IO9 Movie Reviews

 

IN THE PANTHEON of naturist astro-Dracula cinema, very few films outclass Lifeforce.  Replete with astronauts behaving like they never graduated middle school and cosmic Nosferatus forgetting their pants, Lifeforce appeals to the galactic Van Helsing in us all...[Read Full Review]

IN ITALIAN DIRECTOR Dario Argento's 1996 horror-thriller The Stendhal Syndrome, his own daughter Asia Argento stars as Anna Manni, a detective investigating a series of brutal sex killings in Rome and Florence. [Read Full Review]

IN JUAN CARLOS FRESNADILLO’S 2001 fantasy noir thriller Intacto, Max von Sydow plays Samuel Berg, a Holocaust survivor who lives in a casino and steals, gambles and barters with the luck of people unfortunate enough to cross his path.

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IN AARON LIPSTATDT’S 1982 science fiction melodrama Android, Klaus Kinski plays brilliant cyberneticist (and snappy dresser) Dr. Daniel.  Don Keith Opper is Max 404, Daniel’s assistant and longtime android companion.

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THESE ARE movie and television series reviews I wrote for the online fantasy/science fiction magazine IO9.  The links in the descriptions below are to the original articles on the IO9 site.  If any of the links are broken, you can find copies of the articles on my wiki.

Encounter at Raven's Gate — which is alternatively titled Incident At Raven's Gate — is a 1988 small town alien invasion family melodrama directed by Dutch-born Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer.

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IN LOUIS MORNEAU’S 1997 time travel road thriller, Retroactive, Frank Whaley plays Brian, a physicist studying time travel. And James Belushi portrays the character Frank, a computer chip thief...and sociopathic Elvis impersonator.

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THE JIM HENSON COMPANY’S early 2000s serial space opera Farscape ran with multiple subplots, and some were more satisfying than others.  The key to getting the most out of Farscape is to focus on the conflict between human hero John Crichton and his nemesis Scorpius.

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IT WAS THE DAWN of the third age of television, many years before networks would discover the power of long-form storytelling, when Warner Brothers helped former Murder She Wrote writer J. Michael Straczynski realize his dream to cross The Lord of the Rings with Casablanca...IN SPACE!

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