Savage clone battles! Mind-bending time travel! And more multiverses than you
can possibly imagine! Keep watching for more from the best sci-fi movies of 2022.
From the creative minds that brought us Free Guy, The Adam Project follows the titular Adam,
a time-traveling pilot from 2050 who becomes stranded in 2022 while pursuing an unauthorized
mission. There, he meets his 12-year-old self, and the two Adams must work together to accomplish
older Adam's objective: Get back to 2018 to save his wife's life. Same old same old, right?
"Unless it works like a multiverse, where each ripple creates an alternate timeline. . ."
"It's not a multiverse! My God, we watched too many movies."
But time travel has a way of making things complicated - especially since older
Adam is fleeing a dystopian future. With the odds stacked against them,
Big Adam and Little Adam decide their only solution is to find
the man who actually created time travel itself. . . their dearly departed dad.
The Adam Project makes maximum use of Ryan Reynolds' charisma, giving him a part that
allows him to play excellently off his younger self's vulnerabilities; notably,
newcomer Walker Scobell kills it here. Plus, there are time jets. Who doesn't love time jets?
After Yang is a deeply moving exploration of memory and grief. In an idyllic-looking future,
parents Jake and Kyra have provided their adopted daughter Mika with an android sibling named Yang.
When Yang stops functioning, Jake promises Mika he will have her "brother" back to normal as soon
as possible. But as they go through Yang's memory bank, Jake and Kyra make several major discoveries
about Yang's past and the true depths of his soul. What emerges is breathtaking, emotional,
and profound - proving filmmaker Kogonada is one of the very best directors working today.
Writer-director Richard Linklater mixes fact and fantasy in Apollo 10 1/2:
A Space Age Childhood. A kid growing up in 1960s Houston,
young Stanley is fired up by the Apollo 11 mission. As he watches history unfold,
the real details of the mission are interwoven with his elaborate dream of being recruited as
an astronaut - mostly because he's small enough to fit in a lunar module's tight quarters.
Apollo 10 ½ embraces nostalgia without completely ignoring the upheaval in America at this time:
in this movie, Houston is just as fascinating a setting as the moon. Meanwhile, rotoscoping - a
technology rarely used these days - captures Stanley's imagination in suitably vivid fashion.
In Belle, lonely teenager Suzu leads another life in the virtual world known as "U." There,
she's a famous singer named Belle with charming freckles and flowing pink hair.
After a concert is violently ruined by a mysterious user known as the Dragon,
Belle sets out to find him. But she soon discovers that they both have tragedy in their real lives,
tragedy they must overcome together. Belle features stunning visuals and
real emotional heft, rooted in all the trials and tribulations of adolescence.
Brian and Charles finds mild-mannered Welsh inventor Brian creating a boxy
robot with a mannequin's head. After a thunderstorm brings the automaton to life,
it dubs itself Charles and develops a keen interest in everything the world has to offer.
"Oh my gosh, what was that?"
"It's okay, it's okay."
"Perilous, very perilous."
An unlikely friendship emerges as Charles grows more and more human. At a brisk 90 minutes,
Brian and Charles offers the best of intentions and a pleasantly
genial story that will no doubt leave a smile on your face.
Squishy body horror and nightmarish advanced technology go hand in hand in director David
Cronenberg's moody meditation on art and humanity, Crimes of the Future. Cronenberg's
sci-fi/horror hybrid revolves around the evolution of the human body,
a government cover-up, and a straight-up medical nightmare.
Saul Tenser and his partner, Caprice, have turned the surgical removal of his spontaneously
growing new organs into performance art, which attracts the attention of a group of radicals.
As you may have guessed, this film is awash in gore.
Also notable is Kristen Stewart, who gives a particularly nervy, off-balance performance as
Timlin, an administrator at the National Organ Registry. Stewart's weird energy is
a perfect tonic in Cronenberg's morbid tale of surgery and sexual attraction.
Sam Raimi infuses the Marvel Cinematic Universe with his trademark horror stylings in Doctor
Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Superhero sorcerer Stephen Strange must protect America
Chavez, a dimension-hopping teenager, from someone seeking to steal her powers.
Their flight across the multiverse takes them to the very limits of existence, with Strange
grappling with his own issues and confronting the darkest and most disturbing versions of himself.
Meanwhile, Wanda Maximoff emerges as the emotional core of the film as she struggles
with the harrowing aftermath of WandaVision. What results is a thrilling blend of terror,
fantasy, and sci-fi — one that proves the MCU still has a lot of a heck to give.
In the dystopian future of Dual, dying people can arrange to have themselves replaced by clones.
But what happens to the clone if the original person doesn't die? So begins Sarah's nightmare.
After she survives a terminal illness, Sarah's clone decides she wants to continue
living Sarah's life. By law, only one Sarah can remain alive, so the two must duel to the death.
"We can't have two of you running around forever. That'd be ridiculous."
In Dual, writer-director Riley Stearns explores themes of identity in a
surprisingly comic fashion — despite the devastating nature of this key dilemma.
Simply put, Everything Everywhere All At Once is one of the best films of the year.
An endlessly inventive and absurdist delight, it stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn,
a middle-aged laundromat owner whose IRS audit becomes a surreal adventure
through the multiverse. As it turns out, reality is threatened by a fearsome being,
and only Evelyn can rise up to be the savior of every dimension. Multiple viewings are a
must to catch every detail packed into this wild, heartfelt, and colorful good time.
King Car is a horror-comedy-sci-fi oddity chock-full of political commentary.
The film stars Luciano Pedro Jr. as Un o, a boy who can telepathically communicate
with cars. He refurbishes an old automobile, the titular King Car,
providing it with the means to actually speak. While Uno's power is exploited by his uncle Zé,
King Car has its own ideas. The bizarro absurdity of this one-of-a-kind film
spins out of control at times, but King Car is definitely a wild ride worth taking.
At the beginning of Lightyear, audiences are told upfront that this is the film
that made Toy Story's Andy into a Buzz Lightyear fan.
"To infinity. . ."
"And beyond."
The story sees the titular hero's headstrong insistence on adventuring solo strand a
ship full of his fellow Space Rangers on a hostile planet. Buzz winds up working with
this crew of lovable misfits, including his former partner's granddaughter and
an adorable robotic cat named Sox, to make things right. But can they overcome Zurg,
the enigmatic villain who is dead set on sending waves of robots after them?
Lightyear is a gorgeously animated sci-fi adventure with plenty of comedy and heart.
It's at its best when spotlighting the crew's attempts to figure out their strengths — and
when it indulges in its absolutely incredible hyperspace sequences. Whether you're watching
it on an IMAX screen or Disney+, this Pixar tale is sure to entertain and inspire.
In Last Survivors, Troy and his son Jake live in a remote haven, far from the horrors of a
post-apocalyptic landscape. Though Troy tells Jake the world beyond is a nightmarish waste,
that doesn't keep Jake from being fascinated by Henrietta, a woman he meets while looking for
medicine. Last Survivors distinguishes itself from other post-apocalyptic films by focusing
on the characters' inner turmoil: here, their emotional journeys take center stage,
rather than the ravages of World War III. And the movie is made all the better for it.
An adaptation of the celebrated German film Run Lola Run, Looop Lapeta revolves
around a fallen track star named Savi. With her burgeoning athletic career derailed by injury,
Savi starts off in a dark place. Soon enough, however, she falls in love with Satya,
a charming criminal. After he leaves a bag of cash on a bus, Savi must come up with the loot,
lest Satya be bumped off. But there's a twist: Savi is stuck in a time loop.
As the story replays over and over again, she must use her knowledge to bring about better
outcomes. More comedic than its source material, Looop Lapeta is nevertheless a thrilling
trip through alternate timelines, where the slightest change can have massive repercussions.
Neptune Frost is a singular work of Afrofuturism.
It's a sci-fi musical with an audacious vision that mesmerizes even if, at times,
the story seems elusive. Set in Burundi, the film follows a coltan miner named Matalusa and
an intersex runaway named Neptune, whose coming together gives birth to something incredible.
At turns impressionistic and poetic, Neptune Frost features characters with symbolic names
such as Memory and Psychology, and it primarily concerns an anti-colonialist hacker collective
waging technowar against an oppressive police state. When Matalusa and Neptune meet,
it creates a jolt that powers the collective's technological struggle.
Expect this movie's visuals and songs to get stuck in your cerebral cortex for a long, long time.
"What did you see?"
"Hmm?"
"It was big."
"How big?"
"Big."
Horror auteur Jordan Peele strikes gold yet again with Nope, a sci-fi-horror film about
siblings Emerald and OJ Haywood, horse wranglers to the stars. When a UFO begins hovering above
their ranch, they decide to catch it on tape — but they're not the only ones with plans for
the mysterious entity: Reporters, photographers, and a sleazy former child star all have their own
designs. Nope tackles society's exploitation of tragedy, humanity's relationship with animals,
and the treatment of below-the-line crew on film sets. This makes for a layered
experience that will have you questioning your own assumptions from the very edge of your seat.
Strawberry Mansion is a surreal sci-fi-rom-com adventure starring Kentucker Audley as
James Preble, a government agent who audits people's dreams. That's right:
In the future this movie imagines, dreams are taxed. He soon discovers something more sinister
afoot as he investigates Bella, an elderly artist and the sole occupant of the titular home.
Full of bizarre logic, oddball characters, and striking imagery,
Strawberry Mansion is a splendid head-trip guaranteed to do a number on your imagination.