spoilers – ScienceFiction.com

Movie Review: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:30:18 +0000

New beginnings bring new excitement, but also new challenges. Such is the takeaway vibe I got from our advance screening of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,’ the kickoff for Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Let’s be clear from the get-go: Marvel has been giving us entertaining, high-quality films for a long time now. Almost 25 years, across dozens of television series, along with short films and literature tie-ins… this juggernaut is no slouch. Unfortunately, every entry into the series can’t be a home run – and that’s where we need to have some “real talk” about ‘Quantumania.’ The story itself is right in line with what viewers have been given across the over-arching MCU narrative to date: things on Earth appear to be “settling in” a bit post-Blip (although, frustratingly, ‘Quantumania’ still does not reference anything to do with the giant stone Eternal that is now sticking out of the Earth, half-stuck, as shown in the climax of ‘The Eternals,’ with this new film believed to be the 11th property to take place in the MCU timeline set after those events with absolutely zero remarks or tie-ins to it). The story does reference The Blip, of course, as […]

The post Movie Review: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

The God Of Mischief Is ’10 Steps Ahead Of You’ In The New ‘Loki’ Trailer & Photos

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 14:54:31 +0000

Even with the success of the now-complete ‘WandaVision’ series and the in-progress ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ series, Disney isn’t resting on their laurels or taking it easy when it comes to the future success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its forays into interconnected televised content. As a perfect example: coming hot on the heels of ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ after that series concludes is the series that may be the most eagerly anticipated of all the Marvel small-screen work, the Tom Hiddleston-led ‘Loki’ mini-series. Seeming to pick up Loki’s story pretty much immediately following when audiences last saw him – opportunistically stealing the Tesseract during the time-hopping chaos of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ – the God of Mischief looks to have gotten himself mixed up with the Time Variance Authority (TVA). The TVA appears to function as a sort of space-time regulatory force, and from the hints we’ve been given so far, it would seem that Loki’s action have caused some temporal ripples that need ironed out, with the god’s semi-unwilling assistance, of course. From Disney, the “official” description of the series is as follows: Watch Loki—the imperious God of Mischief—who, after absconding with the Tesseract, is a fish-out-of-water when he […]

The post The God Of Mischief Is ’10 Steps Ahead Of You’ In The New ‘Loki’ Trailer & Photos appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra’ (2001)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 18:13:46 +0000

It’s no secret that I, like many sci-fi and horror fans, have a special place in my heart for the old, ultra-cheesy, often uber-chintzy “B-Movies” of the 1950s and 1960s. With so many fans of this genre out there, odds are good that at least a few are movie directors, right? And possibly among those few directors, it’s even possible that a couple of them actually make movies that don’t suck, yeah? And of those select individuals, is it feasible that one of them may actually have excellent writing and acting skills as well so that he could fully utilize these skills in tandem with his love of B-Movies to create a brilliant and loving homage to the genre? While The Rolling Stones often remind us that “you can’t always get what you want,” fortunately sometimes you can: writer-director-actor Larry Blamire struck gold with his 2001 release of ‘The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra,’ an amazingly-detailed and lovingly-satiric take on the old B-Movie. I proudly own a copy and have seen the movie many times over; I’m excited to now bring the film to ScienceFiction.com for our Throwback Thursday action! ‘Lost Skeleton’ blends so many “fantastical” elements soften utilized in the […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra’ (2001) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Movie Review: Wonder Woman 1984

Dave Taylor — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 03:04:57 +0000

I really wanted to love the new Wonder Woman movie. After all, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) is a fun and engaging character, particularly in her super-powered Wonder Woman guise. She’s a superhero with heart and compassion, quick to stop the bad guys but just as likely to help a child regain their lost soccer ball or favorite toy. The first film, 2017’s Wonder Woman, was mostly great fun with General Ludendorff (Danny Houston) a suitably epic antagonist that made for a dramatic showdown and goofy but lovable Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) as her love interest. It’s no longer World War I, however, it’s 1984 and the tail end of the Cold War. In Wonder Woman 1984 Diana is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute when she’s not donning her trademark outfit and zipping about DC rescuing women from being hit by speeding cars or tossed off bridges. Her new colleague Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig) is envious of Diana’s presence, self-confidence and beauty; she’s a bit of a clumsy goof that people tend to ignore. A shipment of antiques arrives from the FBI with the request that the Smithsonian help identify the individual pieces. Chief among them is a crystal […]

The post Movie Review: Wonder Woman 1984 appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘Reanimator’ (1985)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:42:26 +0000

Straight out of the 1980s came ‘Re-Animator,’ an amazing film that somehow took zombies, gore, comedy, and an unknown cast, threw it all together, and created a one-of-a-kind experience for zombie and horror lovers everywhere. H.P. Lovecraft wrote the serialized story ‘Herbert West: Re-Animator’ back in the early 1920s, proving to be stunningly ahead of his time in his descriptions and depictions of re-animating the dead. Even though the 1985 movie we’re talking about here shares the same name and a few characters and locations, make no mistake: this movie is its own entity, brought to life by the writing team and the performances of its cast, most notably the over-the-top personification of the titular Dr. West played to perfection by Jeffrey Combs. ‘Re-Animator’ is, quite simply, a unique movie-watching experience, not likely to be reproduced any time soon, if ever. ‘Re-Animator’ is old-school fun. From the opening scene with it’s one random zombie through the “it’s over…or is it?” ending, the movie keeps the viewer engaged and wanting more. Sure, the look of the film has gotten a little dated, but that’s part of what makes it grand. ‘Re-Animator’ is a great example of a “splatter film” made in […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘Reanimator’ (1985) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Spoiler-Free Preview: ‘WandaVision’

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:01:06 +0000

Thanks to the fine folks as Disney+, we were granted early access to the first three episodes of the first-ever MCU TV series, ‘WandaVision.’ This is a spoiler-free over-arching review, as we would never want to intentionally spoil anything for our readers! You’ll find individual reviews of Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3 here on ScienceFiction.com, as they become available to the public. The first thing that jumps out at the viewer upon engaging with the new series is that this is definitely NOT your typical entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s no secret that the previews have shown the episodes with a decidedly “classic TV sitcom” type of vibe, and this is the general format that the show follows, with each episode “taking place” in a different chronological sitcom era, progressing forward through time (at least, through the first trio of episodes, anyhow); the first episode is set in a 1950s type of ‘I Love Lucy’ vibe, with episode two wandering into the ‘Bewitched’ feel of the 1960s, and the third episode moves things smoothly into the 1970s, with some of the televised technological advances that came with that era. A unique point of the series is […]

The post Spoiler-Free Preview: ‘WandaVision’ appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Review: ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Does Not Run Rings Around The Competition

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 18:14:38 +0000

If you know, then you know. You know all about the “curse of the video-game-to-movie adaptation,” where no matter how hard studios and directors and writers and actors try, no one can really seem to get a top-to-bottom good film out of a video-game property. For every ‘Resident Evil’ or ‘Mortal Kombat’ that shows promise (and geez, these are really the best of the best in this category?), there’s a deluge of crap like ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ ‘House of the Dead,’ ‘Doom,’ the list goes on and on. And yes, even you, ‘Super Mario Bros’ fans, you must admit that the 1993 movie is a dumpster fire, all nostalgia aside. If you know, then you know. You know all about ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ and the CGI foibles its main character went through during the film’s production, and the infamous decision by Paramount and director Jeff Fowler to admit that the titular blue hedgehog, in the first released trailer, looked creepy as all get-out and that they were going to commit the time and resources to redo the character’s design and get him looking right. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s that original pre-redesign trailer, in all its horrendous glory: You can’t un-see […]

The post Review: ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Does Not Run Rings Around The Competition appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘Red State’ (2010)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 01:58:10 +0000

It can be a mixed bag when a “genre” director makes a foray into a category that he/she has never tried before. For example, no one is stopping Rob Zombie from making a romantic comedy, but one has to wonder what the success of that film would look like. Heck, I even wonder what the title would look like – ‘The Devil’s Roses’? ‘House of 1,000 Delightful Misunderstandings’? There was a time, exactly a decade ago, when Kevin Smith had only ever made “Kevin Smith-style comedy” movies. It was with great intrigue at the time, then, that he took a very direct and intentional tonal shift. The man best known to his fans as “Silent Bob” effectively turned things on its ear with the release of ‘Red State,’ a horror film with serious undertones of social commentary. Smith is known to both casual movie-goers and his legions of hard-core fans as the comedic mastermind behind cult classics like ‘Clerks,’ ‘Chasing Amy,’ ‘Dogma,’ and ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.’ But ‘Red State’ sees Smith take things in a whole new direction, something that can most closely be approximated to the horror genre. By Smith’s own admission, the film isn’t exactly […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘Red State’ (2010) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Is This Classic ‘Doctor Who’ Theory The Key To “The Fugitive Of The Judoon?”

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 14:30:18 +0000

WARNING: Major spoilers for “The Fugitive of the Judoon,” this week’s episode of ‘Doctor Who,’ lie ahead. If you don’t wish to have this episode spoiled for you, then the time to stop reading is NOW! Okay, time to dive deep into ‘Doctor Who’ lore – so deep, in fact, we’ll be covering some things from novels, audiobooks, and things that were simply ideas that the TV show creative team had but never were able to bring to the screen. So, let’s call this a “probable theory,” but as always with things that haven’t been officially revealed as of yet, take this with a grain or two of salt. So, in “The Fugitive of the Judoon” episode, we are introduced to Ruth (Jo Martin), a seemingly normal human living her life as a tour guide operator in Gloucester, England. When a squad of alien Judoon “galactic enforcers” suddenly arrive, however, Ruth’s life is turned upside down when she discovers that the man she’s been living with has been harboring strange alien secrets – and when he says certain “code words” to her, Ruth travels to her “family home” only to have parts of her subconscious activated and discover that she […]

The post Is This Classic ‘Doctor Who’ Theory The Key To “The Fugitive Of The Judoon?” appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘Slither’ (2006)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 22:47:47 +0000

There’s a fairly standard sci-fi/horror trope that a lot of stories use: semi-sentient alien organism visits Earth and takes over individual humans by entering our bodies through our mouths/ears/noses/butts/any other orifices they can wriggle into. Many times, the aliens “kill” the humans or incapacitate their brains when taking over the bodies, turning the infected folks into a creature most would call a zombie. It’s definitely not a new plot device, showing up as early as the 1930s in sci-fi serials, but if done correctly it can easily make for a story that is entertaining, suspenseful, and thought-provoking. By plot line alone, ‘Slither’ doesn’t break any molds or cover any new ground: it’s your fairly standard “alien slugs turn people into zombies and try to take over the world” scenario. However, it’s the nuanced performances by the cast, the attention to detail on the part of its creators, and the broad humor mixed with tongue-in-cheek homages to former stories of this type that make ‘Slither,’ in my humble opinion, a must-see film for any fun-loving sci-fi, horror, and/or zombie enthusiast. Now, take this review with a grain of salt if you’re not a huge fan of the “classic” sci-fi/monster movies […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘Slither’ (2006) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘Zombieland’ (2009)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 21:53:33 +0000

Many of you might be like me, and remember where and when you were when you heard about or even saw ‘Zombieland’ for the first time. If so, then you’re likely asking yourselves the same question I am now: how in the heck has a whole decade gone by since the movie first came out? Back in late 2009, the hype surrounding ‘Zombieland’ has grown to fairly epic proportions; yes, zombies were the “next big thing” for a while, but that was the early 2000s, and by the time we were just a few scant months from the calendar turning to 2010, the zombie hype train had left the station and wasn’t even necessarily on the tracks anymore. So at that point, then, could you think of the last time a zombie movie received a major national marketing campaign and a coast-to-coast wide theatrical release? 2008’s ‘Quarantine’ had a few commercials on TV here and there, but 2004’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ is the next-most “recent” movie that springs into my head in terms of big-time national exposure, and that was half a decade prior! I’ll never forget my first watch-through of ‘Zombieland.’ It was at the relative dawn of […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘Zombieland’ (2009) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘Planet Terror’ (2007)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 22:06:40 +0000

I think I was born in the wrong decade. Although I grew up watching the great horror movies of the 1980s, I seem to have a special affinity for the “groovy,” rough-and-gritty feel of the 1970s horror films. Maybe I just enjoy cinematic experiences from the times when the writing and characters had to drive a story and the special effects were a supporting player; nowadays it seems to be the exact opposite, with each new CGI-tacular movie trying to outdo the last. But every so often, a film will come along that breaks the trend and gives its viewers both a good-looking film and a great story to boot. Throw in a healthy dose of retro feel with an homage to a bygone era of cinema, and you’ve got the makings of one amazing movie-watching experience, specifically known as ‘Planet Terror.’ Half of the ambitious two-movie “Grindhouse” project put together by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez (Tarantino’s B-movie/exploitation homage ‘Death Proof’ being the other half), ‘Planet Terror’ is simply a good old-fashioned zombie movie made by people who know how to entertain. Rodriguez has actually said in multiple interviews that he came up for the idea of this […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘Planet Terror’ (2007) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Should I Check Out: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 21:10:40 +0000

Welcome to ‘Should I Check Out…” a new weekly column here at ScienceFiction.com dedicated to giving you the scoop on recent TV series, movies, games, novels, comic books, and more – entertainment that you may not have heard of or may not have had the chance to explore yet. We’ll explain a bit about what the property is, what you might get out of it, and what you might not know about it, so you can be armed with more knowledge as you ask yourself the question: should I check out this stuff… or not? Take a look at what we’re writing about this week, and if you’ve already checked it out, let us know in the Comments section below what you think about it! It’s tough being a younger sibling. ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is a television show that has had to work extremely hard to live up to the expectations and standards set by its “big brother,” ‘The Walking Dead.’ Complicating matters further is the fact that, almost always, spin-off series are aired well after the original series has been completed and “off the air” in terms of new content being produced; ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ was […]

The post Should I Check Out: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Throwback Thursday: ‘The Wicksboro Incident’ (2003)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 22:04:04 +0000

The mockumentary is not a new style of filmmaking, and its origins can be traced back to Luis Buñuel’s 1933 film Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan), though some film scholars might debate that point. Looking through the scores of films created since that time, the one genre that seemed to benefit from the mockumentary was the comedy — from The Rutles in 1964 (a parody of The Beatles) to anything from Christopher Guest. But it wasn’t until 1999, when a little independent film became a surprise hit for its use of “found footage” to re-tell the last days of three young investigators journeying into the Black Hills of Maryland to uncover the truth about a legendary creature: The Blair Witch Project. Clever storytelling and usage of the actors themselves to film most of the scenes made for one of the most effective horror films of its time. Because of its success, the floodgates opened for other filmmakers to try their hands at crafting something as equally compelling. One such film that likely never would have existed without the Blair Witch Project success: 2003’s The Wicksboro Incident. Successfully mixing together the science-fiction and horror genres is a challenge to begin with, and doing […]

The post Throwback Thursday: ‘The Wicksboro Incident’ (2003) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.

Comic Archive: ‘Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness’ (2007)

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 21:54:50 +0000

Welcome to the Comic Archive! There have been so many amazing stories, characters, and series produced from comic book publishers for almost 100 years now; this column will serve to celebrate some of the tales you may or may not know about. Each week, we’ll take a story arc or trade paperback/collected story from a non-new comic (three years old or further back), and discuss the details with you. The Comic Archive, in conjunction with my Throwback Thursday column, has been “all in” on Marvel Zombies in the past few weeks, with my recaps of the original Marvel Zombies mini-series, the sequel follow-up mini-series, and “Marvel Zombies Return.” Just when you thought the “Marvel Zombies” series couldn’t get any more entertaining or self-referential, BOOM – Marvel went and pulled out a cross-company crossover series with Dynamite Entertainment’s “Army of Darkness” series that features everyone’s favorite groovy undead killer, Ashley “Ash” Williams. (Quick side note: Dynamite couldn’t secure the rights to “Evil Dead” as a title for their comic series, but through a legal loophole with the movie studios, they were able to use the “Army of Darkness” title of the third “Evil Dead” film without legal repercussion from those […]

The post Comic Archive: ‘Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness’ (2007) appeared first on ScienceFiction.com.