PINNLAND EMPIRE: science fiction

Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts

Sunday, May 3, 2026

UPGRADE UPDATED

Upgrade is one of those movies that’s totally fine but you’d think it was my favorite movie based on how I talk about it and defend it all the time. I know that doesn’t make complete sense but that’s the only way I can describe it. This is the true definition of a comfort film. There’s nothing original about the story but the execution is just right. I think media consumption is suffering because a lot of people have this expectation that a movie has to be an instant classic before the final credits role. If the impact isn't felt immediately then the movie is treated like a disposable piece of nothing. Sometimes it's ok for a movie to be fun/entertaining and grow on folks over time. This has been relationship with Upgrade. I never get tired of watching it. Imagine the basic plot of Robocop with a few tweaks, more “bisexual lighting” and a fraction of the budget.

In the film, Logan Marshall Green plays "Grey Trace" - a recently widowed and disabled auto-mechanic that agrees to be the guinea pig for a controversial procedure, “STEM”, that will allow him to walk again. As the movie unfolds we learn that Trace’s paralyzation, STEM and the death of his wife are all connected.

The Robocop comparisons are super obvious but Upgrade director Leigh Whannell made a point to mention the similarities himself...

Robocop / Upgrade

With Upgrade, there's certainly a nostalgia there associated with '80s sci-fi films that I grew up with, like Robocop - Leigh Whannell, Vulture

Robocop / Upgrade

Besides the basic premise of a man turned in to a half human/half robotic killing machine, there are some very specific moments/beats between the two films that go beyond basic nostalgic influence.

Robocop / Upgrade

Some of the key similar moments between Robocop and Upgrade are even shot the same…

Robocop / Upgrade

Upgrade was also understandably compared to Venom as both movies were released the same year, each focusing on characters losing control of their bodies to some sort of outside/alien force (it should also be mentioned that Logan Marshall Green and Tom Hardy kind of look alike).

Upgrade / Venom

The movies that inspired me are the movies that I always loved. Films like the original Terminator, which is one of my favorite films. RoboCop, The Thing - Leigh Whannell, thenerdstemplar.com

Terminator / Upgrade

The Thing / Upgrade

I'm always a little apprehensive to compare anything to David Cronenberg. The older I get the more I'm finding that a lot of people don't exactly understand his films and/or his ideologies, but...Whannell does mention him as a major inspiration. Outside of the basic "gore" element, there is a very surface-level Cronenberg quality to certain aspects of Upgrade...

Cronenberg is a seminal filmmaker for me. I love the topics he covers: this messy world of the body. He finds the human body horrific, and all of his stuff gets tossed into the soup of my subconcious. Videodome, eXistenz, movies like that are there, and being able to draw on those influences is great. Usually, when I'm writing, what I do is I go, "OK, so you've got this sort of Cronenberg/Terminator thing going on. What are you gonna do with it?" - Leigh Whannell, Birthdeathmovies.com

Videodrome / Upgrade

eXistenZ / Upgrade

And I know almost every movie can be connected to Stanley Kubrick in some way, but as Upgrade unfolds, "Stem" starts to act just like Hal from 2001...

2001... / Upgrade

The subject matter of Upgrade was certainly prescient given the rise of artificial intelligence everywhere (it seems like so much of what we read and deal with online and in academia has become a hybrid of the human element mixed with AI). All the elements for a great essay on the parallels between Upgrade and modern AI are there. I’m more interested in this film on an entertainment level. It’s just a fun action sci-fi story with a great droany score.
It has to be noted that the music for Upgrade is great and works as a standalone entity. Jed Palmer’s score would mix in perfectly between early 90s Autechre and modern-day Brian Eno.

My only complaint is that there wasn’t a part two. I know it can get tiring having to deal with non-stop sequels and “cinematic universes”, but in the case of Upgrade it makes sense. Not to spoil the film too much but the final moments of Upgrade end on a sort of cliffhanger. Sure not everything needs a sequel and you could use your imagination to think up your own Upgrade cinematic universe, but I wanted to see it for real.
*SPOILER* - the movie ends with STEM taking over Trace’s body and turning him in to the villain. At the same time - the police officer that’s tasked with trying to stop Trace/STEM is left paralyzed/immobile and in the perfect position to have a similar STEM-like procedure done to her in order to track down the new rogue STEM/Trace).
While Upgrade didn’t break any box office numbers, it still made a $14 million dollar profit off of a $3 million dollar budget and gained a small but dedicated cult fanbase. On one hand, I know Blumhouse has bigger priorities but I can’t imagine it would have been that much of a gamble to make a sequel.

Perhaps Upgrade should have been a direct-to-video release from the start. This way we would have definitely got a sequel like all the Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White DTV films that maintain a dedicated fanbase.

This is hardly a masterpiece but it remains one of my most revisited films of the last decade.

Friday, January 9, 2026

ALPHA: ANOTHER LOVE LETTER TO DAVID CRONENBERG

eXistenZ / Alpha

I’m a little obsessed with looking at the films of Julia Ducournau through the lens of David Cronenberg because, unlike so many other younger/newer generation filmmakers, David Cronenberg seems to be a fan of Ducournau’s work. I don’t know if he’s just being nice in his older age but I have to imagine his praise means the world to her (he's never held his tongue when it came to being critical of other filmmakers in the past).

David Cronenberg is a major influence in my life. I discovered his films when I was a teenager - Julia Ducournau, focusfeatures.com

She’s got a really strong visual sense. I know she’s said how much of an influence my filmmaking has been, but it’s basically in the sense of unlocking her own sensibility, which is unique. She’s got a really strong visual sense and a sense of the absurd, the extreme. Her films are totally not like my films - David Cronenberg, indiewire

The opposite recently happened with John Carpenter expressing his disdain for The Substance…

I like The Substance but it has to feel awful having one of your heroes despise your work. But at the same time it has to be frustrating for Carpenter having his name associated with a movie he dislikes.

Ducournau’s latest film Alpha is about 5 years too late. It’s a movie about a mysterious contagious disease that turns people in to marble. That’s not all the film is about. Alpha delves in to everything from drug addiction and family drama to childhood bullying and repressed memories.
Naturally this can be seen as another Covid-sploitation movie but even if it came out in 2021 or 2022 I’d probably still be a little cynical towards it. We all lived through covid. We get it. A covid movie with heavy symbolism and metaphors seems a little pointless to me.
What’s unfortunate is that from now on, any modern film about a contagious disease will be called a covid movie even though Covid wasn’t the first contagious disease.

What I did find somewhat interesting was how Ducournau pulled from some of Cronenberg’s lesser known works, images and scenes (there are still some nods to his more popular movies). I was warned that Julia Ducournau didn't emulate Cronenberg this time around like she did w/ Raw, Titane and her early shorts but I didn’t see it that way.

It’s an interesting coincidence that Alpha's ending is similar to Crime Of The Future with The Passion Of Joan Of Arc tear drop.

Crimes Of The Future / Alpha

Instead of Videodrome or Scanners, Ducournau seems to pull from stuff like eXistenZ and later period Shorts like The Death Of David Cronenberg.

Crimes Of The Future / Alpha

eXistenZ / Alpha

Amin's body transformation in Alpha is similar to Seth's transformation in The Fly

The Fly / Alpha

The drug addiction aspect from Alpha definitely pulls from Naked Lunch as well.

Naked Lunch / Alpha

Again - this wasn’t my thing but I can see how others might like this. I love a good comparison but Julia Ducournau doesn’t seem to have a voice of her own yet. Shes starting to take the Cronenberg worship a bit too far. That’s not to say Cronenberg owns body horror or the horrors of body transformation. He just seems to be the only person Ducournau pulls from.

Thursday, January 1, 2026

A VISITOR TO A MUSEUM

If you’re familiar with this blog then it’s no mystery that I’m a big Andrei Tarkovsky fan. I’m such a fan that I even like most of his students, knock-offs and copycats. I’ve dedicated quite a few blog entries to the work of Tarkovsky and his direct influence on various filmmakers that came after him (early Lars Von Trier, Carlos Reygadas, Alexander Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Bi Gan, Elem Klimov, Nina Menkes and more).

Tarkovsky’s influence is so prolific that his “students” sometimes feed off of and imitate each other without even meaning to…

The Element Of Crime / A Visitor To A Museum

I say all this because up until a few days ago I hadn’t seen any films by Konstantin Lopushansky. Major oversight. I’ve only seen three of his films so far but the influence of Tarkovsky is all over his work (or at least what I’ve seen so far).

I know it comes off as lazy to compare slow “artsy” contemplative Russian films to Andrei Tarkovsky but Lopushansky actually worked on Stalker. He also never seems to shy away from his mentor’s spiritual influence while dismissing the types of comparisons I make all throughout this post.

The Mirror / A Visitor To A Museum

Figuratively speaking, the great master’s shadow, as people used to say, hangs over every all of us – directors of the 20th century, his influence was enormous. Many critics ask Lars von Trier, Alexander Sokurov, me about his influence. It is inevitable, as he is the greatest representative of auteur cinema, his quintessence of auteur cinema ideology has been absorbed by many, including me. But if we speak about style, some critics who do not like auteur cinema attempt to pick things apart; they say that in my films the water is flowing just like in his films. I respond that water flows in millions of other films. This argument is very weak.

And so on. In fact his influence is spiritual, it is the understanding of art. I was lucky to make a first draft of his lecture. He lectured film direction, later he took me as an apprentice for Stalker, we had an opportunity to socialize and one day he asked me to systemize his lectures - Konstantin Lopushansky, indie-cinema.com

Lopushansky’s time working on Stalker had to have made an impact on his own filmmaking. The basic premise and/or keywords that one would use to describe A Visitor To A Museum sounds a lot like Stalker; a long contemplative dreary quest through dirt, rain and sewage in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world to find a mythical forbidden place. In Stalker, our protagonists are out to find “the zone”. In A Visitor To A Museum, our lone protagonist is on a quest to find the ruins of a lost museum and the city that once housed it (the movie is set after a global/apocalyptic disaster).

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

It's true that water flows in a million films and it's easy to oversimplify visual comparisons in that way but when you place the two above scenes next to each other combined with the history between the two filmmakers - it does take on a slightly deeper meaning than simply two scenes of water.

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

The “message”, metaphors and symbolisms within the film are sort of worn on it's sleeve. Not to give too much away but the discovery of the lost museum/city brings up issues concerning classism and eugenics. For me, this movie really touches on the importance of knowledge and how far some will go to find rare artifacts. I was once a lightweight collector of records, videotapes and DVDs so I can kind of relate. I’ve never taken the type of journey that the film’s protagonist took to seek out lost artifacts but I have driven across multiple state lines to purchase a rare VHS or a piece of vinyl just to have it or further my knowledge of an artist's entire body of work. As cliche as this may sound, at a certain point it’s less about the thing you’re trying to obtain and more about the journey and the folks you meet along the way.

The discovery of the film’s protagonist is a bit more depressing than my journeys and discoveries but there’s still love and dedication. In order to go through what he goes through to find what he’s looking for there’s clearly love, curiosity and dedication to seeking out lost artifacts. That kind of stuff is important. Besides building character, it continues the art of preservation. No matter how much technology pushes away things like the need for physical media, books, libraries, video stores and liner notes - these things all play a part in persevering history (as you read this, the fate of the ECW wrestling archive is in limbo and has been temporary removed from streaming). Preservation of history is important for a multitude of reasons but it’s most important to me because, now more than ever, history is easy to rewrite and/or bury (like in A Visitor To A Museum).

Very few things irritate me more than not only rewritten history, but people’s acceptance of said rewritten history and/or incorrect information when all they have to do is take 60 fucking seconds to open their smart phones and find the correct information without the use of AI. And if the information they find on the internet is incorrect or only partially true, they can cross-reference what they find with more accurate information from a book or newspaper or PDF scan found in a library or some kind of archive.

I worry that both young and older people have become lazy and are relying heavily on not just AI (which I find to be wrong often), but misinformation that panders to or caters to what they want to hear. People aren’t even reading entire articles. They’re just going off of a clickbait headline or a poor description of an article told to them by another likeminded friend. And I know I keep shitting on AI but the way folks on social media just blindly believe nonsense and obvious fake photos really worries me...

A Visitor To A Museum matches my energy when it comes to all of this even though it was made in the late 80s and couldn’t predict where we’d be today.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

THE SUBSTANCE: SUPPLIMENTAL MATERIAL UPDATED

Carrie / The Substance

Here are a few more comparisons that didn't make it in to my original post about The Substance. Click here to read my initial thoughts and to see the original comparisons I made. Also make sure to click here to see Coralie Fargeatt's Letterboxd interview where she breaks down some of her visual influences from The Thing to The Hunchback Of Notre Dame...