Tag Archives: Science Fiction

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CAPSULE: OMNI LOOP (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Bernardo Britto

FEATURING: Mary-Louise Parker, Ayo Edebiri

PLOT: A retired scientist uses pills that send her back exactly one week in time to try to find a (time travel-based) cure before the black hole growing in her chest kills her.

Still from omni loop (2024)

COMMENTS: Omni Loop wisely puts its best scene up front. In a hospital corridor, a doctor delivers a diagnosis worthy of : Zoya has an incurable black hole growing in her chest. As he delivers the news that she has only about a week to live to her stunned daughter and husband, a crowd of doctors, nurses and orderlies in the background erupt in shouts and applause.

Sadly, this may be the last time you laugh during Omni Loop, which teases itself as a fantastical comedy, then turns into a serious seep dramatic dive character study. The inexplicable black hole and a pill that enables time travel (rewinding the swallower’s life by exactly one week) is joined by one other worthy absurdist touch: the Nanoscopic Man, a victim of a scientific experiment (and a quantum 21st century update on a classic sci-fi B-movie hero).

Now, the black hole and the Nanoscopic Man are two elements worthy of a weird movie, but like the film’s flirtation with comedy, weirdness is not something Omni Loop is willing to lean into. In fact, these plot pieces are completely superfluous; if you just replace the black hole with cancer and the Nanoscopic Man with any sort of scientific gizmo that performs the same function, you will have essentially the same movie. And perhaps the movie would even better without its scintilla of surrealism, which distracts you from taking the characters and their world seriously. The science fiction angle, as well, is barely addressed—there is no transformative technology and no meaningful special effects, its just two women talking about arbitrary scientific theories necessary to advance the plot—but sci-fi at least supplies the film’s essential premise.

That’s not to say Omni Loop is a bad film. On the contrary, it’s cleverly constructed, even if the script seems bit padded at times. The performances are excellent. Mary-Louise Parker conveys the proper sense of a smart, driven woman who’s also understandably conflicted, at times sad, at times weary of living through the same week over and over for what could be several lifetimes worth of research. Edebiri does as well as possible with a less-developed character (a little time could have been taken away from Zoya and devoted to Paula’s personal trauma in order to raise the stakes of the story). The film even raises an interesting moral dilemma: what happens to all those alternate timelines when Zoya takes the pill and resets her personal history? In attempting to save a single version of herself, is she creating an unforgivable multitude of grieving families spread across multiple realities? In the end, the movie settles into a message that fits organically into Zoya’s persona as a high-achieving scientist who’s left it all behind to raise a family, and who’s struggling with regret over missed opportunities. The movie’s resolution is unambiguous, and the resolution of Zoya’s internal struggle feels a bit obvious, but the core message is a meaningful. It’s just a shame that the movie is intent on hopping about through distracting comedy, absurdism, and science fiction, instead of focusing on what really matters to it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The result, pleasant enough but frustratingly bland, exists in a soupy, ill-defined emotional middle ground—occasionally amusing but not quite funny, and unable (or unwilling) to substantively commit to thoughtful, penetrating melancholia…  Given the relative lack of absurdism present elsewhere, these [weird] bits aren’t so much whimsical background details as candy sprinkles on a savory casserole.”–Brent Simon, AV Club (contemporaneous)

Omni Loop [DVD]

Omni Loop [DVD]
  • "… a really well-done piece of Sci-fi story telling" - RogerEbert.com
  • 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score!
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MYTH OF MAN (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Jamin Winans

FEATURING: Laura Rauch, Anthony Nuccio, Ian Hinton, Martin Angerbauer, Sidney Edwards

PLOT: Ella desperately seeks information which might lead her to god before she succumbs to death from a brush with an incendiary fog.

Still from Myth of Man (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Winans’ world, characters, score, and all that work so well together as a unit that the Myth of Man feels completely natural. But—this is a dialogue-free adventure quest set in a cotton-candy dystopia featuring neat gizmos and unconventional physics whose heroine is a deaf and mute messiah seeking an interstellar artist-creator-god. This strangeness cannot be overlooked merely because it is so credibly conveyed by the filmmakers.

COMMENTS: The first thing which catches your eye is the glowing rectangle on Ella’s shoulder. It pulses a soft green color as she looks about her train car. An unkempt youth enters the carriage, his indicator flickering red. Shunned by the others—all of whom feature blinking green—Ella is struck by the tragedy, and goes over to the sickly boy. He dies soon thereafter, but not before Ella hands him an odd, humanoid figurine of wire; on his passing she clasps his hand, and feels something, nearly seeing it.

Our first brush with Myth of Man lays out much of the groundwork. Not only do we understand the odd “HUD” system in place, but plenty of other things: this is a visual world, as necessitated by the protagonist’s circumstances. Ella’s eyes wander constantly (typically accompanied by a subtle smile), as she takes in the ambient wonders of her day-to-day existence. Great machines whir in the background and foreground; cybernetic telepathy enhancements summon a dazzling animation of a Creator; black-market medicine extracts the incipient humors of death; and warning systems blare scarlet at the approach of the frequent death clouds that descend upon the metropolis.

Jamin Winans’ latest film continues his tradition of low-cost, high-impact marvels. With nods to City of Lost Children‘s technological elements, as well as the defiant triumph of humanity lurking under the surface in Brazil, he paints us a picture of a futuristic society existing under the omnipresence of cindering doom (the effects of the gas are unlike anything I’d seen before) in a society which manifests as something of a reluctant police state. Eye-popping visuals abound, and Ella’s cryptic forays into the afterlife astound with their windswept vistas of photographs and assembled flip-book recollections. The enchantment worms its way quickly into the viewer, so once the inevitable tragedy falls, the whole exercise feels not only satisfying, but rational; even though we’ve just undergone a strange and fabulous dream.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Part animated, part live action, part surrealism, and 100% without dialogue, Myth of Man is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”–Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: ASH (2025)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Aaron Paul

PLOT: An astronaut finds herself stranded on an outpost on an alien planet with the rest of the crew missing or dead, and no memory of what happened.

Still from Ash (2025)

COMMENTS: Eight years ago, when we first heard that trippy electrojazz musician Flying Lotus (AKA Steven Ellison) would be trying his hand out at filmmaking, we were excited for multiple reasons. His experimental Afrofuturist aesthetic made it unlikely he would go down a conventional cinematic path; we expected his movies to be as weird as his beats (and his cosmic album covers). There was the hope he would extend the psychedelic lineage of his great aunt Alice Coltrane. And another African-American presence on the weird movie scene would be welcome; it’s a bit embarrassing that weird is so white. So when the first trailer for his debut feature Kuso dropped—with its colorful fuzzy aliens with TV monitor faces, George Clinton as a hip physician, and what looked like an uncooked Thanksgiving turkey flying through the Los Angeles sky—anticipation ramped up into the stratosphere.

But Kuso, which turned out to be more with an NC-17 rating than with a ian spin, arrived as a major letdown. Juvenile, scatological, and borderline undistributable, it quickly and quietly sank out of most weirdophiles’ subconsciousnesses, despite a few collages and images that worked as standalone surrealist stills. An installment in the fifth installment of the long-spent V/H/S horror anthology franchise kept Lotus’ name alive as a filmmaker, but suggested little redemption. Still, when it was announced in 2022 that Neil Blomkamp was backing Lotus in making a relatively large budgeted sci-fi feature (originally to star Tessa Thompson and ), hope sprung up again that he would realize his promise.

The fact that I’ve opened this review by spending so much time on Lotus’ career, rather than his new movie, may clue you in to the main conclusion about Ash: it’s OK. It’s neither good enough nor bad enough to earn much in the way of analysis, or even to be the lede in its own review. Let’s stress this: Ash isn’t bad, and it has its own pleasures, entirely sensory rather than intellectual. The acting by the two leads is good. The ambiance is great: the spacecraft interiors have that fluorescent Alien light, but mostly served up through red (sometimes blue and green) filters. The expressionism in the lighting is influenced by Suspiria, and even more so , whom Lotus consulted for advice. The extraterrestrial planet’s design comes from the “Yes”-album-cover-come-to-life school of sci-fi mise en scène, complete with floating rocks in the sky and a swirling pink mandala. The film’s best sci-fi doodad is the Japanese-speaking medical bot that performs surgeries or autopsies with equal, and sometimes inappropriate, cheerfulness. The music, surprisingly, is generic science fiction ambiance, functional but tending to fade into the background. (It would be interesting to hear Lotus’ original score, which he wrote first and then discarded when he decided it didn’t fit with the movie’s tone.)

The script is, at best, a medium for the visuals. Astronaut alone in a planetary outpost with amnesia, rest of crew appear to be victims of foul play, another astronaut arrives to investigate… it pretty much writes itself. The opening is strong enough, but soon it bogs down, with a second act that fails to generate meaningful paranoia between Eiza’s character and Paul’s (or between Eiza’s character and herself), stumbling into a third act that’s overstuffed with violence and a complete explanation of the story’s rather mild mysteries. You’re unlikely to be surprised by the story’s resolution, but like most other things about the movie it’s… satisfactory.

In a post-Ash “Variety” interview, Flying Lotus says “I would love to do another film soon if the right thing happens, but I’m definitely not in a hurry to get back into it.” He remains a musician first; he doesn’t have a burning passion to make films. This feels like a film that was made by someone with skill, but without a burning passion.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film’s seductive and trippy aesthetics help mask the overall dullness of this two-person chamber drama.”–Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter (contemporaneous)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DETENTION (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Joseph Kahn

FEATURING: Shanley Caswell, Josh Hutcherson, Spencer Locke, Aaron David Johnson, Dane Cook

PLOT: A serial killer is loose in the halls of Grizzly Lake High, and there may be a connection with events 20 years in the past; only a pair of eye-rolling millennials, uncool vegetarian klutz Riley and popular slacker screwup Clapton, can save the day.

Still from Detention (2011)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Plenty of movies like to subvert audience expectations by mixing genres and deploying radical shifts in tone. Yet it’s hard to recall a film that pursues these goals with such ruthlessness, rapidity, and thoroughness as Detention. The filmmakers practically carpet-bomb the audience with twists, references, and backstories, producing a tale of such density the only people who could possibly keep track of it all are the men who made it. Detention is a movie that would make Dennis Miller say, “Whoa, Chachi, dial it back with the pop culture smorgasbord.”

COMMENTS: The opening credits of Detention are the essence of the whole film in microcosm: exceedingly clever, with names appearing in every possible location: sneaker brand, chocolate bar, upchuck in a urinal. (The director reserves that last one for himself.) Several have even been thoughtfully chosen to match, like the costume designer’s name stitched on a letter jacket or the sound designer appearing on a fire alarm. The flip side to this visual wit is that the names go by so quickly, amidst so much activity and chaos, that there is precious little opportunity to take the information in. The signal is overwhelmed by the noise, and you feel assaulted rather than edified. This will become a theme.

Even if Detention weren’t determined to be some kind of tonal chimera, it would still be a massive millennial snarkfest. The first five minutes play out as a kind of Clueless-meets-Scream, as a too-cool ice princess outlines the secret to high school success (complete with whip-pan edits and onscreen text) before having her head briskly removed from her body. It’s a whole postmodern vibe, and it telegraphs the desire of director Kahn and co-screenwriter Mark Palermo to pile on the jokes and references like so many hats on hats. But this is just an appetizer. The movie adds characters and plotlines like courses in a fancy meal. After introductions to our heroes, all the other high school archetypes get their turns in the spotlight, including the blond cheerleader, the lunkhead jock, the nerdy sidekick, the tech wizard, the bitter administrator… heck, even the stuffed bear that serves as the school’s mascot gets its own storyline. But Detention finds its own path by layering on incongruous genre elements that stupefy with their appearance. Time travel, UFOs, body swapping, predestination paradox, Cronenbergian body horror, and even a Minority Report-style touchless interface are among the twists and turns that arrive unexpectedly.

It’s tempting to view Detention as a parody or send-up of horror and teen comedy genres, and it does work on that level. But Kahn is such a committed nerd that you have to take all the sci-fi tropes as legitimate ventures into the genre. For all the seeming randomness of each new element, the film studiously connects everything in the end. No matter how arbitrary – a cheesy horror film within the film, a teenager obsessed with the 90s, a legend of a student engaging in sexual congress with a stuffed animal – it all ties into the plot. And cast’s commitment to playing every bizarre left turn earnestly (especially Caswell, who should have found a springboard to stardom here) helps keep you engaged, even as the dense plot pushes you away.

Kahn, an incredibly successful music video director, is excited for the opportunity to try his hand at the big-screen format. (He reportedly provided the bulk of the budget himself.) He’s willing to take his lumps – one student speaks disparagingly of his debut feature Torque, while another snarkily references the coke habits of music video directors – and he puts his experience to work on some appealingly offbeat setpieces. Easily the film’s highlight is a montage of one student’s 19-year-long detention, a one-shot tour backwards through changing fashion styles and popular music of the day. But Kahn also refuses to let a moment be a moment, and every bit of wackiness is decorated with more wackiness, so that there’s no real opportunity to take any of it in. Like a McFlurry with a dozen different mix-ins, it’s undeniably sweet, but dizzying and ultimately too much.

For a film as cravenly derivative as Detention, there’s honestly nothing quite like it. It stands as a fascinating artifact, a celluloid Katamari Damacy collecting genres and tropes and stereotypes into one big stew. It’s a piece of pop art, fascinating to observe even if difficult to admire.   

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A seriously (and unapologetically) bizarre piece of work… while Kahn deserves some credit for attempting something different within the teen-movie genre, Detention is simply (and finally) too weird and too off-the-wall to become anything more than a mildly amusing curiosity.” – David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews

(This movie was nominated for review by David. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Detention

Detention
  • Blu-ray
  • AC-3, Blu-ray, Dolby
  • English (Audio Description), German (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
  • 1
  • 93
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Capsules

CAPSULE: LOVE ME (2024)

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Love Me is available on VOD for purchase or rental.

DIRECTED BY: Andrew Zuchero, Sam Zuchero

FEATURING: ,

PLOT: After the apocalypse wipes out Earth’s entire population, an AI-equipped buoy connects with an AI-equipped satellite that holds a digital record of humanity, and together they decide to recreate a human relationship in virtual reality.

Still from love me (2024)

COMMENTS: Love Me, the debut feature from real-life married couple Andrew and Sam Zuchero, debuted at Sundance in 2024 to underwhelming reviews, but managed to get a theatrical release a year later based on the strength of stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. The overall reaction to the film has been tepid, both from critics (who have tended to find it too obvious) and audiences (who have tended to find it too outlandish). Still, although not without flaws—including an unwillingness to pursue the most interesting ideas it raises—Love Me is original and adventurous enough to elevate it above the usual dreck that litters the romance genre.

Although the core romantic relationship inevitably falls into cliché (including the mildly offensive trope of a hysterical girlfriend who demands every detail be storybook perfect as a way of eluding her own insecurities), the film feeds off its high concept post-apocalyptic premise. The most interesting part of Love Me, in fact, is its nearly experimental opening, which shows a spinning globe briefly shrouded in a flash of nuclear flame, before zooming into the planet for a time lapse montage showing the passage of innumerable days. Stewart’s smart buoy, equipped with a scanner shaped like an eye, clicks to life and her speech module gets stuck on stutter mode as her programming resets, post-apocalypse. Meanwhile, Yuen’s satellite, a kind of eternally revolving monument to humanity containing  pedabytes of data, is already fully operational. The two beings connect and, via the satellite’s archive, try to reconstruct what it means to be a human being (in the 21st century, at least).

The film’s take on A.I. remains willfully unexamined (the movie is not about A.I. at all; the characters could just as well have been aliens). The answer as to how these machines developed emotions like loneliness and curiosity is a little thing called “willing suspension of disbelief.” Love Me‘s technological focus is more on current Internet culture and social media, and the take seems positive enough at first: the A.I.s effectively investigate human behavior through YouTubes and memes, encountering genuine human miracles like baby laughter reinforcement loops. As the film goes on, this attitude develops more a satirical edge, as it becomes clear that modeling a relationship on an influencer’s Instagram feed won’t lead to an accurate simulacrum of human connection. But the attempt creates a dual romantic metaphor for the film. On a shallow level, it’s a warning about the destructive influence of the unobtainable sanitized fantasies presented on social media as model lifestyles, as the buoy slaves to in vain to perfectly recreate a spicy quesadillas/whimsical onesie/”Friends” marathon date night video she’s seen starring an Instagrammer (also played by Stewart). On a deeper level, one on which the viewer must do most of his or her own work, Love Me can be viewed as an existential parable about persona and authenticity. The buoy and the satellite can only meaningfully interact in a shared virtual reality where they are represented by their chosen avatars—which is almost a religious scenario, when you think about it.

The film’s audiovisual elements are good, for the budget. Many reviewers complained about the midfilm virtual reality section being too long and repetitive; it’s easy to see where they are coming from, even if I don’t share their level of frustration. Once the movie shifts into live action for the final act, Stewart and Yuen show real chemistry and passion (as they must, since there are no supporting actors to turn our attention to). Josh Jacober’s solo piano accompanies the film throughout, in a fashion reminiscent of a silent movie score. And the film features a one-billion year fast-forward, which sets a record by exceeding even the eons-spanning smash-cut from 2001.

While there’s no question Love Me doesn’t soar to the thoughtful heights of similarly-themed movies like Wall-E, Her, or A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, it easily exceeds the low standards we expect from the romantic movie genre. While it’s not something I’d recommend actively seeking out, if you’re a couple who finds yourself with 90 minutes to kill on an evening, you could do a lot worse on date night (for example, mail-order Mexican food and a “Friends” marathon).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a daringly weird debut, executed with real style and vision. It’s an oddity that’s bound to appeal to fans of similarly strange high-concept love stories, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”–Tasha Robinson, Polygon (contemporaneous)

Love Me [Blu-Ray]

Love Me [Blu-Ray]
  • Love Me [Blu-Ray]
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