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We've watched a couple of films that weren't on the Hugo shortlist!
First was Freaks (the 2018 Scifi, not the 1932 horror); Chloe lives with her father, who insists on covering all the windows and never letting her leave the house. He teaches her to pretend to be normal (e.g. to have opinions on baseball, a sport she's never seen), and tells her that the bad men will try and kill her if she ever goes outside. I can't say much more about the plot without going into spoilers, but one of the things I liked about this film was that you spend quite a long time wondering what is going on - is the father paranoid, bad, or is there actually danger outside? Why all this talk of normals?
All becomes clearer as the film goes on, but the plot has plenty of twists, and the characters are all pretty believable, underpinned by some really good acting. Recommended.
The other was The Vast of Night, which is a Scifi mystery set in 1950's New Mexico. It's a curious piece - there's some distancing framing (as an episode of "Paradox Theatre Hour"), there are precious few close-ups, and the genre nods are liberally scattered (the radio station is WOTW, for example); and it's definitely a slow-burner despite only being 90 minutes long.
I rather liked it; there are some great moments (oddly, I found the hyper-efficient switchboard operator fascinating), and it's very well placed in its setting without becoming historical fiction. It's an atmosphere piece more than anything else, I think, and it builds that atmosphere very effectively.
First was Freaks (the 2018 Scifi, not the 1932 horror); Chloe lives with her father, who insists on covering all the windows and never letting her leave the house. He teaches her to pretend to be normal (e.g. to have opinions on baseball, a sport she's never seen), and tells her that the bad men will try and kill her if she ever goes outside. I can't say much more about the plot without going into spoilers, but one of the things I liked about this film was that you spend quite a long time wondering what is going on - is the father paranoid, bad, or is there actually danger outside? Why all this talk of normals?
All becomes clearer as the film goes on, but the plot has plenty of twists, and the characters are all pretty believable, underpinned by some really good acting. Recommended.
The other was The Vast of Night, which is a Scifi mystery set in 1950's New Mexico. It's a curious piece - there's some distancing framing (as an episode of "Paradox Theatre Hour"), there are precious few close-ups, and the genre nods are liberally scattered (the radio station is WOTW, for example); and it's definitely a slow-burner despite only being 90 minutes long.
I rather liked it; there are some great moments (oddly, I found the hyper-efficient switchboard operator fascinating), and it's very well placed in its setting without becoming historical fiction. It's an atmosphere piece more than anything else, I think, and it builds that atmosphere very effectively.
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