SILO – Review by Susan Granger

If you enjoy sci-fi thrillers, stream 10 episodes of the first season of Silo on Apple TV+. Based on a series of dystopian novels by Hugh Howey, it revolves around the inhabitants of a 144-story subterranean bunker built to shelter 10,000 people after an apocalyptic event left Earth uninhabitable. Designed with a huge spiral staircase in its center and no elevator, living space in the Silo is strictly stratified. Those in authority and the elite occupy the top floors; the white-collar labor force is in the middle; and the blue-collar mechanical workers are down below.

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DUNE – Review by Diane Carson

We’ve waited a long time for director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and, yes, it has been worth the wait in terms of its overpowering visuals and sound design. The technical elements do all but smother the ecological, sociopolitical critique, but it’s there in battles for the rare commodity spice, imperialist incursions affecting the native Fremin culture, and the imperial family skirmishes.

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DUNE – Review by Susan Granger

Since its publication in 1965, Frank Herbert’s epic tale has become one of the most popular sci-fi novels of all time. No wonder that filmmakers have grappled with interpreting its vast, complex story. French Canadian writer/director Denis Villenueve begins his $165 million extravaganza with “Part I.”

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MOVIE OF THE WEEK August 20, 2021: REMINISCENCE

Writer/director Lisa Joy’s twisty Reminiscence has all the hallmarks of a classic film noir. A flawed hero. A femme fatale with a dark past. A manipulative crime boss. Double-crosses and misdirection. Climate change. Wait, climate change? Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum might never have had to deal with soaring temperatures and rising sea levels, but that all-too-realistic threat underlines everything in Joy’s sci-fi-tinged mystery, offering a new angle on a familiar trope.

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REMINISCENCE – Review by Susan Wloszczyna

Don’t be surprised if you get a Christopher Nolan vibe from this intriguing sci-fi thriller with a film-noir undercurrent amid a climate-change disaster scenario is set in a near-future flooded Miami coast. While rich land barons keep safe and dry behind a giant dam, the common folk must deal with the nasty damp byways of the city’s overflowing streets. Keeping track of the film’s narrative can be a bit tricky. Many of characters on screen aren’t fully fleshed out as well as they could or should be. That said, High Jackson’s emotional performance anchors the movie even if the narrative sometimes drifts away.

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REMINISCENCE – Review by Susan Granger

What went wrong on this South Beach jog down memory lane? Perhaps it’s because first time feature writer/director Lisa Joy, who co-created HBO’s Westworld with her husband, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan’s brother, wrote a clunky, cliché-filled, confusing script – plus, her predictably melodramatic pacing plods. Although Rebecca Ferguson and Hugh Jackman previously teamed in The Greatest Showman, there’s little on-screen chemistry with more talk than action.

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