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"Never send a human to do a machine's job."
When Star Wars (now titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) debuted in May of 1977, it forever changed sci-fi — and Hollywood’s perception of the genre — with its epic fantasy story and groundbreaking technology. It quickly became the highest grossing movie of all time and garnered numerous accolades, winning six of the ten Academy Awards categories for which it was nominated. Star Wars continually ranks near the top of just about every movie list category out there, including our own recent Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1970’s and ‘80s, as voted by you, the Reelz.com readers.
The long-awaited prequel trilogy that was launched in May of 1999 with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was a huge success for Lucasfilm, but, even though it boasted far superior special effects, it failed to make the same sort of impact on moviegoers as the original. Was Jar Jar Binks really the source of the ambivalence that many fans felt toward The Phantom Menace or was it that they had already had their minds blown by The Matrix, which opened two months prior? And how do the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix trilogy stack up against other sci-fi movies with next-level special effects like Avatar or more cerebral movies like Donnie Darko? Sit down, jack in and upload your choices of the best sci-fi movies from 1990 to today.
Rate the Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies (1990s - 2010s) >>
Posted 03.14.13 by BrentJS -
"Yippee ki-yay, motherf****r!"
Legendary action movie icon Bruce Willis can currently be seen on the big screen in his fifth go-round as John McClane, the perpetually "wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time," in A Good Day to Die Hard. In his 28-year career as an actor, Willis has starred in more than 60 movies — five last year alone — playing such diverse characters as a time travelling hitman, a deep-sea oil driller (in space), a taxicab driver (in space), a dead child psychologist, an honorable boxer with a killer hook, an assassin named "Mr. Goodkat," a professional gambler named "Dink," and a charming killer named "The Tulip." Some of his movies have become classics, while others...not so much, but they all boast one thing: Willis himself, a bonafide movie star the likes of which are rarely seen in Hollywood anymore. Pour yourself a refreshing glass of Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler, queue up The Return of Bruno on your iPod and help us select Willis' best movies.
Rate the Top 10 Best Bruce Willis Movies >>
Posted 03.04.13 by BrentJS -
Everyone loves a good time travel movie and moviegoers got a good one with this thriller that starred two of the biggest stars on the planet.
Why Does Pitt Look So Crazy? >> Posted 12.31.12 by Chris -
Everything Old Foreign is New Again
To the entertainment writers and movie critics who have grown cynical in the face of the seemingly endless stream of sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots hitting theaters these days, the recent news that Charlize Theron will be starring in an English-language remake of Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is just another sign that Hollywood is fresh out of ideas. However, according to the writer of the adaptation, William Monahan — who took the already exceptionally good Chinese crime thriller Infernal Affairs and turned it into a script worthy of Martin Scorsese and the Academy called The Departed — that couldn't be further from the truth:
[Screenwriting is] the only popular literary form we’ve got left. Adaptation is a very traditional and honorable endeavor in writing for dramatic performance, and if people don’t know that it leads to a hell of a lot of originality and invention in the right hands, well, I’m not going to provide a reading list."
Monohan describes screenwriting as "drama in English" and said foreign movie remakes are the equivalent of Shakespeare taking foreign stories and doing his own "departures from the material." While we have a hard time comparing the vast majority of foreign movie remakes to Shakespeare, there have been several exceptional ones over the years and even a few that managed to surpass the foreign originals. Turn off the subtitles and help us choose the best English-language adaptations of foreign movies.
Rate the Top 10 Best Foreign Movie Remakes >>
Posted 12.03.12 by BrentJS -
In Looper, writer-director Rian Johnson's (Brick) new time-tripping action thriller opening this Friday, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JGL) plays a hitman ("looper") tasked with terminating his own future self (Bruce Willis), who is sent back in time so that there will be no trace of the crime in the future. Talk about a head trip! This plot has "time paradox" written all over it. If JGL kills Willis, wouldn't he remember that happening and try to prevent it from happening when he grows up to be Willis? And, if Willis kills JGL, wouldn't he simply cease to exist?
Looper isn't the first movie to delve into the complex moral and metaphysical conundrums inherent in time travel. In The Terminator, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is sent back in time by John Connor, the future leader of the resistance against the machines, and ends up becoming Connor's dad. And in Back to the Future, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) goes back in time to save his friend and is almost erased from history when his mother (Lea Thompson) starts crushing on him. Help us rate the Top 10 Mind-Bending Time Travel movies.
Click to Rate the Top Time Travel Movies >>
Posted 09.28.12 by BrentJS