Attack on Titan 2: End of the World (進撃の巨人 エンド オブ ザ ワールド) (2015)

Attack on Titan tries to have its cake and eat it

Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人) (2015)

Pacific Rim was Hollywood's love song to Japan.

Japan now returns the compliment with Attack on Titan.

The Giver (2014)

In the future, there is no racism, sexism, inequality, or discrimination of any kind. Look what we did to eradicate all these evils!

Under the Skin (2013)

Scarlett Johansson oozes sex appeal that can melt a man into a puddle in this update of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s Elizabeth Arden advertisement

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Is it a stinker or a hit? I admit I watched this just to see Tom Cruise die over and over again!

The Zero Theorem (2013)

Watch Brazil instead

Transcendence (2014)

Transcendence is this decade's The Net!

Her (2013)

Joaquin Phoenix has a meaningful relationship with his personal computer in Spike Jonze’s scifi arthouse take on Chobits

Real (リアル 完全なる首長竜の日) (2013)

J-horror auteur Kurosawa serves up his own, creepier version of Inception

Ender's Game (2013)

I have many gay (and gay-affirming) friends, some of whom have vowed to boycott Ender’s Game. I’d like to say that as a film critic and student of the arts, I believe in the death of the author, that a work of art needs to stand on its own merits, that all artists are mad, bad, and dangerous to know anyway and if we began with Orson Scott Card, we’d end with a long list with everyone else on it. I don’t apologise for watching Ender’s Game and I’d recommend people watch it.

Gravity (2013)

Gravity is easily Sandra Bullock's best action film to date. Okay, make that her best film to date.

The Colony (2013)

That's a natural disaster/exploding buildings escape sequence that Michael Bay hasn't filmed before!

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

JJ Abrams remakes The Wrath of Khan as a summer action movie, circa 1985

Cloud Atlas (2012)

The Warchowskis are back with an anthology of 6 unconnected stories from 6 different genres, set in the past to distant future.

The gimmick: Everything is connected by the narrative structures of film and story. Yes, it's a 3 hour exercise in Lit 101.

Watch for: Wachowskis riffing off Amistad, Moby Dick, Amadeus, The Talented Mr Ripley, The China Syndrome, Shaft, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Make Way for Tomorrow, Soylent Green, Blade Runner, Logan's Run, Total Recall, The Fifth Element, The Road Warrior, Zardoz, and A Canticle for Liebowitz -- and mashing them into one bland mess.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on16 January 2013.

Grabbers (2012)

Sleepy Irish seaside town suffers an invasion of blood-sucking aliens. Aliens are mortally allergic to alcohol. Hilarity ensues.

This is one of those B-grade sci-fi horrors that practically write themselves and appeal to the Ed Wood school of filmmaking.

Watch for: an actual budget, decent acting, funny script in what could have been an Ed Wood film.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 November 2012.

The Dinosaur Project (2012)

Jurassic Park meets Blair Witch meets Paranormal Activity in The Dinosaur Project.

The resulting, incoherent mess could well be Survivor: Dinosaur Jungle.

The story is hackneyed, the characters are cardboard, but the film doesn't take itself seriously, and is so very silly and fun to watch.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 17 October 2012.

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Like many franchise films in 2012, Resident Evil rediscovers PLOT.

The gimmick: Resident Evil Retribution is a prison break movie and not a Milla Jojovich vehicle or a video game movie or a movie consisting of video game cutscenes.

Watch for: WS Anderson at peak form (outside of Event Horizon).

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 September 2012.

Iron Sky (2012)

The director who gave us Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning returns with an actual movie budget to make a film about Space Nazis.

It's a spoof of a sub-genre of B-grade sci-fi flicks and also a wickedly sharp satire of American culture and politics in the vein of Idiocracy.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 22 August 2012.

Total Recall (2012)

The sci-fi setting may be further away from Philip K Dick's short story but this remake is still a plot point for plot point, action scene for action scene retread of the Arnold flick, made with CGI instead of props and pyrotechnics.

Creatively though, it's a very unambitious film, which suggests Len Wiseman was more of a hired hand than a visionary for this project.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 8 August 2012.

SPEC: Heaven (劇場版 SPEC ～天～) (2012)

It's definitely a Japanese scifi when the ending of the world is foretold in a Catholic prophecy while shadowy forces play out their Gambit Pileup. All while the personification of Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus watches on.

Yet SPEC literally reverses the genre convention that protagonists are the aberrations in an otherwise normal universe populated by very normal human beings with their very mundane agendas.

Watch for: a crazy premise taken to its logical, absurdist extreme.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 1 August 2012.