Movies in the Science Fiction/Thriller genre

For roughly the first half, The Gorge has all the elements of a solid, engaging thriller. It does a good job developing a mystery and establishing the characters. There’s a period of romantic playfulness as the two leads – Miles Teller’s Lev...

Slingshot is about the first manned trip to Titan but, somewhere along the way, the primary narrative is hijacked by a series of too-long flashbacks and a questionable decision to insert a late-in-the-proceedings twist. A problem with this movie, ...

Three Russians and three Americans living in harmony aboard the International Space Station (I.S.S.) – that’s the setup for Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s science fiction thriller, I.S.S. The film’s early scenes depict the day-to-day interaction...

This is what happens when a less-talented director tries to make a Christopher Nolan movie. The convoluted result – low on thrills, lower on coherence, and lowest on acting – is more confusing than compelling. Boiled down to the essential deta...

I have done my best to avoid spoilers and, although I’d love to get into specifics about what’s wrong with the movie, such an approach would require revealing plot twists. So, although I won’t go that far, some of the “comparison” movies...

With only a previous pair of features on his resume, Jordan Peele has become one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. His directorial debut, Get Out, took the cinematic world by storm. The follow-up, Us, was less crisply written a...

For her feature-film debut, Lisa Joy (Jonathan Nolan’s partner-in-crime on the HBO Westworld series) has attempted to graft futuristic elements onto an old-fashioned noir detective story. The result is disappointingly drab with contrived act...

One of the age-old questions about movies is whether a terrible ending can ruin an otherwise solid motion picture. In the case of Oxygen, the bad aftertaste from the contrived and unconvincing conclusion diminishes the experience but doesn’t...

Spoiler Warning: I’m not 100% certain what constitutes a “spoiler” for this film and what has been revealed in the trailer and/or pre-release publicity. However, it’s difficult for me to engage in a coherent discussion of the movie wit...

The scenario presented in Captive State would almost certainly have worked better in a mini-series format. The filmmakers’ low-budget approach of minimizing special effects might have allowed for an expansion of the narrative over a six or ei...