KATLA (2021, Netflix) is an Icelandic sci-fi drama about a small town depopulated and devastated by the previous year’s eruption of the Katla volcano. The eight-part series is about loss, second chances, and redemption. I quite liked it, mainly for its likeable characters and its brooding, almost apocalyptic atmosphere.

Vik was once a thriving seaside town near the volcana Katla, but its eruption the previous year, which is still active, resulted in most of it being evacuated and off limits to visitors. On the glacier, a scientific team studies the eruption. In the town, a skeleton crew of people watch over the place and provide emergency services. When a woman appears on the glacier covered in ash, they take her to a clinic, where she appears to be a woman who once lived in the town 15 years ago… Soon, more people come from the volcano’s ash.

Are they real? Do they have a purpose? And what created them? These are the mysteries explored by KATLA.

This show was enjoyable for me, largely because I connected with the people in it, but honestly mostly because life in the town in the shadow of an active volcano is so engaging. The volcano looms over the beautiful if haunting landscape. Everything is iced over, ash covers the town, you can simply take abandoned cars, and the buildings are largely abandoned and empty of people. It’s fairly apocalyptic, giving the setting an almost ghost town vibe, a story you could easily imagine in the Old West as much as modern Iceland.

The characters are for the large part engaging, though one or two are pretty frustrating, and they react to what’s happening to them with a terrific mix of realism and drama. It’s a show that takes its sci-fi premise very seriously, an approach that pays off. Those who like all the answers laid out for them may be a little frustrated by the end, though I thought it was handled well, particularly one plot line conclusion that was actually fairly shocking.

Check it out if you dig foreign sci-fi, particularly if you’re looking for something a little philosophical and strange.

Based on the novel MY ABANDONMENT by Peter Rock that in turn fictionalized a true account, LEAVE NO TRACE (2018) was a real gem for me. It’s the most reviewed film to have a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it earns it by telling a simple, powerful, and affecting story.

The story is about Will, a military veteran father (Ben Foster) with severe PTSD, who lives with his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) in a heavily forested Portland park. When they’re discovered by a jogger, rangers come to take them out, and the police bring in social services to help.

Social services places them in a home on a Christmas tree farm. Tom likes it, but Will can’t handle it. Soon, they have to leave again, calling into question whether Will can ever live with people again and what Tom considers home.

What a powerful film. Everything about it is understated and natural. The directing is almost perfect, showing real life in a way that is dramatically compelling. The writers take zero shortcuts and don’t force any dramatic twists or plot points, relying on the loving, loyal chemistry between father and daughter and how their separate needs begin to pull them apart. The focus is always on the central conflict of Will versus the world, and Tom increasingly versus Will. As for what we see of the world, there is a beautiful focus on small-town life, plain folks doing their thing and offering help and a society that is actually warm and welcoming but can’t be accepted. It all courses to a conclusion that is inevitable, moving, and satisfying.

I highly recommend this one and hope Hollywood takes note.

HIGH LIFE (2018, streaming on Netflix) rolls out like an art-house, haunting, punk response to Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It’s weird, slow, and difficult, but it achieves an incredible look and vibe I found hypnotic, and I quite liked it.

Monte (Robert Pattinson, who with a string of great performances has thoroughly outgrown his TWILIGHT baggage) is one of the crew of 07, a spaceship fired out of the solar system to explore a black hole, a mission that may help solve Earth’s energy crisis. The entire crew, we learn, are convicts who volunteered for this world-saving mission to avoid the death penalty. The captain is nominally in charge, but the real leader is Dr. Dibbs (Juliette Binoche), who is conducting in vitro experiments in an attempt to make babies in space despite the radiation killing them off.

Realizing this is likely a one-way trip and is definitely just an extended stay in prison, the crew are sullen, solitary, and seething with repressed desires and hatreds. When they finally explode, Monte must use his self-control to survive and achieve a final redemption and escape.

The film has a great look to it. The spaceship is Brutalist in its design, falling apart after years in space, a perfect backdrop and cage for angry, good-looking people on the verge to show us an experiment in the dark side of humanity. There’s a weird, almost surreal logic to the overall mission and what little communication they still have with Earth. The ending offers a conclusion but not necessarily one that offers a satisfying closure, though I was good with it–honestly, it’s the only ending that makes sense.

Check it out if you’re looking for a very dark, trippy sci-fi movie about the human ape in space, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY with a dash of punk and LORD OF THE FLIES.