Why Watch? Because you have to watch it to realize that you’ve already watched it by watching it. This clever short takes the eye-burning cliche of time travel and spins it around until it tastes sweet again. It’s like the nicer cousin of Timecrimes, and, yes, the title totally vindicates Ralph Wiggum. An inventor is tooling around with a time machine when he hears an intruder and gives chase. But sensing that we don’t need another lesson in the dangers of time machines, writer/director Robin King just delivers a fun mini-mystery as to how everything that’s happened, happened. What does it cost? Just 3 minutes of your time. Check out Unpossible for yourself:

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all most half of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #37): “King Nine Will Not Return” (airdate 9/30/60) The Plot: A WWII bomber pilot wakes up in the middle of the African desert trying to figure out where his crew went. The Goods: Welcome to season 2! We all made it, and we made it together! As with the first season, this new round of episodes opens up with a lone military man trying to understand what’s going on while slowly going crazy. It’s a fascinating parallel because even though Rod Serling was clearly obsessed with the military (being a former fighter himself), it’s telling that he chose to introduce fans to the series and re-introduce a new season of the series using the talents of a single actor breaking down due to guilt and isolation.

After Avengers, Ridley Scott‘s secretive Alien semi-prequel Prometheus is perhaps the most anticipated film of 2012, so when the opportunity arose to listen to screenwriter Damon Lindelof, star Charlize Theron, and director Ridley Scott talk about the film, I punched fellow Reject Jack Giroux in the face, stepped on a Twilight fan, nut-sack bashed a security guard and then patiently waited in line to gain access to the panel. It started off quickly with a production package of Prometheus goodies that I’m going to tell you all about, after you click the Read More button to your right.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #30): “A Stop at Willoughby” (airdate 5/6/60) The Plot: A man seeks out a pastoral existence in a mysterious train stop as his home and job life crumble around him. The Goods: Gart Williams (James Daly) is waiting for a train. It matters where it will take him because it won’t be his home, but he’ll want desperately to live there. Williams rides this train back home every evening after a soul-sucking day of working in advertising (without all the whiskey breaks and adultery that we know existed because of Mad Men), and after a brief nap, starts waking up at the last stop on the route. Curiously, this last stop also seems to exist in 1888 instead of 1960. The stop’s name is Willoughby.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all most half of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #27): “The Big Tall Wish” (airdate 4/8/60) The Plot: A washed up boxer manages a surprising comeback thanks to the wish of a child, but his inability to believe in magic threatens to take the victory away. The Goods: Bolie Jackson’s (Ivan Dixon) not a man who’s ever really had ‘best’ days, but his better ones are clearly behind him. He’s a boxer who never made it big and is now well past his prime. Bolie can see his history in the ring, and in life in general, in the scars on his face, and while he knows tonight’s fight is a long shot he’s not about to turn down the opportunity. A neighborhood boy named Henry (Steven Perry) tells him he’ll be making a big, tall wish that Bolie wins the match, and when the child’s mom tells Bolie that’s the biggest wish of all the tired boxer shakes his head in sadness. Little boys with their heads full up with dreams. When do they find out… that there ain’t any magic. When does somebody push their face down on the sidewalk and say to them ‘Hey little boy, it’s concrete, that’s what the world is made out of, concrete.’ When do they find out that you [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #26): “Execution” (airdate 4/1/60) The Plot: An outlaw from the Old West is saved from the noose by a scientist who gets in way over his head. The Goods: The funny thing about time travel is that if you invent it, you want to use it yourself. On the other hand, if it’s untested, you might want to see if you can grab an unwilling volunteer (which is an oxymoron, I know) to make sure people come out the other side with all their parts in the right places. In this episode, Professor Manion (Russell Johnson) uses his time-bending invention to pull a man from the 19th century, and it just so happens that Joe Caswell (Albert Salmi), the unwitting traveler, was a nanosecond away from shuffling off his mortal coil at the end of a rope.

Science Fiction has seen somewhat of a resurgence these past few years, bringing dozens of different aliens to Earth’s surface via cinema screens. Tom Cruise battled aliens in War of the Worlds, aliens broke down in South Africa over District 9, and more recently Transformers waged war on our planet, Los Angeles was invaded, and a subterranean alien was interrogated in a small town, only to escape. No matter what year it happened, one thing is clear: when aliens come in peace, all is well. When they don’t, well, they’re the ones in for an ass whooping. Not that it makes much sense, considering alien species that manage to make it to Earth are often technologically advanced, super strong, intelligent, and sporting a massive boner for our resources, not to mention laser guns. Despite all of this, when have aliens ever managed a successful takeover? Not only that – when have aliens ever managed to not look like completely retarded asshats, who pretty much design their own downfall as if they were Death Star engineers?

Why Watch? Because Life Aquatic is a great inspiration for an animated adventure. This short features some playful animation, a clever idea, and a clear homage to the work of professional fish hunter named Steve Zissou. It’s got touches of Miyazaki as well, and it’s all handled brilliantly. A young boy living under the sea watches his robot friend fall asleep, so he heads out into the open ocean to get the light bulbs needed for power from an unlikely source. They run into danger, enjoy the beauty around them, and do it all set to music that sounds strikingly like a certain Mark Mothersbaugh’s score. Regardless of the close referencing, this film is a smile factory. What does it cost? Just 4 minute of your time. Check out Playing With Light for yourself:

Whether you’re trying to avoid the releases this week or augment them with even more movies, Your Alternate Box Office offers some options for movies that would play perfectly alongside of (or instead of) the stuff studios are shoving into the megaplex this weekend. With apologies to everyone scratching at the walls of their play pen to see Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, this week features one major release. Trains, nostalgia bombs, and a coming of age story the likes of which haven’t been seen since Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, J.J. Abrams is back with a tribute to everything he loved when he was just Jefferey. If you plan on catching Super 8, here are 3 films you should watch with it.

The last time I heard about The Cooler and Running Scared director Wayne Kramer, he was jumping off of Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming hitman movie Headshot because they couldn’t agree on a direction for the film. Kramer reportedly wanted to make it more dark and violent, while Stallone was looking for a lighter, more humorous approach. Needless to say, at the thought of Stallone doing more comedy, I easily fell down on Kramer’s side of the disagreement. So now that he’s gotten some distance between himself and the Headshot debacle, what is the director going to try for next? According to Deadline Tembisa he’s going to be filming Ecstasia, an original script that he wrote himself, for Relativity Media. Ecstasia is said to tell the story of an alternate universe where love no longer exists. In order to feel any sort of emotional attachment to someone, people must go through a medical procedure called “commitment” which sends emotional signals to your brain through an implanted computer chip. The problem is, commitment is a very expensive procedure to maintain, so when couples run out of money they either have to resort to desperate measures to keep it going, or fall out of love completely. Ecstasia centers on a couple that is in just such a predicament. Given Kramer’s penchant for the dark, I’ll be interested to see just what those “desperate measures” end up being. And also what his explanation is for people who can’t fall in love wanting to fall in [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Movies have a strange relationship with history, that’s for certain. On the one hand, they have the ability to bring to life, in spectacular detail, the intricate recreation of historical events. On the other hand, films can have a misleading and even potentially dangerous relationship with history, and can change the past for the benefit of storytelling or for political ends. And there’s always the option of using films to challenge traditional notions of history. Finally, many movies play with history through the benefit of cinema’s artifice. Arguably, it’s this last function that you see history function most often in relationship to mainstream Hollywood cinema. In playing with history, Hollywood rarely possesses a calculated political motive or a desire to recreate period detail. In seeking solely to entertain, Hollywood portrays the historical, but rarely history itself. Tom Shone of Slate has written an insightful piece about a unique presence of that historical mode all over the movies seeking to be this summer’s blockbusters. Citing X-Men: First Class, Super 8, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Cowboys & Aliens as examples, Shone argues that this is an unusual movie summer in terms of the prominence of movies set in the past. However, while such a dense cropping of past-set films is unusual for this season, these movies don’t seem to be all that concerned with “the past” at all – at least, not in the way that we think.

This trailer is a trip. It seems completely unnecessary considering the source material but absolutely believable considering the year of release. Nineteen Eighty-Four is an incredible film, but it’s not one you want to show at two in the morning when everyone’s already feeling sleepy. It’s a slow-burn featuring some damnable performances from John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton, and Richard Burton (in his last film appearance). There are a ton of fascinating things about this adaptation of George Owell‘s seminal novel, but the best piece of trivia involves the shooting schedule. As most know it was released in 1984, but it was also shot in 1984, and the days (which you can keep track of by watching Winston write in his journal) are the actual days they filmed on. An example? When Winston jots down that it’s April 4, 1984, it’s because the cast and crew were shooting that scene on April 4, 1984. Pretty clever. Has any other movie shot in fake real-time?

This editorial contains spoilers for Source Code and Moon. If you haven’t seen the movies yet, go check it out first before diving in. When I watched Duncan Jones’s sophomore effort Source Code, I couldn’t help but think about how much it resembles, nearly beat for beat in its structure, his first film Moon. This is not necessarily a criticism of Source Code or Jones, as repeated thematic occupations and narrative revisitation can be the sign of the auteur, and I’ve enjoyed both his films. But the films are, admittedly, structurally identical in several ways. Both involve a lone protagonist who discovers something unexpected about their identity that changes their relationship to their given tasks (Sam Bell realizing he is a clone in Moon, Captain Colter Stevens’s “near-death” state in Source Code), and combat some form of repression against a bureaucratic organizational body (a private corporation in Moon, military scientists in Source Code) while being assisted by an empathetic, benevolent subordinate of that organization (GERTY the robot in Moon, Vera Famiga’s Captain Goodwin in Source Code). But it is rather appropriate that both of Jones’s films be so structurally similar, for the major themes connecting them, and the narratives by which those themes are exercised, are enveloped in the topic of the repetitive structures of everyday life.

Why Watch? This sharp short feels a lot like a miniature episode of Twilight Zone by way of Fight Club and Office Space. The boredom of office work is destroyed when one man finds a black hole on a sheet of paper that works. Now he has to figure out how far he’ll go in using it. It might be more than a distraction from the workday, but it does come in awfully handy at the vending machine. What Will It Cost? Just two minutes of your time. Does it get better any better than that? Only if we did your TPS reports for you while you watch. Check out The Black Hole for yourself:

The Adjustment Bureau, loosely adapted from a Philip K. Dick story, takes on one of science fiction’s stock themes. Fans of Lost, for example, or Minority Report or The Matrix will recognize the classic struggle between fate and free will at the heart of the picture, the clash between the universe’s plan for us and our desire to carve out our own destiny. It’s familiar, quasi-religious territory rendered with stylish flair by writer-director George Nolfi and cinematographer John Toll. Set in a Manhattan rife with dapper henchmen in fedoras and swanky buildings with long marble foyers, captured in sweeping camera movements and symmetrical compositions, the film has the look of a production of weighty, spiritual import. Yet that stylistic edge services a love story that starts flat and never gets going. It’s a forced and altogether empty conjoining of two moderately likable, exceedingly bland individuals that inspires none of the deep, transcendent passion required of a narrative so immersed in spirituality.

We pretty much all saw the found footage trailer for Apollo 18 that crash landed last week. It taught us to fear space ghosts that knock over our flags and invade our space suits. Now we might have reason to fear for Bob Weinstein’s sanity. According to his quick quote to EW, he really, really, really wants audiences to think this movie is actual found footage from a real-life secret moon mission that ended tragically. The money quote: “People intrinsically know there are secrets being held from us. Look at WikiLeaks: There are secrets that are really true to the world. It’s not bogus. We didn’t shoot anything,” Weinstein claims. “We found it. Found baby!” The question here is whether this sort of tactic will backfire and hurt the film.

If you’re a science fiction fan, John Scalzi is probably no stranger. He’s a talented writer, has a unit of measurement named after him, and generally hangs out with old men and androids. It’s a charmed but difficult life, I’m sure. The good news of the day is that movie rights to his novel series “Old Man’s War” (which ostensibly includes “The Last Colony” and “Zoe’s War”) have been sold to Paramount. Unlike some novel rights news, this bit comes with a director attached in the form of Wolfgang Petersen. It also comes with a screenwriter attached in the form of David Self. Petersen is a veteran with a lot of big budget material under his belt, although he’s looking for some redemption for Poseidon. Self will probably be angling for a little redemption as well since he worked on Wolfman, but Road to Perdition is as smart a script as you could hope for. With these two kicking things off, Old Man’s War might be the start of a great new sci-fi trilogy. The story focuses on John Perry who, at the age of 75, joins the Colonial Defense Forces and has his mind transferred into a genetically enhanced body based on his DNA. The similarities between Scalzi’s work and Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” is remarkable, but with Petersen at the helm, it’s doubtful that a movie version will stray into square-jawed parody. Actually, it might. You never know. Scalzi had this to say about the project:

Remove your forehead from your palm. Apparently one of the strains of DNA from Alien making its way into Prometheus is the Space Jockey. That makes more sense than it should considering that the original script idea was focused solely on the character. According to Screen Rant, the icon will be brought to living, breathing status by H.R. Giger (and will be 8-feet-tall and practical). The movie also comes complete with a giant, partially human head piloting a space craft. Does that mean Ridley Scott is teaming with Cheech and Chong? One can only hope. One take on this, which I’m borrowing from Brian Salisbury, is that creating this vision of the Space Jockey steals the mysterious impact of the character’s appearance in the first film. It’s a good point, and it’s still unclear how much desire there is to see that character on screen in the first place. What do you think?

The found footage horror craze is a bit exhausting, mostly because of its limitations. However, it’s the limitations of Apollo 18 that most excite. Most notably? A lack of room to move around in. The two astronauts are either in a small craft or walking around in the prison of their spacesuits. They won’t be able to go far, which means they won’t be able to avoid the danger. From the looks of the trailer, danger definitely comes to them. Check it out for yourself alongside the 5 things you should be afraid of in space:

Marti Noxon speaks with the sort of joyous enthusiasm you can’t fake. After the Smallville creators (and at least one uncredited script doctor) took a stab at the I Am Number Four script, Noxon sat down to add her geek-property prowess (with episodes of Buffy, Mad Men, and the script to the remake of Fright Night under her belt) to the project about an alien discovering his powers and hiding out from other aliens that want him dead. Noxon was nice enough to take some time out of her day to talk to us about the science fiction flick, how a ghost named Bertha acted as a catalyst for her writing , and to respond to one critic’s fear that Fright Night won’t be gory enough.