope,* but in keeping with his work onGet Out,Us, and evenThe Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele has…Read More

Picking up afterThor: Ragnarok andAvengers: Endgame, the fourth Thor standalone film reunites the God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) with his scientist ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), his rock-alien-monster friend Korg (director Taika Waititi), and the fresh king of New Asgard, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). After a stint of adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor is shocked to discover that normal Earth mortal Jane has somehow reassembled –…Read More

Finney and Gwen (Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw) are siblings in 1978 Colorado. Finney is a shy boy who wants to be tougher than he is, including wishing he had the nerve to get between his tougher younger sister and their physically and mentally abusive alcoholic father. The kids have to navigate their relationship to each other while dealing with bullies at school and the potential psychic abilities Gwen seems…Read More

Issue 781 Table of Contents, February 2026

Bryan Fuller’s debut film,Dust Bunny, is a highly stylish (or stylized) family horror* with lots of flashy visuals, humor, and a monster under the bed. After a monster eats both of her parents, a young girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) tries to hire her across-the-hall neighbor to kill it (this is Mads Mikkelsen, who refers to himself throughout the movie as Resident 5 but is credited as…Read More

Issue 780 Table of Contents, January 2026

Issue 779 Table of Contents, December 2025

Issue 778 Table of Contents, November 2025

Issue 777 Table of Contents, October 2025

Crises precipitate change. Before Russia’s despicable invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s transition to zero carbon energy lagged a decade behind schedule. Three years later, Europe has surged well over a decadeaheadof schedule in their solar transition, and the process is only accelerating. It turns out that all the intractable obstacles to rapid, total technological transition just melt away when you’re shivering in the dark thanks to the aggression of…Read More