2009: A great year for speculative movies
Posted on February 12, 2010
Filed Under Uncategorized |
The Dark Knight was the best speculative movie in 2008 among quite a few mediocre to worse. (I’m not a graphic comic fan, so bear that in mind.) 2009 was a great year for speculative movies. Here is my list:
- District 9 - A bit offbeat, but this is a character-driven movie. It’s documentary style helps sharpen the image and allowed the director to cut the action to keep everything moving crisply. Of course there is the stock evil corporation, but if you can ignore that cliche the movie is an incredibly creative piece.
- Sherlock Holmes - This is Steampunk Sherlock. Forget Sir Arthur’s version. The characters are right out of a steampunk novel. This movie has so much energy it is bursting. The acting is great and for steampunk, overdoing it is part of the gig. The CGI was great and there were some great visuals.
- Avatar - This is a sci-fi romance. Avatar wins the CGI honors by a mile. The plot is cliched and some characterizations are pure comic book. Why does the evil corporate guy always have a golf club in his hand. There are some heavy-handed messaging and the kumbaya personality transference was beyond belief. This is not the best picture of all time, but I’ll make sure I’ve got my own copy.
- Inglorius Basterds - I take this from secondary sources. Alternate history is speculative. This is a romp that is as nasty and irony-laden as much as Sherlock is a good natured romp. I can’t wait to see it.
- Star Trek - The movie was well done. Of course, this is the equivalent of sublime fan-fiction. I enjoyed quite a few parts of it. The Nimoy Spock greatly stretched my suspension of disbelief, but the movie was one of the better Star Trek movies.
What does this mean for speculative writers? Not so much for writing, but instead of a bunch of comic book movie spin-offs we have a great selection of movies here and a good variation of genres.
Comments
One Response to “2009: A great year for speculative movies”
Leave a Reply
2009 was a pretty good year, definitely. I’ve linked to your blog on my blog, hope you don’t mind.