Strawberry Mansion first published by SciFiNow As he stays in the home of elderly, eccentric ‘atmosphere creator’ Bella (Penny Fuller) to audit her dreams, Preble (Kentucker Audley) finds himself sharing a room with Bella’s pet Sugar Baby. This tiny tortoise spends most of his time in a pink-lit terrarium, eating strawberries. If the terrarium is…
Night Sky first published by SciFiNow. Near the end of Night Sky, someone will menacingly promise protagonist Oren (AJ Bowen) “a long excruciating couple of agonisingly painful hours while you – you helplessly wait to bleed out,” adding, “a sensation with which I think you’re pretty familiar.” Indeed, when we first meet Oren in the…
Molli and Max in the Future had its world première at SXSW 2023 Two strangers get to know one another on a journey to the Big City, and then intermittently reencounter one another over the course of twelve long years during which the circumstances of their separate lives evolve with the times even as their…
Tropic (Tropique) had its UK première at the Glasgow Film Festival 2023 Tropic (Tropique) begins in water, as young people in a pool try, under test conditions, to stay on the bottom for the longest amount of time, holding their breath. Edouard Salier’s sci-fi feature is set in a near future where nations are vying…
Writer/director’s Zachary Donohue’s debut feature The Den (aka Hacked, 2013) was an innovative screen-life thriller, where ‘found footage’ sourced from webcams, CCTV and smartphone reveal the internet itself as an anonymous hunting ground for home invasion and horrific entrapment. Donohue’s latest work, The Unknowable, also pieces its narrative together from recordings if not quite found…
Bermuda Island (2023) Most of Adam Werth’s Bermuda Island may be set in the location of the title, where a planeload of pilots, passengers, flight attendants and FBI personnel has crash-landed in a freak storm en route from the United States to San Juan, Puerto Rico – but the film begins on the mean streets…
10 Sci-Fi Adaptations first published by BFI, 14 October 2021, to coincide with the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Includes capsules of: Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Horror Express, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds, A Scanner Darkly, 1, The Congress, Aniara With its immense world building, vast ensemble of characters, and complicated…
Vesper has its UK première at Grimmfest The sowing of seeds, whether literal or metaphorical, is not just an investment in the future, but a gendered activity, strongly associated with men. For in agriculture it has traditionally been men who till – and sometimes even own – the land, spreading seeds across it for their…
Film4 Foresight Shorts first published by SIght & Sound, December 2021 There are notable exceptions to be found in, for example, the Afrofuturist movement, but science fiction has predominantly been a white genre. Film4’s Foresight sets out to redress the imbalance by offering five short British sci-fi films which have been made by black and…
Eden Log first published by EyeforFilm, 11 Nov, 2008 He may have made two (or five, if you count the various director’s cuts) of the best known and most loved films in the genre, but if you were to try to pinpoint Ridley Scott’s original contribution to science fiction, it might be summed up by the…
Les Maîtres du Temps (Time Masters) first published by Film4 Summary: René Laloux and Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud animate this episodic SF rescue story for children. Review: “To get to Perdide, we’ll have to land on Devil’s Ball, and then go to Gamma 10. We’ll have to wait for the passage of the Blue Comet. By keeping within…