Glenn Close

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First look–What Happened to Monday, a new dystopic vision of the future

Filed under: Movies, Sci-Fi Café — Leave a comment

August 1, 2017

The next effort at creating a complex and challenging role for a lead actress Orphan Black-style is coming in August from Netflix. It’s the dystopian sci-fi thriller What Happened to Monday, formerly titled Seven Sisters, written by Max Botkin and Kerry Williamson, and directed by Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters). What Happened to Monday is sci-fi’s next new look at a bleak future world in the vein of Children of Men (hope in the face of global infertility), Logan’s Run (to battle population explosion a shortened life clock of 30 years is enforced for all), Never Let Me Go (clones are created for parts for the ruling class), The Handmaid’s Tale (remaining fertile women are forced to reproduce for those in power), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Harrison Bergeron (a twisted equality is enforced on the world), and Gattaca (only the genetically superior are allowed to succeed). It stars Noomi Rapace (Prometheus, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) in seven roles as the seven sisters–seven identical septuplets to be exact–in a society where only one child is allowed per family. Willem Dafoe (Platoon, Clear and Present Danger, Spider-man) stars as their grandfather who raised them, Robert Wagner (The Pink Panther, Hart to Hart, Stars and Stripes Forever, The Towering Inferno) in an undisclosed role, and Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction, Reversal of Fortune, Guardians of the Galaxy) is a leader in the repressive future world.

The first trailer was released this week for What Happened to Monday, and it looks compelling, providing a peek at the plot. The septuplets’ father hides the sisters’ existence from everyone, allowing only one girl outside one day per week, corresponding with their names, each a day of the week. When Monday does not come home one day, the sisters must go about discovering what happened to her without revealing their secret. It’s a role that will certainly be compared, for good or bad, to Tatiana Maslany’s role as multiple clones on Orphan Black.

What Happened to Monday is the latest in Netflix purchasing first run otherwise theatrical releases exclusively for Netflix subscribers.

Check out this first trailer for What Happened to Monday:

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Tags: Children of Men, dystopian movies, Gattaca, Glenn Close, Harrison Bergeron, identical septuplets, Kerry Williamson, Logan's Run, Max Botkin, Never Let Me Go, Noomi Rapace, Orphan Black, Seven Sisters, The Handmaid's Tale, Tommy Wirkola, What Happened to Monday, Willem Dafoe

World Series 2016–Five of the best baseball movies to stream now

Filed under: Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment

October 26, 2016

It’s that time of year again. The 2016 World Series is now in full swing with the first game a sweep by the Cleveland Indians. How will the Chicago Cubs fare in Game 2 tonight? If you’re not in the baseball frame of mind yet, we have five of the all-time best baseball movies you can stream right now for free or for less than four dollars on Amazon Prime’s streaming service. Most of these can also be rented on Netflix. And let’s face it–everyone should own our fifth movie on the list.

Have you seen them already? Then you know these great films can be watched over and over again.

Let’s start with a classic: Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees from 1942. The movie recounts the then-recent personal triumph and tragedy of what baseball as an American pastime has created over and over for more than a century: baseball players as American icons. Pride of the Yankees shows the personal side of being a famous baseball player, and features real-life legends Babe Ruth, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig, and Bill Dickey, all playing themselves on-screen. Academy Award winners Teresa Wright and Walter Brennan co-star. If you want to see classic baseball from a contemporary view, this is your movie. Although the story is certainly bittersweet and a tear-jerker, it reflects baseball as more than just a game.

The most recent movie on our list is Moneyball, from 2011, a modern classic we’ve already watched over and over. Moneyball reveals the game as a modern business. The conflict between playing the game as classically envisioned and the game as seen from an analytical angle is wrestled with from the real life mostly true story of the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane as he turned the team around in its 2002 season.
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Opening weekend review–“Guardians” brings fun back to superhero movies

Filed under: Comics & Books, Movies, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes — Leave a comment

August 1, 2014

Review by C.J. Bunce

After so many dark and dreary superhero movies, did Hollywood forget what drew everyone to comic books in the first place? Somewhere along the way drama began to bog down the genre resulting in the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, and it looks like it’s not going to let up with the first images for the 2016 release Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. “Why so serious?” And it hasn’t just been movies based on DC Comics. Marvel’s X-Men franchise gave us all those Academy Award winning actors all so grim and in such dire circumstances. Sure, they’re good films, but Guardians of the Galaxy proves superhero movies don’t have to be so grim to be good.

If you don’t find yourself laughing out loud with this flick then the superhero genre is not for you.

The same kind of excitement you remember from your first viewing of Star Wars and Superman is waiting for you. For certain Guardians of the Galaxy is neither movie, but it isn’t trying to be. Good escapist fun underscores every scene, and its greatest achievement is not taking itself too seriously. Its characters have a familiar and likeable chemistry like our favorite crews of Serenity or the Millennium Falcon. Writer/director James Gunn and co-writer Nicole Perlman pull together familiar elements from The Fifth Element, Flash Gordon and even “The Tholian Web” to make a fully-realized new sci-fi/superhero universe. And it’s as good an adaptation of a comic book series as you’ll ever find. Even better, its second tier cast of characters–unfamiliar to most movie watchers–means expectations and preconceptions filmmakers may be more concerned with in a Batman, Superman, or Spider-man story are just not an issue here.