10 Classic ’80s Sci-fi Moments: ‘RoboCop’

#6 – “RoboCop” (1987) – Clarence and his gang kill Murphy – Lathered with ultraviolence, wild special effects, outright terrific action set pieces, and some humor along the way, Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop” proudly holds up 31 years later and still towers over its sequels and one remake. One of the many reasons is the old adage that an action film is only as strong as its villain, and whoa, does this movie have its lion’s share!  A gang, in fact, led by Clarence Boddicker played by the grumpy dad in…

‘Annihilation’ horrifically demolishes old boundaries

“Annihilation” – Nobody. Nobody comes back. Nobody comes back after entering The Shimmer. Actually one person does come back, and now, Lena (Natalie Portman), a doctor – who also spent seven years in the United States Army – feels compelled to enter it.  In doing so, she takes movie audiences on a sometimes beautiful, but mostly a deeply unsettling, nightmarish journey in writer/director Alex Garland’s (“Ex Machina” (2014)) visionary science fiction stunner. The Shimmer is a bizarre phenomenon, a growing permeable force field, created by a meteor that landed near an…