It shows that a good story with a good script far outdoes any special effects.

Agree 100%. Unfortunately, good sci-fi and speculative fiction stories are getting pretty rare. Some of the best are currently found in Japanese animae films - but that's a topic that rates a whole separate thread.

One very cool film no sci-fi buff should miss is this relatively low-budget picture:

Avalon-  released in 2001 and directed by Mamoru Oshii, who also was responsible for the great animae classic Ghost in the Shell.

Avalon tells the story of Ash, a woman who competes in an illegal VR wargame called Avalon. Because the game links directly into the brain, Avalon players run the risk of becoming one of a growing  number of damaged players who live out their catatonic lives in state mental hospitals. But despite this risk, or maybe because of it, the game remains popular in the bleak industrial world its players live in.

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Quote from: Renegade on June 16, 2010, 01:35 AM

It shows that a good story with a good script far outdoes any special effects.

Agree 100%. Unfortunately, good sci-fi and speculative fiction stories are getting pretty rare. Some of the best are currently found in Japanese animae films - but that's a topic that rates a whole separate thread.

Have you seen "Fallen" with Denzel Washington, John Goodman and Donald Sutherland? It's a horror film, but it's just beyond spectacular. I've seen it probably 50 times or more. (An international title for it was "Dark Angel".)

It only rates 42% at Rotten Tomatoes, but they're retards. It really is very cool. Even if it recycles some themes, it's done really well.

I find that the very best films are often horror films. Now, 99% of horror films are just drivel, but that rare horror that pokes its head above the crowd really does go beyond.

Sci-fi I find are generally more consistently good, but again, rarely truly are "great". Star Wars and Blade Runner are what film makers aspire to. Getting there is another thing though.

A lot of current TV shows are doing very well with good plots and writing. Lost, Supernatural, Flash Forward, Fringe, Heroes, Paradox, Star Gate (various spin offs), Southpark, and I'm sure others can name more -- these push different methods and literary devices with plot twists and the like that you don't get in shows like "Friends" (which I find mildly humorous, but entirely stupid) or other typically mainstream shows.

There's nothing better than a show that when it finishes, you're swearing and cursing a blue streak because now you have to wait an entire week to find out what happens next.

The show "Surface" was very cool, but got canceled, leaving the final episode as a cliff hanger ending. Disappointing when shows get canceled sometimes. Farscape deserved better.

Blah. I'm rambling now.

A person either loves 50's sci-fi and horror movies or they don't. There's no middle ground.

EDIT: This was in reference to some not liking that movie posters & movies of the time didn't always sync up or may not be as fast-paced as modern films.

I see this as a response to 40hz's recommendation of IT: The Terror from Beyond Space and my dislike of it, so I'm responding to clarify my position.

I don't really mind that the movie poster didn't align with what happened in the movie. Heck, these days you'll see movie trailers with actual footage from the movie that doesn't make it into the movie. And I don't mind slow-paced movies either, as long as something is happening (i.e. story or character(s) is/are developing).

What probably bothered me most about the movie was just how stupid and helpless everybody was. A couple of the really bad ones:

[Potential Spoilers Below]

• They find out pretty early on that bullets are ineffective at stopping (or even harming) the Martian, yet every time they hear a growl from the creature, they immediately pull out their pistols and, if in sight, start firing.
• They have deadly gas bombs that are supposedly strong enough to kill dinosaurs, so all (but three) of them don gas masks (and the three without protection are only a few feet away from those with the masks) and toss a few down the hatch and seal it up. 10 seconds later they open up the hatch to see if it did the trick and let all the fumes up. If the gas was as deadly as they said, it would obviously kill the three unprotected folk pretty fast.
• They actually do this stupid hatch trick a few times. Throw something down there to destroy it and then immediately open up the hatch again to check if it worked, each time getting ambushed by the monster who is still in the same spot on the staircase/ladder it was in just 15 seconds ago.
• Why didn't they ever think to just jettison it out into space and be rid of it? If the thing got on board by someone accidentally leaving a door open that can be opened and closed (remotely) from the bridge/cockpit/control room, why not just open it up again while the creature is still down there?
• If you really think a guy murdered his entire crew on Mars for no good reason, why would you allow him to roam around freely (albeit accompanied) on your ship?
• If there's even the slightest chance of there being an alien lifeform on Mars (which was the lone survivor/alleged murderer's story), wouldn't that potential discovery seem more important than anybody made it out to be in the film?
• They are in a small spaceship, with circular rooms that are maybe 15-20 feet in diameter, yet two people will carry on a conversation (loudly) about someone else on the other side of the same room as if that other person won't hear it.
• Amazingly, that other person doesn't seem to hear it!

And these are just a few examples of the stupidity of everyone involved.

I disagree with 40hz's description: "With it's (mostly) intelligent dialog and brooding shadowy set, IT succeeds in creating a remarkably believable atmosphere of escalating tension."

In my opinion, the characters were unbelievably stupid (stupid is as stupid does) and quite often downright illogical. I do suppose, however, that there was escalating tension throughout the film, but that was mostly just my patience wearing thin waiting for anybody do to something intelligent.

Movies really irritate me when people behave irrationally or illogically for no good reason. (Upon reflection, that sounds funny, I need a valid, logical reason for someone to behave illogically.) I'm not good at watching movies just for entertainment. I usually can't help but think about them for the next few days and analyze them to pieces.

But now that I've vented about IT: The Terror from Beyond Space, I think I've gotten it out of my system enough that I can move on to analyzing Pandorum, which I found while looking to see if Avalon was on NetFlix's Instant Play. (It's not.)

Oh - DEXTER. Great show.

Take CSI... Yikes. Need I say more?

Upon reflection, I suppose I'm only willing to suspend my disbelief so far as the setting and theme of the movie suggests is reasonable.

Something that takes place in the future or in space or another planet requires a suspension of disbelief in what kind of technology is available and what other forms of life exist. Generally, the rules of "how things work in reality" don't have to be modified much more than that.

Something in a fantasy setting requires you to be able to modify the "rules" for other forms of life and what kind of magical powers are available/commonplace (i.e. Harry Potter).

Something set in modern America (i.e. CSI) should require very few modifications to the rules of "how things work," so when things are unrealistic they set off internal alarm bells that say "Hey! That can't work like that!"

But no matter the setting or theme, I become agitated very easily when a director/screenplay insults my intelligence by presenting me with people who behave irrationally and illogically without providing a logical reason as to why their cognitive abilities are so impaired.

I guess what I'm saying is that, ultimately, I have an extremely hard time suspending my disbelief in people (their behavior). Even though I'm quite capable and willing (as far as the theme suggests) to suspend my disbelief in "how things work in reality" for the sake of a good story.

I think the Transformers movies are a good example of that. Polymorphic alien robotic lifeforms that take the shape of human-made vehicles is a pretty lame idea that requires you to really stretch your imagination to accept as possible if you think about it, but I willingly accepted it. The thing that I hated about the movies was how idiotic nearly every single human being (and some of the robots, especially in Revenge of the Fallen) was!

Quote from: Deozaan on June 17, 2010, 08:21 PM

But no matter the setting or theme, I become agitated very easily when a director/screenplay insults my intelligence by presenting me with people who behave irrationally and illogically without providing a logical reason as to why their cognitive abilities are so impaired.

Wow...

You can get all that just from a movie?

How do you ever manage to make it through a work day?

The medication (legal and prescribed!) sure helps.

A person either loves 50's sci-fi and horror movies or they don't. There's no middle ground.

EDIT: This was in reference to some not liking that movie posters & movies of the time didn't always sync up or may not be as fast-paced as modern films.

Ya know... I'm not entirely sold on the modern (faster-est paced) movies are better to be frank. The 50's flicks, while a tad corny, did rely on a suspenseful-ly told story and the viewers imagination to (best) fill in parts that would today just be gushing gore. Because nobody knows what really scares us better than we do (kick in imagination->done).

Moving forward the story telling craft became (much) less important as movies went from thrill-a-minute, to action packed, to violent, to really violent, to ultra violent, to hyper violent to who the hell knows what's next. It's gotten to the point where there is so much going on so fast that one spend half the movie pondering wtf just happened. Why?

In the 50's when a scene was shot "at night", the picture would (more often than not) just have a grayish background (that we all understood to mean it's night time), and the rest of the "action" was easy to perceive including the stick the rubber monster was mounted on. Now we have scenes the cost millions to create, but are so dark that the screen is literally completely pitch black with only a few points on reflected moving light, and nobody could possibly have a clue what happened. Half these "High-Tech" million dollar scenes could easily be recreated with a cheap camera, a rubber monkey, and the minimal light that leaks under a closed closet door for under $10.

So if you're looking for a superspy, rockstar, scientist, brain surgeon, astronaut, racecar driver ... look no further than the Adventures of Buckaroo Bonsi - It is by far the stupidest movie I ever totally loved (I still whistle the rather catchy theme music from time to time).

Especially effective is the old trick of dropping every third frame to create a subtle but noticable choppiness that gets most people edgy without their knowing why. 

That is wicked~! I've never heard of that before!

Ya know... I'm not entirely sold on the modern (faster-est paced) movies are better to be frank. The 50's flicks, while a tad corny, did rely on a suspenseful-ly told story and the viewers imagination to (best) fill in parts that would today just be gushing gore. Because nobody knows what really scares us better than we do (kick in imagination->done).

I'm of the same opinion. And I wasn't even alive when those movies were made!

So if you're looking for a superspy, rockstar, scientist, brain surgeon, astronaut, racecar driver ... look no further than the Adventures of Buckaroo Bonsi - It is by far the stupidest movie I ever totally loved (I still whistle the rather catchy theme music from time to time).

The DVD that was recently released a couple years ago gave an excellent treatment of the Buckaroo universe. Lots of things are explained in the extras that were never explained in the movie.

And if you thought the theme song was catchy, somewhere I have an MP3 of the never-released alternate version of the theme music which was supposed to originally be the ending credits theme, but never made it to the final cut of the film.

....and it's Mr. Bigboo-TAY!! 

parkint, what a shame. The pre-screening version would have made it a much more powerful story.

Oh well...what do you expect from audiences that were scared senseless by The Tingler.

That's one of the reasons why all those unstoppable-psycho-serial-killer franchises (Freddie Kreuger, Jason, et al) have so many sequels. Hollywood will not allow these stories to end with evil triumphant.

Huh.

So....all these years Hollywood has been pushing out drek sequels in order to deliver an uplifting message that good will eventually prevail.

Here I thought it was just a money grab.

Children are not to be subjected to cruelty or physical harm. You may threaten harm. But have a scene in a script where a child actually gets hurt and your script will be tossed in the trash.

How does that gel with the ending of The Mist ?

While you don't actually get to see the deed done, the killing of the boy is very graphically implied.  (Apologies to people who may not have seen the film but what I've typed in no way gives away the whole plot.)

But then, the SciFi/Horror genre is allowed a bit more flexibility with regard to how a story ends.

That's one of the reasons why all those unstoppable-psycho-serial-killer franchises (Freddie Kreuger, Jason, et al) have so many sequels. Hollywood will not allow these stories to end with evil triumphant.

I would have put it down as trying to milk more money out of the movie watchers.  If they just didn't want to end with evil being triumphant then they could have stopped at Friday the 13th or A nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, (to use your two psycho examples), but they didn't.  From that point on it was just greed, IMO.  (If you follow the premise of New Nightmare you could actually say that Evil has won - who else would be causing all these crappy sequels to be inflicted upon us?)

Anyone who enjoys the SciFi/Horror genre will go along and see the sequel no matter how bad it is, they'll watch the following sequels in the hope they will be better than the previous, etc, etc, etc.

I know, I am stupid enough to sit through every sequel of most SciFi/Horror films. 

How does that gel with the ending of The Mist ?

While you don't actually get to see the deed done, the killing of the boy is very graphically implied.

As I said, you can imply all you want. But you can't show it happening.

The scene in The Happening where the smart-mouthed kid got shot had to be reworked several times before Shyamalan got an OK from the studio's legal department. Note when you see the film that you don't actually see the boy getting hit even though you do get to see his dead body (partially and briefly) afterwards. And even that is so quick it's almost implied.

That's one semi-spoiler in any movie. If there's a lead character kid in the film that's 12 or younger, you just know they're going to make it through the movie no matter what.You can kill off the heroine, her boyfriend, her dog, and her helpless and elderly Mom and Dad. You can  even nuke the town where she was born. But that 7-year old kid she picks up along the way is always going to be one of the survivors when the credits finally roll.

I would have put it down as trying to milk more money out of the movie watchers.  If they just didn't want to end with evil being triumphant then they could have stopped at Friday the 13th or A nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, (to use your two psycho examples), but they didn't.  From that point on it was just greed, IMO.  (If you follow the premise of New Nightmare you could actually say that Evil has won - who else would be causing all these crappy sequels to be inflicted upon us?)

Anyone who enjoys the SciFi/Horror genre will go along and see the sequel no matter how bad it is, they'll watch the following sequels in the hope they will be better than the previous, etc, etc, etc.

Yes. They could have stopped the follow-ons at any time. But only if it left the 'conflict' in an unresolved state where evil hadn't yet been conclusively defeated. They don't greenlight movies where the script calls for human evil to finally, absolutely, and conclusively win.

And if you do know of an exception, please educate me. Because AFAIK - it just doesn't happen.

Note: I wasn't saying that the taboo against human evil triumphant is what drives the creation of sequels. But it does provide the opportunity to make sequels since it keeps most of these films from reaching their logical conclusion.

I mean c'mon... unstoppable killer repeatedly comes back from the dead after he's been hit with everything from a baseball bat to a tactical nuke? By this time you'd figure he's just a force of nature like a tornado - something to avoid as best you can since there's nothing you can really do about it.

One way out would be if the military rounded up Jason and his ilk and transported them over to the Afghan/Pakistan border to hunt for and kill Bin Laden. After Bin Laden was gone, the Pentagon could send in the cruise missiles and possibly even call in a B2 wing to do a follow up cluster bombing run "just to be sure." International threat removed, evil punished, supernatural evil semi-redeemed but still punished, and America saved!

Give it a name like Leatherface Leathernecks or The Texas Chainsaw Detail with Stallone as the commanding general and Dolpf Lundgren as the 'CIA guy.' Hey, dredge up the Cenobites from  Barker's Hellraiser franchise while you're at it too. Let Bin Laden plan to unleash them in LA as part of his next terrorist attack...

You can probably see why they don't they let me write these things...

How does that gel with the ending of The Mist ?

Note: the following response contains film spoiler. Don't read if you haven't seen The Mist.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The shootings at the end of the film weren't murders. They were mercy killings intended to save his child and the others from a fate worse than death. But even though David ends up shooting them (with their consent) for a noble purpose, he still gets punished. Since killing another is generally considered 'wrong' (especially killing his own child in order to 'spare him') David is punished by his survival - either to face criminal charges; or at the very least, to live with what he has done and the knowledge he was wrong.

The monsters don't qualify for the taboo because they are not human evil.

I'm with you, 4wd. I just don't buy it. Otherwise The Forgotten never would have been made. At the end, IIRC, good does not win. The "Big Bad" persists and its crystal clear that good will never win.

Yet another spoiler laden response on my part...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Good does win. The redhead got her child back.

The aliens aren't 'taboo evil' because they aren't human evil. And even so, the evil alien conducting the experiment gets 'punished' by his own people for his experimental failure. He bet his mind control games could sever that strange spiritual link his people observed between a human mother and child.

Well guess what? It couldn't. Human love (and family ties) triumph over heartless advanced alien experimenters and their human government collaborators.

Plus, they're not gone - so there's an implied "to be continued." Sequel anyone?

If evil did triumph over good, Telly and would have lost Sam, never got her memory back, and that would have been that. In real life that's probably what would have happened. And that would have made an incredibly boring movie. Or no movie at all since it's an inevitable conclusion which offers no opportunity for genuine conflict. And without conflict, there is no story to film...

There are lots of movies and TV shows where evil wins. I'm thankful for that, watching the good guys win in the end. Every. Single. Time. Well, it gets old.

It only gets old when screenwriters can't come up with an original angle on it. But that's why we create fiction rather than just read history. If you want depressing examples of where human evil triumphs, look no further than that - although you might argue that since history is constantly being written and rewritten, it's a never-ending series of stories about the good guys going on to fight another day.

I'm not aware of any movie where human evil triumphs absolutely. There may be films where the bad guys win the conflict, but the protagonists still always wins in terms of spiritual growth, or goes on to fight evil another day- even if its' only by inspiring a new generation with his/her own death.

How 'bout some more titles?

Ain't film appreciation fun? That's why you always want to watch and discuss movies with friends.