Outland, written and directed by Peter Hyams in 1981, was originally conceived as a western, but the success of science fiction films at the time led Peter Hyams to re-write the script in a space setting. Despite this, Outland is still very much a western in spirit, showing remarkable similarities to High Noon (1952). Sean Connery plays William O’Niel, a veteran police marshal newly assigned to a remote mining colony on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Not long after he…

50th anniversary, 70mm cinema screening.

I have seen this film more times than I would wish to count, but on the big screen I was more blown away than ever before. In a little over 2 hours Kubrick shows us the dawn of man and learning to use tools, evolving over thousands of years into a species capable of space travel, and then the next step in our evolution with the advent of the star child. Kubrick doesn’t make a…