Tag Archives: Science fiction

Saturday Matinee: Kin-dza-dza!

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In praise of Kin-dza-dza! – the best sci-fi film you’ve never heard of


Mad Max meets Monty Python is the best way of describing this strange Soviet gem.

By Joel Blackledge

Source: Little White Lies

Originally released in 1986, Georgiy Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! is possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years. A Soviet space odyssey across an alien landscape, it is packed with comic nuance and absurdist charm, yet it is rarely screened or even seen outside Russia. With 2016 marking its 30th anniversary, this deadpan oddity deserves a reappraisal for its wit, imagination and stunning design.

The story begins with Vladimir, a Moscow construction worker, popping out for some macaroni. He is stopped in the street by Gedevan, a young student who needs help with a seemingly insane man claiming to be on the wrong planet. The man needs Earth’s coordinates so he can use his teleportation device to go home. Impatiently humouring him, Vladimir presses a button on the device. Instantly, he and Gedevan are transported to the desert planet Pluke in the galaxy of Kin-dza-dza.

Before long, they meet Bi and Wef, two wandering performers whose speech is largely limited to the word ‘koo’ or its vulgar equivalent ‘kyu’. The Earthlings haggle over the terms of their rescue, though the performers are loath to give something for nothing. Just as the performers are about to leave, they notice that Vladimir has a box of matches – one of the most valuable commodities on Pluke. The four establish a shaky alliance and set in off in a ramshackle aircraft to find a way back to Earth. Vladimir and Gedevan discover that the entire planet operates on a ruthless economy of scavenger barter, and nothing is off limits to the market. The deserts were once seas, but the water was greedily converted into engine fuel. Of course, now the only way to collect drinking water is to extract it back from that fuel.

Kin-dza-dza!’s salvage punk aesthetic – which might best be described as Mad Max meets Monty Python by way of Tarkovsky – hints at this rich, tragic and very stupid history. A collapsed Ferris wheel provides a home for destitute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by balloons containing the deceased’s final breath. The colour of your trousers signifies social status, so they are powerful barter items.

The planet’s inhabitants are primitive in their hardheartedness, yet they also fiercely insist upon maintaining arbitrary social conventions. People are separated into two castes: “Chatlian” and “Patsak”. The subordinate Patsaks must wear bells on their noses and squat before Chatlians. The only way to determine if an individual is a Patsak or a Chatlian is to see if a purpose-built machine emits a green or orange light when pointed at them. The Earthling visitors decry this as racism of the most inane kind, but Plukanians fail to see the problem. When Bi asks with genuine puzzlement how people on Earth determine who is subservient to whom, Vladimir dryly responds, ‘Oh, just by eye.’ Hearing this, Wef dismisses Earthlings as savages. Advanced technology does not a civilised culture make.

What elevates Kin-dza-dza! beyond a simple procession of snipes is the careful attention paid to countless details within its alien world. Even Giya Kancheli’s comic score sounds like it’s from another world – an ungainly, melancholic dirge that conjures up the hopeless bafflement of absurdism. All of this rich world building puts the film into a literary branch of satirical sci-fi occupied by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and even Franz Kafka. There is no convoluted plot, but instead a convoluted universe, and its incredulous victims ready to point out the farcicality therein. They find a planet that demands a mix of callous entrepreneurial savvy and fearful deference to the status quo familiar to any Earthling living in the 21st century.

Kin-dza-dza!’s sideways look at the barbarities of everyday oppression remains pertinent 30 years on. It’s a must-see for anyone interested in the cosmic potentials of science fiction.

Watch Kin-dza-dza! on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/14715372

Saturday Matinee: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

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Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) Review

Director: Junta Yamaguchi
Cast: Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani, Gôta Ishida, Masashi Suwa, Yoshifumi Sakai, Haruki Nakagawa, Munenori Nagano, Takashi Sumita, Chikara Honda, Aki Asakura
Running Time: 70 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Source: City on Fire

The concept of time travel is always an interesting one when it’s transferred to screen, and the Japanese film industry has flirted with it just as much as any other. From modern day military units transported to feudal Japan in the likes of G.I. Samurai, to the quirkiness of Summer Time Machine Blues, to of course the countless romantic spins on the genre. What all of them have in common is characters travelling back to the past, whether it be days or decades, and their need to adjust to a different time period or right a wrong. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes also uses time travel as its key theme, however it does so in an arguably more minutiae way than any of its predecessors (and perhaps anything that’ll come after it), dealing with a café owner who realises the monitor in his room is capable of showing 2 minutes into the future.

Played by Kazunari Tosa (Prisoners of the Ghostland, Misono Universe), his character lives in the apartment directly upstairs from the café he runs, and this realisation comes about when he returns home one night and the monitor flickers on, his own face staring back at him from behind the screen. His 2 minutes into the future self is back in the café downstairs, and after explaining the strange phenomenon to his current self, his current self heads back downstairs – completing the loop and setting things in motion. Soon the café’s barista, played by Riko Fujitani (Beautiful Dreamer, Asahinagu), gets in on the action, who proceeds to call up 3 of the cafes regulars to also come around and check it out as well. Before you know it, the group find themselves interacting between their current and 2 minutes into the future selves with all of the inconsequence you’d imagine 120 seconds can bring.

The directorial debut of Junta Yamaguchi, the creative force behind the indie production is actually a theatre troupe called Europe Kikaku based out of Kyoto, of which Yamaguchi is a member, as are most of the other cast and crew. The fact that the majority of talent involved in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes comes from a theatre background makes a lot of sense when you consider that 95% of the punchy 70-minute runtime plays out in a single location – the upstairs and downstairs in a low-rise building. The use of the confined environment enables the 2 minutes plot device to play out via a series of comedic interactions involving the cast talking to themselves through a monitor, a feat which Yamaguchi makes look easy, but had to have taken a substantial amount of precision timed planning behind the scenes.

The plot itself is inspired by scriptwriter Makoto Ueda’s (who also scripted the previously mentioned Summer Time Machine Blues) own self-directed and penned short from 2014, Howling, with the motivation being to stretch out the concept from the shorts 11-minute runtime to a feature length production. Admittedly, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ origins do show through on occasion. There can be no denying that the concept is a one-trick pony, and Yamaguchi spends a little too much time with the cafe’s regulars fooling around and being shouty in a slightly aggravating way. The focus initially seems to be on how many comedic vignettes can be pulled off with the concept, not all of which necessarily work, when it would be far more engaging if there was an actual plot to anchor the gimmick off.

As a result, because of the scenes inconsequential nature, topped off with the fact that we have to watch many of them play out twice (current and future), there are moments that feel like padding. Thankfully Yamaguchi has a plot up his sleeve, and once it kicks in it delivers the required narrative thrust just in time, ensuring that the concept alone isn’t left to carry the entire production on its shoulders. Sure it’s nothing we haven’t seen countless times before – a stash of cash with unknown origins and the yakuza who are looking for it – but paired up with the time travel concept it provides a reason for the audience to get behind the characters, as well as some of the biggest laughs.

Yamaguchi goes for the double whammy on the gimmick front, opting for the one-take approach for the 70-minute duration, although he confessed in an interview that it is in fact made up of several 10-minute takes which have then been blended together in post. The authenticity behind the one-take isn’t the important part here though (as opposed to its importance in productions like One Shot and Crazy Samurai Musashi, where the performers endurance is an integral part of enjoying the single take), rather the flow it gives to the time loop allows both the characters and the audience to experience the 2-minute time travel in real time. 

As much as the previously mentioned productions are defined by the performers sustained physicality during the continuous takes, here the admiration goes to how skilfully everyone involved has executed a narrative which essentially involves them talking to themselves for extended periods. I had to frequently remind myself while watching Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes that the actors are actually not talking to themselves in real time (it was done with recordings), and the complexity behind creating such a unique character dynamic must have been vast. It’s a testament to the passion of the cast and crew that onscreen not once does it come across as questionable or contrived, and the fact that the complexity only increases as the plot progresses but the illusion never wavers is an outstanding feat.

As the owner of the café Kazunari Tosa makes for a likable protagonist. His realisation that he has a monitor that can see into the future is one of understated (almost disinterested) bewilderment, and his lack of enthusiasm to utilise its potential makes him a relatable character for the audience. The short runtime doesn’t give much room for character development, but his change from a passive observer (in his own café no less!) into a somewhat man of action is a convincing one, spurred on by the chance of a date with the café owner next door, played by Aki Asakura (the most recognisable name in the cast, having featured in the likes of Whistleblower and 2017’s live action Fullmetal Alchemist).

Despite this though, there should be no doubt that the real star of the show in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is the filmmaking technique itself. Whereas just a few years ago saying a movie looked like it was shot on an iPhone would be considered an insult (see my review for 2018’s The Dark Soul), here the entire thing actually was shot on an iPhone, and it looks just fine. In Yamaguchi’s eagerness as a first time director he also took on the role of cinematographer (something which he openly states he likely won’t do again for his next production!), and his commitment to getting certain shots at certain angles can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage as he scrambles on top of, over, and around tables and various other objects to maintain the integrity of his vision. 

While Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has had plenty of labels thrown at it already, from being a time travel movie for the Zoom generation, to One Cut of the Dead comparisons due to its micro budget and one-take approach, in the end both only tenuously relate to the end product that Yamaguchi has crafted. While far from perfect and at times a little too stretched for its own good, ultimately the way such a complex tale has been successfully pulled off from both a technical and story standpoint is difficult not to admire. The fact that some genuine laugh out loud moments are thrown in along the way make its shortcomings easy to overlook, and at just 70 minutes Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes self fulfils its title, not sticking around a minute longer than it needs to.

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Watch Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes on Tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/671945/beyond-the-infinite-two-minutes

Saturday Matinee: Death Machine

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THE DAILY DIG: DEATH MACHINE (1994)

“DEATH MACHINE” HAS ALL THE WORKINGS TO BE A CULT SCI-FI HORROR FILM, RIPE FOR REDISCOVERY AND A PROPER US RELEASE FINALLY.

By Bobby Lisse:

Source: Morbidly Beautiful

A weapons manufacturer tries to cover up its mistakes with a super soldier program while a morally sound executive does her best to uncover their evil plot and the scientist behind it all plots to maim and destroy it all. Let’s dig into 1994’s “Death Machine”, directed by Stephen Norrington!

AS I SEE IT

The directorial debut from Stephen Norrington, and reportedly the effort that landed him the director’s chair for Blade, Death Machine is a good movie with an arsenal of flaws.

Set in the future, which is now past, 2003, we follow the company Chaank that provides military weapons. Their failed Robocop-like super-soldier suit has malfunctioned and caused a slaughter of civilians. Now they’re back to the drawing board, so to speak, though the bottom line is always more important. In steps Scott Ridley who instructs the board they will just be pivoting.

The mad scientist behind the creation, Jack Dante, secretly creates a psycho-death bot named Warbeast. And once the fun starts, this metal death force shreds everyone in its path.

The story has interesting points, such as the evil corporation, the righteous humanist alliance, and the mad genius hellbent on domination. But the acting and script fall off a cliff a little more than halfway through the film. The sets are great, and the animation on the Warbeast is chaotic and amazing, which makes sense because the Director used to cut his teeth in creature effects on films like Aliens and Alien 3. 

The homages are off the charts.

Some of the examples I picked up on were sound effects from Doom, Masters of the Universe toys that decorate Dante’s office, a Daffy Duck impression from Brad Dourif, a battle cry from Street Fighter, as well as the Warbeast resembling a Mouser from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The names of the characters as well are tributary. Some are identical: John Carpenter, Scott Ridley (Ridley Scott), Jack Dante (Joe Dante), Weyland, Yutani (Alien).

There was too much whimsy and cheeky humor inserted for the tone of the film and could have used some fine-tuning. But I feel it was just on the cusp of being a classic sci-fi/horror.

FAMOUS FACES

Brad Dourif (Dante): you know him, you love him, he’s everyone’s favorite good guy. He always brings the same quality of maniacal energy and really excels as the bad guy, but no role was as iconic and great as that of our friend Chuck in Child’s Play. 

He has since become a Rob Zombie regular (31 and Three from Hell), but Richard Brake (Ridley) showed he has the propensity for villainy in what I felt was an underappreciated role. He really stood out, and it was a shame he was killed off so early as he seemed to have an insurmountable level of maddening bravado.

William Hootkins (John Carpenter) is probably most famous as Porkins (Red Six) in Star Wars. He also played Eckhart in Tim Burton’s Batman.

Rachel Weisz has a brief cameo in this her first feature, and would later go on to star in The Mummy series and marry James Bond.

OF GRATUITOUS NATURE

The inclusion of the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching story of Cale’s daughter getting her arm flayed in a garbage disposal does nothing for the greater good of the story. It affords Pouget an opportunity to display another emotion in her repertoire. At this point, however, the script already jumped the shark.

HEARTTHROB

Ely Pouget (Hayden Cale) is a great leading lady for this genre, and her skills are emphasized in the first half of the film. She’s got Ripley’s bad-ass woman card in my opinion, and she’s beautiful to boot. She seems to have hardly aged since 1994 in most recent photographs as well.

RIPE FOR A REMAKE

This is one of those odd, hardly heard of, 90’s films that deserved better. I know it’s been given numerous cuts and a so-called definitive cut, but it could really stand to use some sound editing and unbiased clipping. It’s not sacred ground, but I would rather it see a clean pass rather than a clean slate.

SPAWNS

No progeny to report.

WHERE TO WATCH

An uncut Blu-ray was released in Germany (the version I watched). If you don’t feel like paying up for it, you can stream on Amazon Prime, Roku, Vudu, or Plex.

Saturday Matinee: Cold Souls

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You may say it’s my soul, but it looks to me like a garbanzo bean

By Roger Ebert

Source: RogerEbert.com

Would an actor sell his own soul for a great performance? No, but he might pawn it. Paul Giamatti is struggling through rehearsals for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and finds the role is haunting every aspect of his life. His soul is weighed down, it tortures him, it makes his wife miserable. He sees an article in the New Yorker about a new trend: People are having their souls extracted for a time, to lighten the burden.

The man who performs this service is Dr. Flintstein, whose Soul Storage service will remove the soul (or 95 percent of it, anyway) and hold it in cold storage. As played by a droll David Strathairn, whose own soul seems in storage for this character, Flintstein makes his service sound perfectly routine. He’s the type of medical professional who focuses on the procedure and not the patient. Giamatti, playing an actor named after himself, has some questions, as would we all, but he signs up.

“Cold Souls” is a demonstration of the principle that it is always wise to seek a second opinion. The movie is a first feature written and directed by Sophie Barthes, whose previous film was a short about a middle-aged condom tester who considers buying a box labeled “Happiness” at the drugstore. Clearly this is a filmmaker who would enjoy having dinner with Charlie Kaufman. Perhaps inspired by Kaufman’s screenplay for “Being John Malkovich,” she also credits Dead Souls, the novel by Gogol about a Russian landowner who buys up the souls of his serfs.

Gogol was writing satire, and so is Barthes. We hope that medical intervention can help us do what we cannot do on our own: Focus better, look younger, lose weight, cheer up, be smarter. If only it were as simple as taking a pill. Or, in Giamatti’s case, lying on his back to be inserted into a machine looking uncannily like a pregnant MRI scanner.

His soul is successfully extracted and kept in an airtight canister. He’s allowed to see it. It has the size and appearance of a chickpea. Lightened of the burden, he becomes a different actor: easygoing, confident, upbeat, energetic — and awful. Rehearsals are a disaster, and he returns to Flintstein, demanding his old soul back.

This is not easily done, for reasons involving Nina (Dina Korzun), a sexy Russian courier in the black market for souls. A Russian soul is made available to Giamatti, with alarming results. All of this is dealt with in the only way that will possibly work, which is to say, with very straight faces. The material could be approached as a madcap comedy, but it’s funnier this way, as a neurotic, self-centered actor goes through even more anguish than Chekhov ordinarily calls for.

I suppose “Cold Souls” is technically science fiction. There’s a subset involving a world just like the one we inhabit, with only one element changed. In an era of Frankenscience, “Cold Souls” objectifies all the new age emoting about the soul and inserts it into the medical-care system. Certainly if you have enough money to sidestep your insurance company, a great many cutting-edge treatments are available. And soul extraction is not such a stretch when you reflect that personality destruction, in the form of a pre-frontal lobotomy, was for many years medically respectable. Insert an ice pick just so, and your worries are over.

I enjoy movies like this, which play with the logical consequences of an idea. Barthes takes her notion and runs with it, and Giamatti and Strathairn follow fearlessly. The movie is rather evocative about the way we govern ourselves from the inside out. One of Nina’s problems is that she has picked up little pieces from the souls of all other people she has carried. Don’t we all?

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Watch Cold Souls on Plex here: https://watch.plex.tv/movie/cold-souls

Saturday Matinee: Everything Everywhere All at Once

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“Everything Everywhere All at Once” Review — Don’t Forget To Breathe

By Sergiu Inizian

Source: Medium

In 2016, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (known collectively as Daniels) premiered their feature debut at the Sundance Film Festival. Swiss Army Man stunned audiences with a bizarre premise and is still one of the oddest films to come out of the prestigious festival.

It is a movie in which the emotional weight gets swallowed by a nevertheless entertaining childish cinematic approach. But it’s also a test run for Everything Everywhere All at Once, a whirlwind of a movie that brings so much more to the screen than downright weirdness.

The Daniels tell the story of Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese-American woman who runs a laundromat with her easy-going husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). She is discouraged by life, has marital problems, and is unable to communicate with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu). On top of it all, she is at a loss when trying to challenge her father (James Hong) about past trauma or present issues.

Yeoh infuses so much dignity into Evelyn, a struggling mother who quietly looks for answers to her personal problems while trying to put the family business in order. Her two priorities are organizing a Chinese New Year party and successfully dealing with an IRS audit.

But, in the IRS building, a wholly changed Waymond introduces her to the Multiverse, a collection of realities that hosts endless versions of Evelyn. This is revealed to her because she is the one powerful enough to combat an entity that desires to destroy the fabric of reality.

What ensues next is a kaleidoscopic montage of possibility that showcases the protagonist’s alternate lives with gripping vigor. This interdimensional music video entertains through dynamic genre mashups, marvelous colors, and an eclectic Son Lux soundtrack. The directors decorate their psychedelic narrative with an abundance of references that range from arthouse drama to “Avengers-style” heroics and to completely silly antics.

At the center of the polychromatic experience, Evelyn is tasked to make sense of it all. Michelle Yeoh is fearless in her multifaceted role, bringing nuance and honesty to a captivating madhouse of a film. Within the Multiverse, Yeoh’s wide-open eyes pierce through all the outlandish embroidery and stand as the film’s brightest marvels.

Underneath the sci-fi-infused cinematic experience, the Daniels reveal an attentive treatment of sorrow, generational conflict, and reconciliation. The portrayal of familial disconnect especially absorbed me: Evelyn is both a mother and daughter and yet she finds herself in the middle of a discord that spans three generations. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the fractures of reality pale in comparison to the emotional ruptures that define Evelyn’s family.

While the visual experience of the massive Multiverse can be overwhelming at times, the directors know when to hit the pause button and insert quiet moments, allowing the characters to shine. Ke Huy Quan steals the show in these scenes, especially in the universe in which Evelyn is a famous actress. He brings so much authenticity to the kind, hopeful Waymond and his presence is a fitting companion to Yeoh’s mesmerizing performance.

In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels create so many layers for the seemingly mundane story of Evelyn. It’s a breathtaking journey that deals with life’s “what-ifs” and entertains through sheer ambition. It also embraces a charming message which showcases the wonder of cinema and the craft of the quirky directorial pair: regardless of how seemingly ordinary a destiny is, it always involves plenty of fantasy, mystery, and hope.

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Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/movie/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-michelle-yeoh/16497128

When Black Mirror’s Dystopia Becomes Our Reality

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Exploring the Impact of Black Mirror’s Predictive Technologies on Society and Ethics

By Nolan Clarke

Source: Medium

In the eerie twilight between fiction and reality, the anthology series “Black Mirror” has captivated audiences with its unnerving portrayal of technological advancements and their potential consequences. As we stand on the brink of a new era, it’s both fascinating and disconcerting to contemplate which of these technologies might soon transcend the screen and become part of our everyday lives. In this exploration, we delve into the dark corridors of possibility, uncovering the most disturbing technologies from “Black Mirror” that could become real in the near future.

The Grains of Memory: ‘The Entire History of You’

In the episode ‘The Entire History of You’, characters have ‘grains’ implanted behind their ears, recording everything they see and hear. This technology is not too far off from the reality we are inching towards with the continuous advancement in augmented reality (AR) and wearable tech. Companies like Google and Facebook are already experimenting with AR glasses. Imagine a world where every conversation and every event in your life is recorded, rewound, and scrutinized. The implications for privacy and mental health are profound, opening up a pandora’s box of ethical dilemmas.

The Echoes of Social Acceptance: ‘Nosedive’

In ‘Nosedive’, society is ruled by social ratings, with every interaction affecting one’s societal status. This dystopian vision mirrors the existing social credit systems and online rating platforms. China’s social credit system, for instance, rewards or punishes citizens based on their behavior. The psychological impact of living in a society where one’s worth is constantly judged and quantified is alarming, leading to a performative existence devoid of authenticity.

The Haunting Presence of the Dead: ‘Be Right Back’

This episode brings to life an AI that imitates the deceased, based on their online presence. With advancements in AI and deep learning, creating digital personas of the departed is not far-fetched. Companies are already developing chatbots based on deceased individuals’ online data. The moral implications are significant, raising questions about grief, closure, and the ethics of digitally resurrecting the dead.

The Tyranny of Surveillance: ‘Arkangel’

‘Arkangel’ presents a future where children are monitored through neural implants, giving parents omnipresent surveillance capabilities. This reflects the growing trend of helicopter parenting and the use of technology to track children. With GPS trackers and smartphone monitoring apps already prevalent, the leap to neural implants doesn’t seem too distant. The invasion of privacy and loss of childhood independence are stark reminders of the dangers of over-surveillance.

The Price of Convenience: ‘Crocodile’

In ‘Crocodile’, memories can be externally accessed and displayed. With tech giants already exploring brain-computer interfaces, the concept of accessing thoughts or memories isn’t purely fictional. Neuralink, for instance, aims to create devices that can be implanted in the human brain. The ethical implications of such technology are immense, potentially threatening the very sanctity of our thoughts and experiences.

The Dark Side of Entertainment: ‘White Bear’

‘White Bear’ shows a world where punishment is turned into a form of entertainment. While this may seem extreme, the proliferation of reality TV and online shaming cultures points towards a society increasingly desensitized to the exploitation of human suffering for entertainment. The blurring lines between justice and voyeurism highlight a disturbing aspect of human nature.

Conclusion: A Reflection on Our Path Forward

As these “Black Mirror” technologies creep from fiction to reality, we must tread cautiously, balancing innovation with ethical responsibility. We stand at a crossroads, where the choices we make today will shape the morality and humanity of our technological tomorrow. In the end, it’s not just about the technology we create, but the reflection of ourselves that we see in it — a black mirror showing us who we might become if we’re not careful.

Saturday Matinee: The Wandering Earth II

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By Simon Abrams

Source: RogerEbert.com

Time runs out in carefully marked units in the mainland Chinese sci-fi disaster pic “The Wandering Earth II,” a sturdy prequel to the record-smashing adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel. In “The Wandering Earth II,” the apocalyptic problems faced by this movie’s Chinese characters—along with their international peers from the United Earth Government (UEG)—have already happened. Because in “The Wandering Earth,” the planet has already left its orbit thanks to some high-powered rocket engines, which have pushed the Earth out of harm’s way (aka a crash course with the Sun). Set in the near-future—a range of dates that includes 2044, 2058, and 2065—“The Wandering Earth II” follows China’s men and women of action as they lead the planet out of the solar system and into the previous movie.

Both “The Wandering Earth” and its sequel are flashy, state-approved cornball spectacles about humanity’s resilience (especially the Chinese). Both movies were produced with gargantuan budgets that would make even James Cameron blink, and they both look fantastic thanks to director Frant Gwo’s eye for panoramic scope and paperback cover-worthy details. The main difference between these two blockbusters is that the protagonists of “The Wandering Earth II” must repeatedly choose to be hopeful despite perpetually impending disasters, each one of which is neatly labeled and foregrounded with pulpy on-screen text like “The Lunar Crisis in 12 hours” and “Nuclear explosion in 3 hours.”

In this way, Gwo (“The Sacrifice”) and his five credited co-writers succeed in refocusing our attention on scenes of ticking-clock suspense, sandwiched between syrupy—and mostly satisfying—melodramatic interludes, where square-jawed astronauts and UEG diplomats struggle to do what we know is a foregone conclusion.

Most of “The Wandering Earth II” follows the superhuman efforts needed to jumpstart the Moving Mountain Project, the mission to first build and then deploy the globe-shifting engines needed to push the Earth out of harm’s way. The UEG’s Chinese delegation, led by the paternal diplomat Zhezhi Zhou (Li Xuejian), recommends prioritizing the Moving Mountain Project instead of the Digital Life Project. This radical initiative would transfer human participants’ consciousnesses into artificially intelligent computer programs. Some Digital Life supporters try to sabotage the Moving Mountain Project, including a deadly attack on the Space Elevator transportation ships that send UEG representatives from the Earth to the Moon.

Nobody living through the events of “The Wandering Earth II” knows what we know: That the Moving Mountain project succeeds and eventually becomes the Wandering Earth project, which comes under threat by a HAL 9000-esque artificial intelligence (A.I.) named MOSS in the first film. Still, multiple scientists, government officials, and space adventurers—mostly Chinese—believe in their work’s vital necessity, whether they’re punching out saboteurs or detonating one of a couple hundred nuclear devices scattered around the moon. There’s a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing along the way, mostly from English and Russian-speaking UEG members, all of whom speak in stilted, poorly dubbed dialogue. But Chinese astronauts, like “The Wandering Earth” co-leads Liu Peiqiang (“Wolf Warrior 2” star Wu Jing) and Han Duoduo (Wang Zhi), always prove Zhou’s slogan-simple maxim: “In times of crisis, unity above all.”

Some melancholic (and occasionally maudlin) flashbacks and dialogue emphasize the personal motives of one-note characters who, in the movie’s best scenes, are just parts of a beautiful post-human landscape. Liu remembers his wife and young daughter while melancholic scientist Tu Hengyu (Andy Lau) talks with his dead child after he uploads her personality into an experimental A.I. program; she cries a lot and sometimes responds with existentially troubling questions like, “Where am I, daddy? I want to get out.” We’re then periodically reminded of the next impending crisis—“the moon disintegrates in 50 hours”—in between solar storms and nuclear explosions. Somehow, “The Wandering Earth II” never feels tonally unbalanced or narratively convoluted, partly because Gwo and his collaborators keep their movie’s plot focused on feats of action-adventure heroism.

“The Wandering Earth II” only seems relatively unambitious because it’s more focused on sap-happy human emotions than on dystopian intrigue. Both movies are still essentially showcases for beautiful and expensive-looking computer graphics. But “The Wandering Earth II”—a brittle and, at heart, old-fashioned space opera—would be insufferable if Gwo and his ensemble cast members didn’t sell you on the possibility that someday, people who are as selfless, monomaniacal, and capable as Liu and Tu could exist.

“The Wandering Earth II” is also like “The Wandering Earth” because it’s just the right mix of silly and somber. Hurt, scared people wonder about the recent past, but always from a rare position of forward-thinking emotional clarity. (“She’s dead, and that’s it. That’s the reality.”) So when humanity must inevitably save the day, their accomplishments are appropriately surreal and awesome. 

Saturday Matinee: The Artifice Girl

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By Sheila O’Malley

Source: RogerEbert.com

The fears and possibilities of Artificial Intelligence have probably lurked in the human brain since human beings started telling stories. Pygmalion and his statue could be seen as members of the AI Universe. So, too, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But A.I. has moved out of science-fiction and into reality, impacting various workplaces in ways which would have seemed far-fetched just a couple of years ago. Franklin Ritch’s “The Artifice Girl” is a thought-provoking film that examines the ethics of A.I., moving into even the existential aspects of the concept of artificial intelligence. Any deep inquiry into A.I. is also an inquiry into what it means to be human. Ritch, who wrote, directed, and also appears in the film, keeps the story tightly controlled, so the sole focus is on the mental and emotional challenges facing us when we’re dealing with our preconceived notions of reality and authenticity.

This calls to mind “Blade Runner,” and its source material, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? If a memory is implanted into an android’s brain, a “personal” memory of a childhood that never happened, then isn’t that memory a real thing to the android? The android can’t tell the difference. It feels real. At a certain point, what is or is not “real” is irrelevant. This is when things get unsettling, and “The Artifice Girl” sits in that very unsettling place.

Broken up into three sections, each of which is about half an hour long, “The Artifice Girl” starts off in a very small, dark, windowless room, where a man named Gareth (Ritch) has been brought in for questioning. The two agents in charge (Sinda Nichols and David Girard) take a very rough approach, terrifying and intimidating Gareth (who is not as naive as he initially appears). The issue is an ongoing project designed to combat the spread of pedophiles and predators operating online, devising technological ways to lure these perverted creeps out into the open. Their newest tactic is Cherry (Tatum Matthews), a digitally created nine-year-old girl who hangs out in chat rooms, going on live chats, logging her persistent viewers, the ones who show up, who message her. She’s an effective decoy. She has also developed beyond her original programming, beyond the humans who designed her.

“The Artifice Girl” isn’t plot-heavy. Each scene occurs in a single location, making the film extremely claustrophobic. The characters sit or stand, or pace in windowless rooms, grappling with weighty subjects, throwing around references to the Turing Test, game theory, the uncanny valley, and NLP; all while trying to deal with the complications surrounding either the sentience of “Cherry“, or their own perception of her sentience. In one scene, Gareth and the two agents argue over whether or not Cherry, the digitized child, can consent to something. She looks so real. The thought of her in all those chat rooms is horrifying. It’s almost like the “adults” in charge of Cherry have to keep reminding themselves: “She’s not real, she’s not real, she’s not real.”

To speak more about how the story is structured would be to give too much away. Ritch’s script is thoughtful and intense, making “The Artifice Girl” a mentally engaging and challenging work. The small cast is excellent, particularly young Matthews, whose dialogue is dauntingly technical and delivered in a monotone. There’s a lot of dialogue, and yet “The Artifice Girl” doesn’t feel like it’s too “talky” (except for the third and final scene, where the long monologues drag). The issues at hand are intellectual and cerebral as much as emotional. There’s a great moment where Cherry, the A.I., is being questioned about what she feels about something. Cherry replies, in a flat voice, “Human nature is not something I aspire to.” Considering all she has “seen” online, one can’t blame her.

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