Noticias

The out-of-this-world success of China’s first-ever sci-fi blockbuster, “The Wandering Earth,” proves that when it comes to watching special-effects extravaganzas in which stock characters scramble to intervene while the planet faces obliteration, it’s a small world after all. Director Frant Gwo’s adaptation of the 2000 novella by Liu Cixin is no genre classic, but its furious pace, spectacular visuals, and fanciful plot deliver decent escapist entertainment. After accumulating an astronomical $640 million-plus domestically — plus a tidy $5 million on limited North American screens — since Feb. 5, this display of capability from China’s commercial film sector was snapped up by Netflix for future release on the streaming giant’s platform.

A hyperactive hybrid of doomsday films ranging from ’50s classic “When Worlds Collide” to Michael Bay’s bombastic “Armageddon” and, most notably, Ishiro Honda’s 1962 Japanese space opera “Gorath,” “The Wandering Earth” is perhaps most striking for its lack of nationalism and propaganda.

**Massive spoilers for every Godzilla movie, with the exception of the 2014 reboot, and Mothra follow**

August 6th and 9th, 1945 forever changed the course of history. When the first nuclear bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, World War II ended, but a new fear was born that dominated the thoughts of all men, women, and children for decades to come. The Cold War, atomic bomb testing, a cartoon turtle telling children to “duck and cover”, and this new technology that had the actual potential to literally end the world changed the perception of what was scary. Art reflects life, so cinema began to capitalize on these fears. Gone were the days of creepy castles, cobwebs, bats, vampires, werewolves, and the other iconic images that ruled genre cinema in film’s earliest decades. Science fiction was larger than ever and giant ants, giant octopi, terror from beyond the stars, and...