Category: science fiction

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Four – “Echo Chamber”
Written by Nathaniel Halperin
Directed by Andrew Stanton

The director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E is the filmmaker behind this entry into the Loop series, which is much less science fiction than it is a profoundly human and grounded story. “Echo Chamber” examines death and mortality against the fantastic landscape of the series. Yes, there is a technological wonder of the echo sphere, a hollow metal sphere where your echo reveals how much longer your life will last. But that’s just a background element to the relationship between Cole and his grandfather Russ (Jonathan Pryce).

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Three – “Stasis”
Written by Nathaniel Halperin
Directed by Dearbhla Walsh

We’ve all had those moments in our life that we wistfully drift back to from time to time. There’s a very distinct emotion we feel when thinking about them, a yearning to go back there, and our senses recalling smells and sounds that further recreate the scenario. More likely than not, if we were to have a way to be in that moment perpetually on closer examination, we would discover flaws & incongruities with our memory. Emotion has such a strong ability to cloud the mind and create false pasts that feel better, editing the problematic parts.

Devs (FX)
Written & Directed by Alex Garland

How do I know I am making a choice to type these words right now? How do I know that I chose to watch all eight episodes of Devs? Are these actions free choices of my own making or merely preprogrammed behaviors, following a path I was set on by some cold, indifferent force of nature? Devs explores these ideas in its roughly eight hours and is my favorite of filmmaker Alex Garland’s work to date. I’m reasonably positive about Ex Machina but found myself underwhelmed by Annihilation. I think long-form mini-series may be the structure that best suits Garland’s style of pacing and cerebral storytelling.

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Two – “Transpose”
Written by Nathaniel Halpern
Directed by So Yong Kim

The second episode of Tales from the Loop delivers an interesting surprise that while this is an anthology series, the stories will revolve around the same set of characters. Where episode one focused on Loretta, episode two shifts to Jakob, her eldest son. The first episode was about destiny using the conceit of a time loop, and this one is about envy of another person’s life and uses more of the esoteric technology of the Loop to go deeper. It’s a smartly written story that puts its focus purely on the human elements and doesn’t get caught up in the hard science fiction.

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode One – “Loop”
Written by Nathan Halpern
Directed by Mark Romanek

Tales from the Loop was inspired by the art of Swedish painter Simon Stålenhag, images that provoke a sense of nostalgia but also of the future. His pictures depict the rural landscape outside of Stockholm, with elements of dystopian science fiction peppered in. The presence of these pieces of technology doesn’t clutter the image, but they do dominate, juxtaposed against children in 1980s clothing observing the machines or only going about their daily lives with the monoliths looming in the background. This is the mysterious world of the Loop, out of time, and the home to luminous and breathtaking feats that break the laws of physics.