Ridley Scott, who directed two of the most important science-fiction films since Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, Alien and Blade Runner, had a hand in SF long before he became a director. Jad Smith’s biography of the writer John Brunner (University of Illinois Press) uncovers a little known footnote in Scott’s career. Back in 1965, Scott was set designer for a BBC television...

Not unlike Star Wars two years earlier, Alien (1979) brought something new to science fiction film...

Drug kingpin Frank Lucas is no one to mess with. Denzel Washington's depiction in American Gangster reveals a man whose fierce pride is frozen into an implacable smirk. Impervious to the heroin habit on which his fortune is based, Lucas is soul on ice. What happens when a cocky Harlem dope dealer disrespects him on a busy street corner? Lucas draws his gun, shoots him dead without blinking, calml...