Chappie — While I can’t say that he has always been successful with his aims, South African director Neill Blompkamp has certainly made a name for himself among the science fiction community. His debut feature, District 9, was an arresting, high-concept drama about the forced detainment, discrimination towards and, in one notable case, transformation into alien refugees in and around Johannesburg. His follow-up, Elysium, focused on undemocratic access to healthcare and inter-satellite social stratification, where a disposable working class lived in the planet-wide slums of Earth and the rich and powerful lived in a technological Edan revolving over it.
His third and most recent feature film is, in a lot of ways, the culmination of the transhumanist and anti-corporate themes that Blompkamp has been developing on screen for more than a decade. In an attempt to combat exponentially rising crime rates, opportunistic corporations implement real-life robocops as law enforcement officers. When one inexplicably becomes self-aware, the “defective” robot, named Chappie, finds himself used on all sides: the engineer who programmed him, the gangsters who adopted him and the company that financed him.
Men in Black — Two decades after its release, I honestly can’t believe that we haven’t gotten more movies in this franchise than just the three. Between its inventive premise (which was basically sci-fi Harry Potter), its perfect cast and its expansive universe, it seemed primed for a massive, bi-annual franchise (or at least as many sequels as those stupid Transformers movies).
But we only got the few, a third of which most people try to block out of their memories entirely. That first movie, though, was just about the perfect action-comedy, one that holds up exceptionally well even today. Young Will Smith is the perfect, wide-eyed rookie cop who just discovered the existence of aliens and their terrestrial regulators, a clandestine, extra-governmental organization known as the Men in Black. Taken under the wing of a crotchety, seasoned agent, he needs to find the insectile assassin of an alien prince before his people wreak a terrible vengeance upon the Earth for his death.
Oculus — Remember how I mentioned that we were in something of a horror renaissance? Blumhouse has been a major part of that genre resurgence. And while not as intelligent or thoughtful as the likes of The Babadook, The Witch and It Follows, Oculus makes up for it by being even more spine-tinglingly terrifying than any of those films could ever be.
The film opens years after two siblings’ parents die in what they are convinced is a supernatural occurrence. Unable to believe their fantastical story, however, the authorities lock the brother up for murder, releasing him only after they believe he’s been rehabilitated. The sister, however, is unconvinced, and recruits her newly sprung brother in a little experiment: designed to prove that the malevolent entity living in an ancient mirror is what actually killed their parents.
The Punisher — It is certainly understandable why Marvel and Netflix delayed on releasing the latest Defender series for as long as they did. A catastrophic mass shooting immediately before a series about a gun-touting vigilante takes to the streets to extra-judicially gun down as many criminals as he can manage — regardless of the collateral damage he causes — doesn’t exactly send the right message to a public still reeling from real-world violence. Its belated release a month after the fact, however comes as soothing news for Marvel fans everywhere.
The series follows the breakout character from Season 2 of Marvel’s / Netflix’s Daredevil series (no, not Elektra — the other one). It depicts the former soldier taking to the streets once more to dish out his draconian brand of justice: this time joined by a like-minded compatriot and Daredevil regular Karen Page.
Silent Hill — I can’t say that Silent Hill is a great movie, because by all rights, it’s simply not. It’s shoddily directed, poorly written, unevenly paced, over-reliant on increasingly dated special effects and wastes its genuinely excellent cast. It’s hardly a replacement for all of the great horror movies that have been vanishing off of the streaming service in recent months and comes in far too late for Halloween.
But while it isn’t great by any means, and its addition couldn’t be more poorly timed, it is an incredibly fun movie, not to mention one of the few good “video game based movies” out there (the only other contenders being Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil — both at a stretch). So while it is a mostly wasted effort in the genre, it is a fun staging of the celebrated survival horror video game franchise, effectively atmospheric and a fun flick to pop in for an otherwise uneventful day.
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