Ex Machina - saw it four times since last weekend. Hadn’t seen it before and knew nothing about it, so I was very surprised when it turned out to be the best science-fiction movie since Blade Runner, and may possibly be my personal favorite science-fiction film now (well, aside from Barbarella).
Predestination - under-the-radar Ethan Hawke time travel movie. I really wish it was better directed, because the story is the most complicated time travel story I’ve seen in a movie (even putting Primer to shame), but for whatever reason I wasn’t really drawn in. It felt a bit TVish. It’s a good movie, though. I’ll give it a rewatch soon. I’m picky about time travel movies, but this is one of the few I like (the other more modern ones being Primer, Triangle, Time Crimes, and The Jacket (not a fan of Looper))
Tomorrowland - I thought it was fun and reminded me of an old fashioned serial (or something like the 1936 version of Things to Come). The story felt like it was made up as it went along, but I liked that about it. Basically, I liked it for the reasons why everybody else hated it. Don’t think I’d watch it again though.
Edge of Tomorrow - A lot better than I expected (probably why it took me this long to get around to watching it), but nothing amazing. Again, I don’t think I’ll ever need to see it again, but I thought it was better than Minority Report (which I only saw once in the theaters, so I may need to see it again before judging). Certainly better than Oblivion.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the recent one. I expected shit, but I kind of really liked the movie. Very cheesy, and I surprisingly liked the turtles (except Michelangelo). Probably my favorite depiction of Raphael, and I loved whoever they chose to do the voice of Donatello. I just wish the turtles weren’t so damn huge. It’s a mess, and objectively a pretty dire movie, but I had fun. This is coming from somebody who has a full run of the Mirage comic (up until volume 3, which I stopped collecting after around issue 15 or so) and has no fondness for the 80’s cartoon. No, I would never actually recommend this movie to anybody.
Honeymoon - pretty fun horror movie. Very 90’s in parts. If you’ve seen Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, it’s sort of a more mainstream version of that. Two people in the woods with weird crap going on. It has moments that are very satisfyingly icky.
Any other movie I’ve watched over the past week and have forgotten to write about means that it probably wasn’t very good. Oh yeah, The Martian. I wasn’t a fan and can’t really remember much about it only a few days later. EDIT: Just remembered I watched The Signal (the 2014 one, not the 2007 horror movie (which I like)), it was total shit.
Upcoming:
Hard to be a God - the three hour Russian movie you might have heard about. Looks pretty nuts, but one of my favorite movies is the nuts three hour Polish movie On the Silver Globe, so I’ll probably get some enjoyment from it.
Enemy - finally gonna watch this two years after it came out.
Goodnight Mommy - I’ve heard mixed things.
I Origins - another low key sci-fi film from the guy who made Another Earth, which I like.
Coherence - I know nothing about this movie other than it’s science fiction.
Time Lapse - another under the radar time travel movie which I know nothing about.
Womb - again, I know nothing about this other than I think it deals with somebody giving birth to their own clone, or something. I tend to be off in my preconceptions on story, because I thought Ex Machina was about a robot learning to be human (I guess in a way it is), and I thought Tomorrowland took place in a post-apocalyptic world and Tomorrowland was actually a broken down Disneyland (I’d still like to see that movie).