Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#4 in my ranking of The Matrix franchise. That was disappointing but not entirely unexpected. I like the original Matrix trilogy pretty evenly, finding its pretensions thin but the overall entertainment value of the hero's journey inverted fairly consistent. There was always room for the story to continue in some way, but when Lana Wachowski… Continue reading The Matrix Resurrections
Reminding me of the ending of The Fellowship of the Ring without the assured satisfaction that the next part is definitely coming, Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part One is a beautiful looking film that sets out to accomplish the impossible: telling the first half of a story. David Lynch managed an adaptation in the 80s that… Continue reading Dune (2021)
#2 in my ranking of Andrei Tarkovsky's films. There's something about science fiction that really tries to mess with the audience's head that I really appreciate. These are stories that really try to create something different, something removed from our own experiences, that challenge some basic concept of perception. Part of doing that, I long… Continue reading Stalker
#6 in my ranking of Andrei Tarkovsky's films. Fresh off the uncomfortable release of Andrei Rublev (actually, in the middle of it since it didn't actually get an official Soviet release until 1973), Andrei Tarkovsky went safe. He chose to adapt the work of a popular Polish Soviet science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem, and hoped… Continue reading Solaris
#21 in my ranking of John Carpenter's films. Vampires felt like a misstep. Ghosts of Mars feels like John Carpenter had lost all sense of what made him appealing as a filmmaker. A combination of Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog (In SPACE!!!), Ghosts of Mars is pretty much a complete disaster. Carpenter gave… Continue reading Ghosts of Mars
David Vining, Author 