Some Science Fiction Films of the Year 1990 Reviews

     Back to the Future III was the end of a popular trilogy but was probably one of the better made movies. However, I remember when I watched it in the theater, being disappointed. I didn’t think it was very funny and thought the characters had become too cartoonish. I believe it has aged well, completing Marty and Doc’s character arcs and ending on a positive note, that the future is in your control.  It's basically the first movie, but with late 19th century technology. 4 out of 5 It's a classic but isn't one of the best classics.

    Flatliners was a typical bratpack movie, with  gratuitous sex scenes. It was well shot and I loved the gothic feel of the movie like I was watching a classic horror movie. I overall was disappointed with the scenes of the afterlife. The afterlife is nothing but the guilt we hold on to. Maybe that is the point, that death is meaningless and that we need to make our lives worth living and let go of our guilt. I didn’t feel like it did too much for the science fiction genre but is more of a psychological thriller. Schumacher would later direct Batman movies. He previously did St. Elmo’s Fire and The Lost Boys. 2 out of 5

  

     Predator 2 was hard for me to review because I had never seen the first Predator so I had nothing to compare it to. It was an angry, sweaty, aggressive movie. This was also a near future movie that imagines 1997 as extremely violent and where cities are the scenes of battles between different international drug gangs.  It was supposed to be telling us that if we don’t do enough about crime and the environment, we will end up having the future like the one in the movie. What is interesting is how much of the present was in the movie, like the heatwave in the late 80’s that almost dried up the Mississippi and damaged crops. The movie was filmed in real LA alleys, so the garbage and graffiti you see is real. The film crew was actually threatened in real life by the homeless living in the alleys and had to deal with the smell of urine and excrement. One day while cleaning a pile of trash, they found a dead body!  The drug gangs featured in the movie were also based off of real gangs at the time. Jamaica and Colombia were heavily involved in the drug wars of the late 80’s and it was feared the conflicts with those countries would escalate. The gangs are portrayed as heathen savages. The Colombian leader drinks a ritualistic cup of what looks like a drink with cocaine in it and the Jamaican leader follows some kind of mixture of Rastafarian and voodoo religions, throwing down chicken bones before he meets the Predator monster. Some reviewers think this movie is racist because of the portrayal of the gangs. If you like diversity in films, the hero protagonist of the film is played by black actor, Danny Glover, and the bad guy is played by a white actor, Gary Busey.  A scene in the future LA subway is an homage to the real 1984 Bernhard Goetz shooting, the subway vigilante. Except in this situation, everyone on the subway pulls out a gun on the gangs. This scene was in the Predator Comic book which took place in NYC instead of LA. Since LA at the time was still building their subway, the movie took place in the near future. The Predator is attracted to their anger and attacks them all, killing many in the dark subway car. The Predator alien is developed in this movie with more insight to how the Predator thinks, that he isn’t just a monster, but a hunter with an honor code. He is defeated by an older LA cop who used the Predator’s weapon against him, a DVD looking weapon. This cop is given a trophy by the other Predators and let go. This movie’s violence was too over the top and uncomfortable. It has some great scenes, like the subway attack, Predator meeting King Willie in the alley, Predator holding up Bill Paxton’s skull in the air on top of a skyscraper getting hit by lightning, and the final fight with Danny Glover’s character in the Predator spaceship. 

3 out of 5

    

    I Come in Peace is too much of a rehash of other science fiction thriller movies. Dolph Lundgren is trying to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger. There is an alien behind gang killings similar to Predator 2. This one is different because the buddy cop team get an exposition from a dying alien cop who explains what is going on. The alien also uses a DVD looking weapon like in Predator 2. Bad acting, directing, extreme graphic violence and nudity made this an uncomfortable watch. An alien using humans as a drug isn’t a new story and we will continue to see more movies about an alien cop or bounty hunter, trying to catch an alien criminal on Earth with the help of humans. It had the worst gratuitous nudity scene of all of the movies I watched.  Something I liked about the movie was that it was filmed and took place in Houston, TX which is different, and I think the actor playing the alien did a great job. Best scene- Alien "I Come in Peace!" Dolph Lundgren's character- "And you go in pieces!" BOOM! 2 out of 5 It isn't a 1 because it is at least fun to watch.

    Moon 44 was the worst movie of all. I only added it because it was an early Roland Emmerich film. It was a boring rip off of other science fiction movies like Blade Runner, Star Wars, and Aliens. Nothing much happens in the plot and the main character was like watching a piece of cardboard. The space helicopters didn’t make much sense. The entire scene of teenage hackers bunking with older former prisoners was very uncomfortable. Then there is an added scene of a former prisoner sexually assaulting and later raping a teenage hacker in the shower. Then when the teenager kills his rapist, the teen is punished and thrown in prison. In the end, the teenager kills himself. One of the reviewers on IMDB called this movie “one of the greatest homoerotic science fiction films ever made" and I wonder if Emmerich made it that way intentionally. One of the teens is played by Dean Devlin who would later work with Roland Emmerich in writing Stargate and Independence Day. I wonder if he got Emmerich to drop the homoerotic stuff? Malcolm McDowell plays the villain in this movie, and he is our actor of 1990 as he was also in Class of 1999 playing the principal. 1 out of 5

    Class Of 1999 was the biggest surprise of all of these movies. I imagined it was going to be a trashy B movie, but it ended up being enjoyable to watch. The director previously did the movie Class of 1984, a modern retelling of Blackboard Jungle with exploitative violence, introducing us to the Canadian actor, Michael J. Fox, right before he took the role that made him famous on Family Ties. The director then made a couple of hit movies, Firestarter and Commando.

After those successes, he made Class of 1999 in 1990 as a futuristic sci-fi sequel to Class of 1984. He imagines a dystopian world where youth gangs now control areas of major cities that police will not even enter called “no fire zones’. Schools became so dangerous that the Department of Educational Defense was created and contracted a weapons manufacturer to create robot teachers to take back the schools and restore order. They chose to pilot this program in a newly reopened school in Seattle. The no-fire zone is currently being ruled between two rival gangs, the Blackhearts and the Razorbacks. The former leader of the Blackhearts has just been released from prison and has to attend this school in order to stay out of jail. Meeting him are his brothers, Sonny and Angel who are addicted to drugs. They drive to school while being chased by gangsters firing machine gun and exploding bombs all around them, in a Mad Max style scene. The school bus is a tactical school bus and the high school has guard towers and metal detectors at the entrance. It looks more like a prison than a school. The new robot teachers are introduced into classes but the students are unaware they are androids and continue to be disrespectful and fight. Each robot teacher demonstrates how they discipline by beating the kids, spanking them and they continue to escalate the violence by killing two students, scaring the kids. Cody, the star, suspects something is wrong and spies on them. He and his new girlfriend spy on the new teacher's home and discover they might not be human, but are robots. He gets caught and the robots go into war mode. They trick the gangs into a gang war and as the kids are fighting, the robots start killing them off one by one until Cody catches them. Cody convinces the leader of the other gang to work together to fight the robots. They find out they were created to be military robots created by the evil albino scientist at Mega Tech that he reprogrammed to sell to the Department of Educational Defense for PROFIT!  Only Cody and his love interest are left alive and they leave the now burning school with a power ballad playing in the background. The special effects were done by Eric Allard who worked previously on Short Circuit. The best part of the movie is how Cody destroys the final robot with a forklift. It's a rehash mix of Terminator and Westworld so I can see why it didn't do very well in the theaters. 4 out of 5 I know it isn't the best movie, but I enjoyed it so much

NEXT- ROBOCOP 2 and TOTAL RECALL