Sci-Fi

  • Ciro Guerra – La sombra del caminante aka The Wandering Shadows (2004)

    Arthouse2001-2010Ciro GuerraColombiaSci-Fi

    Two men meet in downtown Bogotá; one is missing a leg, the other is a “silletero,” a man who carries people around for money. Each character bears the burden of a bitter past life.Read More »

  • Jack Arnold – It Came from Outer Space (1953)

    1951-1960ClassicsJack ArnoldSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    This thoughtful, prototypical film was Universals initial foray into science fiction during the 1950s. While technically not the first sci-fi movie to explore the theme of benevolent aliens threatened by the ignorant, knee-jerk hostility of humans, it more or less set the standard for those that followed. Most of the credit for this belongs to a story treatment by SF legend Ray Bradbury, the sure-handed direction of Jack Arnold (who would go on to helm most of Universal’s top drawer genre flicks of the decade), and a fine performance by lead Richard Carlson… It Came From Outer Space remains the real deal, a genuine genre classic. It’s easily one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s.Read More »

  • Del Lord – Trapped by Television (1936)

    1931-1940Del LordDramaSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    This film tries to blend comedy with drama, and the result is an uneasy tossed salad rather than a smooth pudding. Lyle Talbot is so stalwart and large it is difficult to feature him as a TV inventor — but he more than makes up for this in the fight scene, where, with his usual technique, he just beats the dickens out of the other actors for five or ten minutes. Nat Pendelton is wonderful as the dim-witted bill collector turned science hobbyist. Mary Astor, playing closer to her “Thin Man” arch smile than to her “Maltese Falcon” dramatic style, is a scheming but lovable promoter of potato peelers who decides to back this newfangled thing called television. All in all, this makes a better comedy than a drama, but the direction pulls it both ways, and thus it fails to satisfy either audience altogether.Read More »

  • Kurt Neumann – The Fly (1958)

    1951-1960HorrorKurt NeumannSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    After her husband Andre Delambre is crushed to death in a mechanical press, his wife recounts to his brother Francois Delambre and police Inspector Charas the events of the previous few months. They were very much in love and with their little boy, a very happy family. Andre was experimenting with teleportation – transporting objects from one point to another by breaking the object down to the atomic level and then reassembling it in a receiver a distance away. The system had some glitches – it seemed to work with inanimate object but his cat disappeared when he tried teleporting it. He thinks he’s solved all of the problems with his invention and decides to try and teleport himself. When a fly enters the teleportation device with him, disaster strikes.Read More »

  • Akio Jissôji – Teito monogatari AKA Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988)

    1981-1990Akio JissojiAsianJapanSci-Fi

    A demonic reincarnation of a Japanese general from the 10th century appears in the early 20th century Tokyo with a mission to destroy the blooming city.Read More »

  • Larry Blamire – The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (2009)

    2001-2010ComedyLarry BlamireSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    Jerranium 90, a “little rock” that made all the papers, is buried deep within the Amazon. And everybody wants it, including crooked importer Handscomb Draile, slimy Gondreau Slykes, cheap crook Carl Traeger and evil scientist Dr. Ellamy Royne.Read More »

  • Edward D. Wood Jr. – Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

    1951-1960CultEdward D. Wood Jr.Sci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    Plan 9 From Outer Space has been unjustly deemed the worst movie of all time. It’s true that cardboard gravestones are knocked over, that scenes change from day to night at a moment’s notice, and that half of Bela Lugosi’s scenes are shot with a taller stand-in who has trouble keeping his vampire’s cape on his shoulders. But technical gaffes like these are shared by a number of low-budget sci-fi films with plots that equal the absurdity of this epic’s tale of extraterrestrial grave robbers.Read More »

  • Larry Blamire – The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

    2001-2010ComedyLarry BlamireSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    A bad scientist and wife, a mad scientist and skeleton, two aliens and their escaped pet are all searching for the elusive element “atmospherium”.Read More »

  • Adirley Queirós – Era uma Vez Brasília AKA Once There Was Brazilia (2017)

    2011-2020Adirley QueirósBrazilPoliticsSci-Fi

    In 1959, the intergalactic agent WA4 is arrested for making an illegal allotment and launched into space. He receives a mission: to come to the Earth and kill the president, Juscelino Kubitschek, in the day of inauguration of Brasília. His ship is lost in time and lands in 2016 in Ceilândia.Read More »

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