Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (5000)

Content

Tim McGuire (301 KP) rated Harbinger Down (2015) in Movies

Nov 13, 2019

Harbinger Down (2015)

2015 | Horror, Sci-Fi

8.5

(2 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Old Movie Revisited: Harbinger Down. Now if you're anything like me, you've spent a fair amount of time thinking, Man, they should remake The Thing with Lance Henriksen. Well those dreams have been answered in the form of Harbinger Down. Now sure there are differences, Instead of an Arctic outpost, they are on a cargo ship in the arctic... Instead of a ufo crashing to earth with a nasty alien on board, this one has a russian space capsule, crashing to earth contaminated with a space virus... And from there its pretty much the same... including the mimicking of the host... Shit even the ending is the same, sorta, a lone survivor stranded in the arctic. Now all that aside, it wasn't a bad little low budget flick, and c'mon it has the low budget movie God in it, Mr Lance Henrikson, remember how he wowed us all in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the guy standing in the background. Its almost as incredible as Cliff Clavin being part of the Rebel Alliance, its true!! But that was a long, long time ago, in what seems like a galaxy far far away... Filmbufftim on FB

Kudos

David McK (3791 KP) rated Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1) in Books

Nov 20, 2019

Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1)

Philip Reeve | 2004 | Fiction & Poetry, Science Fiction/Fantasy

6.9

(8 Ratings)

Book Rating

Well, that was … unusual .. to say the least.

This was one of those stories that I'd been meaning to read for ages, but had never really got round to, and proved to (effectively) be a mash-up of Young Adult dystopian future with steampunk.

Steampunk, as a genre, is not one that I've really read all that much in - ab out the only other one that currently springs to mind is Jim Butcher's Cinder Spires series (all one book, so far!), but I tend to associate it more with an alternate past or present than the far future, which is when this one is set.

The main draw for me - and, I'm sure, many others - was the central concept of cities on wheels, cities that need to keep mobile and scavenge/attack each other in order to keep going - or, as it is described here by characters within, of 'Municipal Darwinism'.

While I found the writing and general plot a bit - how shall I say? - lacklustre? flat? I did enjoy the central premise of the story, and may come back to the world to see what else happens in future instalments.