With his debut feature, Pölsler has created a captivating and emotionally compelling parable which harks back to an era when popular sci-fi functioned as a thoughtful and vital study of contemporary issues – rather than yet another glossy distraction from the drudgery of the modern.
In 2006, acclaimed director Bryan Singer delivered his Superman reboot to mild fanfare and mostly quizzical audiences. ‘Man Of Steel’ again kickstarts the Superman mythos, with a more divisive figure at its helm – Zack Snyder, an understandable choice considering his relative talent in capturing action as seen in the likes of ‘300’ and ‘Watchmen’. Snyder was joined by Christopher Nolan behind the scenes, but does ‘Man Of Steel’ provide the Superman we deserve?
There are two types of audiences prevalent in our cinemas – those who eat popcorn and those who don’t. Somewhere along the quieter moments of Iron Man 3, when director Shane Black isn’t loudly crashing metal against metal, a cacophony of popcorn-munching rises above conversations between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow on-screen, blatantly reminding myself that despite this being a multimedia screening full of press and critics, I am also in a room of the popcorn crowd.
Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario) has never been able to come to terms with her mother dying during childbirth. Her long-suffering father (Alfred Molina) and his new wife are at a loss as how to cope with the depressive and acerbic teen, especially as her upcoming birthday and the anniversary of her mother’s death throws her into even deeper despair.
Joseph Kosinki’s sci-fi pretender Oblivion arrives at our cinemas with an unmistakably bulky baggage. It piles up an excessive weight of borrowing, conscious or unintentional, bearing the absolute misfortune of being compared to a live-action version of Pixar’s dystopian romantic sci-fi WALL-E, featuring a protagonist, operating as a mechanic/repairman, roams a desecrated post-apocalyptic Earth where humans have buggered off to a different planet somewhere (this time, one of Jupiter’s moons Titan, of all places).