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GOO Reviews

~ An Edmonton-based movie blog

GOO Reviews

Tag Archives: Aliens

Arrival review

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Tags

Aliens, Sci-Fi, Space

The kangaroo did it

by Thom Yee

arrival-one

Arrival images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Most people don’t know this about me, but I didn’t grow up speaking English. That might not be a huge, shocking surprise given my Chinese surname and the… let’s go with “inward-looking nature” of my people, nor is it likely a huge stretch of the imagination to then conclude that my first language might have been Chinese. In my  case, it was a dialect of Chinese that you probably wouldn’t even recognize if I specified which (and I’m not going to), and looking back and thinking about my parents, both second-generation Canadians who were more comfortable speaking English (if at all?), it seems like a strange choice for them to have raised me in a Chinese-speaking environment. What I remember most of my first few years speaking Chinese was a great deal of isolation from all of the people I met who spoke English, then a brief a period of transition as I adapted to English and entirely forgot Chinese, followed by a great deal of isolation from the Chinese community of which I was allegedly a part (a feeling that continues to this day). I like to think sometimes that those early experiences with conflicting languages and incompatibilities gave me a unique perspective on grammar and the process with which I put sentences together, but really, I think it was mostly just an experience that made me hate everyone and the world around me. Continue reading →

Star Trek Beyond review

30 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Action, Aliens, J.J. Abrams, Sci-Fi, Space, Star Trek

It’s been a long road getting from here to there

by Thom Yee

star-trek-beyond-head3We’ve been pretty fond of J.J. Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek here at GOO Reviews, with 2009’s Star Trek, the first entry in what’s now officially known as the Kelvin Timeline, still a standout favourite among the many movies we’ve covered here. Generally well received by critics and fans, it’s the movie that revitalized Star Trek as a viable franchise after it had been, more or less, run into the ground, its last ongoing series, Enterprise, not even airing on a major network as it eked out four seasons-worth of episodes to an audience that had long been growing tired and apathetic towards the whole… well, enterprise (and let’s not even get started on that opening theme song). Continue reading →

Independence Day: Resurgence review

02 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Action, Aliens, Disaster, Sci-Fi

What, Adam Baldwin was too busy?

by Thom Yee

independence-day-resurgence-one

Independence Day: Resurgence images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Of all the, globe-spanning, widescreen, blockbuster movie genres, the disaster movie has been one of the most peculiar and inconsistent even as it’s persisted through decades of more contemporaneously popular sci-fi, action, and, lately, superhero movies. In some of them a high concept like hyper-intelligent monkeys are the problem, while many more lean towards environmental catastrophes like tornadoes or even global warming (“We didn’t listen!”). Some have even centred on the arcane, calendar-based prophecies of ancient civilizations, but no matter the premise, most of them find some way to specifically peg modern society as the real problem, and every one of them hinges on the notion that, no matter what’s come before, this time is different, and there’s nothing we can do but pick up the pieces. Sometimes I think that’s what made Independence Day’s alien invasion scenario so popular, because an alien invasion, an assault from outside forces, is an external threat, an easy one, one we can put a face to that isn’t our own and one we might be able to fight back against. The rest of the time I know that its popularity comes from the fact that most disaster movies are terrible. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean Independence Day was good. Continue reading →

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Aliens, Sci-Fi, Space, Star Trek, Time Travel

He’s not really dead. As long as we find a way to remember him.

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Particularly with our most cherished film franchises, it’s easy to (over) analyze the choices made and the possibilities of our favourite series’ continuing adventures. Should Harrison Ford return for one more Indiana Jones or should Chris Pratt reboot the series? Should George Lucas have invited constructive criticism and handed the directorial reins off for the prequels the way he did on the original trilogy? Should we learn about the Enterprise crew’s academy days or do we need to see Shatner again?

These are all enduring questions, debatable even years after the producers have made their final decisions and the finished products have hit the screen. Fans don’t want to see their beloved stories ruined, retroactively or otherwise, and producers don’t want to lose their cash cows. Continue reading →

Simul-Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by ghcrawford in Films, Simul-Review

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Action, Aliens, J.J. Abrams, Sci-Fi, Space, Star Trek

by Grace Crawford and Thom Yee

poster

All images courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot Productions, K/O Paper Products, Skydance Productions.

Grace: I try not to remember a lot about my childhood—not for any emotionally crippling reasons, but because I had short hair and John Lennon glasses and small children would ask me if I was a boy or a girl—but there are a few things that stick out to me. A tree in my backyard. A pink-and-blue plastic play kitchen. Reading books by a nightlight long after I was supposed to be asleep. And just a ridiculous amount of Star Trek.

My stepfather was a big fan, my mother supported him, and my brother got into it with such enthusiasm that he had doodles of the Enterprise all over his school binders. All of this meant that I, the odd one out—my sister was too young to notice or care what we watched—had to sit through endless hours of Star Trek or spend the evening staring at the walls in my room. Which were white. And boring. So I picked the option that at least had colour.

Continue reading →

Star Trek (2009)

24 Friday May 2013

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Action, Aliens, J.J. Abrams, Sci-Fi, Space, Star Trek, Time Travel

by Thom Yee

Star Trek poster

Star Trek images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

We hit a bit of a snag this week, so while this may not be THE Star Trek review we’d planned to post today, it is at least A Star Trek review.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is my second favourite movie of all time and is constantly vying for first place. I say that as somebody who grew up neither a Trekkie nor Trekker, without much thought towards Star Trek vs. Star Wars, and with no real opinion of Kirk or Picard. Unlike generations of fans who grew up on the show and became engineers because of Scotty, cold, logical scientists because of Spock, or fan fiction writers because they’re losers, I watched some Star Trek (but only a bit) simply because it wasn’t usually bad and my dad watched it. But — through The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and whatever else followed — I never really liked any of it. Before the summer of 2009, when I thought about Star Trek in general, I mostly thought of cramped, sparsely decorated sets, boring protocol, and older men using strained metaphors, talking about prime directives and like that.

Continue reading →

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