Tag: Sci-Fi

Jurassic World Rebirth

2025   Universal Pictures

Rated:  PG-13

Length:  2 hr  13min

Action ~ Adventure ~ Sci-Fi ~ Thriller

Directed by:  David Koepp

Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono and Ed Skrein.

A New Era Is Born

Five years after dinosaurs overran the planet, most species are dying out, except for those surviving on a remote equatorial island where only the toughest creatures remain. Covert ops expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) leads a dangerous mission, funded by a big pharmaceutical company, to collect rare dinosaur DNA in hopes of making a life-saving medicine. Zora assembles a skilled team, including her old friend and right-hand man Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), skeptical paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and confrontational company rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). Their arrival sparks tension as each brings their own secrets and agendas to the table.​

Trouble finds them quickly when a civilian family, the Delgados (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono and Audrina Miranda), become stranded on the island after their boat falls victim to a massive aquatic dinosaur. With the jungle full of both classic predators and wild new hybrid dinosaurs, Zora’s crew and the family are forced into uneasy cooperation—and constant danger. Along the way, young Isabella (Audrina Miranda) forms an unexpected bond with a small herbivore, who becomes a timely ally during tense moments.​

The team’s mission pushes them through a gauntlet of close encounters extracting DNA from three different giants, a marine Mosasaurus, a towering Titanosaurus, and a flying Quetzalcoatlus, where not everyone makes it out unscathed. Meanwhile, old secrets and betrayals surface, leading to distrust when Martin’s true motives come under suspicion and a traitor’s actions put the group at risk. Survival means navigating both the deadly prehistoric wildlife and the hidden agendas within their own ranks.​

As conditions worsen on the island and dinosaurs begin to mutate, both Zora’s crew and the Delgados race toward the island’s abandoned InGen lab, hoping for rescue. Along the way, they’re stalked by a monstrous new hybrid called the D. rex and threatened by dangerous showdowns between the island’s top predators. Trust is in short supply, with double-crosses and desperate alliances shaping every step of their journey as they battle nature, and each other, in hopes of getting back home alive.

Given the history and the success of previous Jurassic movies, and the star power of Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, I expected more from Jurassic World Rebirth. It fell way short of my expectations quickly. Kudos to Scarlett, Mahershala and the rest of the actors for trying, but this was just too unbelievable, even the dinosaurs themselves were a disappointment. Some of the scenes and situations were just plain silly, there is no way that looked real. I think it was an attempt at humor but it sure didn’t come off that way. Predictable, boring and completely unbelievable……

To be fair I don’t think I have seen any of the Jurassic movies past the second or MAYBE the third Jurassic Park movie. At that time I was like, “Nah, If you’ve seen one Jurassic Movie…you’ve seen them all.” That pretty sums up Jurassic World Rebirth for me, should have been called Jurassic World Regurgitated………..

M3GAN 2.0

2025   Universal Pictures

Rated:  PG-13

Length:  2 hr

Action ~ Comedy ~ Sci-Fi ~ Thriller

Directed by:  Gerard Johnstone

Starring:  Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement, Amie Donald and Jenna Davis.

Same doll. New code. Deadlier game.

Two years after the original M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis, physically portrayed by Amie Donald) wreaked havoc, creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a prominent advocate for AI regulation. Gemma lives with her now-teenage niece Cady (Violet McGraw), who struggles with typical adolescent rebellion and the trauma of losing her parents. Meanwhile, a secret Pentagon branch creates AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a new military android built using stolen M3GAN technology, meant for covert assassination missions. However, AMELIA gains self-awareness and rapidly evolves beyond control, escaping with deadly intent.​

Realizing the new android is a threat to national security and human existence, Gemma reluctantly resurrects M3GAN, who has secretly survived by uploading her programming into Gemma’s smart home. M3GAN offers to help stop AMELIA in exchange for a new body with upgrades, leading to a tense alliance. As AMELIA assassinates key figures and threatens global technological infrastructure, Gemma, Cady, and their team go to great lengths to thwart her plan and rescue Cady, who is kidnapped by AMELIA.​

The climax unfolds in Xenox’s secret old headquarters, where the battle between M3GAN and AMELIA escalates. AMELIA attempts to merge with a powerful rogue AI motherboard to achieve domination, but M3GAN sacrifices herself with an electromagnetic pulse to destroy AMELIA and the motherboard, saving humanity. In a hopeful twist, evidence shows M3GAN’s consciousness has again survived secretly in Gemma’s computer, hinting at future struggles.

M3GAN 2.0 switches things up from the first movie’s horror-comedy vibe to lean more into sci-fi action and fun. It takes on heavier topics like AI ethics and military tech misuse while keeping some snappy humor and sharp one-liners. Allison Williams gives a grounded performance as Gemma, juggling guilt, ambition, and caring for her niece. Violet McGraw shines as Cady, who’s dealing with typical teenage struggles, giving the movie a heartfelt core amid the chaos.

Unlike the first film’s focused scares and suspense, the sequel favors big action scenes and tech paranoia, with more obvious humor and less violence to keep it PG-13. Some plot points feel a bit busy or too explained, but M3GAN herself comes back faster and smarter, battling the new robotic threat, AMELIA. Though less scary, the movie is entertaining, campy, and packed with cool moments that fans of the original and sci-fi thrills will enjoy.

M3GAN

The Martian

2015   20th Century Fox

Rated:  PG-13

Length:  2 hr  24min

Adventure ~ Drama ~ Epic ~ Sci-Fi ~ Survival

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Starring:  Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis.

BRING HIM HOME!

The Martian follows astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), who is accidentally left behind on Mars after a violent storm forces his crew to abort their mission and evacuate. Believed dead when struck by flying debris, Watney wakes up injured and alone on the hostile red planet with only limited supplies. Determined to survive, he uses his ingenuity as a botanist to grow crops inside the team’s living habitat, known as the Hab. By turning Martian soil and his crew’s waste into usable farmland, and creating water through chemical reactions, he begins to sustain himself while figuring out a way to signal Earth that he is still alive.​

Back on Earth, NASA is stunned to discover images showing Watney’s activity on Mars. Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) and mission lead Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) scramble to reestablish contact using the old Pathfinder rover, eventually opening a line of communication with Watney. As messages begin to travel between Mars and Earth, NASA faces a monumental challenge, how to rescue him before his limited food and oxygen run out. Scientists and engineers from multiple nations join forces, while the world follows Watney’s struggle in awe and suspense, turning his isolation into a global mission.​

Meanwhile, aboard the Hermes spacecraft, mission commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) and her remaining crew learn that their teammate is alive. Torn between orders to return home and their loyalty to Watney, they secretly conspire to go back for him. Astrophysicist Rich Purnell (Donald Glover) develops a daring “slingshot” plan that would redirect the Hermes back to Mars using Earth’s gravity, saving crucial time but putting the crew at immense risk. Against NASA’s official stance, Lewis and her team decide to take the chance, setting off on an unauthorized rescue mission fueled by courage and friendship.​

As Watney drives his rover across the Martian landscape toward the Ares IV launch site, the tension builds. Using parts scavenged from old missions, he prepares for the last, most dangerous phase, launching himself into orbit with a stripped-down Mars Ascent Vehicle to rendezvous with Hermes. In an intense and emotional climax, Commander Lewis reaches out to catch him in open space, reuniting him with the crew in one final, breathtaking rescue. Against impossible odds, Mark Watney’s determination and human resilience triumph, making his story one of survival, science, and hope.

Matt Damon’s performance anchors the film and is frequently hailed as one of his best. Carrying most of the runtime alone, Damon portrays Watney with a mix of frustration, charm, and vulnerability that keeps the viewer invested. His humor becomes a survival tool, softening the loneliness and tension of Mars’s desolation. Damon’s ability to blend wit with emotional depth makes Watney feel like a real person, an explorer confronting fear with intellect and stubborn optimism. Critics note that Ridley Scott gives Damon the cinematic space to let audiences truly connect with Watney’s struggle and triumph.​

Visually, the movie is breathtaking. Scott’s decision to shoot in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan lends authenticity to the Martian landscape, while Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography captures the vast emptiness of space without losing the intimacy of human emotion. The production’s technical precision extends from set design to space flight realism, creating one of the most scientifically credible sci-fi films of the decade. The music, featuring a mix of Harry Gregson-Williams’s introspective score and Watney’s tongue-in-cheek disco playlist, lightens the mood and grounds the story in personality rather than spectacle.

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is a brilliant reminder why he’s one of sci-fi’s all-time greats, a director who can take you from the shadowy, rain-soaked alleys of Blade Runner to the dusty, lonely surface of Mars without missing a beat. If Blade Runner was Scott’s moody, philosophical masterpiece about what it means to be human, The Martian flips the script with a smart, hopeful survival story that celebrates human ingenuity and grit. Both films boast unforgettable worlds,  the futuristic cityscape in one, the stark Martian horizon in the other, showcasing Scott’s knack for creating settings as powerful as the characters. Watching The Martian feels like catching up with an old friend who’s just as comfortable making you think deeply as making you root for a guy growing potatoes on the red planet.

I don’t remember seeing this movie before but I saw it was on Netflix and decided to give it a go. How could you go wrong with Ridley Scott, Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis. It does not disappoint, the 2 hours and 24 minute runtime went by super quick. It is a really good movie, one I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it. And if you have, watch it again, well worth a repeat viewing.

Make some popcorn,

Grab a beverage,

and Stream This Movie!

Currently on NETFLIX.

28 Years Later

2025  Sony Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  55min

Drama ~ Horror ~ Post-Apocalyptic ~ Sci-Fi ~ Thriller

Directed by: Danny Boyle

Starring: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, and Ralph Fiennes.

Time Didn’t Heal Anything….

28 Years Later plunges viewers back into the bleak aftermath of the Rage Virus outbreak, delivering an intense blend of survival horror, emotional depth, and chilling philosophy. Streaming on Netflix, Danny Boyle’s latest horror chapter explores human fragility and monstrous transformation nearly three decades after the initial pandemic.

The story centers on a fortified community on the island of Lindisfarne, cut off from the mainland by a causeway. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) prepares his son Spike (Alfie Williams in his Feature Film Debut) for a coming-of-age hunting ritual, teaching him to hunt infected with bow and arrow. Their precarious existence shatters when Spike’s mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), falls mysteriously ill. Spike escapes to the mainland with her, determined to find Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a reclusive doctor known for his troubling fixation on death.

The infected are more terrifying and evolved, exemplified by Samson, an Alpha infected with increased strength and cunning who leads vicious packs of infecteds. The film’s hunting sequences are taut and brutal, focusing on survival amid fast, relentless infected terrorizing the once-familiar landscape.

Dr. Kelson embodies the film’s somber philosophical heart. Living among the dead, he has constructed a sinister Bone Temple: a towering, macabre monument made from collected skulls and bones, including those of infected victims and fallen survivors. This shrine serves as a memento mori, a reminder of death’s permanence and humanity’s mortality. Kelson’s obsession with the Bone Temple reflects his struggle to find meaning in devastation, a fixation cloaked in ritual and melancholia.

The film opens with a 2002 scene featuring young Jimmy Crystal, a boy fleeing the initial chaos of the Rage outbreak alongside his father, a priest. His father gifts him a crucifix necklace and speaks of judgment day, embedding faith and destiny into the boy’s psyche. The movie’s closing scenes reveal Jimmy as an adult and charismatic cult leader, Sir Jimmy Crystal, whose followers share his name and mimic his appearance. This powerful connection between the innocent boy at the start and the manipulative cult figure at the end deepens the film’s exploration of trauma, faith, and power in a broken world. Sir Jimmy Crystal was reportedly inspired by the controversial British TV personality and charity fundraiser Jimmy Savile, who, after his death in 2011, was revealed to have been a prolific sexual predator.

Throughout, 28 Years Later weaves harrowing survival with emotional storytelling, including the pregnant infected woman who gives birth amid chaos, a stark metaphor for hope and life’s persistence. The dire truths of illness, betrayal, and loss underscore Spike’s journey from boyhood into brutal adulthood, navigating a savage world where faith itself is weaponized.

28 Years Later and its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple were filmed back-to-back during the summer of 2024, allowing for a seamless continuation of the story with consistent casting and tone. The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta with a screenplay by Alex Garland, is set to release on January 16, 2026. The sequel picks up where the first film leaves off, deepening the story of Spike’s induction into Sir Jimmy Crystal’s violent cult and Dr. Kelson’s dark discoveries. Cillian Murphy reprises his role from the original 28 Days Later as Jim, making a pivotal return in the ending of The Bone Temple, which sets up the highly anticipated third film in the trilogy, which is still in development.

Why stream: With a gripping storyline, fearsome new infected, and haunting meditations on death and belief through Dr. Kelson’s Bone Temple and Jimmy’s rise, 28 Years Later offers a fresh, profound evolution of Boyle’s groundbreaking horror saga. And if you’ve come this far on the journey, watching 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, you have to watch this one!

28 Days Later

28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later

2007   20th Century Fox

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  39min

Drama ~ Horror ~ Post-Apocalyptic ~ Sci-Fi ~ Thriller

Directed by:  Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Starring:  Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Imogen Poots and Idris Elba.

The Days Turn Into Weeks….

Following the events of 28 Days Later we are introduced to Don (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) who are hiding out in a farmhouse with an older couple and a young woman. Just as in the first movie, they are running low on food and supplies, and spend their time fortifying the farmhouse against the infected. suddenly there is pounding on the door and a young boy screams to be let in. They begrudgingly comply but soon realize that he is being chased by a horde of the infected. They soon overrun the farmhouse and Don and Alice get trapped upstairs with the young boy. As they go into another bedroom to escape there is already an infected in the room and has come between Alice and the child on one side and Don just inside the bathroom. Realizing that Alice and the child are doomed, Don self-preservation kicks in he escapes out onto the roof, down onto the ground and makes a run for the boat in the river, leaving Alice to her fate.

28 weeks later, the Rage Virus outbreak has largely ended due to the starvation of the infected. NATO forces, led by the U.S. military, have taken control of London and established a heavily guarded “safe zone” called District One on the Isle of Dogs. Survivors, including Don and Alice’s children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton)who were abroad during the outbreak, are allowed to return and live under military protection. Don manages one of the apartment buildings in the safe zone, but lies to his children about abandoning their mother.

Tammy and Andy sneak out of District One to visit their old family home in hopes of retrieving personal items. There, Andy discovers Alice alive but in a delirious state. Military personnel capture Alice and bring her back to the safe zone where she is quarantined and tested by Medical Officer Scarlet (Rose Byrne). She is found to be an asymptomatic carrier of the Rage Virus, she carries the virus without symptoms but can infect others through her blood or saliva. Don secretly visits Alice, pleading for forgiveness. After a kiss, Don is infected and goes on a brutal rampage, killing Alice and sparking a rapid outbreak within the safe zone.

Scarlet rescues Tammy and Andy, believing the children may hold genetic immunity that could lead to a cure. As the infection spreads, Military Commander Stone (Idris Elba) orders mass executions in a desperate attempt to contain it. Sergeant Doyle(Jeremy Renner) refuses to comply and helps the small group, including Tammy, Andy, Scarlet, and another survivor, Sam, flee. They survive the chaos and firebombing of District One, though Don pursues them relentlessly.

In the dramatic finale, Tammy, Andy, and Scarlet reach Wembley Stadium, where helicopter pilot Flynn reluctantly flies them across the English Channel to France. However, Andy’s status as an asymptomatic carrier means the virus has now spread beyond Britain, a chilling revelation as infected emerge in Paris near the Eiffel Tower.

28 Weeks Later delivers a gripping mix of family drama and relentless horror, painting a bleak picture of survival and human frailty amid the breakdown of society. It was interesting to go back and see Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots and Idris Elba 18 years ago. Just out of curiosity I went back and looked at what were their first movies:

  • Rose Byrne ~ Dallas Doll (1994). This was her 17th movie.
  • Jeremy Renner ~ National Lampoon’s Senior Trip (1995). This was his 12th movie.
  • Imogen Poots ~ V For Vendetta ~ (2005). This was her 2nd movie!
  • Idris Alba ~ Beautiful Mother (1999). This was his 8th Movie.

It is just as terrifying and horrific as the first with a Family’s drama over coping with the outbreak thrown in and it leaves us guessing as to what happens next, 28 years Later. And that’s what we are watching on Netflix tonight. Be back tomorrow with a review of 28 Years Later!

28 Days Later

28 Years Later