*there are spoilers here. Daniel Espinosa's sci-fi thriller Life is not without a few dull moments. The idea of the crew of the International Space Station researching samples from the planet Mars is sound, and with a telling title which recalls Ridley Scott's Alien; the comparisons do not stop there. After a slow start, this film gets morbidly fascinating, and I was left looking for clues if a rumour created over at comicbook.com is true. Unless the creative team want to rewrite a lot about how the symbiote works, the answer is no. This movie is not a precursor to Sony's Venom movie which is currently in development. Without giving too much away, just what the team of scientists find show that the fourth planet away from the Sun is not a dead world. Although stripped of an atmosphere and it is a desert-like world, something can...
- 3/24/2017
- by noreply@blogger.com (Ed Sum)
- 28 Days Later Analysis
David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson) in Columbia Pictures’ Life.Courtesy of Sony Pictures. © 2016 Ctmg, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The science fiction/horror film Life sends a team of astronauts to Mars on a mission to retrieve a robotic capsule containing what may be the first life form found on Mars. They are supposed to analyze this single cell, in the safety of space, but everyone who saw the movie Alien knows collecting extraterrestrial life forms is risky business.
So we are already braced for a scary ride when the little organism they name Calvin turns out to be less cute than it seems, despite reaching out a finger-like appendage a la Et. The accomplished Nasa crew on this interstellar mission is an international mix of scientists and specialists, mostly with multiple skill sets. The six crew members include physician/pilot/seasoned space veteran David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal...
The science fiction/horror film Life sends a team of astronauts to Mars on a mission to retrieve a robotic capsule containing what may be the first life form found on Mars. They are supposed to analyze this single cell, in the safety of space, but everyone who saw the movie Alien knows collecting extraterrestrial life forms is risky business.
So we are already braced for a scary ride when the little organism they name Calvin turns out to be less cute than it seems, despite reaching out a finger-like appendage a la Et. The accomplished Nasa crew on this interstellar mission is an international mix of scientists and specialists, mostly with multiple skill sets. The six crew members include physician/pilot/seasoned space veteran David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal...
- 3/24/2017
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Hollywood writing duos are a long-standing tradition that’s continued through the years and there have been even more recently, but Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have created a particularly creative knack for tackling genre and franchise.
I personally met the duo on the set of their 2009 movie Zombieland many years ago, and watched them taking on other big genre movies including G.I. Joe: Retaliation, before working with Ryan Reynolds to develop a Deadpool movie that was hugely popular with superhero fans.
Their new movie Life is an outer space thriller also starring their Deadpool collaborator Ryan Reynolds, along with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson as half the crew of the International Space Station, who have recovered a sample of life from the surface of Mars. It’s a single cell organism that’s been frozen, but when they try to revive it, it starts growing, becoming stronger and more violent towards its would-be captors.
I personally met the duo on the set of their 2009 movie Zombieland many years ago, and watched them taking on other big genre movies including G.I. Joe: Retaliation, before working with Ryan Reynolds to develop a Deadpool movie that was hugely popular with superhero fans.
Their new movie Life is an outer space thriller also starring their Deadpool collaborator Ryan Reynolds, along with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson as half the crew of the International Space Station, who have recovered a sample of life from the surface of Mars. It’s a single cell organism that’s been frozen, but when they try to revive it, it starts growing, becoming stronger and more violent towards its would-be captors.
- 3/23/2017
- by Edward Douglas
- LRMonline.com
What we have here is junky Alien clone disguised as, well, something better. But there's no life in Life, just leftovers, and a set-up comes pretty close to being a parody of the 1979 Ridley Scott classic. We're squeezed into a claustrophobic , $200 billion international space station, which is charged with care of a probe that has returned from Mars with soil samples. And what do you know, when you put one of those samples in a petri dish, something emerges. And it's alive! At first, the one-cell organism looks like a floating plant tendril,...
- 3/23/2017
- Rollingstone.com
For decades, the pinnacle of the sci-fi horror genre was Ridley Scott’s Alien, although it’s territory John Carpenter explored just as well with his version of The Thing in 1982 and plenty of others have followed suit.
Life, written by Deadpool scribes Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), pays tribute to both those classics with a film that offers insight into the fairly simple idea of what it might be like to find life on another planet and what might happen if that existence proves to be hostile. This type of premise has driven the best science fiction in all formats, and while the way Life sometimes falls back on ways this premise has worked before that might make it feel derivative, it also offers enough tension to keep you invested throughout.
The Iss (International Space Station) Pilgrim 7 is about to receive samples...
Life, written by Deadpool scribes Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), pays tribute to both those classics with a film that offers insight into the fairly simple idea of what it might be like to find life on another planet and what might happen if that existence proves to be hostile. This type of premise has driven the best science fiction in all formats, and while the way Life sometimes falls back on ways this premise has worked before that might make it feel derivative, it also offers enough tension to keep you invested throughout.
The Iss (International Space Station) Pilgrim 7 is about to receive samples...
- 3/23/2017
- by Edward Douglas
- LRMonline.com
Credit “Life” director Daniel Espinosa with courage. The Swedish filmmaker has made a horror-in-space feature starring Jake Gyllenhaal, a film that centers around a vicious alien that slowly picks off spacecraft crew members, and he doesn’t even wait for the question about comparisons to Ridley Scott’s seminal “Alien.” He jumps right into it.
“For me, one of the great references, the great movies, the movie that is an obvious comparison, [which has that] great, great, glorious breakfast scene which everybody aspires to is ‘Alien,'” he said.
Rather than scary set pieces, it’s the smaller stuff that gets him, he said, the parts that rely more on character development and connection. That’s what excited him about the genre, not the actual alien at its heart.
“I think that most directors have a kind of secret ambition of sci-fi,” Espinosa said. “Even great glorious artists, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Scott, went into this genre,...
“For me, one of the great references, the great movies, the movie that is an obvious comparison, [which has that] great, great, glorious breakfast scene which everybody aspires to is ‘Alien,'” he said.
Rather than scary set pieces, it’s the smaller stuff that gets him, he said, the parts that rely more on character development and connection. That’s what excited him about the genre, not the actual alien at its heart.
“I think that most directors have a kind of secret ambition of sci-fi,” Espinosa said. “Even great glorious artists, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Scott, went into this genre,...
- 3/22/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
“Life” spends its first act building up some big ideas, but eventually unravels into another monster movie in space. The story follows the crew of the International Space Station on a special mission to find evidence of alien life among dirt samples retrieved by a Mars lander. Believe or not, they find it — which is just enough buildup to unleash a serviceable “Alien” knock-off in disguise.
But that’s not the only sci-fi hit to which “Life” owes its existence. Director Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”) imbues the otherworldly setting with a visual flair right out of the “Gravity” playbook. The movie opens with mission specialist Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds), who has a penchant for derring-do and always has a one-liner handy, undergoing a spacewalk captured in an ambitious long take. As the camera roves through the zero-gravity corridors of the station, peeking out windows at the black void, we meet the rest of the crew.
But that’s not the only sci-fi hit to which “Life” owes its existence. Director Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”) imbues the otherworldly setting with a visual flair right out of the “Gravity” playbook. The movie opens with mission specialist Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds), who has a penchant for derring-do and always has a one-liner handy, undergoing a spacewalk captured in an ambitious long take. As the camera roves through the zero-gravity corridors of the station, peeking out windows at the black void, we meet the rest of the crew.
- 3/19/2017
- by Jonathan Poritsky
- Indiewire
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.