In my experience, the biggest issue with many sci-fi/fantasy movies made today is that they begin with great premises, and then have no idea what to do with them, or just fall flat on their faces when it comes to character development or other elements.
This never dulls my hunger for more sci-fi in particular, because the premises tickle my imagination in ways that mundane contemporary universes do not, and I always keep hoping that they’ll get it right this time. So I keep gravitating toward the sci-fi/sci-fi-adjacent titles on my list, over the classic dramas or Serious Movies, which I am still very far behind on. There are 3 sci-fi-ish movies out of the 5 in this batch — 2 of varying degrees of disappointment, and 1, thank goodness, that delivered.
THE MOVIES
Movie #27: She’s All That (1999) | PG-13
So high school boys are the worst and Laney Boggs is the best. Freddie Prinze Jr seems like the 90s' less charismatic version of Chris Evans, but that was some seriously existential hackysack performance art.
(For real though, I think Chris Evans probably owes his career to Freddie Prinze Jr’s success, because I would not be surprised if casting directors thought exactly what I did -- “hey, here’s a guy with similar hair and face shape to Freddie Prinze Jr, but he’s so much funnier and more charming with a much stronger screen presence - if Prinze can carry movies, imagine what we can do with THIS guy.”)
Movie #28: RIPD (2013) | PG-13
A good premise and fantastic cast completely squandered on this underwritten forgettable CGI-fest. Afterlife cops as a concept has so much potential, but from the unimaginative terminology (deados? Really?) to the lousy mcguffin (a Jericho staff, which is neither a staff nor does it do anything resembling what happened at Jericho) to the incredibly one-note love interest and most other characterization, the only thing memorable about this movie is how badly it manages to waste Ryan Reynolds, Mary Louise Parker, Jeff Bridges, AND Kevin Bacon. That is talent, people.
Just go watch Dead Like Me and never watch this.
Movie #29: The Color Purple (1985) | PG-13
Conversation of the day from my days attending automotive trade school, Jan 13, 2015:
Guy #1: "You know what makes me sad?"
Guy #2: "Watching Oprah in 'The Color Purple'?"
Guy #1: "Aw man, you don't have a soul if you don't cry during that f***ing movie."
So many tears. At so many parts. So many terrible things happen in this movie. Some good things too, though they felt a bit rushed at the end, to me. I feel like in the original and the stage production, the turning point happens earlier, maybe halfway or two-thirds in, not three-quarters like this one. I would have liked a bit more development of the good after all that awfulness. But there were some happy tears too.
(Also, of course in a 1985 movie, this was as much lesbianism as they could have gotten away with, but I wish there had been more development on that too. It was hugely important in the book, and is one of the things I consider to have helped me start to recognize and begin to accept the oddities of my own sexuality, so it’s sad to see it downplayed here.)
It also must, sadly, be mentioned that while this book and play and movie are incredibly powerful portrayals of fighting against injustice, the author, Alice Walker, has unfortunately in recent years fallen into traps of these exact sorts of prejudices — she has become a vocally anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. (Not even subtly — she posted on her blog this month that Israel and the Rothchilds are responsible for the COVID pandemic. It’s looney-tunes anti-Semitic conspiracy 101.) So learn from the work, but not from the artist.
Movie #30: Source Code (2011) | PG-13
I’ve wanted to see this since the trailer came out in 2011, but never got around to it because I heard it was another “great premise, meh execution” movie, and it is, although nowhere near as bad as RIPD. It’s definitely watchable, just could have been really great if both mysteries had been equally compelling and the romance had been worthy of emotional investment instead of cringy. (A cringy romance in a movie? You don’t say.)
It’s got a dual mystery structure — time loops to solve a train bombing and then a whole mystery of who is in charge of this time loop technology and what do they want. That second mystery is so much more fascinating than anything that happened on the train, and the characters were incomparably more interesting.
The movie also has a tendency to get excessively sappy at points that don’t feel earned, and the ending, well, the very end is just dumb. Still worth a watch, but frustratingly unrealized potential. I felt like this had the makings of a real classic but fell short.
Movie #31: Daybreakers (2009) | R
I wanted to see this one in theaters in 2009 when I was at Yankees Fantasy Camp in Tampa, FL, but I couldn’t manage to convince my uncle to take me to a vampire movie at the height of the Twilight craze, so we went to Avatar instead. I subsequently procrastinated on watching this movie for the past 10 years, but now I can finally say: This is a better movie than Avatar.
And (FINALLY!) it’s a movie with a fantastic premise and fantastic execution. It takes vampires to a logical extreme — they grow to outnumber and overpower humans, take over society, and now are faced with the crisis of an insurmountable blood shortage due to humans being nearly extinct. And we follow Ethan Hawke, a Vegetarian Vampire Named Edward (which is apparently a category of character but this iteration is much better than the more famous one), on his hunt for a viable blood substitute to save what’s left of humanity and keep the vampire race from starving to death. And it just gets better from there. (Plus, Willem Dafoe shows up and starts chewing the scenery something fierce.)
A big part of why I put off watching this one for so long even though I knew it would be good was because it looked so dark and grim, with the moodiest color palette, and I just never felt like subjecting myself to that. BUT! This movie is so well-crafted, well-paced, and with emotional and physical stakes so clearly established that it never feels like it’s just dragging you through the muddy darkness and getting bogged down for the sake of being dark and edgy. And there are sequences where they bring in beautiful golden light to contrast the vampiric green and gray scenes, so it’s not just relentlessly oppressive, color-wise, all the time.
And did I mention there are female characters and NONE of them are forced into awkward romances for lack of anything else to do with them?? Amazing. That exists! There’s definitely some romantic tension that you can read into things, but the movie respects the characters’ focuses enough not to shoehorn them into some half-baked relationship in the middle of their mission.
It does get seriously gory toward the very end, so watch out for that, but on the whole, there is so much here beyond the action and the gore. This is a little gem and I’m glad I finally saw it.
PS - Another Ethan Hawke genre movie gem that you should check out if you haven’t: Gattaca. Which I reviewed with minor spoilers here in college, if you’re curious. It’s even better than this one. Plus, SPACE.
That’s all for the week; see you next time! If you like this batch, feel free to subscribe.