sci-fi
Adam Sweeting
The race continues to create the most ridiculous cooking programme on TV. Channel 4’s new brainchild, Crazy Delicious, finds the culinary nutty professor Heston Blumenthal teaming up with fellow-judges Carla Hall and Niklas Ekstedt to become the “Gods of Food”.Each week, three amateur contestants turn up on a studio set which supposedly represents some kind of mythical garden or bosky glade from classical mythology (though with its warped scenery and funny-coloured foliage, it mostly looks like something out of an ancient episode of Star Trek), where they can find an exotic array of Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Best-known for his TV series Legion and Fargo, director Noah Hawley makes the leap to the big screen with an existential space drama based on true events, starring Natalie Portman.During the Apollo 11 space mission, Michael Collins was left in the shuttle on the far side of the moon. While sat there, he reportedly said: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it.” Such an awe-inspiring level of isolation in the vastness of space is an experience few humans will ever know. But what are the psychological effects of escaping terra firma, and how do you Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Sentient machines have taken over the Earth. The leader of the human rebellion is so effective that a robotic ‘terminator’ is sent back in time to ensure he’s never born. A guardian follows, to ensure he is. We’ve been here before. Even in the unadventurous, market-driven world of sequels, it’s remarkable just how stuck theTerminator films have been in their template, with the same basic premise, the same character dynamics, the same action sequences predicated on the relentlessness of the robot assassins, the same bewildering timeline. However, not all of them have had Sarah Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
David Greig’s reimagining of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel has brought a masterpiece of intellectual science fiction back to its philosophical core. Over the concentrated two hours of Matthew Lutton’s production, which reaches the Lyric Hammersmith from Melbourne via Edinburgh, we are compelled to contemplate, in the best tradition of the genre, ideas that go “beyond the reach of human beings”, as Lem himself put it. The experience is mesmerising. And if that sounds somehow cold or inhuman, the dramatic kernel of the story hits home at a deeply human level: Lem’s premise in this space Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
There have been a number of excellent science fiction films of late – Gravity, The Martian, Annihilation among them. But Ad Astra may be the most complete and profound addition to the genre since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick’s masterwork has set the bar for 50 years now and its proposition – from prehistoric ape to star child – remains in a league of its own for imaginative bravura. So it’s striking to what extent the new film, directed by indie stalwart James Gray and starring a scintillating Brad Pitt, has similar ambitions and narrative trajectory Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This lovingly lo-tech visit to galaxies far far away is a curious proposition, which, while neither dark, nor sublime, does have its moments. Framed as a tribute to Seventies sci-fi in all its polyester-clad absurdity, it in fact reveals itself to be an exploration of the parallel emotional worlds we all inhabit, with hat-tips to Star Trek and Blake 7 along the way.Dark Sublime, running downstairs at the Trafalgar Studios, is the first play by the writer Michael Dennis, and has scored itself a considerable coup in persuading Star Trek’s Counsellor Deanna Troi, Marina Sirtis, to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Russell T Davies’s doomsday odyssey reached its endgame on BBC One, feisty grandma Muriel (played by indestructible Anne Reid) got to deliver the moral of the story. With the Lyons clan gathered round that now-familiar dining table, she spelt it out for them. “It’s all your fault,” she scolded, reminding them how they’d all twiddled their thumbs and done nothing while everyone was ripped off by the banks, let themselves be seduced by dirt-cheap globalised manufacturing, and let the evil Vivienne Rook become Prime Minister. “This is the world we built,” she jeered. “Congratulations!”This Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Manga, the Japanese art of the graphic novel, took its modern form in the 1800s. Illustrated stories already had a long heritage in Japan — encompassing woodblock prints and illustrated scrolls and novels — but the introduction of the printing press by foreign visitors changed the rate at which works could be made and the extent of their distribution.Part of manga’s appeal is its restlessness — it never gets stale. While the 1950s saw distinctions crystallise between shōnen and seinen manga (respectively for boys and young men) and shōjo manga (for girls), the 70s saw the Year 24 Group of Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's five years since Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus released an album, and it's not entirely clear how far he's moved creatively. To be fair he's been busy branching out in other directions, producing for superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar, making short films, and helping members of his Brainfeeder stable like Thundercat and Kamasi Washington along to greater fame. But with this album he seems to have taken up precisely where 2014's “Your Dead” left off. The same preoccupations are here: exquisite musicianship mashed together with deliberate decay and destruction, high falutin spiritual Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Claire Denis's High Life is science fiction as a fever dream rather than a frenzy of ray guns and aliens. Our first contact is Monte (played by a gaunt Robert Pattinson); he’s alone on a rickety space ship, fixing the leaks in the hull, nurturing both the crops in the biosphere and his baby daughter, Willow. Pattinson is a mesmerising screen presence with his close-cropped skull and sharp-angled jaw; there’s real tenderness in the opening scenes where he interacts with the infant as her sole parent. But that idyll doesn’t last; Monte is the last survivor of a crew of murderers Read more ...
graham.rickson
This Blu-ray reissue brings sci-fi masterpiece Ikarie XB 1 back to its original visual glory, with the 1963 film presented here in the 4K restoration first shown at the Cannes festival in 2016 (distributor Second Run had previously released an earlier restoration on DVD in 2013). Just how good the film looks in its latest incarnation can be observed when it's compared to the title and closing sequences recut for the film’s English language dub that are included as bonus features. Both are distinctly dim and scratchy, though worth watching to see what happens at the very close, Czech Read more ...
Owen Richards
The Earth’s mightiest defenders are back in a triumphant climax, 11 years in the making. Despite a three hour runtime and an overstuffed preceding chapter, the Russo Brothers pull off the near-impossible by creating a wholly satisfying final chapter, and possibly the best film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.When we last saw the Avengers, all hope was lost. Half of all life in the universe was turned to dust. Tony Stark and Nebula were adrift on a distant planet. Earth’s remaining survivors were left to contemplate their failures. How they each deal with this speaks volumes about their Read more ...