SYNCHRONICITY (2015)

There is one thing that all time travel movies have in common, and that’s this: none of them actually make sense. That’s the paradox of the time travel film: though each goes out of its way to carefully explain the rules and possible ramifications of time travel, at the end of the day, none of them make sense. Putting aside that time travel, in reality, doesn’t actually exist, and therefore can’t be held up to any existing rigorous scientific criteria, each one featuring an individual traveling back or ahead in time in order to fix a conflict or know the unknowable is, honestly, just making shit up as it goes. It’s examining what is necessary to its own plot, making sure it’s arguably sensible in narrative form, and jettisoning the rest. And honestly, that’s fine. Even the most historically accurate film leans on fiction. Biopics fudge a detail now and then. Dinosaurs have been brought back to life, people. WITH FROG DNA. It’s fine. If those films are allowed to play with reality, the time travel film is certainly allowed the same consideration. But it’s when the time traveling and its ramifications get lost in its own plot that it can get a little frustrating.

From a technical standpoint alone, Synchronicity is beautifully made. Heavily influenced by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, right down to the incredible synth-based score by Ben Lovett, but also containing bouts of TRON, Dark City, and other titles of the cyberpunk era, no one can say that Synchronicity isn’t audacious as hell. Certainly the first cyberpunk time-travel film-noir romance of its kind, Synchronicity has been brought to life with a very assured and very confident hand by writer/director Jacob Gentry (The Signal—2007, not 2014). From the opening sequence alone, the audience is immediately transported into a time and environment in which they have had zero previous experience. In the same way Blade Runner opens in a very foreign cityscape, replete with merging cultures and disturbing amounts of futuristic gadgetry, Synchronicity, too, plummets the audience directly into the thick of an unusual and dangerous experiment. Who are these three men? What are they doing? Is this sanctioned or have they gone rogue? What’s with this awesome music?

Chad McNight as Jim Beale does admirable work as a man obsessed—first with his potentially world-changing experiments, but later on with the mysterious and beautiful Abby, who enters into his life seemingly at random until that randomness is called into question. He spends much of the film frantic, backed into a corner, and doubting everything—this mostly works for him, but sometimes it doesn’t. Brianne Davis, however, as the noir-required femme fatale, doesn’t quite grasp what she’s supposed to be doing. Her performance as the untrustworthy siren of Jim’s growing infatuation is largely inconsistent; her abilities to emote simply through facial expressions certainly helps in establishing the mystery of her character, but this is too easily counteracted during most of her dialogue scenes, where her hesitance with the role is all too palpable. AJ Bowen, Canada’s version of a young Vincent D’Onofrio, does expectedly fine work as Jim’s co-experimenter, Chuck, who finds himself swept up in Jim’s increasingly complicated life (lives?) as he struggles to save his friend.

Plus this thing’s got Michael Ironside!  He can make your head explode just by WILLING it! I’m not even talking about Scanners, but in REAL LIFE.

Synchronicity stumbles the most (but not doing any permanent damage) in its handling of the actual time travel aspect—considering this is being sold as a time travel film, that understandably sounds alarming. Synchronicity throws a lot at its audience, expecting them to grasp as many breadcrumbs as it can as the film barrels through its narrative. Once one timeline becomes two, which is which, who is who, and wtf all become lodged in your brain, making for a daring but frustrating experience.

Despite these flaws, there is something impressive and impulsively thought provoking about Synchronicity that to outright dismiss the film because of these flaws would be an utter crime. There’s a vagueness, perhaps purposely so, to many of the film’s aspects—like Klaus Meisner’s mysterious company, the future time period in which it’s taking place, the location of the city where it all unfolds—leaving a wake of haze wafting over everything like it’s a dream. The more scientifically minded viewer is going to want to break down the plot’s events to determine who is who at that time, what has changed in this scene being depicted for a second time, what possible implications are to come, but I’m not so sure Synchronicity was designed for that.  Like so many other genre films, time travel or not, the crux of the story is based on Jim and Abby’s growing relationship. Does she love him? Can she be trusted? Will Jim wise the fuck up? Around this dynamic the rest of the film has been wrapped, and whether or not the timeline of events and the science of time traveling makes sense becomes window dressing.

It’s simple, really: if you become engaged by Jim and Abby’s plight, then Synchronicity will prove a rewarding experience. If you’re here for the time travel, then you might find yourself checking your watch.

Taking a page from the book of Blade Runner (and it's five million versions), Synchronicity is impressive to look at. As is demanded by all future-set science-fiction films, the landscape of Synchronicity is cold, sterile, institutional, and impeccably clean. The film leans on blue hues and bright whites because of this, but while also adhering to the dark and shadow of classic film noir. And yeah man, I love this music. The synth-based score by Ben Lovett lovingly skips back in time to the golden age of Carpenter and Vangelis, driving Synchronicity forward, perhaps even atoning for its storytelling flaws in the same way that Daft Punk's masterpiece of a score for TRON: Legacy aids in propelling it from mediocrity to an incredible visual and audio experience.

Synchronicity gets a cautious but still enthusiastic recommendation, if for nothing more than its ambitiousness. How its story will grab you is tough to predict. It's a wonderful technical experience, providing beautiful visuals and an equally beautiful if slightly melancholy musical score. For those longing for more San Angeles ambience, look no further: it's easy to believe that while Deckard is hunting down replicants in the rainy night, just a few blocks over, the events of Synchronicity are unfolding in not just one but two separate timelines. And like Blade Runner, perhaps it will take some time before Synchronicity's story can be truly appreciated.

NO ESCAPE aka ESCAPE FROM ABSOLUM (1994)

If you’ve heard of 1994’s Escape from Absolom at all, it’s likely by its American title, No Escape (not the Owen Wilson film of the same name). Though it opened #1 at the box office during its weekend debut, it would ultimately fail to make back its production budget, relegating it to live in home video obscurity. Director Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale), relatively unknown at that time, helms an adaption of Richard Herley’s obscure 1987 novel The Penal Colony and staffs it mainly with character actors — and Ray Liotta, in a rare heroic leading man role. The likes of Stuart Wilson (Death and the Maiden), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), the immeasurably cool Lance Henriksen (Aliens), a very pre-Entourage Kevin Dillon, and many more “hey, it’s that guy!” folks fill out the diverse cast — none of whom would be considered box office draws.

No Escape was one of the many unexpected titles I thrived on as a kid; a version recorded off television (likely the now-defunct Prism) enjoyed dozens of revolutions in our trusty VCR. Though it’s fairly violent, the idea of two warring prisoner factions attacking each other’s very rustic fortresses clad in armor and wielding weapons both futuristic as well as primitive and obviously made from forest implements was hugely alluring to a child’s overactive imagination. No Escape, in a sense, actually plays like an adult person of Hook, with the Insiders (good guys) taking on the adult counterpart roles of the Lost Boys who live by their own code and with their own sense of order. Houses are constructed from logs and tree trunk wood, clothes are burlap, weapons and armor are fashioned from bamboo, and the less said about their food, the better. And then, like a grown up and cynical Peter Pan, Ray Liotta’s John Robbins drops unexpectedly into their lives — although, instead of re-learning how to fly, he learns how to kill a bunch of bad dudes alongside other people instead of killing a bunch of bad dudes by his lonesome.

Additionally interesting is the dichotomy of the prison island’s inhabitants, because everyone on the island deserves to be there — everyone has taken lives — but yet the prisoners naturally deflect to either side. If you’re semi-bad but bare some regret for your shiftless life, you become an Insider and you live as an undersupplied and undernourished member of what’s essentially a poor community, but if you’re really bad, you become a member of the Outsiders — the baddest of the bad who are offered a very unfair advantage by the Warden, who drops off supplies from a helicopter (which include the aforementioned futuristic weapons) to ensure the two factions remain constantly at war. Even among prisoners, the Insiders strive to be good, under the paternal guidance of The Father (Henriksen). The film acknowledges that, yes, people can make poor choices, but even when living in the physical manifestation of oblivion where there is no chance of salvation — where there’s nothing to be gained from living in peace; there’s no such thing as time off for good behavior — some still choose to live as good men anyway.

Liotta’s John Robbins is an interesting lead; even when the hardened bad-ass Marine eventually softens, Liotta still plays him as intimidating and slightly cold, unwilling to grow close to any of the men. In particular, Robbins takes Kevin Dillon’s Casey, a young and hapless would-be kidnapper, under his wing (sort of)…yet he still maintains a detectably off-putting presence toward him. He’s that film father who offers tough love from the very start, and only at the end when his ice melts does he reveal himself as someone empathetic and warm; here, however, this film father fails on that second part. Liotta can play warm — 2001’s mediocre drug flick Blow proves this — but in No Escape, where he’s playing the hero for the first time in his career, he seems to have trouble playing someone strong and heroic but also someone who surrenders to the warmth and shared community of the Insiders’ camp. As such, the audience never fully warms up to him, even as he slowly sheds his lone-wolf sensibilities in favor of living in a community — or the closest thing to it he can find.

Much of No Escape can be explored and further analyzed; its futuristic setting (sort of — this movie takes place in or around 2022, which is depressingly right around the corner) is once again a warning on where a failing society can lead: rich vs. poor exaggerated to the nth degree, and the idea of a for-profit prison system are two aspects of the plot that are still in constant conversation today.

ARRIVAL (2016)

At times it feels like the theater has gotten so used to sci-fi films where laser guns are zapped and mutant alien races wage war on Planet Earth that it’s easy to forget the genre can still be used for messages and morals of merit. Stemming back to the 1950s with The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers – both about the imminent threat of communism (although some theorize the latter was actually about homosexuality) – the genre was once used for purposes beyond intergalactic pulp escapism. Like any other genre that’s well utilized and handpicked to effectively tell two stories at once – the surface story and the hidden story – the sci-fi genre has a lead over its counterparts in that the very tenets of its foundation are based on being limitless. As science knows no bounds, neither does science fiction.

When watching Arrival play out during its opening moments, it’s hard to disassociate it from its immediate and more well-known colleagues. Scenes of people looking across the landscape in awe will trigger memories of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Bystanders huddling around televisions will (perhaps unfortunately) recall Independence Day. And Arrival, along with these associations, hits a lot of familiar beats that call forth concepts that are necessary to tell its story. But what sets Arrival off from the rest of the pack, despite its similar surface story, is its hidden story – or really, it’s double-hidden story. Because in the multi-layered Arrival, you slowly piece together the story you think is hidden until unearthing the one that you didn’t see coming, which just happens to have the power to bring you to your knees.

As more audiences discover Arrival, their reaction will be inevitably polarizing. If you were bothered by the ambiguous nature of Christopher Nolan's Inception or the abstract philosophical nature of that same director’s Interstellar, you’d be advised to stay far, far away from Arrival. Because multiple viewings will be required before it’s possible to begin piecing together what exactly took place on the day the Heptapods came to earth.

By purposeful design, Arrival is dark and dour. Even scenes set in exterior environments are purposely dim. Arrival was meant to look this way because the outlook for our planet isn’t good. The mystery of why the aliens have landed pervades across every inch of the screen. (There’s another reason why everything looks so dour and void of vibrant color, but to discuss it would ruin one of Arrival’s many surprises.)  

So much of the story is told through Arrival’s sound design, from the musical score by Jóhann Jóhannsson to the creation of the Heptapods and their space ship, to a slight and uneasy ambience that filters through almost (almost) unnoticed during many scenes. The film opens and closes with what has apparently become a controversial use of Max Richter’s famous song “On the Nature of Daylight” (used, among other films, in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island), and despite what you might think of the choice, there’s no denying the emotional power that the song carries with it.  

Director Denis Villeneuve continues a career of unique, dark, and somber films with Arrival, which so far might be his best. Not necessarily his most accessible, but — and despite the inclusion of aliens — possibly his most relatable, Arrival is a gut punch in the beginning, throughout, and especially at the end, and all of them for different reasons. There were tears on my face before the first five minutes had even concluded, and this in a movie about an alien invasion. Please don’t miss it.

BORN AGAIN, HOME AGAIN: THE QUAGMIRE RETURN OF ‘THE X-FILES’

I’m a ‘90s kid. I think a lot of us Internet dwellers are. It was during this magical decade where three gigantic pop-culture phenomena TV shows came into prominence; they entertained and captivated audiences, forever contributing strange references and expressions to the lexicon: Seinfeld gave us “master of our domain,” Friends offered “how you doin’?” and The X-Files, well...the one-hour paranormal drama gave us much, much more. It gave us intrigue, mystery, horror, humor, icky monsters, complicated love, and most importantly, it resurrected one of the biggest life lessons which flourished during the cinematic movement of the 1970s: trust no one.

For nine seasons and two feature films, Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) hunted the things that bumped in the dark, kept watching the skies, and slowly fell in love. And during this mostly '90s-set series, I literally grew up watching it all unfold. It was the first "grown up" show I followed with any regularity, and during my formative years, the impact of it all was that much greater. My boyhood peaked during the show's best seasons, and when the realization set in that said boyhood was nearly over and "grown up" things were soon coming, it just so happened to coincide with the series losing its luster. The magic was vanishing both in real life and the land of make believe. It made coming of age a little bit harder, and in a way, made having to say goodbye to the show something to dread, not anticipate with the usual amount of excitement.

1998's feature film The X-Files: Fight The Future was meant to be the first of many theatrical endeavors that were planned to transition the series from the small screen to the big, with the show's fifth season originally meant to be its TV series swan song—a move that would allow time to flesh out the alien mythology in a streamlined story while reaping the benefits of fans anticipating seeing Mulder and Scully reunite in their never-ending quest to find the truth, which, for all intents and purposes, was out there. (Somewhere.)

This didn't happen.

Fox wasn't about to let go of its largest viewership, even if they could have easily collected their X-revenue from the box office instead of TV advertisers, so The X-Files remained on the air far longer than it should have. It stayed on the air for so long that Duchovny (one of the leads) excused himself from the show’s stranglehold during the last couple seasons in an effort to do something—anything—different. This caused several complications, on top of ones previously caused by a show having already satisfied its main conflict several seasons ago. Obviously, a new new conflict would be needed, and in Duchovny’s absence, new characters, which are almost always a sign of a creatively bankrupt show.

After its disappointing finale in 2002, The X-Files, it appeared, had been permanently sealed.

Enter the series' second feature film I Want to Believe six years later, which picked up on our beloved agents in the next stages of their lives: Dr. Dana Scully was now a staff physician at a children’s hospital, and Fox Mulder was now an unemployed and bored as hell recluse treating his home office ceiling like a dartboard. Not nearly as bad as many fans claim it is, nor as good as some well-meaning but misguided articles might have you believe (how you doin’, AV Club?), The X-Files: I Want to Believe resurrected our beloved FBI agents in a way that felt more perfunctory than ceremonial, leapfrogging off a series finale that found them on the run and pursued by the FBI, but lazily neutralizing that conflict by stating, basically, “Good thing the FBI stopped trying to kill us!” The series finale saw attempts on their lives; their first appearances in I Want to Believe found them barely hiding out, with Mulder lazing around his house protected by a single gate, and Scully working as a prominent doctor under her real name, neither of them at all concerned about having a needle shoved into their medullae oblongatae by a man in black.

Still, The X-Files was back—in theaters!—so if their so-called wantedness by the FBI was the creative hurdle to overcome in order for that to happen, fine. And I Want to Believe presented what ultimately would have been an above-average adventure for our duo…had it been pared down and relegated to the small screen. But with it being a feature film, anticipation for something large in scale and teeming with aliens was expected, though not received, so the reception was not great and its box office haul was pitiful. (Note to Fox, who chose to open it one week after The Dark Knight: counter-programming doesn't work against the geek demographic.)

Ordinarily, I Want to Believe would have signaled the end of the franchise. A low-budget sequel produced to test the waters resulted in a resounding “no thanks” from fans, not helped by its marketing campaign which opted to eschew indication of its actual plot and instead drape its trailer in ambiguity that, hopefully, would be surmounted by the return of Mulder and Scully. Fox was banking on audiences saying, “They’re back? I’m in.” And it didn’t work.

Eight years later, and well into the trend of resurrecting established properties for the small screen, the The X-Files returned with mostly pitiful results. While it was an absolute delight to see Fox Mulder and Dana Scully once again calling each other by their surnames, checking in via cell phone, and doing that cool FBI thing where they point flashlights and guns as they charge into dark rooms, unfortunately, Seasons 10 and 11 made the same mistakes as its most immediate predecessor seasons.

To determine the worth of these new episodes, we need look no further than the book-ending episodes of each new season, "My Struggle" Parts 1 through 4.

With the first episode, the introduction of Mulder and Scully felt perfunctory. The first scene with A.D. Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) felt obligatory. Nothing about it felt big. And every moment should have been big. It was The X-Files back on television after fifteen years, people! Tepid second feature film aside, this was a big deal and should have been treated as such. But Duchovny looked bored, appearing as if he’d shown up late on set for the first day of filming without time to slip back into his character (including his wardrobe). Anderson still seemed to be in the process of shedding the cold disassociation with reality her Bedelia Du Maurier had exhibited during her run on the short-lived Hannibal. Neither of them seemed comfortable revisiting their most famous characters—not to mention the arduously stupid dialogue with which series creator Chris Carter had saddled them.

The opening episode is in such a hurry that it hits the ground running but doesn't know what to do when it lands. There's so much to do, and so little time in which to do it—not just in the 45 minutes of an episode, but in the six episodes of the new season. (What first sounded like a good idea—the six-episode thing—became a handicap. Two mythology episodes and four standalones that found subtle ways to move that mythology along, or reintroduce us to these characters and allow us to see how they've grown and changed, all sounded well and good, but so much it felt like "hurry up and wait" that the wind was taken out of its proverbial sails.) Thematically, where “My Struggle” failed the hardest was in Mulder’s complete willingness to shed his philosophy about the alien invasion that had served as his personal crusade for the entire run of the show, finding him too eager to believe it was all just a distraction from the "real" truth. Fans crucified the episode for this—"My Mulder would never sell out like that"—and they were right to do so.

As to why Carter would introduce such a revelation, there are two possible explanations. One: it was a graceless fumble to concoct yet another alien mythology to order to give The X-Files its purpose, this being the third alien conflict for our duo to investigate. Or two—and one that I’m more inclined to believe, given the endless developments that support it: this was his attempt to attract a whole new audience previously unfamiliar with The X-Files by saying, “What, that? Those previous nine seasons? Forget all that, don’t worry. All you need to know is: Mulder’s got a hard-on for alien conspiracies, Scully’s along for the ride, and they once had an alien baby." And the reasons to support this theory go on, from a statement on the pre-Season 11 greenlight potential for more episodes from Fox entertainment president David Madden where he referred to it as "Season 2” instead, to the befuddling announcement that a series of prequel books geared toward "young adults" are being written to explore Mulder and Scully in their teens—before they joined the FBI or even knew each other.

As for "My Struggle: Part II," Carter borrowed from another of his Fox television series, Millennium, by relying on a conspiratorial group of shadowy men attempting to mass produce a biological contagion as a means to decimate the world's population while leaving a "chosen" few behind. Likely shot following Part 1, Duchovny again looked awkward in the role, and Carter's dialogue—"There's talk all over the Internet!"—again sounded corny and unrealistic. However, not all was lost, and the episode was a remarkable improvement over Part 1. Anderson exhibited a better ease at finding Scully again after so many years, and this episode rode mostly on her shoulders. Carter, who pulled double duty as writer and director, managed to show some directorial flare that bordered on damn near cinematic (speed-ramping fight scenes notwithstanding). Devotees of the series might have felt a rush at certain moments—the returning Monica Reyes' (Annabeth Gish) phone call to Scully, for instance, or, finally, a significant amount of screen time for C.G.B. Spender (William B. Davis)—but they weren't enough to sail this episode, and by proxy the season, through to the finish line.

As for Season 11's mythology-"concluding" episodes, Chris Carter seems to have pursued a purposely dialed-down resolution to the Mulder vs. Cancer Man conflict, which became an organic backbone of the series throughout its run. After being hilariously and stupidly destroyed by a tomahawk missile fired directly into his face following the first ending to The X-Files waaay back in Season 9, Spender not only survived with some minor dents to the fender but he's still as dastardly as ever. But instead of the big, flashy, Hollywood ending Carter tried the first time, now, things for Spender ended with a whimper...and with a single gunshot. He survived a missile to the brain, but Mulder's gun finally does the trick, I guess, castrating this bigger than life conflict between them, relegating Spender to a simple monster of the week, as if he had never been hugely significant to Mulder's ongoing struggles with who he is and the real truth he's seeking.

Speaking of monsters, the new series' "monster of the week" episodes all did admirable jobs of trying to find that careful balance between satisfying the old fans, intriguing the new ones, and presenting episodes that appealed to the many diverse sensibilities of its audience. Different fans of old-school X-Files loved the different approaches to the episodes: the horrific, the silly, the pensive and quiet, and the mythological—all in equal measures. In order to give every faction their due, and within the confines of a six-episode season, they did as well as they could have. The problem, however, wasn’t the tone, but the actual writing. If nothing else, Season 10 has the dubious honor of unleashing upon its fanbase probably one of the worst—if not the worst—episode of the show’s existence. (Do I even have to say “Babylon”? Couldn’t you all have assumed that?)

Line-dancing! Gangsta rings! Cameos from dead dorks! What is happening! 

Amidst all of these disappointments, one stood head and shoulders above the rest. It wasn't the lackadaisical performances, the questionable story choices, and the wildly uneven tone. It's that with Season 10, The X-Files lost its intelligence. It sacrificed subtlety to satisfy how apparently angry with and saddened by his country Chris Carter has grown. What made the original run of The X-Files so thrilling and beloved was how American it was. And I don't mean Reagan's America, but the real America—history book America. The original series was socially relevant and mindfully political because it pertained to a certain bygone era of America's modern history, off which the show created a lot of mystique. The most political it ever got was by insinuating that J. Edgar Hoover had once been part of the conspiracies that ran rampant—and by implication, President Nixon, easily roping in that tangible sense of paranoia. This specificity to an era of American history is always going to be relevant because that aspect is so ingrained in/with American culture. It's vital to our culture in the same way baseball is our national pastime. There's no explaining why—it just is. This is what gives The X-Files strength and purpose: the paranoia of the blue-collar nobody attempting to circumvent the trials and tribulations of everyday life in order to find the truth. Is there a conspiracy? If so, who's in on it? Who can you trust? How high does it go? Equal parts The Manchurian Candidate, All the President's Men, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, The X-Files endeavored to embody that same spirit—American stories about American conflicts featuring American men and women standing up against invading threats. They were about us fighting corruption at the very top.

Carter's new X-Files was no longer interested in subtlety. Far more interested in broad strokes and empty meaningless gestures about how we can improve as a people (talking and love can fight terrorism! homelessness is bad; someone should do something!), the new X-Files didn’t skewer American culture as much as focus on the things that have hindered that culture. It's Carter's insistence on making the series socially relevant that forced it to stand out like a sore thumb when compared to everything that’s come before. With the introduction of right-wing TV host Tad O'Malley, Islamic extremism, and references to drones, constant surveillance, the Iraq War, anthrax, and Edward Snowden, it's tried so hard to feel current that it somehow already felt dated by the end of the episode. One day there will come a time when religious extremism and ISIS and suicide bombings become a thing that just was. Down the road, new fans will discover the show, and these new episodes, and think, "Was this ever part of your culture?" But the original conflicts that really gave The X-Files its power—Watergate, the JFK assassination, Roswell—aren't just pages of our history, but shapers of our culture. They're never going to dissipate, and they exemplify what Fox Mulder is trying to do: expose the shadowy government officials at the highest levels for what they are and prove to the American people they've been lied to.

Even if we want to take a step back from all the pseudo-philosophizing and examine the show for nothing more than a piece of entertainment, the rebirth still existed on shaky ground. Carter wasn’t able to overcome the recognition that The X-Files achieved pop-culture status. Even people who never watched a single episode in their lives know the names Mulder and Scully. They know "trust no one." And they know, without ever having seen a frame, that Mulder and Scully totally wanted to do it to each other. Carter was so aware of this pop-culture status that he seemed unable to refrain from elbowing his audience in the side, in every episode, to remind them of this. Too aware of its own legacy to just be a show, it tried to be a show at the same time it was reminding people, "Hey, this was a show before it was a show!" Scenes of Mulder being confused by iPhones are played for laughs, oddly suggesting that following I Want to Believe, he lived in a closet while culture continued to advance without him. The "mini" versions of our characters that appear in "Babylon"—down to Lauren Ambrose's red hair and her ultra-cynicism—have all the subtlety of a fireworks factory exploding. And the list goes on and on.

Different intellectual properties have been explored on television in various ways, whether they be the resurrection of previous series or film properties being explored in inventive reboots. But none of them ever felt the need to remind their audiences, "Hey, we've done this already." It caused The X-Files' return to feel obligatory, exhibiting a seeming "Oh, is it our turn?" mentality. As if they didn’t really want to be back.

And that sucks.

Though Seasons 10 and 11 seem to be the final word on The X-Files in terms of television (and Anderson, who has been enjoying one celebrated role after another since then, has made it very clear she wouldn’t do another season), Carter has been claiming for years that he's written a film script for The X-Files 3, and his comments on that script suggest the events of these new seasons don't really complicate what he's already concocted. The problem is he already had a long break between Season 9 and I Want to Believe, and then another long break between that and Season 10, to focus on the story he wanted to tell and how he wanted to tell it. Hence why Season 11 didn't dare much better.

If Chris Carter loves The X-Files as much as I believe he does, the best thing he can do for it is close the lid of his laptop and hand over all future writing responsibilities to someone else – either to the staff he’s assembled over the years which includes Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, or to the dreaded ‘new class’ of writers who could take that concept of The X-Files and re-create it as something new while giving it a clean slate.

Regardless of what form in which it returns, The X-Files could be great again. After seeing how low it can go, any eventual returns would have to serve as some kind of marginal improvement. Or maybe that's the fan boy in me holding out hope that such a thing is possible. Maybe, at this stage, after so many disappointing seasons, it's simply not possible.

But, let's just say I want to believe it is.

ZARDOZ (1974)

Budding cineastes slowly developing their love for cinema in the Internet Age have likely become aware of Zardoz's existence through the infamous image of Sean Connery dressed as a viking by way of a Prince music video while grasping a rather modern looking pistol and smiling right into the camera. It's an image that invokes thoughts of, "Oh man, I need to see this...but, maybe later." 

Before it went out of print, home video distributor Twilight Time resurrected this strange title for another lease on life. The definition of a cult film, Twilight Time ran through its typical allocation of 3,000 units quicker than many of its other titles, and after having seen Zardoz for myself, I can understand why: it's so goddamned weird that it's clearly the kind of title that only appeals to a very few, and those to whom it does appeal, it appears pretty hard.

Frankly, I'm at a loss as to how I might adequately provide even the loosest iteration of Zardoz's plot, so I'm not going to try. Twilight Time's own synopsis:

Writer-director John Boorman’s fabulously bizarre Zardoz (1974) is a visually stunning science fiction/fantasy fable starring Sean Connery as the spanner in the works of a dreamily languid future society. A primitive Adam, Connery’s Zed charges like a bull through the china shop of a civilization from which all signs of lusty humanity have been drained.

Added to that: by film's end, Connery will end up in a wedding dress before he turns into a skeleton, all while holding hands with...another skeleton.

Zardoz is an entirely maddening, confusing, frustrating, highly amusing experience that cannot be easily summarized into mere words. To try would be to harvest from the film its identity, its uniqueness, and its complete lunacy. Zardoz is artistic expression unrestrained, anchored by the presence of former James Bond Sean Connery, whose involvement wrongly assures the most mainstream of audiences that he's made a film that appeals to everyone who enjoys going down to the cinemas on a Sunday afternoon looking for a brief slice of harmless escapism. Zardoz's "story" is baffling. Zardoz's "message" is baffling. That Zardoz was produced and distributed by a major motion picture studio is utterly baffling. But it's here: now, and for all time. It's recently turned forty-five years old, and its legend remains firmly intact. It's wonderfully and weirdly captivating, and deserves to be seen once. Though it may demand more than one viewing to fully appreciate how utterly mad it is, the jury will be forever out on who would ever do such a thing.

A good friend of mine put it best: "Sean Connery turned down both The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings because he 'didn't get' them, but he said yes to Zardoz."

You figure that one out.

Zardoz is less of a film and more of an experience. Like that fever dream you once had following your all-night puke-a-thon the last time you got that really nasty stomach bug from the half-KFC/half-Taco Bell, Zardoz probably makes sense somewhere in the outer-reaches of artistic creation, but here on Earth, it's frankly one of the most absurd and deeply abstract 105 minutes of your lifetime. What on the surface may look like a silly B-movie accidentally starring Sean Connery is actually an art-house experiment straddling the line between erotic thriller and science-fiction extravaganza purposely starring Sean Connery. Those interested by such a breakdown may possibly use Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film Under the Skin, another unorthodox film about cross-universe alien races driven by a deconstruction of sexuality, as a guide to determine what kind of experience Zardoz may provide. One thing is for sure: you've never seen anything like it.

Zardoz has spoken.

ANNIHILATION (2018)

By now, Annihilation is well known for having made an inauspicious debut on Netflix after Paramount, the studio behind its production, declined to send it to theaters. While it’s a shame that this route was chosen, as its visuals alone demand a theatrical experience, I can understand why, because Annihilation is a challenging work. Alex Garland, writer/director of the similarly challenging Ex Machina, and screenwriter of the 28 Days Later series and Dredd, has concocted a wild hybrid of B-movie monstrousness married to a Kubrick-esque mind-fuck a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take that, and add Annihilation's unsettling ending, which can sometimes be a death knell on box office, as audiences like their conclusions both happy and easy to comprehend, and its home on Netflix makes more and more sense.

Another reason Annihilation may be so well known: it’s all-female cast, led by Natalie Portman but supported by the likes of Tessa Thompson and the always wonderful Jennifer Jason Leigh. In fact, the presence of men figure rarely into the plot, except in the form of Oscar Isaac, whose reappearance after being thought dead is the direct catalyst for Portman’s Lena stepping directly into the mysterious world the film calls The Shimmer. If there’s a specific reason for the all-female cast, Garland doesn’t use Annihilation to present it in any broad manner, but of course the viewer can determine the implications of this choice on their own. One thing is for sure: in this particular world, it’s the women who are getting shit done.

Annihilation’s visuals are its biggest selling points, from its use of CGI to create mutants animals to the production design featuring the design of flowers arranged in humanoid shapes, like living statues existing within a botanical garden. But the visuals don’t just start and stop at wonder — especially during the ending, as Lena gets closer to solving the mystery of The Shimmer, the sights she sees maintain the wonder but up the creep factor significantly.

Annihilation requires more than one viewing to fully appreciate its scope, to begin unearthing the true mystery of The Shimmer, and to catch all the subtleties Garlan hid throughout, especially within the confines of the framing device used to propel the story forward. It’s daring, well acted, visually aweing, and again, challenging. You should be absolutely ready for something beyond a simple sci-fi romp should you take your own trip into The Shimmer.

MINDWARP (1992)

Filmmakers, especially horror ones, were sort of obsessed with the idea of computers and artificial intelligence during the 1990s. Lawnmower Man comes to mind, as does Ghost in the Machine and Brainscan. None of these films are of any particular merit, but it's not really the fault of the horror genre per se. For fun, we can throw The Net into the mix for proof that big-budget Hollywood projects could be equally ludicrous. Hell, perhaps you remember the sexually charged Disclosure from 1995, a serviceable thriller starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore that features, by today's standards, a frankly hilarious virtual reality third-act climax whose special effects were on par with South Park. No one was really making any pro-computer films because they were still considered a new technology (at least at the consumer level), and, as with all "new" things, people didn't know enough about them, and hence were terrified of them.

Mindwarp, released in other parts of the world with the higher-stakes title of Brain Slasher, is something of a different beast. It has more in common with 2001 than any of the above films, and also includes a dash of Mad Max and Total Recall. It presents on a philosophical level the danger not of computers in general but of our dependence on them. On this wasteland formerly Earth following nuclear fallout, human civilization was divided into two groups of people: The first group consisted of those who escaped the blast into a permanent indoor environment where they can plug into computers all day and pretend to be anyone, anywhere, at any time in history. (These plugs go into the back of the neck, by the way, so suck it, The Matrix. Mindwarp was here first.)

One of these hiders is a young woman named Judy, confined alongside her mother, who has grown tired of the artificiality of it all and demands to SysOp (the Systems Operator) to free her and allow her entry to the outside world so that she may see for herself what the "real" world is like. Well, its exactly there where Judy meets the other group of people: scavengers destined to hunting rodents to survive, covering themselves head to toe in furs and burlap to shield themselves from the sun (and those who don't turn into drippy gooey mutants). As you can imagine, some of these outsiders are really really mean and it causes all sorts of havoc. Along the way, Judy meets Bruce Campbell, one of these scavengers just trying to survive. Things go fairly well, and each begins to learn about how the other half lives, but then things go badly pretty quickly and Judy is kidnapped by these mutants where she meets Lord of the Mutants, Angus Scrimm. Only one person will save the day - guess who!

Fucking Mindwarp. What a quirky, well-meaning film. At times both philosophical and entirely stupid, well made and...not so well made, it's the kind of harmless Blockbuster horror shelf fodder that I frankly miss. Regardless of the success that Mindwarp obtained, it's easy to tell that everyone involved in this - from director Steve Barnett, co-writer John D. Brancato (hey, he wrote The Net!) to its cast of Campbell, Scrimm, and Marta Martin - believed in the film they were making, because it shows. Everyone's on board, even for the silliest of aspects, so for that alone Mindwarp deserves at the very least a round of mutant applause. 

Mindwarp is goofy, corny, and was destined for late-night Sci Fi Channel. But there's also an undeniable charm about the whole thing. A film with a rather pessimistic view of the future that features philosophical conversations about God, love, "what is real?" mixed with mutant cannibals, swords and leather, scary women with green gooey syringes. Take Bruce Campbell, add some Angus Scrimm, remember that this film is "presented" by Fangoria, and just enjoy it for what it is: an early '90s cheese plate.

THE 'SPECIES' SERIES (1995-2005)

Of all the films to have ever been financially successful, Species is not the first title that comes to mind. Essentially a film akin to cheeseball directors Fred Olen Ray (Bad Girls from Mars) or Jim Wynorski (Not of This Earth), but with an A-list cast and released by a major studio, Species was that film back in 1995 that made the female demographic roll their eyes and say, "That's that movie where that girl walks around topless the whole time," leaving their male counterparts to chuckle their best Beavis & Butthead chuckle and say, "That's why I want to see it!" Whether you like it or not, Species made bank while also inexplicably starring Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Forrest Whitaker. Normally I'd also throw in Michael Madsen to bolster my point, but then you'd think of the current Michael Madsen and go "So?" instead of the Michael Madsen of 1994, who was pretty respectable.

Species was a box office doozy in 1995, and it's actually kind of surprising it would take three years for Species II to rear its alien head. What isn't surprising is how bad it is, and by now I believe that's achieved common-knowledge status. Amusingly, there is exactly one critic's pull-quote on the current home video release:

"Great special effects!" – Boxoffice

And even that's a lie.

Maybe they were great special effects in 1998, but in 2016, sorry—today's soda commercials, literally, have better effects. It's tempting to believe that it's H.R. Giger's alien designs being celebrated, not the jokey MS Dos visual effects, but being that his creations receive roughly four minutes of screen time in the finale, what's likely being celebrated are the shameless close-ups of blown-off heads being digitally reformed by alien magic.

Species II was somehow directed by Peter Medak, a cult director perhaps best known for The Changeling and Zorro: The Gay Blade (and The Ruling Class, a personal favorite). His sly sense of humor is evident throughout, which is pretty much the only thing that makes it watchable. (The film opens with our astronauts floating around space in their vessel covered in sponsor logos [Miller Lite! Pepsi-Cola!], as if suggesting NASA had to sell out and go elsewhere for funding.) Medak might not have been the only person involved in the production who knew how stupid the film was, but he makes his near-disdain for it the most obvious. (Spoiler alert: in the film's finale, the bad alien literally mouth-fucks the good alien to death. You know, for kids!)

Film Fact! In Species II, James Cromwell plays Senator Judson Ross and father to a man who will soon became an alien. He tells him, "You're a Ross. Act like it." In Oliver Stone's W., James Cromwell plays Congressman George H.W. Bush and father to a man who was probably an alien to begin with. He tells him, "You're a Bush. Act like one." Ergo, we are forced to conclude that W. is a big budget remake of Species II—and like most other remakes, ain't as good.

For the first entry in the Species saga to go direct-to-video, gone are the established directors, reasonable budgets, the alien designs by H.R. Giger, and except for the opening five minutes, Natasha Henstridge. Instead what we receive is a silly plot recycled from—of all things—Re-Animator, a handful of tepid performances, and a plot that, somewhere—perhaps on paper—makes sense, but doesn't within the course of the film. Also sadly gone is former director Peter Medak's wry sense of humor, while newcomer Brad Turner instead makes the error of trying to take all this sexy alien nonsense way too seriously. He shouldn't have, as I can assure him, no one else is.

Our lead alien-dealer-wither, Dean, is played by Robin Dunne, who seems to have built himself a tidy career in the direct-to-video sequel world, having also starred in Cruel Intentions 2, The Skulls 2, and American Psycho 2. They are all bad, just like Species III is bad. And he is bad in them.

Considering the Species franchise is built on one very silly and shaky premise—hot alien babes trying to get knocked up—it was inevitable that an installment finally go full gonzo to create a majestic train wreck. Species IV: The Awakening is that installment. At first appearing to be the most serious of all the Species films, that soon devolves into alien babe nuns, mutant taxi drivers and hotel concierges, and apparently the most dangerous and alien-slimed town in all of Mexico. The acting talent pool sees a series-low, and for a film that looks to have had the lowest budget yet, the constant insistence on utilizing visual effects it can't afford soon becomes a thing of amusement. There are exactly two reasons to ever sit through Species IV: The Awakening—the astoundingly gorgeous Helena Mattson as the new alien babe, and the ludicrous and awkwardly choreographed fight scene between the two alien costumes during the finale. Picture the early Toho Godzilla films, which saw two mid-sized dummies flailing their lifeless plastic limbs at each other, and you're nearly there. The performers ensnared in these suits can barely move, let alone have a convincing fight, and it will give you a serious joy-joy feeling to see it unfold.

This might be a point I've made before, but I'll make it again because it's still relevant: We live in a world where all of the Species films are now on Blu-ray, but not all of William Friedkin's films are on DVD. Think about that as you watch sexy alien girls tearing off men's flesh and walking around in slime, or nothing, or slime/nothing, and wonder if it's really worthy of the newest home entertainment medium.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)

I adore Ray Bradbury. I grew up reading the author’s works, but without truly honing in on the emotion and sense of wonder that the author infused in his writing until I was much older. The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The October Country all rank as not just my favorite Bradbury works, but my favorite works ever. But as someone who leans more toward out and out horror rather than sci-fi and fantasy, there are some books and short story collections by the author I never felt compelled to read — an example being The Martian Chronicles, as well as The Illustrated Man.

By the studio’s own synopsis, one would think that the film adaption strayed away from the heavier sci-fi leanings of the anthology of the same name, but that’s not the case. Though the wraparound story (featuring the titular character played by an excellent Rod Steiger) exists in a mid-1900s, middle-America environment, every tale spun by the illustrated man exists in a science-fiction or futuristic environment. Source material aside (again, I haven’t read it, so I don’t want to tick off the purists), the wraparound story doesn’t mesh well with the stories that are told. (For once, the wraparound story is actually the best part of the anthology.) A single story existing in the sci-fi world would have been one thing, but by the second story, the theme is established and it feels at odds with the film’s opener (and closer).

Steiger and Claire Bloom (who plays the illustrator witch in the wraparound) play all the lead roles in each story, and though they do a great job, it also lends itself to confusion — especially with the very subtle inference that some of the stories may or may not overlap. Sci-fi aspect aside, there’s another thing that all the stories have in common, and it’s one very unexpected, and that’s a slight hint of sexuality. Steiger’s carnival drifter becoming attracted to Bloom’s witch and undergoing his body transformation in hopes to sleep with her is just one example, but each story includes something akin to this. I’m not sure what it all means, to be honest.

If there’s one reason to watch The Illustrated Man, it’s for Rod Steiger. He’s a blast to watch, and manages to play an intimidating, authoritative figure in every tale. His dominating performance anchors every segment, and there’s an interesting dichotomy in place in that, though every character is supposed to be different, Steiger’s approach seems purposely similar in each, suggesting that maybe all of them are him in some way. And if there was anyone with the audacity to attempt such a thing, it would be Bradbury.

Surprisingly, Bradbury hasn’t been adapted for film as much as you’d think (the most recent was HBO’s mind-bogglingly reckless and disrespectful Fahrenheit 451), given his large body of work and Hollywood’s tendency to adapt cult and horror authors. For reference, Stephen King is already starting to lap himself, racking up two adaptations, or more, per novel or novella. I can’t imagine that those Bradbury fans who enjoy or prefer his science-fiction writing won’t enjoy The Illustrated Man, but for me I was hoping for something a little more “supernatural” (as promised by the tagline). 

The Illustrated Man is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archives.

EVILS OF THE NIGHT (1985)

Let me set the scene for you.

It’s night. It’s summertime (I guess). The moon is full and high in the sky. Cicadas sing their songs, unseen in the tall wheatgrass.

A handsome young couple begins to softly nuzzle in the woods near a calm lake. They’ll be getting married soon. They’re in love. A big wedding is planned. She wants the big affair. He doesn’t; he wants to elope. Their disagreement threatens to ruin their calm romantic night out.

“Let’s not fight,” says the boy. “I’ve got a better idea: two lips…gathered as one.” A soft Billy Joel-ish ballad begins to play as the camera moves in close on his hand unzipping her pants. In slow motion.

It was during this moment when I realized: Evils of the Night is just the greatest.

Boy, there’s nothing like the perfect bad movie — especially when it’s horror. Blood Rage — a new favorite — comes instantly to mind. There’s also Vampire’s Kiss, Squirm, The House Where Evil Dwells, Troll 2, along with —

I’ve wasted my life.

Evils of the Night is rather simply plotted: teens at a lake become victims one-by-one to a pair of auto repair guys being paid in gold coins by humanoid aliens to kidnap people for their blood. Evils of the Night features a lot of teens. A lot. If you can keep up with all the young people who are introduced, I applaud you. And because we’ve all seen horror movies, we all know what teenagers like to do: kiss, pet, get high, and be naked. Evils of the Night, itself wanting to be different from its ilk, sets off for daring new territory. Now the teenagers, in their throes pf passion, lick each other. Constantly. They lick every part: the neck, the chest, the Adam’s apple, or nipple (man or woman’s). Sometimes they like to lick all around each other’s mouths while kissing; like an eager child learning to ride a bike for the first time, the enthusiasm is there, but the skill is yet to be honed.

This makes Evils of the Night supreme, along with sample dialogue amusingly taken out of context:

• “Alright! Now we can get high!”
• “You gonna tease me all night, or can I get a little action this time?”
• “Where’s my surprise?” “First, let me clean the sand off.”
• “I’ve got to go see a man about a dog!” “What?” “I’ve gotta go to the john!”
• “No tongue, it makes me laugh.”
• “Why are you touching my nipples like that?” (asks a dude.)
• “Calm down — I’ll definitely call the police! Come on in.” ::a scream::

Even completely innocent lines of dialogue somehow become hilarious within the confines of this utter cinematic insanity:

• “Do we have any Pepsi left, Eddie?”

If you were to tell your mother that you were about to watch a film starring Aldo Ray, Julie Newmar, Tina Louise, John Carradine, and Neville Brand, she would probably say, “Ooh, can I watch it with you?”

Don’t let her.

Because amidst all the scenes of blood theft, murders, and John Carradine expositing to the other aliens exactly what it is the aliens are doing, even though you’d think they should know by now, since they’re aliens (“Just think, Cora: without these platelets, your bones will eventually grow fragile and break within a hundred years, but WITH them, you could live 200 years or more”), Evils of the Night also features: hilarious doggy style, unwitting necrophilia, teenagers running around in their underwear, hospitals inexplicably taken over by an alien race that no one seems to notice, sexy alien orderlies threatening to seduce each other in the hallway because they’re in between utilitarian alien tasks, suggestive and unsubtle banana consumption, duel lesbian suntan-lotion-rubbing, and finally, a crop of dry blonde hair swirling about in the gentle surface of the lake as she services her man underwater.

But above all of this madness, and all the things that make Evils of the Night so deliciously and ironically transcendent — the budget Cyndee Lauper knockoff soundtrack that goes ♬ “Boys will be boys, they will always be that way, boys will be boys, they just wanna play!” ♬; and the multiple scenes of aliens firing alien lasers from their special alien rings directly into the writhing bodies of underwear-clad teens — there lies the glue that holds all of Evils of the Night together. She is the heart and soul. For every wide-eyed look of shock and surprise levied directly into the camera, or every line of dialogue intended for her cast-mates, but aimed at space itself, you will know you are witnessing something unique, rare, and defining.

She is beautiful. She is blonde. She is…Connie.

Essayed by professional actress G.T. Taylor, Connie is the horror heroine the genre had been looking for since 1978’s Laurie Strode. Someone cunning, intelligent, forthright, and brave. Someone willing to believe that mud and seaweed applied by two horny boys is great for the skin. Someone who daydreams about making love to Prince Andrew. Someone eager to host a hand-burning contest. Someone who shies at the mere idea of a penis.

The performance — one seemingly laden with lithium, helium, and delirium all at once — is one that went on to define the genre. This cinematic portrayal of good, fighting against all this evil, was a butterfly effect with neutron bomb-sized ramifications which would transform the genre, the medium, even the world from thence on, elevating it into the next plateau of awakening. You see, Connie is us; we are Connie. She embodies us all at our most vulnerable, but also at our most resilient. She’s taught us everything we’ll ever need to know about each other, and ourselves. She’s taught us never to give in, never to surrender. We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We’re going to live on. We’re going to survive. Tonight we celebrate…Connie.

Please, before we go, let us take a brief detour to IMDB for actress G.T. Taylor’s official filmography:

Very impressive.

  

The day I saw Evils of the Night, my life changed forever.

Because I’d met Connie, the blond-haired, pin-striped, kewpie-doll-voiced angel who proved she’d fight to the death with a power drill to save her friends, all while fantasizing about wanting…you know…an O.

Evils of the Night is not just a gift from the bad movie gods, but it’s one of the nicest times I’ve ever had.

CLASS OF 1999 (1990)

Looking back on films that were supposed to represent the future, long after that “future” has come and gone, can be hilarious. For example, according to Demolition Man, L.A. was to be reduced to one gigantic warzone, constantly on fire where busloads of people were being kidnapped.

In 1996.

As I’ve said before, every movie you have ever seen that’s set in the future doesn’t offer a sunny and optimistic look at what’s to come. Color everywhere has been replaced by sterile white; warmth is non-existent. And technology has run rampant, making humans nearly useless on their own (uh oh!); meanwhile, right in front of our stupid faces, that technology is threatening to undo the very rules of civilization (uh oh!).

Mark L. Lester’s Class of 1999 (made in 1990), a very loose sequel to his Class of 1984 (made in 1982), is a pretty good example of that, only instead of something like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and all the colorless, cold, and mechanical environments that come with it, there’s the usual amount of ‘80s-era bright colors and Mad Max-ish carnage. Not only is technology a future danger to society, but so are high school students. Run!

To backtrack, Class of 1984 was about a high school teacher pushed too far by his unruly gang member students, and this is a concept that’s been seen time and again. James Belushi’s silly but underrated flick The Principal, and later on, Tom Berenger’s The Substitute (which would spawn a direct-to-video franchise with Treat Williams). Class of 1999 takes that same basic concept and then throws robots into the mix, and in case you weren’t aware, adding robots to any movie makes it instantly better 99.999% of the time. 

This can be confirmed scientifically by using the following equation:

Movie x └[ ∵ ]┘ = 🙂

Class of 1999 is an amalgam of the previously mentioned Mad Max, along with The Terminator, The Warriors, and your choice of any typical ’80s action flick. It’s utterly beyond stupid and addictingly watchable. The action, the robots, and the robotic-action go a long way toward achieving this, but also helping? The inclusion of Stacy Keach, who as science has also proven, also makes any movie better 99.999% of the time. So now that we’re operating at 199.998% worth of superiority, it’s easy to see why Class of 1999 is so much fun. And this is before I mention the inclusion of John P. Ryan (Cannon’s go-to villain during the ‘80s and ‘90s) and blaxsploitation icon Pam Grier as grinning killer robots, and lead groog himself, Malcolm McDowell, as a sometimes caring/sometimes shrugging principal.

Lester had previously directed one of the greatest films of all time, Commando, and though Class of 1999 doesn’t come anywhere close to that film’s amount of carnage and violence, you can still sense Lester’s affection for it, so his sequel goes as far as it can on the budget he was given. There are still lots of explosions and fatalities during the finale and it’s an absolute blast.

If you haven’t guessed by now, not much of Class of 1999 is to be taken seriously. In case you missed the plotline, it’s about robot teachers murdering their gang member students, who eventually take revenge. If for some reason that kind of plot doesn’t interest you, frankly, I don’t want to know you.