Tag Archives: sci-fi

May 8 2025

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Coherence

Coherence (2013)
Emily Foxler, Nicholas Brendon, Maury Sterling, Elizabeth Gracen, Lorene Scafaria, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian, and Lauren Maher
Directed by: James Ward Byrkit


So this film has been on my watch list for years. I’d always heard such good things about it that I really wanted to see it. So yesterday I finally took the plunge. And I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed.

Eight longtime friends come together for a dinner party on the night that a comet is passing overhead. What begins as a fun evening devolves into fear and paranoia as strange things start happening.

SPOILERS INCOMING

I had high hopes for this film and, to its credit, it has some great ideas. The comet seems to affect reality, splitting it into what is probably infinite possibilities. The friends come to realize that walking through a “dark space” outside will bring you to another reality where exact copies of themselves reside, with just some very slight differences. That was all great. But everything else… not so much.

The acting, first of all, feels weird, very forced. I guessed that maybe a lot of the dialog was improvised and, after looking it up, saw I was right. But it wasn’t seamless improv. The actors (none of whom I’d ever seen before save Nicholas Brendon who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) seem to struggle with thinking of things to say, so it all sounded hollow. They also ended scenes very abruptly with hard cuts to black, which was very off-putting. The camera work was just plain bad, all weird angles and shakiness. And the ending was very underwhelming. They could have done so much with such an interesting idea, but they chose the low-hanging fruit.

I’ll give it a few points for an original idea, but I can’t give it more than a 5/10. Such a shame.

M.

This film is currently streaming on Prime.

Mar 9 2024

Mel’s 10 Things About… Dune part 2

Dune part 2 (2024)
Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Dune2

  1. There is a ridiculous amount of eye candy in this film, just to get that out of the way. Even Austin Butler, under all that Harkonnen makeup, is still beautiful.
  2. The film looks beautiful. The cinematography is insane. The makeup, the costumes, the visuals, all breathtaking.
  3. The acting is all great, as expected after seeing the first film. Zendaya does a surprisingly good job, and Austin Butler is great as the psychotic Feyd-Rautha.
  4. The fight choreographies are insane. I’m not sure how much the actors did themselves, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
  5. I heard from someone who’s read the books that there are some key things that are different, but as someone who has not read the whole book (I’ve only read about a fifth of it, then I pooped out), the story felt fluid and complete.
  6. The score was, to use an epic word, bombastic. Less so than the first film, but I think that’s a good thing. The score was a little overpowering in part 1 (but that’s literally the only thing that I have to say bad about it).
  7. The film ended a bit abruptly. Things were a bit long in the tooth (not in a bad way) for most of the film, then all of a sudden, it was over. The film is 2 hours and 46 minutes long, already a good chunk of time, but I really could have used a little extra time to flesh it out some more.
  8. Slight spoiler: I think I saw a small mistake near the end of the film. Paul gets stabbed in what I see as his side, but then he pulls the blade from his shoulder. Did I see it wrong, or was that an actual mistake?
  9. I liked Jessica’s character a lot less in this film, but I’m thinking that that’s how you’re supposed to feel.
  10. All in all, I did really love this film. It was a wonderful film. I saw it in a cinema with a screen that wrapped three quarters around the room, and I’d never experienced that before. It was great. Do I reccomend it? If you liked the first one, then definitely. If the first one left you cold, then you probably won’t like this one either.

This film is currently still only in cinemas, but I’m sure it’ll come to streaming soon. Enjoy! I certainly did!

M.

May 2 2015

Mel’s 5 Second Audiobook Review: The Martian

The Martian
Written by: Andy Weir
Read by: RC Bray

The-Martian

“If the Oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I’m fucked.”

(Questions from Audible’s reviews form)

Would you listen to The Martian again? Why?
I probably wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s very, very rare that I’ll ever re-read a book. It’s happened only a small handful of times in my adult life. I have so much in my to-read list that I don’t spend time re-reading books, no matter how awesome they were (and this one was awesome).

Who was your favorite character and why?
Definitely the main character, Mark Watney. Along with the obvious heroic stuff, he’s got a killer sense of humour that just brings the character to a whole other level. Venket Kapour, a NASA administrator, is also a wonderful character.

What about RC Bray’s performance did you like?
Everything! He’s an awesome reader! Every character has his own unique voice and accent, even the women, without sounding silly. His voice is pretty much perfect. He was born to read audiobooks.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I laughed out loud a good few times. I never cried, but I did get really tense a few times. Near the end, I actually had trouble sitting still while listening!

Any additional comments?
This is a practically perfect sci-fi story. And it’s not so out there that I couldn’t picture something like this actually happening. It’s futuristic, but not very far into the future. 50, 100 years, tops. The writing was simple, but very good, and all the characters were engaging. I’d recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in sci-fi. It gets a perfect score from me, 10/10.