The long arduous birth of Vincenzo Natali‘s genetic engineering genre-mash (make no mistake this is way more drama that horror, Row Three Review of Splice is here) continues as Splice lands a Sundance slot in a couple weeks. Here is hoping that E1 will finally launch this one sooner rather than later. There are a lot of folks keen on seeing it, despite the release woes the film has seen.
A quiet happy moment of slug romance is captured in the clip tucked under the seat.
A previous Clip is here.
I missed your initial review of this. Natali + a story that would be at home in a good sci fi short story sounds amazing. I’m sold. I’m really happy with the amount and quality of movies in this vein that have been made recently over the last 10 years.
Well, in 6 months to a year, I’ll be sold, judging by the complete lack of details that I could find about a wider Canadian release.
it was a fantatic year for good science fiction filmmaking.
District 9, Moon, Mr. Nobody, Splice, The Road (post-apocalyptic)
Middle of the road: Watchmen (ethics side) , Avatar (ahem, unobtainium!), Terminator 4, 2012, Star Trek (the latter three were fun action movies with bad science)
Crappy science fiction films:
Transformers2, The Box, Knowing,
Watchmen was absolutely terrible. A terrible mess of a film in which I hadn’t the foggiest what was going on. And the aesthetics were not my cup of tea. And Jackie Earle Haley being completely wasted and hired purely to do his best Christian Bale/Batman impersonation just irked me. One of the worst movies of 2009.
The more I think about Avatar and the more praise I hear lavished upon it makes me hate that movie even more too. it’s boring and pointless, makes very little character sense and is not that good looking.
I liked some of the Shyamalan-esque creepiness behind Knowing however – plus I just like watching Cage in almost anything. And The Box had some interesting ideas going on and a retro quality I quite liked. But agree that it doesn’t quite go for broke.
Having said all of that, can’t for Splice. It looks interesting.
Sooo….Back to Daybreakers….
Avatar and Watchmen are both superior films to Daybreakers (both in looks and storytelling and well just about everything….)
Just sayin’.
You’re entitled to your opinion… wrong as it may be.
Kermode’s review of Daybreakers this week is spot on.
I don’t remember finding Watchmen difficult to follow – had you read the book, Andrew? If I had an issue with it, it was mostly that it took itself too seriously, but then, so did the book. It was deadly, apocalyptically serious. Still wish they’d found a way to work the Tales of the Black Freighter into the actual film, though. The interplay between that and the main story was one of my favorite parts of the novel. But that would’ve made an already long film even longer, so maybe not. I haven’t seen any of the DVDs – didn’t I hear one cut was going to edit the animated Tales of the Black Freighter into Watchmen? Or did I just want that to happen?
Splice looks weird as hell and kinda awesome.
I am in genereral agreement with your list, Kurt.
I’m eagerly awaiting Mr. Nobody reaching Calgary in some way. The rest of the list would be exceptional in a decade never mind a year. I just watched Moon this week, and was entirely blown away by Rockwell’s performance and the number of themes that managed to make their way into the script.
I used to love Proyas, but I am having trouble forgiving him for the excruciatingly bad last 40 minutes of Knowing. He took a movie full of dreadful possibility and then served up pure shit for the denouement.
For my part, I don’t have anything against Avatar. I enjoyed watching it in the same way I enjoy listening to a kick ass guitar solo in the middle of an otherwise weak song. It’s worth seeing in the way that Siggraph videos are worth seeing, that appreciation of pure technical excellence. I really wish that that technical excellence had been matched in other areas, but now that the ground has been broken, I expect better efforts will follow.
In all fairness, the Prologue of Knowing is also shit. The bad far outweighs the good in that film. After the promise of Dark City (The Crow is merely ok), I agree that Proyas is officially a bust.