Happy New Year

 

The Sci-Fi Gene's final theremin video of the year. Strange as it seems, the 100th anniversary of the creation of the theremin has been overshadowed a little by other events in 2020. Anyway. Wishing everyone a good 2021.

You're on mute! [Review: Sleep Dealer]

Sleep Dealer is an indie science fiction movie made in 2008 and set mostly in Mexico. I first came across it when reading an interview with the director, Alex Rivera. I recently watched it online and I think it's a beautiful film, deserving a second lease of life in this era of Zoom remote working.

 Memo (Luis Fernando Pena) is a tech geek growing up in a farming village but dreaming of escape. When catastrophe strikes his family in the form of an aerial drone attack, Memo is forced to leave. He travels to Tijuana, along the way meeting city girl and aspiring writer Luz (Leonor Varela), gets mini-jack ports inserted painfully in his arms and back, and he's ready to get work in a "sleep dealer factory" where he can plug into the VR network and control a construction robot that could be working in another country.

This movie uses near-future sci-fi concepts to tell a very personal story about oppression, exploitation and the value of life. Remote working is not safe - thanks to dodgy electronics Memo runs the risk of blindness or injury every day he clocks in. His employers don't seem to be interested in health and safety and there's little he can do. But while labour is cheap, water is expensive - following the construction of a dam, the rivers around Memo's home village have dried up Jean de Florette style and the inhabitants pay to collect water from a commercially owned and heavily guarded reservoir.

The remote working theme is interesting as it becomes a metaphor for indirect oppression - while the privileged seem to be running the world, the means of oppression are remote controlled checkpoints with machine guns, and their operators are likely to be other low-paid workers. The drone pilot is revealed to be a young American with a Mexican immigrant background and perhaps it is this connection that leads him to seek information about Memo, leading in turn to a surprising finale with elements of Star Wars or Dambusters.

There's also a Scanner Darkly-esque theme about the many aspects of surveillance: Memo and his brother watch the drone attack unfold on a live TV programme, recognizing their own village as the drone approaches its target. Luz pays her bills by literally selling her memories online, including her memories of meeting Memo - a career choice that does not bode well for their relationship.

Sleep Dealer is accidentally prophetic. In addition to the themes of remote working and social media, it's the second indie film I've seen that predicts a US-Mexico border wall. The other is Gareth Edwards debut Monsters. In this case the wall has prevented migrants coming to work in the US, and as a result the low-paid migrant workforce has become an equally low paid remote working workforce, migrating to work digitally all over the world while remaining plugged in to their factories.

As other reviewers at the time of release noted, a weaker aspect of this movie is the CGI for the aerial drones and the construction robots. While it's good enough to tell the story it's not quite convincing as real. In contrast, the practical special effects are excellent. I squirmed in empathic pain when Memo had his nodes inserted - that's one memory I won't be downloading. And the acting from all the lead characters is superb, with total commitment to role.

Overall this is a likeable and thoughtful indie sci-fi and well worth the three stars out of five I'm giving it.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Shake, Rattle and Roll [Review: Shivers]

Along with Nakatomi Plaza, Peach Trees, Wyndham Tower and the unnamed High-Rise, I have unfortunately had to add Starliner Towers to the list of high-rise buildings to avoid. It's a shame - the period architecture, the peaceful island location and the easy accessibility of the on-site swimming pool, supermarket, medical and dentist's surgeries and parasitology research lab all make it so tempting...

Shivers (also released as The Parasite Murders and They Came From Within) is a horror movie from 1975 directed by the emerging David Cronenberg and set in a tower block in Montreal. Dr. St-Luc is the resident MD tending to the inhabitants who have started to develop odd stomach complaints that are definitely not related in any way to his colleague's work on a parasitic organism designed to replace organ transplants. He is asked to investigate a suicide-homicide that took place in one of the apartments, and discovers a link to the parasites - and the possibility they have already been spread to several other residents through their fun and games.

Taking Shivers out of the context of other films, it's an uneven quality experience and mainly of interest as it shows an early Cronenberg still coming into his powers. Acting is hit and miss, sometimes sincere and convincing, sometimes melodramatic or wooden. Scenes of violence, sex or sexual violence are also variable. A few of these scenes are horribly effective, including the homicide-suicide where an older and sinister man appears to be attacking a schoolgirl, and clips of their fight are juxtaposed with a new couple being shown around the luxury tower-block. 

Other effective horror scenes betray the director's influence by his contemporary George A. Romero as the residents, turned into sex-crazed demi-zombies by the parasite, try to corner St-Luc and nurse Forsythe.  The parasite creature is fun but doesn't ever appear convincing or threatening itself - the most effective creepy scenes are the ones that don't show the creature at all but just its' trails of blood. However the legacy of this film is the continued popularity of parasite-horror, including such classics as Alien (1979), The Thing (1984), Species (1995), The Faculty (1998), the Cronenberg-inspired Slither (2008) and so on. Meanwhile Cronenberg grows in filmmaking ability and his own later films such as Videodrome and eXistenz develop the bio-horror theme further, and the high-rise genre also continues to develop - High-Rise (2015) is essentially a re-make of Shivers without the parasites.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

[Review: Thin Air]

Mars - a planet of factions. There are the Western and Chinese settlements, the corporations, the criminal underworld, the political groupings, the various military, police or security organizations... and in the middle of it all is Earthman Hakan Veil, once a unique kind of spaceship security officer, now stranded on Mars, trying to live day to day and find a way to get back to Earth. But someone with Veil's abilities can't stay hidden for ever.

Thin Air is a novel by Richard Morgan. It's unrelated to the Altered Carbon series, and takes place in the same setting as Thirteen (originally published under the title "Black Man") - a few centuries into the future, the Solar System explored and settled, genetic engineering is commonplace, but despite this humans are still as quarrelsome and pugnatious as ever, and boy bands are still a thing.

Veil was engineered from early childhood to be the ultimate deterrent on a spaceship - a hibernating one-man army to be thawed out as a last resort in the event of piracy or mutiny. His abilities come at a high cost - he's a hibernoid, only able to remain awake for nine months before he must find a hibernation chamber, and while "running hot" he has little control over his aggression and lust. Veil is also a relic - the hibernoids have been consigned to history, at least officially. 

Veil's story arc and character are also pleasantly retro. He's the wounded, traumatized tough ex-soldier a la Cormoran Strike and any number of ex-military private investigators, or the special agent with superhuman abilities a la James Bond. The novel reads like a Bond film, with plenty of supervillains, gadgets and femmes fatale to enjoy. At least in Veil's case his ability to handle weapons, vehicles and people is explained by his genetic engineering and AI enhancements - the least credible aspect of the Bond canon is the idea of a competent British civil servant.

High School Musical Of The Dead [Review: Anna and the Apocalypse]

Anna (Ella Hunt) dreads breaking the news to her father that she doesn’t want to go to University. Her father is still grieving for the death of her mother. Her best friend John is “secretly” in love with her, while their other friends Chris and Steph are tryin

g to find their voices as student filmmaker and journalist.

Anna and the Apocalypse is easily the best of the High School Musicals. Disney’s decision not to include zombies in any of the others was clearly a mistake. It’s not too serious – more Shaun than Dawn, but still with plenty of bite, and just enough blue language and young-adult themes for a Christmas movie. Zombies themselves make a poor movie enemy. They’re slow and weak except in numbers, so there always needs to be a human threat, in this case the melodramatic deputy head Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye).

The dance numbers are fun and the songs are good, very much in the HSM / Grade 4 Keyboard style. A highlight is Turning My Life Around, a bright, joyful number as Anna dances through town oblivious to the horrors around her.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Trailer:

Singalong version of Turning My Life Around

Harvest Moon [Review: Elizabeth Harvest]

Newly-wed bride Elizabeth (Abbey Lee) and her super-rich husband Henry (Ciaran Hinds) arrive at their isolated mansion to begin their honeymoon and are welcomed by Henry’s servants Claire (Carla Gugino) and Oliver (Matthew Beard). Elizabeth is shown all the riches of the house – swimming pool, endless wardrobe, wine cellar blah blah blah but there is one door Henry instructs her never to open. Henry then immediately abandons his bride for a brief work-related trip, leaving her to her own devices, and Elizabeth makes a terrible discovery – the first of many.

Elizabeth Harvest is a dark, soulful mixture of horror, sci-fi and fashion film. Although the setting is different, the twists and turns of the plot, the beautiful cinematography and the pervasive sense of loneliness reminded me of Duncan Jones' Moon.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Bring On The Wall [Review: Deep Dark]

Hermann (Sean McGrath) is a Failed Artist TM trying to express himself through the oft-neglected medium of hanging mobiles and trying to win the attention of gallery owner Devorah Klein (Anne Sorce). Hermann’s mother sends him to his rich uncle in search of a Real Job TM – but instead his uncle sends him to a dilapidated apartment to use as an artist’s retreat until he finds inspiration. So nothing weird so far. However…

In the apartment, Hermann finds a mysterious hole in the wall. Pulling a thread from the hole leads to communication with a strange entity – one who has the power to help Hermann make his mobiles into successful art. And all the poor lonely entity wants in return is Hermann’s company. What could possibly go wrong? Surely there won’t be a terrible price to pay for all that success…

Deep Dark is a lo-fi horror movie from 2015, directed by Michael Medaglia, with shades of Being John Malkovich and Little Shop Of Horrors, but with a few more WTF scenes than either.

Deep Dark also has a wicked sense of humour and a fair helping of blood, guts and other disgusting stuff, although it’s also strangely restrained at times. Not everything makes sense. For example the opening scene features a man removing a bathplug from his abdomen. It’s a great horror scene, really inventive, well done! but I have no idea how this fits in with any of the rest of the film. However for the most part this is a well plotted movie with a strong subtext. The relationship between Hermann and his somewhat unusual muse is a metaphor for the pain of the creative process. At least I hope it's a metaphor. If all artists actually have to do this then I have more respect for them than ever.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

Wayne's World [Review: Hylics]

Hylics is a role-playing-game with a surreal plasticine vibe. You play the role of Wayne, a man with a plasticine croissant head as he explores his world, meets strange beings, beefs up his stats and prepares to take on an evil plasticine warlord.

At least, that's what I think is going on. The back story is a mystery - you can talk to the many inhabitants of this world with their uniquely shaped heads, but while a few will hint or trade, most will reply in a poetic gibberish.

The plasticine world is equally mysterious and this makes it a baffling pleasure to explore. It's a large, jumbled mess of islands, buildings and dungeons.

There are also villains and monsters to fight. Combat is turn-based and there are a range of weapons to buy, spells to learn and objects to use in battle.

You will die a lot - this is part of the game. Death takes you to a plasticine plateau where you can rest, add hit points and make sandcastles before heading back through the portal and rejoining the fray.

Although Hylics may look like a low-tech 1980s game it was actually written in 2015 by Mason Lindroth.

Wayne can recruit three band members on his travels - literally as it turns out. That's Dedusmuln on the theremin.

Hylics is available at a very cheap price on Steam and will give you several hours of satisfyingly different JRPG gameplay. Just don't expect anything to make sense.

Music for a contactless age [Theremin 100]

Les Berceaux (Gabriel Fauré) on Open Theremin. I did promise to inflict further theremin "performances" on you at the beginning of the year so fair warning was given. I believe, or delude myself, that I am making progress in learning this instrument, and in the absence of any formal examinations in the UK I'm sure I'm playing at at least grade 2 standard.

It's approximately 100 years since Leon Theremin first invented this musical instrument (the first one is thought to have been built in either 1919 or 1920). The theremin is one of the earliest electronic musical instruments, and along with the laser harp it's one of a very few instruments played without any physical contact - instead two antennae detect microvoltage changes caused by movement of conductors close to them, allowing the player or thereminist to control the pitch with one hand and the volume with the other. The original theremin was based on an analogue circuit. Today there are analogue theremins such as the Etherwave, but also digital theremins such as the Open Theremin or the Theremini.

(Theremin 100 banner designed by Paul Sizer)

Midsommar Murders [Review: Midsommar]

Dani, recovering from grief after the deaths of her sister and parents, and her boyfriend Christian who wants to break up but doesn't think this is the right time, travel to Sweden with some friends to attend the midsummer celebration at a pagan commune, the Harga. They all have a happy, healing and relaxing time, there's nothing sinister about this secret community or their religious festival and there will definitely be no murders or mutilations *innocent face*.

Sorry. Midsommar is a bleak and bloody horror film about a secret commune that appears very friendly and social at the start, but it's not long before Dani and Christian are shocked to witness a ceremony where two older members of the community take their own lives by jumping from a cliff. From here the weirdness builds up quickly. The festival includes other rituals including a version of Maypole dancing as an endurance competition and a May Queen coronation, all building towards some sort of final ritual. Meanwhile there's a mysterious book, mysterious goings on at night, mysterious disappearances, mysterious glances, mysterious food and drink, mysterious lack of mobile phone signals and mysterious inability to leave the commune. As is often the case in this genre of films, this is not going to end well.

Midsommar is directed by Ari Aster, also responsible for the unsettling horror film Hereditary. Dani is played by Florence Pugh. I would describe Pugh's performances in Lady Macbeth and in this film as intense and unforgettable. Possibly because the cast is large, there are few other stand-out performances.

Horror based on pagan culture (or misunderstandings of it) is a well-developed subgenre. In some ways Midsommar is a Swedish take on The Wicker Man and there are many similarities between the films. However while Police Sergeant Howie is a sane man (if a bit of a prude) cast into an insane world, Dani is different. She's already traumatized before she arrives at the Harga and, while she is further traumatized by what she sees, she responds in unexpected ways to her situation and becomes stronger, calmer and more open to the strange ceremonies.

A horrific three stars out of five.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

They're made out of meat! [Review: Tender Is The Flesh]

The spread of a deadly virus leads to the elimination of livestock and animals in general - and to the creeping legalization of cannibalism and a future in which humans are farmed, bred and slaughtered for meat on an industrial scale.

Tender Is The Flesh (Cadaver Exquisito) is a dystopian novel by Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica. It's told from the viewpoint of Marcos, a senior manager in the "special meat" industry with a role in every stage of the lives of the "heads." Motivated by a need to pay for his father's nursing home and recoiling from his own tragedies and the breakdown of his marriage, Marcos embodies the double-think of the time, taking pride in his expertise and business success while still  aware that he is participating in an atrocity.

There are plenty of bleak, horrific novels in the dystopia genre - not least the torture-heavy 1984 and the misogynistic violence of The Handmaid's Tale or A Walk To The End Of The World. I may have become a little desensitized to literary violence but I rarely read a book that truly horrifies me - Tender Is The Flesh is a rare example of writing that stopped me in my tracks several times, even though I was still compelled to finish reading it. 

It's clear that Bazterrica has far too much time on her hands and has spent much of it figuring out just how modern intensive livestock farming could be modified to farm humans, and all the ways that those on the right side of the electric fences might maintain the sense of denial, from the euphemisms such as "heads" and "special meat" to the scientific "evidence" presented against vegetable diets, to the legal structures protecting and regulating the process, to the removal of vocal cords from farmed humans to prevent them screaming or communicating. The detailed descriptions are shocking, particularly the chapter about 30% of the way through the novel where two job applicants are taken on a tour of the slaughterhouse. And there's still time for interesting subplots - the inhabitants of an abandoned zoo, and the implications that fear of infected bird droppings might be a conspiracy promoted by the umbrella industry.

There's an obvious between-the-lines link to ethical veganism - for those of us who eat meat, are we acting on good evidence that, say, cows are not conscious beings, or are we taking that view in order to make ourselves feel better? Is it our IQ that distinguishes us from the animals - and if so would it be OK to eat a human with lower IQ than a cow?* And what of the Ameglian Major Cow, served at the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and other fine intergalactic establishments - an artificially created, sentient creature genetically programmed to offer itself up to be eaten on an entirely voluntary, consensual basis. Is that OK?**

But this novel speaks to human-on-human mistreatment too - it's about how humans dehumanize other humans in order to justify tribalism, slavery, racism, misogyny, genocide and so on, and how we give ourselves license to act in this way.

Humanity is broken in this novel - symbolised by Marcos' father, a livestock farmer whose dementia was apparently brought on following the "Transition" to human meat. Marcos and many of his generation are fully aware of the identity of "human meat" - it's an unspoken universal truth rather than a Soylent Green mystery - and they are living with the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance of treating the "heads" as both human and inhuman, in turn distorting their humanity and morality. Some go for complete "We don't eat people in this house" denial, while others embrace the Transition, such as the game hunters who are equally happy aiming at purpose-bred humans or celebrities gambling their debts on a life-or-death run, or the Scavengers who kill and eat at any opportunity. Marcos is given a chance of a kind of redemption - an opportunity to re-integrate his divided world; the actual outcome reflects just how broken we all are.

*No.
**Still no.

Faking It [Review: Parasite]

Ki-woo and his family, the Kims, live in a basement and barely scrape a living folding pizza boxes. They get what seems to be a lucky break when Ki-woo is offered the chance to become an English tutor for the daughter of the rich Park family, his sister Ki-jeong forging a college student identity to get him started. He then plans to bring the rest of his family into the Parks’ employment, finding ways to get their household staff dismissed and replaced. However this proves to be a risky strategy and it turns out the Kim family are not the only ones with secrets.

Bong Joon-Ho’s thriller won the Palme D’Or at Cannes last year and went on to win the Best Picture Oscar – the first non-English-language film to do so. It was also panned by Donald Trump (so far the only Home Alone 2 cast member to be impeached). It’s an extraordinary movie worthy of all these accolades, hitting many different notes – comedy, intrigue, heist, psychodrama, thriller and tragedy – while still telling a well-written and compelling story accelerating towards a dramatic finale. 

The acting is superb, often understated rather than melodramatic. Many performances stand out, particularly Song Kang-ho as the father of the Kims. I thought Cho Yeo-jeong’s performance as the impressionable Mrs. Park could have been played purely for comedy value but instead she comes across as sympathetic even when she falls for every trick or scam Ki-woo and the others can come up with, and it becomes clear that she is driven by her own insecurities.

Everyone in this story has different insecurities, and this is one of the many ways the movie explores its main theme of the social divide. It has a lot to say about this, and is far more interesting than simply moaning about the disproportionate wealth of the 1%, although the attitudes of the Park family towards poor people are made clear in some very tense scenes.

As with Bong Joon-Ho’s horror movie The Host, reviewed here and also starring Song Kang-ho, this movie centres on a family rather than the loners, romantic couples, friendship groups or mis-paired workers that feature in Western movies. It's fair to say that the Kims are less dysfunctional than the family of the Host. I don’t know enough about Korean culture to know if this is reflective, perhaps of a stronger family-orientated culture or a typical theme of Korean movies. Train To Busan, another Korean horror movie directed by Yeon Sang-ho, reviewed here, centres on a father-daughter bond.

I enjoyed this movie from start to finish, and no doubt Bong Joon-Ho will be happy to add the coveted Sci-Fi Gene three stars out of five to his packed trophy shelf.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

It only takes a minute girl [Review: Downsizing]

A Norwegian scientist has found a way to shrink humans to approximately 12 inches in height, meaning they have a much smaller environmental impact and incidentally can live a life of luxury on the cheap – but it’s irreversible. Occupational therapist Matt Damon and his wife Kristen Wiig are the couple trying to decide whether moving to a small community is an opportunity worth taking.

There are plenty of movies about shrinking people –Fantastic Voyage, InnerSpace, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, and of course the various appearances of Ant-Man. In all of these movies the shrinking effect is reversible and the tone tends to be a mixture of action and comedy.

Downsizing takes a different approach, the key to which is the one-way procedure which gives miniaturization a whole new meaning. This is highlighted by the shrinking process – no instantaneous shrink ray or Ant-Man suit but a prolonged and demeaning medical procedure involving removal of hair and teeth and injection with a special shrinking medicine before being anaesthetised and locked naked in a giant microwave.

It’s a little hard to describe exactly what kind of movie this is. It’s not an action movie or a thriller, and it’s not a comedy either, although there’s the occasional comic moment. There's some romance, so at least we can be sure that size isn't everything, but it's not really a romantic comedy either. Perhaps it’s a little confused – too many subplots with messages about environmental catastrophe, race, immigration, poverty, social inequality and division.

However this is first and foremost a science fiction story in the John W. Campbell sense – the downsizing is the only fantasy element, and the movie takes this concept very seriously and explores the consequences, good and bad, of this new technology and its impact on the world. The result is a thoughtful movie about the challenge of taking an irreversible step into the unknown, and how this affects relationships in which some decisions are reversible.

While most of the supporting cast are poorly developed to the point of stereotyping – flamboyant European party animal, immigrant cleaner with heart of gold and so on, Matt Damon’s lead character is the exception – he’s got enough of a backstory and personality to convince that he is not a hero or villain but a likeable Philip Dick-style everyman character trying to muddle through.

Downsizing is a B-movie, and it’s disappointing in places but occasionally thoughtful or touching. It’s been mis-promoted as a comedy in the trailers when it would be better described as a drama. I found enough positives to merit the highly coveted Sci-Fi Gene three-star rating.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.

2020 Vision

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2020, the year in which, according to Hollywood we should be racing to Mars on a desperate mission to rescue some floating M&Ms, fighting Kaiju and finding true love in our Jaegers, or hiding from dragons while teaching children about Star Wars.

I know. So disappointing when reality doesn’t match up to the movies.

I've almost finished Netflix so I’m looking forward to leaving the house and discovering some new experiences in 2020. My plans include getting to London Comic-Con and also trying some immersive science-fiction theatre – will report back if I survive. I’m also looking at all the movies coming out this year and I have no idea what to think. Ghostbusters, Top Gun and Bill and Ted are all coming back – any of which could be epic or catastrophic. On the other hand there are some originals in the line-up too, including the mysterious Chris Nolan movie Tenet, and while I don't always approve of re-makes I will probably still see the new adaptation of Dune, and I'm genuinely interested to see what Jordan Peele does with his re-imagining of Candyman.

2020 is also the 100^th anniversary of the theremin, that most science-fictiony of electronic instruments. The theremin was invented by Leon Theremin in either 1919 or 1920 – the theremin community are hedging their bets on this. I’ve continued practicing my Open Theremin, working through Carolina Eyck's book, and I’ll post some more thoughts and videos for your amusement shortly.