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The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

  The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)   "And then he looked around him again, at the big hotel room, the almost untouched tray of liquor, and back at Newton, reclining in bed. 'My God,' he said. 'It's hard to believe. To sit in this room and believe that I'm talking to a man from another planet.' "'Yes,' Newton said, 'I've thought that myself. I'm talking to a man from another planet too, you know.'" -from Walter Tevis’ novel, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1963)   Part 1. Background and stye(s) This film started as a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis which was strikingly Autobiographical for a work of SF; Tevis fictionally cast himself as an Outer Space Alien to explore his own feelings Isolation and his own descent into Alcoholism, wrecking all the better ambitions he held before his self-decent. Fiction granted Tevis the power to be a bit more Grandiose than a more Realistic Narrative could’ve, and in many...
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High-Life (2018)

  High-Life (2018)   Here’s a question, is Writer/Director Claire Denis more brilliant, or more frustrating?   She is probably France’s most admired current Director, but I must I admit of only seen her SF,F&H (so only two of her eighteen features, “Trouble Every Day (2001) and this film). She goes beyond subverting Genre Expectations, she achieves wholly new narratives when exploring the familiar Tropes. But she can also fail at the intimacy she seeks because she’s most comfortable with an Art-House archness. I say, “Trouble Every Day” is merely frustrating, but “High Life” is both frustrating and brilliant.   “High Life” addresses one of those questions SF prose Authors let bang around in their heads while looking for the next story, but I can’t think of another serious attempt to address it in cinema. It has to do with the Speed of Light (SoL), that speed limit that apparently is unbreakable, the Physical Law that denies us the Stars (the very clos...
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Okja (2017)

  Okja (2017)   South Korea (SK) has a weird relationship with the USA. The USA seems to think SK owes us something, after all, we saved them, at great cost, from the worse-than-merely Communist Lunacy of the Kim Dynasty in North Korea (NK) in the first significant Hot War of the Cold War (the Korean War dragged on from 1950-1953) and we have secured the border between the two Nations ever since (the Korean War, long-over, didn’t have a Peace Treaty till 2018 and things still remain less-than-honkey-dory). This is true, but the USA also propped up the brutal Authoritarian and/or Military Dictatorships in SK starting with Syngman Rhee, then his ideological descendants, from 1950 through 1987 (or maybe 1997, the emergence of an actual Democracy in SK is a dizzyingly complex story). True, SK was clearly better off under Syngman Rhee and his ilk than the Kims, both in terms of Human Rights and Economic Improvements (note: the Economic Improvements would have to wait till the 1...
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