26 Apr 2015

A.I., A.I. ... . Oh!: "Ex Machina"

By Mike Schulz

EX MACHINA

If you're a fellow fan of the high-tech Twilight Zone that is the BBC's Black Mirror and last year's Christmas special with Jon Hamm didn't sate your craving for more, you won't want to miss the sci-fi creep-out Ex Machina. (If you're not a fan of Black Mirror, which is currently streaming on Netflix, you clearly haven't watched it yet. Get cracking.) Like a 105-minute episode of that haunting anthology series, Alex Garland's quasi-futuristic morality fable boasts a simple premise that grows more complicated and nightmarish as it progresses. Also like a super-sized Black Mirror, the experience leaves you feeling a little shaken and happily freaked out, and kind of antsy to see it again.

08 Feb 2015

Blow It Out Uranus: "Jupiter Ascending," "Seventh Son," "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water," and "Two Days, One Night"

By Mike Schulz

JUPITER ASCENDING

After months of previews in the wake of its delayed release, the big-budget sci-fi spectacle Jupiter Ascending - originally scheduled for summer 2014 - finally landed this past weekend. And with its opening, a question can now be asked: Was there any point at which Warner Bros. executives seriously considered pulling the plug on writers/directors/siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski's epic stinker? Maybe when Channing Tatum was cast as a human/wolf hybrid with a blond goatee and pointy ears? Or when an incensed Russian beat the hell out of his son with a throw pillow? Or when, for the performer's first scene, the Wachowskis handed Mila Kunis an all-too-symbolic toilet brush?

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