Regularly lauded as the best anime of all time, Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaro no Haka) now has a UK region “special edition” DVD release. US film critic Roger Ebert has said that this film belongs on any list of top war movies and others have compared its emotional impact to Spielberg’s Shindler’s List.
The original Ghost in the Shell (GitS) was a landmark in quality animation and it remains one of the most satisfying post-cyberpunk sf action movies ever made. Mingling philosophy with wild action sequences, GitS was an almost perfect blend of urban grittiness, large weapons, technology fetishism, big ideas and stylish violence.
Equilibrium borrows liberally from great works of science fiction from the past. 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World should all get together and kick the living daylights out of this small-minded piece of rubbish, says Martin McGrath.
Making any film is hard work. Making a film with just £8,000 is very hard work. Making a film with just £8,000 and setting it on an alien world filled with vast and deadly aliens is a labour that would make Hercules think twice. But doing it all in Scotland? Martin McGrath talks to Mark Stirton, creator of The Planet.
Over the weekend of 24-26 June, Philip K Dick held court in San Francisco – and no one seemed to mind that Hollywood’s favourite science fiction author had been dead since 1982.
Smart. Trendy. Cool. These are not words immediately associated with science fiction fans in the minds of the general public. And yet, sitting in the bar of the Curzon Soho cinema, watching Sci-Fi London, the London Science Fiction Film Festival, flow around me, one can’t help noticing that a fair proportion of these people look like they might have had these words used about them in casual conversation.
One of the many surprising things about Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of PD James’s novel The Children on Men is the transformation of a dry and highly conservative novel into an exciting and, at least on the surface, quite radical movie.
Princesses, god-like alien boy scouts and billionaires. When I was a child DC superheroes never appealed, and I think the reason lay with their remoteness from the real world. Sure they would occasionally sweep down from their secret bases onto the mean streets of Gotham or Metropolis (even the cities were made up) to beat […]
In 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle delivers a post-apocalyptic vision of London peopled by wild-eyed lunatics infected with pure rage. They chase ordinary folk through the streets howling inpain and anger and are prone to projectile vomiting. It doesn’t sound too different from the West End on a normal Friday night, says Martin McGrath.