Gillian Anderson

I’ll Follow You Down aka Continuum (2014)

I’ll Follow You Down aka Continuum (2014)

(On Cable TV, November 2019) As a Science Fiction fan and relapsing critic, one of the most exciting developments in the genre throughout the 2010s has been the emergence and maintenance of a stream of low-budget SF movies focused more on character-driven emotional issues than whiz-bang spectacle. They’re really not always good (some of them are, in fact, quite terrible) but they offer a more mature than usual, less thunderous alternative to the special-effects extravaganzas privileged by Hollywood studios. I’ll Follow You Down is one such film, focusing on a time-travel premise not as an excuse to strangle baby Hitler, but to help a young man find closure about his missing father. Gillian Anderson stars (this not being the sole small-scale SF film in her filmography) as the mother of the protagonist, although a grown-up child star Haley Joel Osment may earn the most attention as the tale’s protagonist. Alas, despite writer-director Richie Mehta’s best intentions, I’ll Follow You Down does fall flat. The stakes are clear but rarely exploited, Osment doesn’t quite have the intensity required of the role, the film does fall into clichés (not all of them science-fictional), and the ending is a muddled unsatisfying mess that loses itself attempting to do something other than the expected. (Here’s a note to those filmmakers mulling small-scale SF movies: The expected is forgivable if it makes audiences happy. That it all.)  Time-travel films work best with, appropriately enough, a deadline of sorts to meet and I’ll Follow You Down is far too laid-back to crank up that ticking-clock element. The cinematography is also quite reserved, meaning that there’s no execution bonus to compensate for an underwhelming substance. But while I’m somewhat disappointed in the result, I’m still upbeat about the existence of the film (a Canadian production!) as a further data point that the Science Fiction genre is perfectly viable—and interesting—to filmmakers without a sizable special effects budget: it’s always about the characters and how the science fictional premise affects them.

UFO (2018)

UFO (2018)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) I’m not a sympathetic viewer for undigested ufology, but UFO’s main strength lies somewhere else, somewhere I’m more than willing to follow: A scientific procedural thriller, in which an incredibly bright mathematics university student pulls at the thinnest threads in order to figure out a scientific mystery. Writer-director Ryan Eslinger turns in quite a cerebral film, with no action and arguably no antagonist either. But it’s a clever suspense movie in which the question is whether the protagonist will figure out the mystery, with equations and conceptual breakthroughs being what he needs to get there. Alex Sharp turns in a Miles-Tellerish lead performance (that’s a compliment) as the obsessed student, with some assistance by Gillian Anderson and David Strathairn. The low budget of the film is used effectively by a script that knows that its strength lies elsewhere than big-budget spectacle filmmaking. I quite enjoyed it despite my misgivings about presenting this as a true-ish story—it’s best to ignore the weak woo-woo attempts to link it to “real” events and enjoy it as a purely fictional thriller. In that light, it reminded me not only of my own computer science university days, but of the pleasure I got then from reading hard-SF short stories tackling first contact from a mathematical-as-universal-language perspective. I really can’t claim that I completely followed all of UFO’s heady concepts, but I knew enough to follow along and to appreciate that the film doesn’t treat its audience as idiots. There’s some noticeable but clever foreshadowing throughout, and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the more ambitious but also more pretentious wave of low-budget Science Fiction that we’ve seen lately. Hard-SF readers should get quite a kick out of it.

Little Women (1994)

Little Women (1994)

(In French, On TV, December 2018) I can certainly understand Little Women’s timeless appeal—as a story detailing the struggles of the four March girls following the American Civil War, it’s got no fewer than five plum female roles, including four for young actresses. The 1930s version practically made a star out of Katharine Hepburn, and this 1994 version features a terrific cast, in-between Winona Ryder, Trini Alvarado, Kirsten Dunst/Samantha Mathis and Claire Danes as the girls, with Susan Sarandon as the mother. But wait, it gets even better! Gabriel Byrne, Eric Stoltz and Christian Bale are also featured as some of the suitors of the March girls. Meanwhile, the story has just enough melodrama with war casualties, fatal illnesses, romantic entanglements and literary progression. Director Gillian Armstrong manages to adapt and propel the story in a way that avoids some of the hawkishness of earlier version, and create a convincing portrait of a family sticking through challenging times. I do like the 1930s version, but this Little Women may be even more accessible and lighter on cheap sentiment.

The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

(On Cable TV, August 2017) I’ve never been more than a very lukewarm X-Phile (I had planned to watch the series seriously once it ended, but the end was such a mess that I never went back), so it’s not as if I was asking the world out of The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Alas, this underwhelming sequel fails to meet even undemanding standards. Fatally conceived as a meaningless monster-of-the-week episode rather than something advancing the overarching mythology of the series, I Want to Believe sputters a long time on the basic charm and chemistry of David Duchovny (likably roguish with or without a beard) and Gillian Anderson (looking better than ever with longer hair), but reuniting with those two characters as they work out their relationship and what they want to do against the evil of the world isn’t quite enough to satisfy. The central plot is dull as dirt, and occasional visual flourishes from writer/director Chris Carter aren’t nearly enough to keep anyone interested. The ending is pat, leaving us again with our sympathy for Mulder and Scully to pick up the slack. I’ve waited nearly ten years before giving this one a try, but there really wasn’t any reason to hurry.