For the world of television, this week was quite interesting. The second season of True Detective is shaping up with Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, and what appears to be Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch, while Hulu snagged the rights to develop a mini-series based on Stephen King’s exceptional novel, 11/22/63. For film, however, the week was sort of a mixed bag with various highlights, albeit most quite odd. (Looking at you, Mr. Soderbergh.) Regardless of the nutbar stories, one of our favorite visionaries returned and a cult comic hero finally gets his day.

Shall we?

10. John Green gets more movies

[Source: The A.V. Club]

In the wake of The Fault In Our Stars, John Green’s YA novel-turned-movie, Universal Studios has just purchased the rights to another of Green’s works, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances.

Well, with the smash success of this summer’s The Fault in Our Stars behind us, it was probably inevitable that John Green is about to become the latest popular author to see his works flooding movie theaters in the next few years. Since the trend with YA novels in recent years has been one of picking up the most franchise-able options, Green is at least helping to buck it by avoiding the franchise model in favor of meatier fare. Whether you care for Green’s heaping dollops of sarcastic proselytizing about teenagers who’re too smart to actually just have emotions without a running commentary about their emotions or not, embrace the John Green boom. It’s probably going to be here for a while. –Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

In observance of this week’s wider release of Bennett Miller’s hotly anticipated Foxcatcher, a few of our writers got together to talk the politics and larger implications of the American sports movie.

Dominick Mayer (DM): Foxcatcher is coming out at a weird, completely appropriate moment in pop culture. Scrutiny against organized sports and the social mentalities they engender is at a years-long high right now. In context of incidents like the Ray Rice tape and the continuing steroid trials in baseball, it feels appropriate that a true-life story about the seedy side of Olympic wrestling would hit theaters. And it doesn’t hurt that Foxcatcher touches explicitly on the “manifest destiny” mentality held high by sports culture, one that’s prevailed for … well, centuries.

There’s a sequence early in the film in which Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) gives the most hollow speech imaginable to an auditorium roughly a third full of disinterested grade school students, all full of half-cooked nationalistic idealism. It’s a movie that’s stuck with me for weeks now, in part because of how current it feels for a mid-’80s period piece. So, hey, while we’re on the topic: What are some of your favorite depictions of sports at its nastiest and most cinematically dissected?

Blake Goble (BG): Man, Foxcatcher sounds like a beautiful bummer. What’s also interesting about it is that it’s an outright cynical film that acts as a sort of sports film devil to Bennett Miller’s reluctant angel, Moneyball.

I have to share this. My brother’s been a lifelong Michigan college football fan. So was my former roommate, and he played cornerback for years (not at U of M). Me? Whatever. (Go Bears.) Both of them are about ready to pack it in after this current season, not just because of the team’s record, but because in watching a young Michigan athlete get put back out on the field with a concussion last month, they finally found their last straw with the gladiator sport. It saddens me that they can’t enjoy the game the same way they used to, but 2014’s been a watershed moment for the gridiron. “We gotta get it right”? Nice try, Goodell. The movies have been getting it right for years.

Sports flicks can be inspirational and moving at their best. They can also reflect on the sad truths that come with our favorite games. Sports are easily capable of being vicious, aggressive, shameless, and above all, lucrative. The Set-Up taught me the sad truths of how easy it is to rig and narrativize a bout. Friday Night Lights (book, movie, even that soapy show) illustrated the economic and educational implications of football. Spike Lee’s He Got Game showed how shady recruiting is and what the business of college looks like. And of course, the nastiest sports film I know? Oh, definitely Slap Shot for me, with its throwing punches before the game even starts and tin-foiling knuckles. At least it’s funny in that it mocks bloodsport. Sports are full of goons and crooks if any of these flicks are any indication.

Gone are the Invincible and Remember the Titans representations of football. For example, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free production company is in the process of developing a film about the NFL’s head injury problem (complete with Will Smith attached and Luke Wilson starring as Roger Goodell). I’ll be curious to see what it has to say about modern athleticism at any cost.

Justin Gerber (JG): My desire to see Any Given Sunday arose due to my then-love for Oliver Stone, as well as my curiosity about seeing Al Pacino play the head coach of an in-all-but-name NFL team. It was closer to Natural Born Killers than Platoon from an editing standpoint, but I don’t think I fully appreciated just how ahead of its time the movie truly was. For example, the montage in which “Steamin’” Willie Beamen adorns the cover of Sports Illustrated a couple weeks into being named a starter for the Miami Dolphins … err … Sharks. I remember my confusion over the film’s timeline and how ridiculous it seemed that he would have gained such fame and recognition so fast. Cut to over a decade later when then-Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin was on the cover of Sports Illustrated not once, but twice! No one knew who he was at the beginning of that NBA season, but he’s proven to be just an adequate point guard in the league.

It was an indictment not only of sports journalism, but journalism in general – hoping to be the first to latch onto potential despite the real fact that such potential may have peaked before you went to print. Other scandals the film picks up on went as widely unnoticed then as steroids in baseball did near the turn of the century. There are scenes featuring concussion repercussions, wild off-field behavior, and questionable medical decisions by team doctors. These have been covered in greater detail over the past decade than they were in the century preceding Any Given Sunday. It shows that Stone can be great when he sticks to the facts instead of questioning them ad nauseum.

As for the quality of the movie, I still enjoy it quite a bit. Again, I’m partial to the game of football and thought the in-game direction did a great job of putting you right in the middle of the action. It ended up launching Jamie Foxx’s dramatic career, had a great score, and included one of my favorite pep talks/rallying cries in all of movies: “Inches”, scored by The Band’s Robbie Robertson. “There’s six inches in front of your face!” Dom, to circle back to you, what’s a nasty-sports film favorite of yours?

DM: For me, I want to jump ship from real sports to “fake” sports for just a second. If you’ve ever met me online or in real life, it probably doesn’t take all that long to figure out that I’m a huge professional wrestling fan, as entertainment and as a storytelling/artistic medium alike. It’s as physical a contest in its own way as any organized sport, and thus when I’m talking about the dark side of sports, I’d be remiss if I didn’t land on Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. Setting aside Mickey Rourke’s once-in-a-lifetime performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, the film is most powerful when it’s chronicling the lives we don’t get to see from our athletes, the ones they have to live when they’ve been at it since they were old enough to choose it and are starting to break down. It’s haunting, watching Robinson struggle to ably complete his day job or wrestle a gymnasium circuit match without collapsing and dying on the spot.

But to me, like the best sports films do, The Wrestler simultaneously shows esteem for the thing it’s chronicling and doesn’t flinch at the darker underpinnings of its industry. And that’s true even when there’s quite a bit of the latter on display. If the NFL is a circus, professional wrestling is a carnival, an industry still predominantly run by hucksters of various kinds to this day. The Wrestler highlights just how little there is for somebody who makes their livelihood in such a niche profession after their prime days are over and how hard it is for them to let it go. Consider the heartbreaking scene in which Robinson has a young neighbor over to play NES games and how bored and disinterested the kid ends up being in what were and likely will remain the long-gone, halcyon days of his life. It’s something you hear about constantly: broken-down athletes working the baseball card circuit to make ends meet and be looked at as heroes, for even a few more minutes.

Another thing I really admire about The Wrestler is the raw physicality of it. When Robinson ends up doing CZW deathmatches, Aronofsky forces you into the ring and lingers over every thumbtack embedded in his body. And even when he does a nostalgia appearance for Ring of Honor near the end, one that needs him to do little more than preen for the crowd and hit his famous spots, he can barely muster the energy to stand upright, and every slap or pulled punch is agonizing to watch from an audience perspective. But that’s the thing about the movies we’re talking about: They chronicle the side of sports we don’t see, the one where we just cheer for the larger-than-life heroes before us.

BG: Dom, I also found The Wrestler really touching for all the same reasons you did, and yeah, Rourke, giving that total, physical performance just makes you want to break down. Rourke’s casting even added that little bit of real-life context, what with his failed boxing career in the ‘90s. And I totally agree! It may have a hard-edged, barb-wired, indie-cold veneer, but beneath it all is a misshapen and strongly beating heart. The Wrestler knows all the horrors of the sport, yet “The Ram” endures. That’s its secret weapon: overcoming the odds. Yes, that could be said of every single sports flick ever made, but when an athlete takes on the meanest odds. I’m not talking about the damn Cobra Kai or your generic black-and-hued pee-wee team of rich kids. Forget teamwork or discipline or any of that Disney shit. I’m talking about the guys who face off against the system (Hoop Dreams, Million Dollar Baby), who struggle with ego and pride (Raging Bull, This Sporting Life), who are looking to prove something, regardless of how selfish or naïve their dreams may be (Breaking Away). Despite the inspirational cues of sports as a film genre, it’s rooted in base urges, yet the genre’s special in how we can ignore much of that come the final game/match/whatever.

Perhaps one of my favorite sports films, which embraces all of that, is Robert Wise’s The Set-Up. Rooted in ‘40s noir, the movie comes on mean and ends swinging. Robert Ryan plays Stoker, a boxer, and more recognizably, a fall guy. He’s an over-the-hill patsy taking dives for money, a grown loser. Yet the guy, despite being a bit of a bum, knows he can still win. He’s got something left, and he’s tired of being the butt of everyone’s jokes. Wise brilliantly sets the film up as a crime story about a dubious guy desperate for dough, yet when he comes on in the last act … it resembles every other sports film, but it arrives amidst such degenerates and desperation that you really believe in sport as an art of vindication and redemption. You get knocked out by this guy’s struggles, and forget that boxing is a head-damaging prize fight for a brief moment.

JG: So far we’ve discussed films that highlight the less-than-family-friendly stories of athletes both during and after the prime of their careers. I’d like to discuss a film whose producers actually marketed it as family-friendly, light years away from Rourke’s beaten face or Ryan’s desperation. The film I wish to discuss, gentlemen, features no drugs, no gambling, no strippers, no blood, but is based around an idea so dark that we as adults could never see it. Only a 13-year-old boy could. The film in question … is 1994’s Angels in the Outfield.

I can’t say that I’ve seen the original 1951 film (which follows a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates), but I can only assume in that movie that God hates every team in the National League except for the Pirates. In 1994, a young boy prays to God for the Angels to win the American League pennant (mainly because that’s when his father says they’ll become a family again. Yeesh.). And guess what? God answers! Before you know it, the Angels are winning games left and right. Is this down to actual talent? Absolutely not. It’s all thanks to the ghost/angel of Christopher Lloyd’s Al and his long-dead buddies. They lift players a little higher to catch otherwise uncatchable fly balls. They push them to slide faster, hit harder, and even adjust foul poles to favor them.

What have these other teams done to besmirch the name of God that would lead the man in the sky to rain losses and high scores upon them? Or are these “angels” a renegade group that was cast down from Heaven centuries ago and are setting out to ruin the great national pastime? After all, Lloyd’s eerie, grinning face shows up in a kid’s soda early on. Would you trust this angel or run shrieking to the stadium parking lot? I would go with the latter. Long story short, kids learn that praying real hard will compensate for a lack of talent and overrule good sportsmanship. Dark indeed.

BG: And here I was, all complacent about Doc Brown and Murtaugh havin’ a laugh at the expense of a young and confused Matthew McConaughey. But that’s interesting, Justin – divine intervention trumps talent, all in the name of a little kid that obtusely thinks it’ll bring his deadbeat dad back. Come to think of it, Field of Dreams is selfish too inasmuch as a dippy farmer enables his father to cheat death for a moment, all for a sentimental game of catch. Or what about God’s divine plan for Rudy Ruettiger to play for a quarter in his desperate need to be part of Notre Dame’s team of Touchdown Jesuses? (Jesi?) Let’s not get too far down this particular road, but faith-based productions like Facing the Giants or When the Game Stands Tall seem to imply that prayer means higher percentages at the end of the season. This isn’t meant to bash the cloth, but rather to question the over-simplification of sports, thematically. Winning and goals and self-satisfaction. The sports drama really asks us to overlook the more dubious messages.

If pushed, I could argue that all sports films are about selfishness. The Blind Side can be viewed as nothing more than an absolution of white guilt. Million Dollar Arm, this past summer, was a glorified business deal about an opportunistic agent. The Natural is about Robert Redford’s messiah complex, but it took me a minute to realize that once I stopped humming Randy Newman’s all-American score.

In the end, a sports movie needs to accomplish one of two things: it needs to say something non-obvious (“sports are hard and/or metaphors for life n’ stuff”) or earn audience enthusiasm for the sport being depicted with honest, well-founded strife. Case in point: I damn near break down in the last minutes of The Wrestler, because it’s a harrowing message about the ugly aspects of being a former pro, and you wind up hoping the Ram can regain a shred of dignity despite his many screwups. I feel like one of those old sports gambling machines on the local news from the ‘70s, formulating the perfect movie, but anyway, parting thoughts?

DM: Well, I disagree about The Wrestler just a bit, because I’m in the camp that doesn’t think the Ram ever walks out of that ring. It’s just one Ram Jam too many. (It doesn’t help that I frequently consider whether Ric Flair may one day go out in similar fashion in real life.) But I think what we’ve touched on, whether it’s the Disney narrative or Scorsese’s in Raging Bull (a harrowing chronicle of exactly what kind of man it takes to hurt other men for a living and the toll it takes on the human mind, body, and soul alike), is this exceptionalist ideal. In all of these films, even the darker ones, there’s a running theme of the character overcoming. Even in a film like Any Given Sunday, there’s still a deep comprehension of how seductive the ideas of power that organized, professional sports confer really are. And it’s a perfectly domestic art form in that regard, because it reaffirms the core tenets of how we perceive the world from a relatively affluent perspective: that anybody can achieve greatness with enough work (or, more bleakly, a lack of caring about who you have to pass by to get there), that the noblest thing we can achieve is victory in whatever form, that physical and mental toil are positive sacrifices and not possible signs of madness.

And I don’t mean to start thinkpiecing here. I’m an avid sports nut, particularly in the cases of wrestling (fake category) and football. But movies like Sunday or Foxcatcher ask audiences to do something that they often go out of their way to either justify against or avoid altogether: stop and consider the possible downsides of the thing they enjoy. It’s not a case of wagging fingers and passing judgment but rather a reminder that most any billion-dollar industry has a few skeletons buried somewhere. Now, the problem is that that turn of phrase is becoming ever more literal with each passing year, and nobody really knows what to do. And it’s a question that, regrettably, can’t simply be answered by Christopher Lloyd.

JG: Yes, Dom. But did you see the sequels?

Ridley Scott directs everything. Science fiction (Alien), road movies (Thelma & Louise), war epics (Black Hawk Down), crime capers (Matchstick Men), and lame romantic dramas (A Good Year). We realize that no director is perfect, and while he’s amassed some stinkers over his nearly 40-year career in film, Scott has already proven himself to be an icon of cinema.

We’ve managed to pull together the best of his lengthy filmography, and because we can do whatever we want in my America, we’ve ranked them. While our Top Two could go either way, we just had to … well … you’ll see. We’ve also posted links to our favorite moments from each film that made the list, so remember to chime in below with your agreements and even your disagreements. We look forward to your comments, “Anonymous.”

ROFL, LOL, LMAO,
Justin Gerber
Film Editor

Ridley Scott didn’t need to make Exodus: Gods and Kings. How many times have we seen this story? What’s left of the Moses mythology that could even shock viewers into feigning interest? But alas, the acclaimed English director of similar post-2000 epics Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven decided to revisit the Book of Exodus with a film that’s spiritually confused and altogether void of any tangible characters. Which, I’ve got to say, is quite shocking given that he opted for mainstream Hollywood talent in Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, and Ben Kingsley — a decision that’s, of course, sparked controversy, with many circles claiming he’s “whitewashed” the biblical tale.

“I always look on making a film as a partnership and that’s what casting is all about, whether it’s the star or the guy with one line,” Scott told Yahoo back in August. “And over the years I’ve got the best results from actors who really are my partners in the process and it makes it all the more enjoyable.” That’s a fine argument and every director’s entitled to creative licensing, but the majority of the casting in Exodus: Gods and Kings is plain lazy. Weaver as Queen Tuya, mother of Edgerton’s Ramses, comes across as nothing more than a banner name for the poster — a decision that Scott’s been quite transparent about amidst the backlash. As he told Variety last month: “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.”

(Read: Ridley Scott’s Top 10 Films)

And so, the film’s assembly reads and looks very old-school Hollywood, where white actors play dress up and tell an old tale for God knows why. In that sense, Exodus: Gods and Kings is no different than, say, Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 adaptation, The Ten Commandments. This time around, however, there’s an excess of CGI wizardry and a dollop of modern skepticism, as various characters offer reason for the plagues and point to natural causes for various miracles, such as the climactic parting of the Red Sea. There’s even a mild debate about whether or not the visions of Moses are a part of the man’s insanity, but the keyword there is mild. Scott safely oscillates between faith and reason — a fair decision, admittedly — but it’s a choice that strips the film of being at all compelling. The speculation, instead, becomes an afterthought.

It’s a shame because if any filmmaker could grasp those themes and indulge those questions, it’s Scott. In his glory days, this sort of flair was his bread and butter, yet judging by this exhausting 150 minutes, it’s his plate of Melba Toast. So, why? “I was staggered to discover what kind of man [Moses] was and where he’d come from,” Scott admitted to Yahoo. “I had no idea he was the counter-point to Ramses. I didn’t know how close their relationship was and that they were raised like half brothers, half cousins if you like.” Okay, fair point. Here’s the problem: While he does address Moses’ backstory and attempts to forge a bond between the two spiritual brothers, none of it resonates, despite Bale and Edgerton’s best efforts. Confused pacing aside, this issue stems from a scenic screenplay that works with soulless characters, who were all sketched together by a whopping cast of writers in Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, and Steven Zaillian.

Together, the four keep flipping the story’s pages without leaving any time for its characters to forge any bonds. The worst of all being Moses’ relationship to his wife and son — a pivotal connection that should heighten the stakes when he leaves for Egypt on his mission from God. His time in Midian, where he meets and weds Zipporah, leaving her with a child to raise, whisks on by in a very “wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I’ll be on my merry way” sort of style that’s egregious to both the story and character. As such, when he later returns, there’s no feeling of redemption, just as there was no feeling of remorse upon his departure. A similar problem thwarts his relationship to Ramses. Because there’s such a preference for action, the two share little screen time together before Moses is exiled, making them more or less suggestive acquaintances.

(Read: Film Is Risen: A Discussion of Religion in the Movies)

These same issues demolished Scott’s last big-budget foray, 2012’s Prometheus. He was able to craft a beautiful picture — many thanks to cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, whom he’s worked with since  — yet his story just couldn’t connect. What’s worse is that Exodus is all a slog. The plagues are visually interesting but simply offer brief moments of respite amidst a soulless conflict that neither grasps the urgency of Moses nor the tyrannical nature of Ramses — they just exist. In fact, much of the story’s menace stems from the incorrigible Viceroy Hegep, as portrayed by Ben Mendelsohn in what might be the strangest choice of casting since John Wayne read lines as Genghis Kahn. Mr. Scott, there isn’t enough make up in the world to hide the Australian actor’s traditional farm boy features. What’s he doing in the desert?

Actually, what is anyone here doing? That’s a question Scott just can’t answer in Exodus: Gods and Kings, a rote passion project bereft of any passion. Sadly, he even dedicated the film to his late brother, Tony. A better move would have been last year’s The Counselor, a flawed yet highly sophisticated venture that was more in line with either of the directors’ best works. This? It’s exactly the sort of film Hollywood doesn’t need anymore: a gluttonous epic that fails to evoke or teach or entertain. So, save yourself a buck or two by revisiting Gladiator on AMC or doing a quick web search on Moses. Hey, if you’re adventurous enough, you could even seek out a bible. Those are popular around this time of the year, right?

Trailer:

Randall Colburn (RC): I was a born-again Christian when The Passion of the Christ came out. I saw it with members of my church. I loved it. My Christian friends and fellow parishioners went multiple times, taking their secular friends and teenage youth groups. It had been years since many of them had seen a movie in the theater. They bought the DVD at Wal-Mart when it came out. I remember one family who would watch it in between Sunday’s morning and evening services. It was a treat to them, a reward for paying attention in church. Also, they didn’t have many other options.

Surprisingly, the success of The Passion didn’t result in a boom of faith-based films. It was mostly more of the same: VeggieTales and straight-to-DVD cheapies starring D-list actors. Kirk Cameron did his thing, and the Narnia franchise made its metaphors blunt enough to make Christian audiences feel Hollywood hadn’t jacked its series.

But then 2014 rolled around, giving us a veritable feast of faith-based features. Not only were these movies released theatrically, but they were also undeniable smashes. Despite almost universally negative reviews, God’s Not Dead ($62,630,732 worldwide gross on a $2 million budget), Heaven Is for Real ($101,332,962 worldwide gross on a $12 million budget), and Son of God ($67,800,064 worldwide gross, and that was lifted wholesale from the TV series The Bible for Christ’s sake) are currently among the top 50 highest-grossing films of 2014, and the top 10 highest-grossing Christian films of all time.

Today, Ridley Scott’s biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings hits theaters, and it’s no stretch to say Hollywood is hoping the same Christians who turned out for those films will show up for this one.

In anticipation of this film and the annual celebration of Christ’s birth, we decided to take a moment and consider the state of faith-based films: where did they come from, where are they going, and, perhaps most importantly, are they any good?

Dominick Mayer (DM): 2014 has been a watershed year for the faith-based filmmaking subgenre. Like you mentioned, Randall, it’s not like Christian-interest (our operative point of discussion as “faith-based” goes) movies ever left at all, per se. Kirk Cameron made his claim on a small part of the possible box office riches years ago with entries like Fireproof and Left Behind, with the intention of simultaneously offering devout audiences a corner of the film universe specifically for them and reaching out to a larger, more secular viewership. The former ultimately proved to be far more lucrative and successful than the latter, but this nevertheless speaks to the power of an audience that may well feel as though Hollywood isn’t acknowledging them, or has only done so in oblique and vague ways.

And I suppose, if we’re going to discuss 2014 as a renaissance year of sorts for the religious movie, we should start with the one that’s currently making the viral rounds, one that concerns Cameron, the Christian gadfly of our time that he is: Saving Christmas. Despite having its initial two-week release extended due to “popular demand,” the film had a historically bad fourth weekend, with a per-screen average that suggests an average of roughly two attendees per screening. It would seem that most audiences have proven uninterested in Cameron’s offering. And by “uninterested,” I mean that it’s now considered the worst movie ever made on IMDB, worse than disasterpiece luminaries like Birdemic and The Hottie and the Nottie. Why all the scorn, Randall?

RC: Let me start with this: scorn for Kirk Cameron is altogether separate from scorn for Christianity. Cameron, after all, is a troll. His arguments — against evolution, homosexuality, the Grammy Awards, etc. — rely more on provocation than cogency. Remember the croco-duck? Or when he claimed Facebook “blocked” the trailer for Unstoppable? Or his latest stunt, when he tasked his fans with “storming the gates” of Rotten Tomatoes to trump the “haters and atheists” and raise its audience rating (it’s hovering around 32% right now, with 0% from critics)? Cameron routinely fashions himself a martyr, an innocent being bludgeoned for his radical beliefs. He’s extending that martyrdom to Christianity at large with Saving Christmas, which hilariously asserts that Christians are being persecuted for putting up Christmas trees and drinking hot chocolate. If that’s not trolling, I honestly don’t know what is. The bottom line is that anyone attempting to depict modern Christianity as a minority under attack, especially in light of its regressive beliefs regarding actual minorities, is asking for trouble. Cameron knows that if he can’t prove God’s existence, he can at least get them talking.

But Cameron is simply the most vocal among a slew of movie-makers dedicated to faith-based films. And though Saving Christmas surely made a profit – I can’t imagine more than $200,000 went into it – it’s positively dwarfed by the box office pulls of contemporaries like God’s Not Dead and Heaven Is for Real. Beyond that is the relative success of “indie” faith flicks like Mom’s Night Out and The Song, not to mention the abysmal, Nicolas Cage-led Left Behind reboot. Couple all of that with past smashes like The Passion, Fireproof, and the VeggieTales franchise, and it’s impossible to deny that the Christian community is hungry for cinema that speaks to it.

The problem is, the movers and shakers in modern Christian film – producers like Elizabeth Hatcher-Travis, Paul Lalonde, David A.R. White, and the Erwin Brothers – fall right in line with Cameron’s us-against-them mentality. Whether it’s in the slaughter of Christ or the bullying of a Christian student, martyrdom and persecution is a running theme, resulting in films that feel overly defensive and accusatory. God’s Not Dead and Saving Christmas, for example, hinge their entire plots on characters defending their faith in the face of accusers that are presented as either cruel (Kevin Sorbo in God’s Not Dead) or dumb (Darren Doane in Saving Christmas). What we’re left with is neither entertainment nor evangelism, but self-justification. These movies weren’t made to entertain or enlighten; they were made to make Christians feel right. Dominick, you just watched God’s Not Dead. What was your reaction to it, one of the highest-grossing Christian films of all time?

DM: Well, to the point of that “us-against-them” ethic, you probably can’t come up with a better example in 2014 than God’s Not Dead. I’ll have to offer this bit of full disclosure sooner or later, so I might as well now: I was raised traditionally Catholic and have moved away from it over time for numerous reasons. But I do know enough about it, and still feel enough of a kinship with it, to be especially disquieted by what you’re touching on here. You’re dead-on in stating that these movies aren’t trying to foster any kind of dialogue or mutual understanding. They don’t even feel particularly celebratory of religion, which is what really throws me. And by “these,” I mean the didacticism of Saving Christmas or God’s Not Dead, because it’s important to note that #notallchristianmovies are at the Cameron level of frothing hysteria. But God’s Not Dead is. Holy shit, is that movie ever. It’s at a rabid level of froth.

And I think a big part of it is this notion that it’s no longer enough to simply be religious in a secular world. It’s now that the secular world is actively trying to eradicate religion and that any good Catholic must also be an aggressive evangelist, or else they’re remiss in their duties and not truly close to God. It’s genuinely depressing in a lot of ways, because the films are the latest manifestation of the “make it hip” idea that dweeby videos at CCD classes have offered for years, but hard-sold to a demographic that’s trying to reconcile its faith with the changing world. There are a lot of ways to make insightful, lovely films about that anxiety; I think of this year’s Calvary, a movie that explores the very Catholic themes of forgiveness, the futility of revenge, good and evil, redemption, love for your fellow man, piety in the face of overwhelming adversity, and a great many other things that would be incredibly relevant to and insightful for an audience interested in further engaging with those ideas. But that’s the thing. Engagement can lead you off the party line, and that’s not the business a film like God’s Not Dead is in.

Opening dialogue means being challenged on occasion, but God’s Not Dead isn’t even so much a movie as it’s a lengthy primer/study guide that teaches you exactly how everybody who approaches the world differently from you is wrong bordering on evil, that it is impossible for a person to truly be good without believing in God (the Catholic God, specifically, which I won’t even get into at this time), and that education isn’t nearly as important as faith. The film is heavily centered on the dialogues/barely veiled death threats between Sorbo’s nefarious, athiest professor, who couldn’t be more cartoonishly evil if he were carrying around a roll of dynamite and a plunger, and Josh (Shane Harper), a devout Christian who refuses to renounce his faith for the sake of a philosophy class. Even if that idea might seem a bit ridiculous to many, there’s something poignant to that idea on paper, that it’s perfectly fine to assert your faith in a world that increasingly disrespects it. Had the film the tiniest iota of interest in nuance, it could make for an interesting setup. As it stands, the name of the game is the shittiest possible take on Magnolia, with fun doses of sexism and, ironically enough, religious intolerance peppered in throughout.

My point is it’s not just that I hate God’s Not Dead, because I do. Setting aside any and all moral issues for a moment, it’s just a poorly made, ridiculously overlong rant masquerading as a film. Bringing those back, I think it borders on irresponsible in its hard-line fetishization of never once questioning what you’re told, lest you become one of those dastardly backsliders who wants you to engage with your ideas instead of being spoon-fed them wholesale by film studios that stand to make tons of money parroting people’s long-held opinions, anxieties, and fears back at them. But then, I also readily and fully acknowledge that I’m just about as far outside this film’s target demographic as you can get. So, I don’t really know anymore. What’d you make of it?

RC: My girlfriend, who identifies as Christian, summed up God’s Not Dead thusly: “Why does it have to be so bad?” Notice the emphasis on why; she’s genuinely curious, and so am I, as to why so many Christian filmmakers ignore the basics: a well-told plot, engaging characters, stylish cinematography. Measured by those standards, God’s Not Dead is objectively a bad movie, devoid of anything resembling nuance, depth, or humanity. To be honest, the best part is Kevin Sorbo’s performance, as he manages the Herculean task of finding pathos in pure evil. But if Grown-Ups 2 taught us anything, it’s that bad movies can make big box office. “You can do better!” we scream at the crowds bowing before Adam Sandler’s flip-flops, and I’d shout at the same thing at those lining up for God’s Not Dead.

And there are good, faith-based films out there. Good call on Calvary, Dom, though were it released by a major studio, it would probably be shunned in the same manner as Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, which dared to tell a Biblical story without sermonizing it. Truly, one of the best faith-based films out there is also the highest-grossing. Say what you will about The Passion, but Gibson’s direction is positively gorgeous, as are Jim Caviezel and Monica Bellucci’s performances. There’s plenty to hate outside of that, but you have to give Mel Gibson credit for giving his audience more than just a message. On the opposite end of the scale is a quiet film like Paradise Recovered, a micro-budget indie about a girl finding freedom from an abusive fundamentalist sect by forming friendships with atheists, who ultimately end up strengthening her faith. The filmmaking itself isn’t far removed from God’s Not Dead, but the story anchors itself on plot and character rather than message, resulting in empathy that embraces the secular and faithful alike.

By far the best faith-based film to come out in the past 30 years, however, is Robert Duvall’s The Apostle. The story of a Pentecostal preacher that kills a man, then attempts to find salvation by bringing revival to the Louisiana bayou, The Apostle is essentially a love letter to the forgiving nature of Christ and the meaning it can impart to wayward souls. But it also paints its protagonist, played by Duvall, as flawed, broken, and sometimes cruel.

There’s a fear, it seems, in Christian filmmakers to present flawed protagonists. As we’ve mentioned, films like God’s Not Dead and Saving Christmas follow characters who are routinely posited as being morally superior. And even when a protagonist sins, such as in Fireproof, it’s in the sort of whitewashed, defanged manner that cheapens the actual struggle, be it an addiction to pornography or a hot temper. The Apostle, on the other hand, begins by showing its protagonist smashing another man in the head with a baseball bat. That takes balls.

Of course, no studio would finance The Apostle. Duvall paid for it himself. It seems, though, that today’s studios are taking more of an interest in faith-based films, as we’ve seen with the wider releases of Heaven Is for Real and Left Behind. Do you think this is a trend we’ll continue to see, Dom? Or will faith-based movies continue to be mostly shuffled off to DVD and Netflix?

DM: I think one of the great curiosities of these films is that, outside of the films you’ve mentioned and to a lesser extent Mom’s Night Out (released through Sony’s Affirm Films, a distribution label specifically for the faith-based subgenre), most of these movies haven’t seen the widest release to begin with. It’s actually a brilliant marketing model in a lot of respects. Go watch the trailers for a few of these movies, and note how nearly all of them end with either an e-mail address or a hotline number of some sort for group screenings. These films are being hard-sold to churches, youth groups, et cetera, and they’re making a tidy sum doing it. The second key is that they’re not coming out in large portions of the country. For instance, around here in Chicago, God’s Not Dead didn’t actually show on any screens in the city proper. It was at one theater up in Rosemont, a near northern suburb, and a few farther-flung suburbs as well. I’d guess a lot of other major cities not in the South or the more rural parts of the country saw the same. I mean no condescension here; it’s a smart model. Put the film in front of the people likeliest to be receptive to it, and don’t waste time/money/resources selling it to people who may well not be.

The model of selling these films to audiences of similar sensibility is smart, but again, it’s also a cause for concern when some of these films operate with such an inherent bias. Here I’m not just thinking of God’s Not Dead, but of Persecuted, a smaller release that made the rounds over this past summer. It stars James Remar (Dexter‘s ghost dad) as a megachurch preacher who takes a stand against a federal bill that would require all religions to integrate the customs and writings of other religions into their own doctrines. Horrified by the notion of intersectionality, Remar rises up against it on television, only to be framed for the murder of a prostitute by both his own money-hungry church and the dastardly liberal government.

From there, it’s basically a no-budget knockoff of The Fugitive, but with some idealized religious discrimination for extra flavor. And the thing is I think this will eventually be a problem, more so than it is already. This polemic rhetoric is working well enough for the time being, because apparently Christianity is under assault by people looking to eradicate it from the Earth and replace it with gay sex or something, but I can’t see that vitriol holding sway over the larger conversation forever. And when things settle into a point where the religious and the secular can return to more of an equilibrium (I won’t be so naive as to say it’ll ever fully reach that point), movies like Persecuted probably won’t have a place at the table.

And I think, if anything, that this is what we’re calling for. I, for one, am all about the idea of entertainment for an audience burned by the garish sexuality and violence of a lot of mainstream Hollywood cinema. There’s absolutely a place for that, and for as corny as I might find a lot of a film like Mom’s Night Out, there’s also something sweet about it, in the sense that it’s strongly devout without beating you across the face with its messages and simply integrates a strong sense of faith into a sitcom-style comedy.

I think the Christian film will live on and indeed continue to grow; look at Exodus: Gods and Kings this week or Noah. There’s clearly enough of a market for these movies that the Charlton Heston-style Biblical epic can return to even the highest tiers of the film industry. I think we’re seeing the start of something significant, but I also don’t think that its current didactic state will hold.

RC: There’s already been a resurgence of faith-based genre films, what with the appearance of two (yes, two) found footage horror movies about demonic boxes of porn. The Lock-In was released online earlier this year, while Harmless lit up the blogosphere back in 2012 with a wacky trailer and Kickstarter campaign. Harmless, unfortunately, never came to fruition, but I can say that The Lock-In is every bit as awful as it sounds. And though there’s something desperate about this kind of capitalization, there’s also something to be said for devout filmmakers attempting to branch into genre.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time. Christian filmmakers have never shied from using the biblical rapture as fodder for action (with Mr. T, no less!), or incorporating the Gospel into loopy science fiction narratives (hello, Judd Nelson). But the problem with those movies is the same problem plaguing modern Christian films: they’re incompetent, they’re out of touch, and they’re just not good.

Exodus: Gods and Kings, on the other hand, is competent. Some might even call it good (though we didn’t). But modern Christian audiences will never fully embrace a movie like Exodus: Gods and Kings. Why? Because it’s not really a Christian movie. Rather, it’s a Biblical story with Biblical characters that allows every plague and miracle to be perceived as either holy or man-made. Did God part the Red Sea? Or was it simply low tide? Exodus leaves it ambiguous, and, if movies like Son of God and God’s Not Dead are any indication, ambiguity is the last thing that the audience wants.

There is a place in between, I think. A place where characters of faith can exist without strictly being defined by that faith. A place where Christian morals and issues can be explored in ways that welcome both the secular and the devout. It may take America reaching that point of equilibrium you discuss, Dom, because since G.W.’s reign there has been a fierce divide, in society and in culture. What it will more likely take, however, is something much more manageable: talent. And I don’t mean the casting of a Hollywood titan (again, see the shitshow that was Nicolas Cage’s Left Behind). I mean a singular vision, a filmmaker who can bridge the gap the way Duvall did with The Apostle or Hugh Hudson did with Chariots of Fire or hell, Gibson did with The Passion.

Because if we can’t bridge the divide in our country, we could at least maybe do it through the movies.

Photo via Neill Blomkamp’s Instagram

While most of us were ringing in the New Year with bottles of champagne, District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp used the first day of 2015 to reveal a handful of very interesting images which suggest he was once involved in an Alien movie project.

“Was working on this. Don’t think I am anymore. Love it though #alien #xenomorph”, he wrote below a picture of an enraged Xenomorph Queen. One post, simply captioned “Wtf?” depicts the Derelict Ship stationed inside what appears to be Weyland-Yutani Corp. Others offer more views of “The Company” and reference “the world Ridley Scott created”, and there’s even a few featuring Ellen Ripley herself (played, of course, by Sigourney Weaver). According to an illustrated film poster, the project went under the working title of Alien Xena.

As mesmerizing as the images are, it seems as though the project has been shelved for the time being and quite possibly was never actually commissioned by Alien film executives to begin with. “Ps this has nothing to do with the studio. I just feel like I might do something else instead. In which case why not show some work”, a Twitter account allegedly run by Blomkamp himself posted yesterday. “They didn’t really even know I was working on it ha.”

However, as one Instagram picture posted just Friday afternoon suggests, we may not have to wait long before hearing more from Alien Xena. “maybe I’ll go back to it … love the world.”

Artwork by Cap Blackard

2015 is going to be big. Maybe the biggest ever. I don’t mean to go all Fallon here, but it’s true. Not only are we getting a sequel to the third-highest grossing film of all time with Avengers: Age of Ultron, but we’ll also have a new entry in the Star Wars franchise that may rise above them all. If that weren’t enough, there will also be a new Bond (not starring Idris Elba), a new Mad Max (not starring Mel Gibson), and a new Terminator (not starring Christian Bale). Somewhere between these blockbusters will be a collection of genuinely original works coming our way from Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Cameron Crowe, David O. Russell, the Wachowski siblings, and many, many more.

The force is strong with this year…

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Blackhat

Release date: January 16th via Universal Pictures

It’s been over five years since Michael Mann’s last film, Public Enemies, hit theaters. Now, the 71-year-old filmmaker returns to thrust us into the gritty criminal underworld of cyber terrorism. (How timely, right?) His leading man is Chris Hemsworth, who plays Nicholas Hathaway, a convicted hacker who’s been furloughed to assist American and Chinese agencies track down an elusive cyber criminal responsible for attacks on a Chinese nuclear reactor and the Chicago Board of Trade. Ever devoted to realism, Mann spent years researching the material, while Hemsworth was assigned to learn code, which should assuage the more computer-savvy skeptics. And given all of its filming locations — Chitown, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Jakarta — Blackhat should serve as the perfect winter getaway you can’t afford. –Michael Roffman

Trailer:

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Son of a Gun

Release date: January 16th via A24 Films

Between Whiplash and Foxcatcher, 2014 was a banner year for films about damaged proteges and their shitty mentors. The trend continues this year with Son of a Gun, which sees Ewan McGregor as a criminal mastermind who takes rookie Brentown Thwaites under his wing after a successful prison break. Things go sour, of course, and Thwaites finds himself in over his head. As juicy as the plot is, and as much as we’re jazzed about the trailer’s haunting caper imagery — including a bunch of hoods wearing creepy chimp masks — we’re most excited about seeing McGregor play a complex scumbag again, something that was once his bread and butter. –-Dan Caffrey

Trailer:

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Jupiter Ascending

Release date: February 6th via Warner Bros. Pictures

So here’s the thing: There’s a halfway decent chance that Jupiter Ascending is going to be a complete and utter mess. Setting aside Warner Bros.’ decision to quietly bump its release from last July, where it was slated to drop the same weekend as the last two Dark Knight films, to early February, there’s also the matter of this being a Wachowskis joint. But I’ll be the one to argue that this is a good thing, not the bad thing many people might naturally assume. For better (Speed Racer) or worse (the parts of Cloud Atlas concerning Hugh Grant as a post-apocalyptic tribal warlord), the Wachowskis are still making ambitious mainstream cinema like few others out there. And this, the story of a Russian space princess (Mila Kunis) and the albino bounty hunter sent to protect her (Channing Tatum), looks like it could land on either side of that equation. Wherever it lands, though, Jupiter Ascending will assuredly be a hell of a thing to watch. Plus, look on the bright side. If it’s awful, at least the “more like Stupider Ascending” headlines practically write themselves. –Dominick Mayer

Trailer:

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Fifty Shades of Grey

Release date: February 13th via Universal Pictures

What I like about the pre-release trailers for the 50 Shades of Grey film adaptation is that there’s no pretension, no cuteness, no whiz-bang. Cold, handsome, and proficient, the film posits itself as nothing more than a means of dampening granny panties, be it through the story’s BDSM 101 course or what star Jamie Dornan calls a “love story.” Some say Dornan, who replaced Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam in the role of sado-masochistic billionaire Christian Grey, is gambling with his career by starring in the adaptation, and maybe that’s true, but I can’t imagine the film itself not being a financial success. The sneers and chuckles of the literary cognoscenti haven’t hindered sales of E.L. James’ steamy trilogy at all, nor will the sneers and chuckles of snooty reviewers give the readers pause. It’s God’s Not Dead all over again: critics be damned, this thing’s got a built-in audience. –Randall Colburn

Trailer:

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Chappie

Release date: March 6th via Columbia Pictures

If there’s one thing director Neill Blomkamp knows, it’s robots. He made them sympathetic in his Academy Award–nominated debut, District 9, and he made them menacing as all hell in the post-apocalyptic thriller Elysium. For his third film, Chappie, he teams up with his wife and writing partner, Terri Tatchell, for the first time since District 9 to weave a yarn about a sentient robot (voiced by frequent Blomkamp collaborator Sharlto Copley) who gets kidnapped by two criminals. Think Short Circuit 2 only with much better special effects — and without Fisher Stevens’ cringe-worthy portrayal of an Indian scientist. As an added bonus, Blomkamp has assembled one of the most bonkers casts of the year, including Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, and both members of the South African music duo Die Antwoord. –Adriane Neuenschwander

Trailer:

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In the Heart of the Sea

Release date: March 13th via Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s fair to say that Ron Howard has had a spotty career, directing critically reviled films such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Angels & Demons alongside Oscar-winning pictures such as A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13. This year, ol’ Ronnie boy looks like he’s poised to get that red-carpet tux out of storage with In the Heart of the Sea, which is based on an award-winning historical biography by Nathaniel Philbrick. The film tells the true story of the Essex, a whaling ship that sunk after being attacked by a whale who, let’s face it, had every reason to be pissed off at the boat’s crew. The disaster’s legend grew further after inspiring Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. After the wreck, the ship’s crew — portrayed by Cillian Murphy, Benjamin Walker, and Howard’s muse du jour Chris Hemsworth — fends off starvation, squalls, dehydration, and other sticky situations in order to survive. Early trailers suggest that, if nothing else, audiences can expect some pretty impressive visual effects, especially if screened on IMAX. –Adriane Neuenschwander

Trailer:

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Cinderella

Release date: March 13th via Walt Disney Studios

The Cinderella story may only be rivaled by Peter Pan in terms of the number of adaptations it has produced. Besides numerous ballets, operas, and a popular Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, the ubiquitous French fairy tale has a lengthy cinematic history, from Georges Méliès’ groundbreaking 1899 silent film to Walt Disney’s 1950 animated classic to the cheeky, modern twists of Ever After and A Cinderella Story. But the newest version, a color-saturated, live-action fantasy film directed by Kenneth Branagh (perhaps best known for his equally lush rendering of Hamlet) and starring Burton-blonde newcomer Lily James as “Ella,” appears to be both a return to form and a revitalization of it. With Disney again at the helm, Cinderella boasts the visual grandeur of last year’s Maleficent and an intriguing cast that includes Helena Bonham Carter as The Fairy Godmother, Richard Madden (aka Robb Stark from Game of Thrones) as the blue-eyed Prince, and Cate Blanchett looking icily perfect as Ella’s wicked stepmother, Lady Tremaine. –Leah Pickett

Trailer:

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The Gunman

Release date: March 20th via Open Road Films

Sean Penn wakes up atop of Charlize Theron, combusting with newfound testosterone that he just can’t expunge through hissy fits or blubbering monologues. He’s just about to put his boner through a wall when he gets a call from Liam Neeson. “O’Seaney, It’s yer ol’ pal Liam. My shamrock was shakin’, so I guess the force has finally awakened in you. Roll with it, man. It’ll change your life. Strangers will stop calling you ‘Sam’ and ‘Milk’ the same way nobody calls me ‘Schindler’ anymore.” And then Neeson sends Penn a care package containing the director of Taken, a script called The Gunman, a cast of ringers (Elba, Bardeem, Winstone), and a totally Neeson role of a man with a gun who has to fight other men with guns after his wife gets kidnapped and punch/kick/bang/vroom. Here’s hoping it’s good, because stunt doubles with Marlboro-tanned mugs don’t get enough work these days. –Roy Ivy

Trailer:

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Get Hard

Release date: March 27th via Warner Bros. Pictures

So Will Ferrell’s a millionaire prick who gets busted for fraud and is gonna go to jail for 10 years. He’s too soft for prison life, so he enlists Kevin Hart to get him hard before he’s in the pokey. Hart’s never actually been to prison (Ferrell just assumes it), but he takes on the prison-coaching role for money, and for the joy of torturing the rich prick. There’s a great chance this is gonna suck, like an overextended riff on the “we bad” scene from Stir Crazy. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because there’s enough talent on board to make this great. Sure, with this and The Wedding Ringer, 2015 is top-heavy with movies where Kevin Hart helps the hapless white guy. And Will Ferrell’s shtick has certainly worn thin. But I’m hoping writer/director Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) and co-writers Ian Roberts and Jay Martel (Key and Peele) rise above what’s bound to be endless race and prison rapes jokes. –Roy Ivy

Trailer:

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While We’re Young

Release date: March 27th via A24 Films

One day, Noah Baumbach will be recognized for capturing the often irrational, frequently ridiculous, totally histrionic angst of the millennials like few other filmmakers of our time. His last feature, Frances Ha, was an affecting chronicle of a sharp young woman drifting with vague aims through cities and her own life. Now, with While We’re Young, Baumbach looks to be hitting on something that’s going to ring all too true for a lot of viewers: that moment when the next generation down inherits the responsibility of determining what constitutes “cool” in life. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a couple who befriends the trendy young hipsters next door (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried), only to realize that not everything is ahead of them like it once was. Imagine Neighbors if it wanted to sneakily tear your heart out. –Dominick Mayer

Trailer:

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Harrison Ford is confirmed to return as Rick Deckard in a sequel to the sci-fi cult classic Blade Runner. Oscar-nominated Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, Prisoners) is in talks to helm the film, with the original’s director, Ridley Scott, aboard as producer.

The screenplay from Hampton Fancher, who wrote the seminal 1982 original, and Michael Green (TV’s Heroes, Green Lantern) was turned in late last year. Set “several decades” after the first film’s 2019 dystopian future, Ford reportedly told Scott the script is “the best thing he’s ever read.”

Alcon Entertainment acquired the rights to Blade Runner in 2011, and the Warner Bros.-based production company’s Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson will produce alongside Scott.

“We are honored that Harrison is joining us on this journey with Denis Villeneuve, who is a singular talent, as we experienced personally on Prisoners,” said Kosove and Johnson in a joint statement. “Hampton and Michael, with Ridley Scott, have crafted a uniquely potent and faithful sequel to one of the most universally celebrated films of all time, and we couldn’t be more thrilled with this amazing, creative team.”

Below, watch a trailer for the Blade Runner 30th anniversary edition.

According to Variety, Ryan Gosling is in negotiations to star in the long-gestating sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner.

Harrison Ford is already on board to reprise his role as Rick Deckard, with Prisoners director Denis Villeneuve set to helm the film. Ridley Scott will produce.

No word on Gosling’s role, though the likelihood of him playing a son-type character to Deckard seems the safest bet.

Based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the original film was set in a dystopian Los Angeles of the not-so-distant-future, where Ford’s character hunt down genetically engineered replicants living on Earth illegally.

Well, happy holidaze to all you blog-reading stoners out there. It’s 4/20 and today is your day! If you’ve planned accordingly, you’ve cleared your schedule, rolled some joints, and packed your bowl, ready for the day to begin. But hey, this time should be special. Why make it like every other 4/20, watching Pineapple Express, Dazed and Confused, The Big Lebowski or any other classic stoner film? We’ve all been there done that, and no disrespect to those iconic movies, but why not try something a little different?

This 4/20, we decided to look a little deeper. And by that I mean we referred to some real experts. Taking the High Times Top 10 Best Strains of 2014 (which looking at the list, is actually only nine, appropriately), Pat Levy and I found the perfect movie match for each of the winning strains.

So, instead of resorting to those quintessential flicks like every other year, relax into your love seats and learn about the top strains out there, and the movies that suit their delicate differences. Like my mom always said, every strain is like a snowflake, unique and unlike any other.

Rebecca Bulnes
Staff Writer

Roger Deakins isn’t a household name for most people but he’s arguably the greatest living cinematographer in the medium. Having him on board for a film is like having Tim Duncan on your basketball team; he’s not going to hog all the attention but he’ll silently put up some of the best work possible. Deakins has worked with the Coen Brothers on Fargo and No Country for Old Men in addition to fellow auteurs like Frank Darabont and Martin Scorsese while on his way to a dozen Academy Award nominations.

Now he’s re-teaming with director Denis Villeneuve for the as-yet-untitled Blade Runner sequel, due to begin filming in the summer of 2016. Deakins and Villeneuve worked together previously on 2013’s Prisoners and this year’s drug trafficking drama Sicario starring Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin, which is in competition at Cannes Film Festival.

The untitled Blade Runner sequel will see Harrison Ford returning as Rick Deckard, as well as Ryan Gosling in an unannounced role. The film was written by Hampton Fancher (who co-wrote Blade Runner) and Michael Green (Green Lantern), and will be produced by Ridley Scott, who directed the original. No word on whether or not Anthony Bourdain will be doing craft services.

Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film The Martian stars Matt Damon as an astronaut who is stranded on Mars after a dust storm leads his crew members to believe he is dead. The intriguing film, which also stars Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig, and Jeff Daniels, is set to hit theaters on November 25th. Today brings our first look at Damon in costume (via The Playlist).

(Read: Ridley Scott’s Top 10 Films)

Of course, Damon also played an astronaut just last year in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Hopefully things work out better for him this time around.

Ah, autumn. The air grows crisp, the leaves turn, and the only thing more common than pumpkin spice lattes are the endless jokes whining about them. For the staff here at CoS Film, the turn toward the holidays has always heralded another special time of year: the prestige movie season. We can talk for hours about how the awards cycle has forced so many years’ best films into a cramped timeframe, but that’s for later. Right now we rejoice that we’re (mostly) done with 2015’s franchise crop and can look ahead to all kinds of exciting new things.

And what a set we have. New films by Tarantino, Spielberg, Iñárritu, Zemeckis, and so many other name directors. M. Night Shyamalan’s latest bid to return to his onetime glory days. All manner of bummer movies about tragic historical figures made with the endgame of golden statuettes in mind. Okay, we’re less into that last one. But still! There’s a new Star Wars. How bad can it be?

To celebrate the coming of the three-month film geek Christmas that almost always ends with Christmas itself, we’ve put together our 25 most anticipated releases coming by year’s end. As always, we’ll be seeing you at the movies.

–Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
Film Editor

It’s somewhat fitting to be writing about mob movies only a few short miles from where Al Capone’s South Side Chicago gang once ran a bootlegging empire through brute force and backroom politics. And it’s downright surreal and disturbing to be only a short stroll from where the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred in 1929 — allegedly Capone’s bloody blueprint for settling gangland scores.

Capone died nearly 70 years ago, but you still can’t mention his name in Chicago without perking ears and sparking imaginations. He’s as iconic in this town as Barack Obama, Ernie Banks, or Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow. An amalgam of historical figure, favorite son, and folk hero — a combination that speaks to something remarkably peculiar about the types of characters (both real and fictional) who capture our imaginations.

The strangest feeling when watching a mob film comes when you pause for a moment, acknowledge that the character you’re rooting for is a murdering sociopath, and immediately shrug off that realization. How do we so cavalierly rationalize the fact that we’re often pulling for a villain — something we’d never do while watching, say, a superhero movie? Wait, both sides are villains in this movie. Yeah, but I’m rooting for the good villains. Partly, we’re living out fantasies through onscreen bosses and button men who follow a code that, while often brutal, seems to get results far more efficiently than the avenues available to the rest of us legit schmucks.

But more so, the mobsters we’re allied with as viewers — from Vito Corleone to Tony Soprano — tend to be incredibly likable. They’re family men, loyal friends, funny guys, and often “respected” members of their communities. It’s these same qualities, then, that make it all the more terrifying when that switch flips and a fella who looks like the type we’d invite to a poolside barbecue at our house starts practicing amateur dentistry on another guy using pliers and a parking meter.

I think that’s the appeal of many mob movies, really. We’re simultaneously captivated and terrified by the violent, heinous acts committed by men who seem like good enough fellas — if you ignore the body in the trunk. Sure, sometimes the shock of a mob hit stems from sheer brutality or pints of blood donated to the surrounding walls. But just as often it’s the sudden jump from a world we understand to an underworld we can barely fathom, our favorite gangster morphing from nice guy to wiseguy in the time it takes to say fuhgettaboutit.

These are the mob hits that shock us several viewings and, in some cases, many decades later. If you have other shocking hits you’d like to rat about, feel free to spill them in the comments section. And if you don’t agree with us, just remember: It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.

–Matt Melis
Senior Editor

Three years later, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus remains a polarizing science fiction blockbuster. Some fans love it, others hate it, while the majority of the Alien fanbase tends to feel more or less indifferent. However, all would be quick to add that it’s a beautiful looking film, hallmarked by a potent blend of CGI and on-set wizardry, which Scott lensed to perfection. The issues, instead, are mostly thrown on the lap of screenwriter Damon Lindelof.

For over two hours, the story couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be a part or separate from the Alien mythos. For example, why was the film’s action set on LV-223 instead of LV-426 … where the actual space jockey was first seen in the 1979 original? Why was Guy Pearce hiding in a cubby? Why did that one scientist hate the android? Why did the guy who was terrified of the dark sleep next to the creepy silver tubes? And then touch them? Why did some form of a Xenomorph appear at the end?

Well, good news ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to find all that out, and more — that is, if Scott has his own way. While out doing press for The Martian, the veteran filmmaker has begun hinting of plans for not one, not two, but three more films to further expand a series whose sole intention is to cripple and squash the mystery that makes another greater film that much more terrifying. Who knew when Ash said, “There is an explanation for this, you know,” it would warrant another quadrilogy.

(Read: How Neil Blomkamp’s Aliens Sequel Can Work)

“It won’t be in the next one, it will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise,” Scott told FilmFutter. “The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself. I always thought of the Alien as kind of a piece of bacterial warfare. I always thought that that original ship, which I call the Croissant, was a battleship, holding these biomechanoid creatures that were all about destruction.”

No telling what this does to Blomkamp’s forthcoming sequel, prequel, or whatever. Though, MoviePilot reports that we’ll likely see Prometheus 2 before we witness Ripley and Hicks waking up into an alternate cinematic timeline. Does that make you happy? Does that make you sad? Do you care? Would you rather see another Aliens vs. Predator film? Are you nuts? Is all of this getting too confusing? Was Prometheus a bad call? Was it just a … bad call? Discuss in the comments below.

On Wednesday, we reported how Ridley Scott “hates mystery and wants three more Prometheus films.” That was only 24 hours ago. We’re admittedly still a little nauseous from the idea. Now, there’s even more news on the potential quadrilogy, as the English filmmaker has announced the title for its first sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost.

“You hear of the poem,” Scott asks the interviewer for HeyUGuys, referencing John Milton’s 17th century work. “I doubt you’ve ever been through it, have you? The poem’s a book. It sounds intellectual, but there’s a similarity to it, and that’s where it stops.” Well, when you crudely slap on the Alien brand, Mr. Scott, any intellectualism sort of just dissolves.

Why not simply call it Paradise Lost? Oy vey.

Look, there are a number of reasons why this new title is both confusing and irrational. For one, the film isn’t supposed to connect with the Alien franchise for at least another film. But logically speaking, what about Alien: Paradise Lost makes you think this is a sequel to Prometheus? If anything, it looks more appropriate for Neil Blomkamp’s forthcoming sequel.

Speaking of which, as The Playlist points out, this whole title announcement, shuffle, what have you may be connected to earlier rumors that suggested Scott’s not exactly thrilled about Blomkamp’s sequel. Whatever’s the case we’ll likely find out relatively soon as Scott’s going to be swimming in press for The Martian.

This could get exciting. Or just even more confusing.

Good grief has Ridley Scott’s press tour behind The Martian made news writing this week feel like something out of Groundhog Day. (Just replace Sonny & Cher with Jerry Goldsmith and, well, there you are.) Now, after teasing three more films and confirming the ludicrous title, the English filmmaker has clarified some things and, of course, added even more juicy bits about Prometheus 2 — or rather, Alien: Paradise Lost.

“In a way it is Prometheus 2. It’s exactly the same story,” Scott clarified to Empire. “But it was always in the works to be called [Alien: Paradise Lost]. Is Prometheus actually taking us off course from where I’m going, which is actually backing into the first Alien… I’ve even got connections with Ripley [in this], but I’m not telling you what.” Well, that’s all goo– whoa, really? Ellen Ripley? As in Sigourney Weaver’s Oscar-nominated heroine?

(Read: How Neill Blomkamp’s Aliens Sequel Can Works) 

That’s a hefty prospect to consider, and fortunately, it’s not a power play against Neill Blomkamp’s forthcoming film. Scott suppressed the fiery rumors that he’s anti-Blomjamp, adding: “I’m producing it. The design is for it to go out next, after this. This will go out first. It’s more associated with Ripley, it’s a completely different angle, it’s more of a sequel. I’m coming in from the back end.” ::sigh:: We can now peacefully enjoy our cryosleep.

So, what does this all mean? As with anything involving Alien, we’re relying solely on speculation, though if “cinematic universes” are the bee’s knees nowadays, it could possibly hint that Fox is developing a larger universe for this series than we ever intended. It’s not exactly a bad move, and if they can somehow retain past stories like last year’s Alien: Isolation video game, it could prove exciting for the Alien fanbase.

To play Devil’s advocate, however, bye bye mystery.

Ridley Scott doesn’t make fun movies. That’s not to say he doesn’t make movies that are fun to watch, but it’s highly unlikely you’re laughing, glowing, or brimming with joy while experiencing them. In fact, with the sole exception of 2006’s A Good Year, the English filmmaker’s resume, spanning nearly 50 years, reads like a dark recess into the eyes of a well-educated sadist. He’s bruised our brains with history books (1492: Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator), enlightened our souls with the Bible (Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus: Gods and Kings), strangled our necks with science fiction (Alien, Blade Runner), scorched our nerves with real-life terror (Thelma & Louise, Body of Lies), and just weirded us out (Legend, The Counselor). He’s done the caper (Matchstick Men), the biopic (American Gangster), the sequel (Hannibal), the prequel (Prometheus), and the survival film (White Squall). Yet not one of them are as friendly and gentle and as fun as his latest, The Martian.

(Read: The 10 Best Films of Ridley Scott)

Based on Andy Weir’s smart, humorous, and breezy novel, the story centers on the survival of NASA astronaut Mark Watney, who’s been stranded on Mars and presumed dead by his teammates following an intense dust storm and impromptu evacuation. This Watney guy happens to be one hell of a botanist and mechanical engineer, which is why he readily accepts the nightmare scenario as an agreeable hurdle. He’s also a smug bastard with an uncanny sense of humor, two chummy attributes that have rocketed millions of readers through Weir’s science-heavy novel. The 40-something novelist drew inspiration from his scientific background (his father is a particle physicist; he studied computer science) to drill his story with an exemplary wealth of research. Rather astutely, he cut the stuffy language with glimmering slices of humor, saving it from being a snooze fest and turning it into a frenzied page-turner.

That addictive read translates smoothly to screen thanks to a punchy screenplay by Drew Goddard. The veteran writer of episodic series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, and this year’s Daredevil is an ideal candidate for Weir’s story, which was mostly told through Watney’s multiple video logs that captured his days (ahem, sols) on Mars. It’s a clever medium, but proved limiting as a read as we were only able to catch glimpses of Watney’s personality and emotional psyche. Goddard retains the logs, but they’re hardly a framing device. Instead, he stays close on Watney as he works things out firsthand and/or grapples with the occasional blowback of his own miscalculations. This lends itself to a sharper character study; for instance, a sobering moment in the rover following one hellish accident bottles up more emotion than any of the hundred logs from Weir’s story. We’re witnessing his dread, we’re seeing his disappointment, and we’re feeling his frustration.

(Read: Matt Damon’s Top 10 Performances)

What’s strange is how the stakes feel somewhat deflated. We’re watching a human being stranded 140 million miles away from Earth, and it hardly comes across as dangerous. Part of the reason is that Goddard nixes a number of key conflicts from Weir’s original story, including an especially daunting trek toward the end that’s accomplished here with ease, but mostly because the film’s lighthearted tone eschews the restless survival tropes of Apollo 13, Cast Away, or anything else that fits that mold and doesn’t necessarily have to star Tom Hanks. (Gravity! Let’s go with Gravity!) To Goddard’s credit, he doesn’t cloud the sunny source material and champions feelings of hope and accomplishment over the weepier sentiments of despair and fear. As such, the film never comes close to being a harrowing experience. It’s a goddamn blast, one in which we can watch Matt Damon vibe out to Donna Summer as he cruises through the canyons of Mars.

Oh, how could we forget about Damon? He’s having more fun than anyone else on screen — cracking jokes, sneaking grins, watching re-runs of Happy Days — and to think he’s supposed to be the unlucky son of a bitch. As the whimsical and optimistic Watney, Damon thoroughly entertains with a one-man show that’s as admirable for its laughs as it is for its physicality. We never really grasp what makes Watney tick as a person, but Damon’s boyish charm and wise heroics overwhelm the proceedings enough to keep us rooting from the stands. That kinetic energy also rubs off on the film’s idyllic cast, who all take their respective characters and ricochet across the scenes with snappy dialogue and feisty quirks. Donald Glover is a walking cup of coffee as Rich Purnell, Kristen Wiig sweats bullets as Annie Montrose, Jeff Daniels arrives fresh off The Newsroom set as Teddy Sanders, and Benedict Wong delivers the film’s best line as Bruce Ng. Mind you, this is only a third of the support.

(Read: NASA and Zack Ruskin discuss the authenticity of The Martian)

So where does Scott fit into all this? Despite all the levity and giggles, the filmmaker does what he knows best, which is to create a gripping spectacle. The Martian is another gorgeous picture from Scott, brimming with colors and styles, striking with its naturalism and approximation. From the opening sandstorm, to the sprawling deserts of Mars, down to the not-too-distant NASA headquarters, and concluding with the climax’s weightless ribbon ballet, each scene shines from the clarity and wisdom of the 77-year-old auteur. In a sense, it’s his vision that adds a subtle weight to the story, grounding the comedy and action into something that is quite foreseeable. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski also deserves some high praise, proving once again he’s a perfect match for Scott’s aesthetic and scope. For those keeping count, this marks their fourth straight collaboration together (starting with 2012’s Prometheus), and he’s undoubtedly made a difference.

What’s perhaps most stunning about The Martian is how there isn’t a single political agenda tied to it. The closest the film ever gets to the P word is earlier when Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Vincent Kapoor pleads with Daniels’ Teddy Sanders, aka the Director of NASA, to capitalize on the public’s reaction to Watney’s alleged death. He wants to use the outside support to cut through the red tape and secure funding for a rescue mission, arguing that the public eye will forget about the incident in a year. And that’s that — crazy, right? It’s sad, but in an age where anything and everything turns political, it’s reassuring (revelatory, even) to know that a science fiction film, or any film for that matter, can eek by without a picket line. Somehow, The Martian thrives simply for its humor, its heart, and its magnificence, accomplishing what Christopher Nolan yearned to do with Interstellar less than a year ago: turn our eyes to the stars and our imagination beyond.

(Read: Page to Screen: What Would Being Stranded on Mars Be Like?)

Who knew we just needed Ridley Scott to make us smile?

Trailer:

From self-published e-book to New York Times bestseller to blockbuster film, the story of The Martian’s publication is almost as intriguing as its plot … but not quite. Andy Weir’s tale of astronaut Mark Watney, left for dead on Mars and forced to figure out a way to survive and let the world know he’s alive, is a refreshing blend of action, humor, and good, old-fashioned science.

From the immediate needs of making a few months’ supply of food and water last four years to the more extreme innovations required to contact Earth with no working communications, The Martian’s popularity is in large part due to the realistic, brilliant ways in which Watney keeps his hopes of rescue alive.

The son of a particle physicist, Weir wrote his novel with a background in computer science and has spoken often of the immense research he dedicated to subjects like orbital mechanics and astronomy. In celebration of The Martian’s debut as a major motion picture, we decided to run the details of the story by a definitive source: John B. Charles, the Associate Manager for International Science of NASA’s Human Research Program.

Charles is a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association and a Full Member of the International Academy of Astronautics. In addition, he is the co-developer of the Shuttle-era fluid-loading countermeasure and investigated the cardiovascular effects of space flight. He also coordinated all of the NASA-sponsored biomedical, biological, and microgravity science investigations as Mission Scientist for American astronaut missions on Mir, on STS-95, John Glenn’s Shuttle flight, and on STS-107, Columbia’s last mission in January 2003.

Writing by e-mail from his office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Charles graciously gave us his take on a number of The Martian’s most compelling plot points.

[Warning: If you haven’t read or seen The Martian, some plot points are revealed below.]

One of the more humorous elements of The Martian concerns Mark Watney’s entertainment options while he’s stuck on Mars. He has USB sticks from two crew members: one with every season of Three’s Company and one with a lot of disco music. When NASA sends people to space, especially for prolonged periods of time, do they get to bring memory sticks with bits of their favorite music and TV shows? Before USB sticks, was there a more primitive counterpart?

Such diversions are an important part of the psychological support of ISS crew members. I don’t know how it is done these days, but I wouldn’t be surprised if memory sticks are common. Entertainment has used the current technology available throughout spaceflight history.

The Russians used to pipe music up to their cosmonauts (imagine trying to decipher the tune through 1960’s tinny comm systems) and insisted that the cosmonauts also enjoyed playing chess with mission control. NASA’s 14-day Gemini 7 astronauts in 1965 brought one paperback each to read and never got very far into them. One of the choices was Roughing It by Mark Twain. Apollo 13 illustrated how the early Apollo missions brought along a little reel-to-reel tape recorder with music tapes that could be re-recorded with mission data if needed.

Cassette tapes were flown in Skylab and early Shuttle missions, then music CDs. Video cassettes and then DVDs were flown on early ISS missions for in-flight movie nights. Nowadays, with almost continuous broad band access, both mission data and entertainment options are uploaded regularly.

Also, If Watney was so unhappy with Lewis’ entertainment selections, why didn’t he just play his own? Everybody on the crew — including him — brought their own sticks. [Ed note: In a reddit AMA, Andy Weir admitted that he “cheated” a little because he “wanted a funny running joke about disco.”]

The character Mark Watney is both a botanist and a mechanical engineer, and there is mention made that all members of the crew sent to Mars are dual-talented. As NASA continues to probe the feasibility of a manned mission to Mars, is having a crew where each person is an expert in multiple disciplines a necessary factor?

It is already thus. Astronauts are surprisingly diverse and well-rounded individuals, more so now with the last few group selections than ever before. I like to tell my public-speaking audiences that NASA only selects people who are test pilot/neurosurgeon/concert pianists or equivalent. If they aren’t multi-discipline experts when they are selected as astronauts (and, if not, why would they be selected?), then they are by the time they fly.

You said you recently had a chance to see The Martian, along with your co-workers. What was the general impression? Does it rank as one of the more accurate “space” movies to come out of Hollywood?

The Martian was the best space movie I have seen in a long time, which means it is the least cringe-inducing. Hollywood always says they need to make the topic accessible to the vast movie-going public, which demands straying from actual reality more than I would like, but I maintain that if spaceflight is not intrinsically dramatic enough to hold your interest, then maybe the problem is not in the content but in the audience. My experience with the audience is captured by Jim Oberg in his review.

While a lot of the focus is understandably directed at the person stuck on a planet 140 million miles from Earth, the NASA ground control staff plays a pivotal role in the events of The Martian as well. What’s the chain of command like as far as making the kinds of decisions asked of the ground control staff in the book? Who has the final word on the ultimate hard choices?

The movie compressed an awful lot of people into a few central characters [as I mentioned above]. Generally speaking, the flight director (Sean Bean’s character) is responsible for the tactical planning and execution of the mission, and the crew commander (Lewis, in the movie) is responsible for the real-time, boots-on-the-ground execution in flight. Obviously, the manager of the vehicle program has a lot of clout, and the hierarchy in the astronaut office exerts their influence through their supervisory leverage on the crew members. [The chain of command involves] people like field center (like Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, etc.), Directors (absent in the movie), and the NASA Administrator (Jeff Daniels’ character, called the “NASA Director,” apparently to conflate the real-world roles of “NASA Administrator” and “Center Director” — see previous lament). Theoretically, the Flight Director has ultimate responsibility, and they will tell you that is a fact, but they get lots of friendly advice.

Andy Weir employs a narrative technique of having Mark Watney keep a running log of his activities while he’s stuck on Mars. Do astronauts keep “captain’s logs” when they’re on missions?

Everything is reported down to Mission Control, both electronically and in daily planning and debriefing sessions, so I don’t think there is a single Captain’s Log. But the astronauts often keep personal diaries, and we have a funded investigator who is allowed to go through those diaries (only with the astronauts’ permission) to extract and sanitize meaningful information on psych issues. [In the film,] I think Watney started the video log when he was abandoned, to let future generations know about his struggles. I don’t think he was doing it before then.

In a reddit AMA with Andy Weir, a user pointed out that due to the low atmospheric pressures on Mars, even a superstorm-strength wind would feel “like a breeze,” negating the accuracy of the incident that sets in motion Watney being stranded on Mars. If a wind storm isn’t actually a factor to be greatly feared, what elements of Mars do provide the biggest risks when astronauts finally get there?

Apparently, that is the first question every audience asks Weir. That is the first one he was asked during a small-group briefing he did here at JSC — I know, because I asked him the first question, and that was it.

He said he needed an initiating event and knowingly stretched the truth, but the rest of the movie was as accurate as possible. I followed up my “gotcha” question with kudos for his orbital mechanics, which is far more likely to be treated badly in movies — as demonstrated in the dramatic scene at the end of the movie. Also, the dust on Mars is not granular like the sand or gravel that pelted Watney, but more fine, like smoke particles.

The real-world problems are medical care when inevitable accidents happen, psych support (remember Marooned?) in a group of people who are simultaneously more isolated than anyone else ever in history and more connected, with a 10-20-minute delay due to the speed of light, life support (the ISS life support systems need regular replacements and repairs).

Of the many ingenuous tactics Watney employs in his stay on Mars, his idea to recover the Pathfinder lander and the Sojourner rover and retrofit them to communicate with Earth stand out as particularly crafty. It harkens back to the makeshift fixes utilized by the Apollo 13 crew too. Are innovation and resourcefulness vital character traits for anyone embarking on a NASA mission?

Yes … dude, are you pulling my leg?

What would NASA likely do if they learned an astronaut was stranded on Mars? Did they have “rescue” plans in place for the Apollo missions that reached the moon?

As to what NASA would do if they learned an astronaut was stranded on Mars — ask me in 30 years. It will depend on how and why the astronaut was stranded, the design of the mission, advances in technology, and even the mood of society at that time. The rescue options for Apollo were very limited. The ascent stage engine had to function well enough to get the ascent stage and the astronauts into lunar orbit — according to Michael Collins on Apollo 11 — any lunar orbit — so the orbiting command/service module could maneuver to retrieve them.

There was an extremely preliminary early concept that would see the stranded astronauts disassembling their lunar module and making a small open rocket-chariot that could get them into lunar orbit, for rescue as before, but that idea was never pursued, probably because it assumed only an unlikely failure that left the LM unusable but all of its components salvageable, and assumed that the astronauts didn’t break anything important while disassembling it, with all the wrong tools, in the lunar dust, in just the few hours remaining in their nearly exhausted life support systems. Astronauts like to refer to such plans as “something to do while you are waiting to die.”

NASA’s Dr. Ellen Stofan has stated that you hope to send humans to Mars by 2035. Will you make The Martian mandatory viewing/reading for crew members before they launch?

By 2035, I hope we have even better space movies, perhaps even shot in actual outer space, to inspire and motivate our intrepid martian.

The Martian opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, Oct. 2nd.

You can call The Martian a lot of things: Ridley Scott’s best film since 2007’s American Gangster, Matt Damon’s funniest performance since 2010’s True Grit, or the most enjoyable science fiction spectacle in years .

Perhaps the best thing about the Andy Weir adaptation, however, is that it’s seemingly reinvigorated Scott’s love for science fiction. After all, if the film’s endless press junkets are any indication, he doesn’t plan on leaving the genre anytime soon.

Last week, the English filmmaker digressed heavily on his follow up to Prometheus, eagerly anticipating three more sequels and an assortment of connections to his original Alien film. Now, he’s looking to bring similar life to his other franchise, Blade Runner.

Speaking with Yahoo!, Scott discussed the potential for more films to follow his 1982 cult classic:

“Everyone else is, so why not? I love to work. The French say ‘Work to live,’ and I live to work. I’m very lucky to have a job that I adore. All my kids do the same thing. Some of it’s trying, but it’s like being in professional sport. It’s so competitive [that] you better keep bouncing the ball. You can’t rest.”

Apparently Harrison Ford’s a big fan of the new script, which will start shooting under Denis Villenueve’s direction and through the eyes of Roger Deakins next summer:

“Harrison said, ‘Mehh,’ and I said, ‘No, read this.’ And I think he said, ‘This is the best script I’ve ever had.’ We’ve been working on it for a couple of years.”

Perhaps the biggest bombshell was his proclamation that Ford’s Deckard will remain a replicant:

“Of course he’s a bloody Replicant! He’s going to have to admit it…You’ll have to see the story. It’ll all make sense.”

If that weren’t enough, he also confirmed the timeline, adding:

“It was 2017, so coming back it’ll be 2047, roughly. As young as you can play Ryan Gosling. He’s 34, but he looks 27 when he’s doing his push-ups. So maybe 2050.”

With regards to Prometheus 2, aka Alien: Paradise Lost, Scott digressed more on the ties to English poet John Milton and offered a little more context for the story, which begins shooting early next year.

“Have you ever read Paradise Lost, by Milton? In a funny kind of way, it’s an interesting basis for the darkness of [Prometheus 2]. Where the good-looking guy, who is evil as s–t, gets all the girls and goes to the nightclubs. The other guy, who is not quite as good-looking, is boring as hell and stays home. So in a funny kind of way, we used that as the basis for it, it’ll be Alien: Paradise Lost. Which is very spooky, because it continues after the last one, where Elizabeth Shaw [Noomi Rapace] says, ‘I wanna go where they came from.’ And you’ve got Michael Fassbender in two parts, so she’ll slowly put him back together. They will go to the world of the Engineer…That’s where they’re going to go. They will find out who would design such an awful bio-mechanoid creature, like a massive piece of bacteria.”

So, what do we make of all this? If everything goes to plan, we’ll have three more Prometheus sequels, three more Blade Runner sequels, and, of course, Neil Blomkamp’s forthcoming Alien 2.5 prequel/sequel thingy … basically, Christmas for sci-fi junkies.

Or perhaps overkill? Discuss below.