Tag Archives: Sci-Fi

Solo: A Star Wars Story review

02 Saturday Jun 2018

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Han shot first!  Seriously this time!

by Thom Yee

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Solo: A Star Wars Story images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

If you asked me when I was a kid which movie hero I liked better — Indiana Jones or Han Solo — I probably would’ve answered “… was Han Solo the guy in the vest?”  And if you asked me how smooth or cool a character I thought Lando Calrissian was in Empire, I don’t think there’s any way you would’ve been able to remind me of who Lando is, what he did, or how he acted in that movie (and I probably wouldn’t have been one hundred percent sure which movie you were referring to when you called it “Empire” [_______of the Sun?  _______Records?]).  Such was the importance of Star Wars in my childhood. Which is why I don’t feel at all precious about a Han Solo origin movie.

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Pacific Rim: Uprising review

31 Saturday Mar 2018

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Today we are SEQUELIZING THE APOCALYPSE!

by Thom Yee

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Pacific Rim:  Uprising images courtesy of Universal Pictures

There are only a handful of movies important enough that I make sure to have them somewhere on my person at all times.  It’s a pretty big handful actually.  Maybe closer to, like, 10 handfuls—I’m a media hoarder that way.  Though I’m not sure if ‘handfuls’ are the best way of quantifying movies in the first place.  But, even amongst all of those important movie handfuls, the first movie I’ll always put on any new phone, tablet, or computer I buy (or otherwise come into possession of) is Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim.  Or “PacRim” as we’ve started calling it now that its sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising, is here. ~shudder~ Continue reading →

Star Wars: The Last Jedi review

20 Saturday Jan 2018

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What if we AREN’T here for a reason?

by Thom Yee

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

“BOBA Fett?”  “Boba FETT??”  “…What!?!”

I’m pretty sure that’s how it went the first time I’d ever heard the name Boba Fett coming from the mouth of a Star Wars fan.  What the hell is a “Boba Fett”? I thought to myself [probably].  I’d soon learn that he was a warrior, a bounty hunter, and, apparently, a real badass in the Star Wars canon.  He was a fan favourite and certainly seemed interesting, and he even had an unusual out-of-story origin as a character fans first met as a mail-away action figure and in the Star Wars Holiday Special, years before he would make any major impact on the movies themselves.  And then I found out he was just this guy.  And I wondered to myself, “Why the hell would anyone care about that guy?” Continue reading →

Blade Runner 2049 review

14 Saturday Oct 2017

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Do humans dream of organic sheep?  Don’t they just count them?

by Thom Yee

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Blade Runner 2049 images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

So let’s get one thing straight:  The original Blade Runner is a quality movie.

It’s an interesting movie, a distinct movie, and, more than either of those things, a revered movie.  There are some circles for which a Blade Runner sequel is like a dream even, the fruition of decades of speculation and the ultimate expression of the growth of the movie from a once misunderstood quandary to now a cultural icon.  It’s a visual spectacle with a haunting score and a chilling vision of where it looked like we were going.  In preparation for the release of Blade Runner 2049, I, finally and for the first time, watched the original Blade Runner (and read Grace’s now-classic review of course), only days before I would see its sequel.

I fell asleep twice trying to make it through. Continue reading →

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review

23 Saturday Sep 2017

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The Sixth Element?

by Thom Yee

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets images courtesy of STX Entertainment

So.  Summer 2017.  It’s over.  And it really wasn’t a very good summer now, was it?  Adam West died.  North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile.  Some of the strongest hurricanes on record destroyed (or are still destroying) significant parts of the world.  Interest rates went up for the first time in seven years.  It seemed like the eclipse was the only thing people were talking about on that one day.  Spencer Foo and Travis Hamonic signed with the Calgary Flames.  Anthony Scaramucci.  “Despacito”.

And those movies!

This past summer (generally considered May through September’s Labour Day weekend in the movie biz) saw the worst performance at the domestic box office since 2006.  Continue reading →

Power Rangers (2017) review

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club Power Rangers

by Thom Yee

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Power Rangers images courtesy of Lionsgate Films

When it comes to the narrow windows of time that separate our personal childhood fascinations from the general nostalgia that we just can’t stand, I fell just outside of the right age to be into the Power Rangers. I was in upper elementary school, grades 4 through 6, when the morphenomenal teen team first debuted and gained prominence, just a little too mature to fully immerse in their world, but still surrounded by the property’s deluge of television episodes, toys, and commercials. If I’m being honest, there was a part of me that envied the younger kids at my school who were at just the right age for the Power Rangers and could play with the Japanese-looking robots that combined together to form even bigger robots, but at that point I mostly had my sights set firmly on one other goal: Toughening up so that I wouldn’t be eaten alive in junior high. In my case, that meant leaving behind such juvenilia, picking up at least one sport to be good at, and pretending to be into gangsta rap. But, as long as we’re being so honest with each other here, I should probably go ahead and admit something else to you: I still watched Power Rangers sometimes. Continue reading →

Kong: Skull Island review

18 Saturday Mar 2017

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‘Twas beauty killed the—what’s that. He’s still alive? Oh… well never mind then.

by Thom Yee

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Kong: Skull Island images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

So, I’ve never actually seen the original King Kong, not all the way through or all in one sitting at least. That’s not something I regret either despite being ‘the movie guy’ in my group of friends and despite being a person who prides himself on his knowledge of movie history. It may ultimately be a failing on my part, but I just don’t have a great deal of patience when it comes to the classics, and, as has been the case with Citizen Kane, The Graduate, or Scarface, I doubt that I’m going to see the original King Kong anytime soon. I’ve seen parts of it of course, the same way we’ve all watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory, pressed the wrong floor in a cramped elevator, or eaten at Subway, but there was never any intentionality behind those viewings, so while I have a pretty good idea of what the movie was about, I don’t really know what people see in it. But I have seen the 2014 Godzilla. Continue reading →

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

14 Saturday Jan 2017

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There were Asian people a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? 

by Thom Yee

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

If there’s one thing that’s rarely been central to (or at least pre-eminent in) the Star Wars movies, it’s an actual war. Star Wars has always involved its fair amount of physical conflict, but mostly it’s been about things like an individual hero’s journey, lightsabers, the Force, Gestapo-like imagery, whiny little protagonists, the tougher and smarter princesses they love, smooth-talking scoundrels, and funny mascot-type characters, and even the fall of the Empire (spoiler alert?) wound up being a battle where a bunch of adorable little bears were running around in the middle of the conflict zone, adding questionable value to the Rebel forces’ efforts. In fact, the only time I ever felt like there was a genuinely large-scale battle shown to us in the movies was in the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith when Anakin and Obi-Wan rescued Palpatine, the theretofore unrevealed would-be Emperor of the eventual Empire (spoiler alert again?), and that took place when the galaxy still had the Jedi Order around to keep the peace, clouded by the dark side though they and their Council may have been. Continue reading →