The Colin Farrell-starring sci-fi remake Total Recall is readying for release this weekend (read Movieline’s review here) and while Len Wiseman's adaptation of the 1990 Paul Verhoeven film that mixes up bullets, muscles and abstract notions of Cartesian dualism and the specious present isn't the worst thing in the world, it is hardly memorable. (A bit of an unfortunate situation, as the whole thing is about memory.) Still, it's important that we don't present ourselves as the type of dweebs who get all hung up over sci-fi remakes. Sometimes, they're damn good, as this list of ten shall prove.
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He's played cops, a count, Houdini, a time traveler, a king, and even a drag queen, but in this week's Lockout, Guy Pearce treads new ground as an all-out action hero -- not that he necessarily sees things that way. "People used to say that about L.A. Confidential," he recalled to Movieline recently in Los Angeles. "They’d go, ‘Wow, so you’re an action hero!’ I’d be like, action hero? It’s a ‘50s film noir!" Even still, after 20+ years of acting, most recently in a string of acclaimed supporting turns (see: The King's Speech, The Hurt Locker, Animal Kingdom, Mildred Pierce), it's only now that Pearce is laying claim to the title, guns blazing.
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This week's Guy Pearce-starring, Luc Besson-produced Lockout might look like a run of the mill action pic -- that vague title doesn't help things -- but, as the film's opening scenes show, it's got a blustery '80s-style hero at its core and a punny sense of humor to move things along. Get a taste for the brawny bravado and hijinks to come in the film's first five minutes, viewable after the jump.
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This fall you'll see Joseph Gordon-Levitt as you've never seen him before: As Bruce Willis. In the sci-fi time-travel action pic Looper, from Brick director Rian Johnson, Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, an assassin who ties up loose ends for the mob by killing targets as they're sent back in time from the future -- until one day his own future self (played by Willis) comes through for extermination. Previewing a teaser for the September release at WonderCon, Johnson and Gordon-Levitt discussed the trickiness of transforming Gordon-Levitt into a young Willis, pulled off with the aid of prosthetics, and why it's particularly difficult to talk about their time travel thriller.
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A new minute-or-so-long trailer for Prometheus has landed, and while it's unclear how much of this footage will be included in Saturday's planned 2:33 minute trailer debut (which will follow 20th Century Fox's WonderCon presentation), Ridley Scott's June 8 sci-fi pic just keeps the hits coming. Sparse on dialogue, big on images, the trailer teases Prometheus's IMAX release and impresses on the startling strength of its visuals alone.
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The premise for Argentinean director Juan Diego Solanas's English-language sci-fi romance Upside Down has one helluva gimmick: Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess find true love against huge odds, the hitch being that they live on inverted planets and are forbidden to cross over to each other's world. Hell, some people won't date outside of their area code. Watch the dazzling first trailer and appreciate how much easier relationships are should be on a single planet by comparison.
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Lonely sci-fi nerds, listen up: It was only a matter of time following the recent influx of geek-themed porn, but Dennis Hof, the professional pimp and entrepreneur behind the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel seen on HBO's Cathouse, is about to make your fantasies come true. Soon, in the not-so-distant future (ok, a few months from now), Hof and partner/"chief alien design queen" Heidi Fleiss will open the Alien Cathouse 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- a legal brothel with a science fiction theme. Bring on the green-skinned Orion hotties!
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Now that his feature film debut as a hoodlum-turned-savior in Attack the Block is finally hitting theaters stateside, 19-year-old John Boyega is savoring his big moment. As Moses, the hardened teen anti-hero of Joe Cornish's British alien invasion romp, Boyega leads a gang of misfit delinquents into battle against a horde of vicious E.T.s to defend a South London council block. Off-screen, the charismatic up-and-comer has a new territory in his sights: Hollywood.
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Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (The Pusher Trilogy, Bronson, Valhalla Rising) muscles his way into Hollywood this September with the charging crime thriller Drive, but he's also in the midst of remaking the 1976 sci-fi pic Logan's Run with his Drive star, Ryan Gosling, set in the lead. Movieline caught up with Refn at the L.A. Film Fest premiere of Drive for a quick update on the project.
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Great news for those hotly anticipating Joe Cornish's SXSW fave Attack the Block: Sony/Screen Gems will release the U.K.-set street kids vs. aliens pic in limited release July 29. Until then, lucky fans in select cities can try to catch one of the sneak screenings that have helped Attack the Block build a grassroots movie geek following thus far. Just remember: Your geek cred demands that you see this film as soon as possible. [Box Office Mojo via Collider]
It's Brit Marling Day at Movieline! Since you'll be seeing a lot more of her in the near future, take a gander at the new trailer for Another Earth, the first of two Marling-starring Sundance flicks coming to theaters courtesy of Fox Searchlight. Alternate planets, tragedy, romance, and Marling's captivating screen presence -- it's all here. As a bonus, it's also got Ethan from Lost! Bet this ends better.
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Duncan Jones is a director who loves his science fiction. After finding success with his debut feature Moon, Jones assumed the helm of this week's Jake Gyllenhaal pic Source Code, about a soldier involved in a government project that sends him back to relive a dead man's final eight minutes in order to avert a terrorist attack. What's more, Jones spent his down time on the Source Code promo trail whipping up a treatment for his next film -- an even larger scale tale that he promises will be "my last blast of sci-fi." So really, who better to drop some friendly pro-tips on making science fiction cinema than the man currently making his mark in the genre?
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