Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  100 best Science Fiction films Popular Mechanics list #86. Interstellar (2014)   “[This film] knows that our future is in the hands of all us deeply flawed and deeply conflicted humans, but that there’s still plenty of reason to hope anyway. But we do actually have to try.” --quote from a Critic whose name I can’t find   This is a remarkably bold attempt to capture the Crown of the Greatest of All Space Epics for Grownups, so long sitting on the head of “2001: A Space Odessey” (1968). It strove to celebrate Humanity’s relationship with the Infinite with the same of Scientific Fidelity as “2001 ..,” which is no small task, and though “Interstellar” does eventually fudge some Scientific Rules, it does no more so than “2001 …” did.   The challenge for stories like this is that Humans are Finite in a Universe that is the opposite; even though our travels within it will expand, anything beyond Pluto is pretty improbable for Human Flesh-and-Blood. ...

  100 best Science Fiction films Popular Mechanics list #87. Sunshine (2007)   Everybody loves a Space Epic, but they are goddamned hard to do, and the more serious (meaning more Grown-Up than “Flash Gordon” (original film serial 1936)), the harder it gets. Reviewing lists of “Best Science Fiction Movies” the Space Epics are always present, but often take a back seat to other SF sub-Genres like Alien Invasion, Mad-Scientist, Post-Apocalyptic, VR, etc. (Not this list though, “Popular Mechanics” loves them some Space Epic).   Another problem is that most serious Space Epics are in the shadow of one film, the creation of co-Writer (with Arthur C. Clarke) and Director Stanley Kubrick, “2001: A Space Odessey” (1968), which was an extraordinary triumph combining, as no one ever did before or since, the themes/tropes of Hard SF, First Contact, and Spiritual Transcendence. Even since, most others have been stalked by I call “2001 Envy,” Because none of these films can...

  100 best Science Fiction films Popular Mechanics list #88. eXistenZ (1999)   Ted Pikul : “Free will, obviously, isn’t a big factor in this little world of ours.”   Allegra Geller : “It’s like in real life, there’s just enough [free will] to make it interesting.”   As the last century drew to a close there were fewer End-of-the-World SF films than you’d except, but 1999 did provide a remarkable bumper-crop of SF that embraced Virtual Reality (VR), an essential Cyberpunk theme that in Cinema is generally challenged the idea that Objective Reality even exist, or if it does, it’s not as important as you have been led to assume. “eXistenZ” wasn’t the most popular of these, but it was easily the most sophisticated. The only one that came close to its sophistication was “Open Your Eyes,” which was actually two years old already, but it wasn’t until 1999 that it got its release in the USA. The year’s big winner was “ The Matrix ” whose remarkable FX and Fig...