RESURRECTION – Review by Diane Carson

In this dystopian future, humanity has traded mortality for immortality, surrendering and sacrificing the precious, cathartic ability to dream. But enthralled by an extraordinary Deliriant (Jackson Yee) who still enjoys reveries, the Fantasmer Shu explores his riveting dreams in an effort to wake him. Empathically, Miss Shu (Shu Qi), also an Other One as the Deliriants are known, will thereby facilitate this specific representative’s death, liberating him from an eternal time zone. For she maintains the ability through his rare gift to access surreal realms. If all this sounds complicated, even daunting, know that the experience is immersive, indeed dreamlike, and hypnotic. in this dystopian future, humanity has traded mortality for immortality, surrendering and sacrificing the precious, cathartic ability to dream. But enthralled by an extraordinary Deliriant (Jackson Yee) who still enjoys reveries, the Fantasmer Shu explores his riveting dreams in an effort to wake him. Empathically, Miss Shu (Shu Qi), also an Other One as the Deliriants are known, will thereby facilitate this specific representative’s death, liberating him from an eternal time zone. For she maintains the ability through his rare gift to access surreal realms. If all this sounds complicated, even daunting, know that the experience is immersive, indeed dreamlike, and hypnotic.

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MOVIE OF THE WEEK March 21, 2025: THE ASSESSMENT

Director Fleur Fortune’s somber sci-fi drama The Assessment puts a bleakly dystopian spin on the old saying that “if you wait for the perfect time to have a baby, you’ll never have one.” With unsettling keenness, it explores the psychological stress that a couple (played by Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel) undergoes while being evaluated for their potential as parents in a world where parenthood is strictly regulated by the government.

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THE ASSESMENT – Review by Liz Whittemore

Director Fleur Fortuné masterfully creates universal scenarios that induce tension, and then she cranks up the volume. The Assessment authentically mimics the anxiety and stress between couples once children enter their world. There is no denying the film is a twisted form of therapy and trauma exercise and a surprising climate change warning. It perfectly captures the pure chaos and sacrifice of parenting. The Assessment is a horrifying power trip.

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DO I KNOW YOU FROM SOMEWHERE? (TIFF 2024) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

When faced with a tough choice, we all hope we’re making the right move. The bittersweet breakup story Do I Know You From Somewhere? puts its heart where its theme is, showing that all decisions lead us to who we are, even the ones off from our true path. This sci-fi romance is a tender, thoughtful, and occasionally comical journey through one couple’s liminal space, one that shifts moment to moment, incorporating memories of their life together with glimpses of another.

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CONSTELLATION – Review by Susan Granger

Sci-fi reigns supreme as Apple TV+ continues Constellation, its newest space saga. What evolves as a spooky, eight-episode mystery begins in Sweden as a woman is seen driving through a snowy forest with her young daughter. She’s an astronaut who recently returned from a disastrous mission on the International Space Station. Created as a baffling, non-linear, psychological thriller and escribed by ‘quantum entanglement’ mumbo-jumbo, its enigmatic purpose somehow relates to an 89-year-old Thought Experiment: “Schrodinger’s Cat.”

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I.S.S. (Tribeca 2023) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

For most of its roughly 90 minutes, the sci-fi thriller I.S.S. creates a meaty, suspenseful story, exploring not aliens from other worlds but the monsters of distrust within ourselves.
The title is an acronym for the International Space Station, a real-life research facility orbiting the Earth where astronauts collaborate on research involving physics, astrobiology, and other disciplines. The station typically has a crew of seven and involves five space agencies from the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and Europe.

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65 – Review by Susan Granger

“Before the advent of time – in the infinity of space – a visitor crash landed on Earth.” That’s the introduction to the sci-fi action adventure 65, named because dinosaurs roamed the Earth 65 million years ago. The story begins as Mills (Adam Driver), an astronaut, bids farewell to his wife and very sick daughter. To pay for her medical care, he has agreed to a two-year mission which goes awry when an asteroid shower damages his spaceship, forcing him to crash-land on a mysterious planet inhabited by prehistoric creatures.

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THE PINK CLOUD – Review by Leslie Combemale

At this point in the pandemic, most of us have become acutely aware of the relative saving graces and limitations of technology as a tool for communication and authentic interaction. We’ve learned isolation can birth intense loneliness and depression. There is no substitute for human physical interaction, and there likely never will be. This truth wound up particularly if unintentionally hitting home in the new Brazilian sci-fi character drama The Pink Cloud. That The Pink Cloud reflects this moment in history makes it heartbreaking and fascinating cinema.

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NIGHT RAIDERS – Review by Karen Peterson

Night Raiders fictionalizes the tragic history of Indigenous people and uses it as a condemnation, but also to show survival, hope, and a way forward. Looking deeper, the film uses the specific history of atrocities against Indigenous people from around the world to vanquish the concept that cultural homogeneity and that world of complete unity of language, ideology, religion, etc, destroys society rather than strengthens it. At a time where “groupthink” and echo chambers are valued, Danis Goulet shows us there are better ways to live and work together.

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SEE – Review by Susan Granger

This dystopian sci-fi fantasy/drama series begins its second season with a third already in production. The opening credits are a montage of nerve endings that, as the volume increases, form various shapes. As star Alfre Woodward notes: “The characters in season two do not see the past coming to haunt them, but the past coming to be resolved…See has so many parallels with what is going on with the world – or even what could happen. There’s the idea of the masses laying trust in prophetic figures.”

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