TopTenList Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I grew up reading science fiction, thinking my beloved genre was all about the possibilities of the infinite: advanced civilizations inhabiting distant star systems; men with brains so large and hearts so beneficent they could barely be contained within their bodies; women with beauty so magnificent and intellect so stunning they would leave bystanders breathless.

And they I started watching movies and eventually realized it's all about death, destruction ... and more death.

This week's release of The Final Destination, which is obsessed with staging elaborate 'kill scenes,' got me thinking about memorable scenes of demise in science fiction films. Sci-fi is notably short of serial killers, but offers a wider range of death scenes, beyond simple murder and mayhem. Here's my list of the top 10 sci-fi deaths. (Of necessity, this list is nothing but spoilers, so you have been warned.)

1. The Emperor (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi)

Everyone knows where they were when they saw the Emperor get what was coming to him. Me, I was in the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles, opening night, second showing, near 5:00 a.m., shouting (and ultimately cheering and applauding) along with the rest of the sold-out auditorium as Luke looked between his father and the Emperor, in pain, agonizing, understanding that the man he had hated was being tortured by the man who should be hated. And then he made the right call. Goosebumps still raise up in the glory of the memory.

Read the rest over at Sci-Fi Squad

As far as the critics' groups awards go, we've already heard from a bunch of 'em: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., and several others (all of which can be picked through quite handily over at Movie City News), but we haven't heard from the professional film geeks located in one of the nation's finest movie towns: Yes, that's right: Austin, Texas. (Seriously, I'm an east-coaster born and bred, and I'm madly in love with the city of Austin.) So here's what they dug the most...

Best Film: There Will Be Blood
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Actress: Ellen Page, Juno
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney, Juno
Best Foreign Film: Black Book (Zwartboek)
Best Documentary: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Best Animated Film: Ratatouille
Best First Film: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone
Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood
Best Original Score: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
Breakthrough Artist: Michael Cera, Superbad / Juno
Austin Film Award: Grindhouse

Films that didn't earn awards but did make the group's Top Ten list include Into the Wild, Knocked Up, 3:10 to Yuma, Atonement, Eastern Promises, American Gangster and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Members of the Austin Film Critics Association include Marc Savlov, Eric "Quint" Vespe, C. Robert Cargill, Cole (Dabney) and Bobby (McCurdy), and the very cool Marjorie Baumgarten.

1.  Match Point

Match Point has the conventions of an easy-to-follow thriller - a busty seductress, a suspicious wife, a scheming husband and an act of murder - but what it lacks is what makes it special. The film is a post-religious parable, with no overriding moral authority at the center. "Faith is the path of least resistance," one character scoffs at a dinner party. In other words, the only meaningful struggle with moral choice is the one that we are willing to have internally. Is the main character - an ambitious, social-climbing young tennis coach - willing to have that struggle? The signs aren't promising. He reads a Penguin edition of Crime and Punishment with the attention you would give US Weekly, and morally-loaded Verdi operas inspire nothing more from him than a blank stare. On the other hand, he has the self-preservation instincts and the dumb luck of a Patricia Highsmith fox. Watching him operate will keep you on the edge of your seat for the full two hours. The year's best film. – Ryan Stewart

2. A History of Violence

A History of Violence is a rare thing: a genre hybrid film that actually works. On one level, it's an effective thriller about a mild-tempered Midwesterner who may or may not be a stone killer masking his identity; on another level, it's a schlock horror film with make-up effects that would be appropriate for a Friday the 13th film, circa 1987. A lot of bullets fly, but when they do, people aren't simply knocked down or off-screen - they are disfigured, maimed or reduced to chunks of sputtering flesh. It's as if an EMT was present on set as an advisor, and piped in with "no, no...a shotgun blast at that range would do much more damage..." The result is that the audience's ho-hum desensitization to violence is briefly circumvented and the central question about the main character – why is he so at home with blood and gore? – is brought into sharp relief. Director David Cronenberg is asking the same question of the audience. – RS

3. Pride & Prejudice

Pride & Prejudice is, in some ways, a perfect film. Director Joe Wright follows the much-worshipped source material closely and never steps wrong with character, music or scenery. When we think of Austen, our first thought is not wild animals roaming through the Bennett house, but little details like that seem to have some historical grounding, and it adds to the realism. The screenplay also modernizes and clips Austen's language in the most surgically careful ways, so that only those who pay their Austen Society dues a year in advance will notice the seams. Keira Knightley, though certainly more athletic and forcefully feminist than anything Austen could have imagined for her Elizabeth Bennett, somehow owns the role like no one before her. Austen characters famously speak in unbroken paragraphs, expounding themselves purple in the face, but Knightley handles the language and the meaning behind it as easily as slipping into a warm bath, and the other characters fall into line behind her. – RS



4.  The New World

Don't be fooled by New Line's last-ditch efforts to recoup their investment in Terrence Malick's latest: The New World is not a de-Disneyfied tale of pilgrims and indians and a snow-crushed first Thanksgiving full of pious pumpkin eyes; it is not a battle-heavy, voodoo-tinged culture-clash adventure; it is not, by any means, a Colin Farrell film. Sure, Farrell is stunning as Captain John Smith, the borderline-infidel who is spared from execution just in time to meet and fall powerlessly in love with a 12-year-old native princess. But this is The Pocahontas Story, and from its opening frames of still-water reflection to its near-hallucinogenic final sequences, The New World  reimagines a historical footnote known to most six year olds as a fairy tale rich enough to seduce most adults. Drunk, in grand Malick fashion, on sunlight and internal monologue, The New World will irk those who want their historical epics to function as freeze-dried educational substitutes. The rest of us will stare slack-jawed at Q'orianka Kilcher, as she and Farrell and Malick recast the silliest of American myths as a swirling tale of obsession and longing on the order of Lolita. – Karina Longworth