Amazeballs

There’s something very contemporary about Companion, that sense of ordinary people, lacquered in anxiety, stumbling into catastrophe by way of a Silicon Valley fever dream. Drew Hancock, no hack, has made a movie that wants to stare at the icy void where technology and human vanity collide, then crack a joke so the void doesn’t stare back too hard. It’s a science fiction thriller in horror makeup, but with the nervous giggle of a dinner party gone off the rails.

There is an itch in contemporary science fiction which no number of tight scripts and digital vistas can entirely scratch: the genre longs to mean something again, to be both playground and arena, but all too often balloons out into ponderous “themes” and sterile future-worlds. It’s a relief, a relief laced with a kind of giddy disbelief, to witness Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, a film that doesn’t just cross genres, but seems to tear them up and ball them in one trembling fist.

Once in a while, a film comes drifting in on the wind, caught by almost no one, championed by even fewer, carrying the kind of oddball, heart-clutching enchantment that threatens to restore faith in the very act of cinema. Fish Story, Yoshihiro Nakamura’s time-hopping wonder, is precisely that sort of late-breaking revelation: a freewheeling, postmodern fable, at once as headlong and as intricately assembled as the punk anthem at its core. It’s hard to think of a movie, in these battered days, that is so bracingly, disarmingly optimistic—so resolutely happy to believe that music, and thus art, can literally save the world. And damned if the movie doesn’t just about convince you.

This American adaptation of Liu Cixin's acclaimed novel series has captivated audiences with its premise rooted in the mystery of extraterrestrial civilizations and humanity’s response.

“Life” is the kind of film that takes you on a gripping interstellar journey while simultaneously gripping your popcorn with tension. Directed by Daniel Espinosa, this thrilling sci-fi horror flick from 2017 sprinkles just the right amount of suspense with science fiction.

Frank Herbert’s “Dune” is the Mount Everest of science fiction, looming, treacherous, irresistible to climbers. Its reputation has become its curse. With each attempt to bring Herbert’s syncretic, sand-blasted cosmos to the screen, we glimpse the mirage on the horizon, the masterpiece peeking through the haze, while filmmakers crawl toward it, parched, hallucinating grandeur but often finding only the plastic taste of compromise on their tongues.