Looper

Back In Time
Sci-fi Thriller Can’t Solve its Loopholes
Cole Smithey

As time-travel suspense thrillers go “Looper” is only a pinch better than mediocre. The make-up that Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears to make him look like a young Bruce Willis is such a distraction that it alienates the viewer. Our unreliable protagonist Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a paid assassin whose job it is to execute hired killers sent 30-years back in time to the year 2072. Joe uses an unwieldy gun called a “blunderbuss” for the close range killings he frequently commits next to an abandoned cornfield. Joe dreams of using all the silver bars of payment he’s been stashing for a move to France. The aspirational sidebar allows Gordon-Levitt’s character to indulge in some less than academic French language study that hits the screen with a thud.

If writer-director Rian Johnson (“Brick”) has done any homework, he has spent the lion’s share of it on packaging a movie incapable of living up to it’s top heavy casting.

From the opening scene, Joe’s detrimental voice-over narration reduces the storyline to a remedial level. In the future, “time travel is illegal,” Joe tells us. Only a group of dimwitted mobsters are capable of using advanced time-travel technology to their own nefarious ends. Smart people don’t exist in Rian Johnson’s version of the future. The generic criminals do a bustling business burying the bodies of aging loopers in the past where young loopers enter the cycle of self-destruction by killing off their elders. It’s called “closing the loop.” Failing to off your elder version when the time comes is a big no-no for any self-respecting looper. Forget that the gangsters in charge could easily avoid such a polarizing event if they only sent victims back in time to be killed by discrete assassins rather than by their own doppelgängers. This glaring loophole is especially significant since a looper sent back in time could theoretically change the course of the future if they survive.

Detail oriented audiences will have a field day making lists of such narrative inconsistencies. The filmmakers tip their low-budget hand by never showing the much-referred-to future that so many assassins are sent back from. Rian Johnson is no Philip K. Dick. In a story ripe with capacity for some amount of searing social commentary, there is next to none.

Joe gets thrown a curveball when his 30-years-older model (played by Bruce Willis) shows up for assassination. Naturally, Joe does his best not to murder his older self in spite of his vicious boss Abe’s (Jeff Daniels) order to the contrary. Abe’s mob boys are hot on the trail of both Joes. Instead of teaming up to change the future for their life expectancies, the two Joes trade insults in a diner over coffee. The scene is notable for how inferior it is compared to what Hollywood hacks crank out on a weekly basis. Needless to say, Rian Johnson doesn’t make much of Quentin Tarantino knock-off either.

An unsatisfying subplot involving a single mother (well played by Emily Blunt) and her telepathically gifted but volatile young son unbalances the drama. Older Joe suspects the boy of being a child version of a 22nd century baddie called “the Rainmaker,” who may or may not be such a worrisome force of evil. He is also hung up on an Asian woman who saved his life, and wants young Joe to intercept her murderer when the time comes.

The narrative material doesn’t match “Looper’s” visual effects. From the start, Joe is introduced as a character we can never fully empathize with. He betrays a friend before shuffling off in the direction of a story that further impugns his character as anything other than a narcissist. Even the selfless act Joe commits during his crisis decision comes with a grain of martyrdom. If you can get past plot holes that pass by like highway mile markers, and you can put up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s weird make-up, then you’re halfway to enjoying a generic genre B-movie. Bon chance.

Rated R. 118 mins. (C+) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

Click Here to Visit the FilmBlog for Artwork, Movies, Music, News, Photos, Politics, Posters, Reviews, Trailers, Videos, and More

Tweet

Prometheus

Hobbled by a script that largely ignores its marginally implied protagonist, “Prometheus” is a cobbled-together sci-fi movie at odds with itself. It’s clear why director Ridley Scott has gone to great lengths to distance “Prometheus” from his far superior 1979 “Alien” film. With a dash of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and even a little “Rosemary’s Baby” tossed in for good measure, the story follows a trillion-dollar mission to meet up with the alien engineers of the human race on a faraway planet with a similar atmosphere to Earth.

Tacit central character Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) illogically wears a crucifix that flies in the face of her purely secular thesis for mankind’s origins. She explains her hypocrisy as what she “chooses to believe.” Elizabeth and her loving boyfriend Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green looking a lot like Tom Hardy) are an archeologist couple whose discovery of matching alien hieroglyphs from around the world put them on the spaceship Prometheus under the auspices of deceased trillionaire Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce). It’s the end of the 21st century. Weyland’s recorded hologram persona informs the ship’s crew of their mission upon their awakening from a two-year voyage. Once there, the team discovers a hollowed-out mountain full of munitions-styled pods and the corpses of alien astronauts. Hologramic images of the space-travelling predecessors allow for some static-riddled reanimation. From a production design standpoint, the movie is stunning. Sadly, it doesn’t have the narrative muscle to back it up. Where Scott dovetailed the suspense in “Alien” into a spine-tingling frenzy of outright panic, here the anticipation of terror ebbs and flows like water on the shore of a gentle lake. Although the designs are fascinating, the filigreed macabre details of artist H.R. Giger’s work on “Alien” are not as keenly exploited here.

Wayland’s corporate representatives are a robot called David (Michael Fassbender), and Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), an icy crew chief who only seems like an android. Edris Elba is sorely miscast as the ship’s aside-winking captain Janek who is every bit as unreliable as David or Meredith when it comes to possessing any purity of intention. The screenwriters (Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof) go so far in making David, Meredith, and Janek act as villains that it throws the movie into a tailspin even as the predictable alien danger arrives in the form of slithering snake creatures with a vagina dentata ax to grind against everyone they encounter. True to its slasher-movie underpinnings, many violent deaths occur.

For as much as “Prometheus” tilts at some indistinct message about man’s alien-executed origins, the clunky plot bubbles around automaton David’s arbitrarily imposed curiosity that compels him to screw up everything he touches in spite of his ostensibly higher intelligence. The movie seems to say that since man cannot create life, or even a sufficiently close proximity, then there must be a God. You have to extrapolate considerably to reach such an assumption, but the film’s sequel-promising conclusion means the audience isn’t compelled to fill in the blanks anyway.

Click Here to Visit the FilmBlog for Trailers, Posters, Videos, Politics, and More

Beyond the Black Rainbow

You won’t find a less cohesive low-budget sci-fi shit-show than newbie filmmaker Panos Cosmatos’s “Beyond the Black Rainbow.” Tedium sets in quickly as a poorly wigged Nile Rogers appears as Barry Nyle, a futuristic shrink intent on torturing his solitary patient, the near-catatonic Elena (Eva Allan). It’s the future — at least a 1983 version of a future that never panned out — but everything looks like it was lifted off a “Brady Bunch” set from the ‘70s. Everything about “Beyond the Black Rainbow” screams Eastern-European-student-film. Look at all the blurry images under different colored light filters. Listen to the junky electro-noise musical score. Marvel at some of the worst acting you’ve ever seen. “Beyond the Black Rainbow” is destined to become a cult movie for acid-tripping losers who need something to do while they trip balls. Yes, this movie is worse even than “Battlefield Earth.” "Beyond the Black Rainbow" sucks black ant dingleberries.

Rated R . 110 mins. (F) (Zero Stars - out of five/no halves)

Click Here to Visit the FilmBlog for Music, Photos, Posters, Politics, Trailers, Videos, and More...

Men In Black III

Some of the luster has worn off the once-promising “Men in Black” franchise, if for no reason other than its long absence since the second installment in 2002. Nonetheless, the return of Barry Sonnenfeld — the director on the previous two films — allows for the required visionary cohesion.

The tension-riddled relationship between Men-In-Black partners Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is just as contentious as ever. Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) escapes from a lunar prison built for the purpose of containing, well, him. Agent K should have killed Boris when he had the chance back in 1969 during a showdown at Cape Canaveral during the launch of Apollo 11. Now back on Earth, Boris poses no small threat to humanity in general, and to Agent K in particular. To put Boris in his proper place —a shallow grave — Will Smith’s Agent J must travel back in time to make sure Agent K kills Boris. The hokey plot device allows Josh Brolin to step up as a 40-year-younger version of Tommy Lee Jones. Sure enough, Brolin nails Jones’s laconic Texas drawl to a tee. The film’s unnecessary 3D effects are (spoiler alertà) less than impressive, but some choice comic episodes make the magic happen, as when Emma Thompson’s Agent O delivers a speech in an alien tongue. An interlude at Andy Warhol’s Factory gives Bill Hader some comic distance to run with as the wigged master of pop art.

“Men In Black III” might not have all the earmarks of a comic classic, yet Will Smith and Josh Brolin each give performances so polished you could shine your shoes from a block away in the reflection. The only thing missing from Tommy Lee Jones’s screen-time is that there isn’t enough of it. Go ahead and eat some popcorn. “Men In Black III” is a great excuse to do so.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

Click Here to Visit the FilmBlog for Music, Photos, Posters, Politics, Trailers, Videos, and More...

Battleship

“Battleship” is yet another headache-inducing failure of a spectacle movie based on a video game — which, in this case, is based on a popular ‘70s board game. Slow out of the gate, and laced with awful clichés, the story involves an alien invasion that happens to coincide with an international series of oceanic war games. 26-year-old Alex Hopper (Taylor Kisch) is a screw-up younger brother to by-the-book-Navy-man Stone (Alexander Skarsgard). Stone forces Alex to join the Navy after Alex commits one fuck-up too many. Still, Alex has the leggy love of Samantha, daughter to his ship’s commander Admiral Shane (well-played by the ever reliable Liam Neeson).

The action takes place in the waters off Oahu, where five giant alien craft deliver more torpedoes and invincible soldiers than you can count. An especially effective weapon in the alien arsenal is a giant gyroscopic spinning razor-wheel machine of unfathomable destruction. A subplot involving an African American war vet with high-tech prosthetic legs adds a real-war shade to the cartoonishly overblown action that passes for a story. We never get any sense of the alien side of the equation. Everything is battle for battle sake. They never once utter the famous television commercial for the board game, “You sank my battleship.” The movie could have used the humor.

“Battleship” is a loud and booming-blow-‘em-up movie made for a 12-year-old target audience. Adults should sit this one out — that is, if you don’t want to be exposed to a two-hour long headache.

Rated PG-13. 130 mins. (C-) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

Click Here to Visit the FilmBlog for Music, Photos, Posters, Politics, Trailers, Videos, and More...

Blade Runner - Classic Film Pick

Blade Runner is one of the most enigmatic yet problematic science fiction films ever made. Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was marred by a ham-fisted narration track that ruined the overall effect of Scott's original vision due to editorial meddling from the production studio. It wasn't until 1991 that a "director-approved" version was released that deleted Harrison Ford's monotone voiceover commentary. Over the years, seven different versions of the film have been released. Ridley Scott's brilliant, digitally remastered, 25th anniversary "Final Cut" gets the last word as the representative version to judge it by.

Stylistically, "Blade Runner" is a baroque mélange of retro and futuristic industrial elements set in a dark and grungy atmosphere of permanent night. Scott employs a punk rock/new wave esthetic that is both glamorous and sexy. Although it's a science fiction film, "Blade Runner" incorporates a plethora of influences that include film noir, neo-noir, and cultural and political satire. The filmmaker establishes the human eye as an image system to convey layers of thematic subtext.

It's 2019 and Los Angeles is a dystopian nightmare. Fire and smoke billow from the tops of skyscrapers in a smog-covered city that looks more like Hong Kong than the City of Angels. Its trash-strewn streets are a literal melting pot where rising steam and smoke clouds your vision. Impoverished citizens of every nationality and rebel bent bustle under constant rain. Corporate logos of '80s-era companies illuminate with artificial neon and digital light. Cars called "spinners" fly vertically and horizontally like helicopters amid the crammed urban conditions.

Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a grizzled veteran "blade runner"--a career assassin of genetically-engineered organic robots called replicants. Deckard dresses like an ironic transplant from a Dashiell Hammett novel. Here, Harrison Ford's squeaky clean Star Wars character Han Solo turns into a cynical and corrupt anti-hero with a romantic side.

Manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation, replicants are humanoid slaves who work on "off-world" planet colonies inhabited by the very rich. Programmed for four-year life spans, these organic robots are forbidden by law to set foot on Earth. Hence Deckard's dubious task to distinguish the lifelike androids from humans and destroy them. The arrival of five rogue replicants, led by Rutger Hauer's Aryan-looking character Ray Batty, sends Deckard on a search-and-destroy mission that brings into relief discrepancies between the conscious and subconscious mind of humans and replicants alike. Even Deckard might not be the free-will human being he imagines himself to be. The artificial reasoning abilities of advanced Nexus 6 replicant models might just be more humane than their human creators.

Attack the Block

Inevitable comparisons with J.J. Abrams's similarly themed "Super 8" favors writer/director Joe Cornish's seemingly effortless ability to extract laughs and shocks from an alien invasion in urban London. Much of the movie's success derives from the crackle of comedy that rolls off the Cockney-accented teen anti-hero thugs who dare to take on an army of pitch black alien creatures attacking their estate housing tower. The endless spewing of twisted slang hits your ears as funny regardless of how much or little you actually understand of what's being said. A spirit of energetic rebellious teen spirit is the hook that all suspense and action hangs on. And hang it does, right up through the film's well-worn cliché ending.

The irrepressible Jodie Whittaker ("Venus") is a nursing student named Sam who gets mugged on her way home from work by a gang of neighborhood ruffians led by a cocky kid named Moses (played with steely aplomb by John Boyega--looking like a very young Denzel Washington). The mid-street hold-up is interrupted by a falling alien creature that crashes onto a parked car. The hoodlums capture and kill the creature as their prize. Sam escapes only to be reunited with her attackers under very different circumstances soon thereafter.

Joe Cornish made his name writing and directing for British television. Fluency with his craft and the story's British milieu provides a vibrancy to the endless riffing he does on things like marijuana culture. "Shaun of the Dead" actor Nick Frost brings his trademark comic presence as a pothead named Ron, whose apartment is a gathering place for a like-minded younger generation. Tone, spectacle, and comic dialogue conspire to elevate a deceptively simple storyline. "Attack the Block" is a textbook popcorn movie for a new generation that doesn't give a damn about fanboy culture.

Not Rated. 87 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Man Who Fell to Earth - Classic Film Pick

"The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a brilliantly stylized science fiction satire about an alien who comes to our big blue ball with a methodic plan to deliver water back to his home planet, Anthea. Director Nicolas Roeg expands on the success he enjoyed in his experimental film "Performance," in which he turned a British rock star into an imposing film actor overnight. Where Mick Jagger played an ironic character not unlike himself in "Performance," David Bowie transforms into his alien persona with a preternatural instinct that is purely seductive.

Bowie's humanoid alien recasts himself as Thomas Jerome Newton, an orange-haired genius with a stack of original technology patents that will enrich him with the billions of dollars he needs to execute his water transportation plan. After touching down in New Mexico Newton seeks out patent attorney Oliver V. Farnsworth (Buck Henry) in Manhattan to handle his newly minted business World Enterprises Corporation. Newton returns to New Mexico where he plans to construct a spacecraft to complete his mission.

Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), a helpful chambermaid at Newton's hotel, romantically attaches herself to the alien. The couple move in together and slip into a comfortable pattern of American married life. She introduces him to religion, addiction, and sex as he becomes obsessed with television. He tells her, “The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything. It shows you everything about life for nothing, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it’s in the nature of television. Just waves in space.”

Rip Torn plays Nathan Bryce with his usual maniacal glee. The character is a sex-addicted college science professor whom Newton hires to create an energy system for his spacecraft. Nicolas Roeg's intercutting of analogous sex scenes with Bryce's different female partners establishes the era's attitudes. There's playful violence in the sex scenes that is jarring for their honesty and subtext.

Yet Bryce loses his proclivity for young women in the face of his enormous salary and the challenging nature of his work for Newton. But he also becomes excessively curious about his strange but trusting employer. Bryce's tendency toward exploitation will cost the alien his anonymity to government officials who co-opt his riches.

Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 novel, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a prescient story about the clash between consumerism and intimacy, and between capitalism and the ecology. Newton's alien planet represents a fading utopia that is as much a state of mind as it is an actual place. Newton's flagging sense of responsibility reflects the systematic culture of betrayal that consumes him body and soul.

Super 8

Sure to inspire a new generation of youngsters to pick up video cameras and start making their own movies, "Super 8" is an intentionally restrained monster movie that plays the heartstrings of its young characters against a nostalgic brand of filmic suspense. 

Dakota Fanning's more talented younger sister Elle steals the show as Alice Dainard, a young thespian called upon to act in a Super 8 movie being made by four preteen classmates in small-town Ohio circa 1979. Alice's "mint" performance, during a touching nighttime love scene with her adolescent private investigator "husband" on a train platform, is interrupted by the crashing of a train intended to add production value to the amateur movie. Charles (played with goofy aplomb by Riley Griffiths) is a child director with Hitchcock aspirations and an effective verbal command of the director's idiom. Charles's make-up assistant pal Joe (Joel Courtney) recently lost his mother in a factory accident. Joe's town-sheriff dad Jackson (Kyle Chandler) has his hands full dealing with the fallout of the train wreck, which attracts a team of Army and CIA officials for a top secret clean-up operation. Clue: there's an escaped alien creature on the loose. Writer/director J.J. Abrams is clearly having fun with playing two entertaining ends against the middle. On one side is the recreational zombie movie the kids are making to submit to a local film festival. Wait through the closing credits to watch the finished Super 8 product. On the other hand is the big budget sci-fi monster movie Abrams teases out as an homage to B-movies of the '50s. We don't even get a good look at the giant alien monster until the third act. The heart of the story lies in the budding romance between Alice and Joe in spite of the vociferous disapproval of their diametrically opposed fathers. 

If J.J. Abrams errs on the side of producer Steven Spielberg's wide-eyed brand of cinematic cheese (think "E.T.") it comes as a forgivable flaw. Less forgivable is letting Elle Fanning's character slip out of the plot for two too many scenes.

Rated PG-13. 112 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

Source Code

 

Make a friendly donation to help support Cole Smithey's Movie Week

Director Duncan Jones follows up his impressive debut feature "Moon" with this suspenseful sci-fi potboiler. Jake Gyllenhaal is ideally cast as Captain Colter Stevens. Stevens is a soldier caught between worlds. His apparent body is trapped in a plane cockpit. He communicates via video with military scientists who feed him instructions for his current mission. Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright are the faces of a program called Source Code. Stevens's brain is wired into the Source Code which allows our hero to travel back in space and time for eight minute intervals, during which he must locate and disable a bomb. On a speeding Chicago commuter train Stevens sits opposite his attractive fellow suburbanite Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan). The catch is, Stevens is inhabiting the body of a man who died along with everyone else on the train when a terrorist's bomb detonated. The situation makes mirrors especially uncomfortable for Stevens. "Find the bomber, and you'll find the bomb." Like "Groundhog Day" set in hell, Stevens is repeatedly blown up at the end of each eight minute sequence, but he gets ahead of the action he's able to now predict. Michelle Monaghan lights up the film. The romantic spark which develops between Christina and Stevens brings warmth to the story. Newcomer Ben Ripley's brilliant script comes to vibrant life with a strong musical score by Chris Bacon. Here's the first great Hollywood action movie of the year.

Rated PG-13. 93 mins. (A) (Five Stars - out of five/no halves)

March 26, 2011 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Limitless

 

Make a friendly donation to help support Cole Smithey's Movie Week

How long will it be before Big Pharma comes up with a smart-pill that enables human beings to tap into the full capacity of their underused brains? Such is the premise of "Limitless," based on Alan Glynn's novel about a drug that enables the user to exploit every bit of his or her mental potential. "Limitless" is a speedy thrill ride beginning with its virtuosic opening sequence. Bradley Cooper plays habitual underachiever Eddie Morra. Eddie is about to blow the deadline on a manuscript he hasn't been writing. His girlfriend leaves him. His luck changes when he bumps into the drug-dealing brother of an old flame, who slips Eddie a dose of something called NZT. Eddie finishes his book in a flash. Naturally, he returns to his new best friend for more NZT. Eddie isn't the only one coming after his dealer, but he is the only one who finds his stash. Only with repeated doses can the user maintain his newfound mental capacity. Withdrawal symptoms are bad news and chronic users have a short lifespan. The movie strikes an ecstatic chord of sci-fi premonition. Forays into super-violence go over the top, in a good way. Wall Street is the highest mountain for Eddie to climb. He sees heretofore unpredictable economic trends broken down into the algorithmic patterns. The audience finds itself in the hub of the drama when Eddie tries to team up with mega-mogul Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro). As you'd imagine, the kingpin role isn't much of a stretch for De Niro; he fits it like Kate Moss in a cat suit. "Limitless" isn't a perfect sci-fi thriller. But it gives you a fleeting sense of what it might be like to really be the smartest person in the world.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

March 13, 2011 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Adjustment Bureau

Make a friendly donation to help support Cole Smithey's Movie Week

Writer/director George Nolfi makes a smooth transition from screenwriter to filmmaker with his feature film debut. As the screenwriter on such intrigue-action movies as "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "The Sentinel" Nolfi knows a thing or two about creating suspense. The story is loosely based on a 1954 short story by Philip K. Dick. Matt Damon makes a believable politician as David Norris, a blue-collar hotshot robbed of a U.S. Senate seat after a tabloid revelation about a display of temper during in his college days. The sting of defeat is lessened when the young all-American everyman meets a beautiful dancer named Elise (Emily Blunt) in the men's room of the hotel where he faces disappointed supporters. Romantic sparks to fly between Damon and Blunt. The actors' convincing onscreen chemistry puts a simmer under the artificial sci-fi storyline that hovers above. Namely: A handful of hat-wearing men run the planet. Theses "adjusters" monitor anomalies, e.g., the unplanned meeting of Elise and David. Their job is to make corrections for such irregularities so that all goes according to "their" predetermined plan. They carry around special map books that show coded patterns of all human movement. It seems that David Norris has a promising political future before him--if only he stays away from Elise. She too has a bright future, as a modern dancer and choreographer, if she doesn't fall into a long-term relationship with her love-at-first-sight object--you guessed it, David. Eschewing the woof and boom of narrative false-bottoms of an analogous film like "Inception" proves effective in putting across a simple story about two people who desperately want to be together. The simplicity works.

Rated PG-13. 106 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

March 1, 2011 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monsters

Under the pretense of making that ever-elusive low budget gem, the "character-driven" movie, newbie feature writer/director Gareth Edwards slaps together a bland sci-fi movie that withers under its bait-and-switch romantic plot. Poor little rich girl Sam (Whitney Able) is desperate to get out of Central America and back home to daddy in the states. Lucky for Sam, war photographer Andrew Kaulder (Scott McNairy) is working for her wealthy father and is only too happy to supervise her safe passage at all costs. Stolen passports mean only land travel is an option. Problematically, alien creatures landed six-years ago and now occupy an "Infected Zone" between Mexico and the walled-off United States. Taking its cue from "Discrict 9" the movie postures itself as containing some amount of social commentary about illegal aliens and the political landscape of the future but there's no such follow-through to hang anything more than a generic sentiment on. The much-referred-to monsters are rarely-glimpsed giant octopus creatures whose bark is worse than their bite. It turns out the real menace to peace on earth is that pesky U.S. military privatized war machine that's left Mexico looking like Baghdad. At least Sam and Andrew can sleep together; that makes everything fine. At least, that's what the filmmakers think.

Rated R. 94 mins. (D+) (One Star - out of five/no halves)

October 26, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Everything after its striking opening battle sequence is downhill in this predictably sad addition to a flawed movie franchise based on a video game. Returning writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson takes advantage of the film's 3D potential for "breaking the window" only once when Milla Jovovich's Alice throws shurikens in the direction of the camera. The sharp metallic throwing stars fly out before your eyes, and for a minute it seems like there might be something to the hi-tech special effects and ninja-styled action on display. Cut to Alice losing her martial arts super powers after being injected by corporate baddie Wesker (Shawn Roberts). A trip to Alaska reunites Alice with her long-lost best friend Claire (Ali Larter), and the duo fly to Los Angeles where they make the mistake of landing atop a high-rise prison where a small group of survivors wait for rescue from the millions of encroaching zombies the fill the city streets below, and the entire planet. Unintentionally campy, the ridiculously plotted dystopian story makes a marginal action movie like "The Fantastic Four" look like sheer genius by comparison. Ali Larter perpetually acts with her mouth agape like she's trying to attract flies, but Milla Jovovich has held on remarkably well to her stunning good-looks and agile physical abilities.

Rated R. 97 mins. (C-) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

September 12, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2001: A Space Odyssey - Classic Film Pick

With his virtuosic adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's novel, Stanley Kubrick invented the modern science fiction film. That "2001: A Space Odyssey" has blown many audience members' minds to the point of causing them to walk out is a testament to Kubrick's distinctive vision that better reveals itself the more times you see the film. Part philosophical reverie, part social satire, and part sheer cinematic poetry, the story jumps from a pre-historic era when apes began using bones as tools, to a futuristic space-age when man discovers proof of intelligent alien life in the form of a gigantic black monolith on the moon. It is a pure film that eschews tropes like narration in favor of a poetic license that necessarily utilizes classical music as an inner-connecting emotional fabric upon which to balance its mesmerizing outer-space sequences. Kubrick fully embraces a less-is-more format to allow the viewer to interact with the film in the same way that scientists and astronomers work beyond the edges of their knowledge and imaginations to discover what lies beyond. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is a film that dares to admit that humans simultaneously comprehend nothing, and yet too much, about the power we hold to affect one another and the universe around us. Kubrick's multi-dimensional context is larger in scope, and yet more surgically focused, than any other film ever made.

September 3, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Predators

This small-minded reshuffling of the "Predator" franchise that began in 1987 is little more than a modern sci-fi B-movie filled with more plot holes than you can count. Adrien Brody is Royce, a special-ops-turned-mercenary who gets plunked down on a strange planet with six other killers from various backgrounds. The most interesting one is a Yakuza assassin (played by Louis Ozawa Changchien) who's missing a couple of fingers. With more ammunition than anyone could reasonably carry, the team band together against a pack of spiky dog-like creatures before discovering the much more threatening dreadlock-haired, invisibility-cloaked, predators than hunt them in a seriously fixed game of cat-and-mouse. The group's numbers dwindle more after meeting up with Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a heart-of-darkness survivor stranded on the planet, and the movie gets down playing its role-reversal trump card that isn't anywhere near as clever as co-screenwriters Alex Litvak and Michal Finch imagine. Myopic in its thematic scope, "Predators" is the kind of cinematic white noise you might play as visual background at a loud party. There isn't much story here, but the jungle action scenes look pretty good. Adrien Brody is poised to be the next Nicolas Cage.

Rated R. 106 mins. (C-) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

July 9, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Splice

What starts out as a promising sci-fi thriller loses vital steam in an underwhelming third-act climax evidently affected by budgetary limits. Co-writer/director Vincenzo Natali ("Cube" - 1997) leisurely develops the characters of romantically-linked biochemists Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), whose DNA-splicing experiments are under threat of losing funding. Elsa's desire to have a child for whom Clive isn't ready seems to inform her decision to go rogue. Elsa inserts some of her own DNA into the hybrid animal/monster they've created--think "Eraserhead." The filmmaker's inability to deepen suspense comes to the fore as the duo hides their creepy experiment in a disused basement room of their company N.E.R.D.'s industrial facility without much interference--except from Clive's blank-slate brother Gavin (Brandon McGibbon). Once born, the bald female creature assumes the name Dren (NERD spelled backwards), and the real fun begins. Visually, the film is under-designed to a fault. From a script perspective, glaring plot holes open up with annoying regularity. Still, Delphine Chanéac is mesmerizing as the adult creature whose surprising physical abilities provide the story with some intriguing, if not fully realized, plot twists. There's a dash of "Rosemary's Baby" in a film that wants to present more of a horrifying scientific moral dilemma than it is able to deliver.

Rated R. 107 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

May 30, 2010 in Horror, Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I, Robot

Pretty to look at but there's not much under the hood in this Isaac Asimov-based futuristic murder mystery that takes place in 2035 when robots are an everyday appliance until one particular model comes under suspicion for murdering its creator, Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell). Will Smith plays Detective Del Spooner, a firebrand police officer suspicious of the fallibility of robots in spite of the three immutable laws that control their actions. Asimov’s laws state that, "a robot can’t hurt a human or allow a human to be hurt; a robot must obey a human’s orders unless they conflict with the first law; a robot must protect its own existence as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first or second law." The film’s impressive visual spectacle can’t disguise its shallow dialogue and lacking narrative arc. Bridget Moynahan is inconsistent as robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin, and Will Smith plays himself rather than bothering to create a character.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (C+) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

April 1, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Repo Men

It's a sad day when science fiction satire gets as hackneyed as it does in director Miguel Sapochnik's blood-and-bullets adaptation of Eric Garcia's "Repossession Mambo." Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker) are medical repo men for "The Union," a company that sells mechanical organs to patients, and then comes calling to take them back when the person falls behind on payments. The narrative conceit isn't that great to begin with, but Sapochnik uses every blood-splattering cliché in the book to reduce the story to pulp. Carice van Houten momentarily piques interest as Remy's abandoning wife Carol before Alice Braga ("I Am Legend") takes over dystopian duties as a walking billboard for mechanical transplants--she's loaded with them. "Repo Men" is a joyless experiment in stupefaction. Like pornography, you know it when you see it, and you've seen all before.

Rated R. 92 mins. (D) (One Star - out of five/no halves)

March 17, 2010 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Avatar

The most expensive film ever made leaves much to be desired. Paralyzed from the waist down, former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) voices several movies worth of tell-don't-show narration for the benefit of audiences who like being read to when they watch a movie. With no oil resources left on Earth, a battalion of outsourced military bozos have set up camp on the moon "Pandora" with a group of optimistic scientists in order to incite a tribe of native aliens called the Na'vi. They want to drive the Na'vi out of their giant tree home to extract an energy-producing mineral called Unobtainium (yes, really). Jake's lack of scientific training nevertheless allows him to rest in a coffin-like bed from which he projects a walking-talking avatar in the form of a Na'vi creature. Jake's mission is to earn the trust of the blue-skinned Na'vi and report back to the colonizing military forces, who want to dispossess the aliens rather than kill them all outright. The Na'vi are primitive aliens who wear loin cloths, do battle with bows and arrows, and fly around on winged four-eyed creatures with which each Na'vi bonds for life. Naturally, Jake falls for a cute Na'vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who returns his affection. The inevitable David-and-Goliath war that transpires delivers a familiar tale: boy meets alien, boy goes native, boy betrays his past to do what's right. For an ostensibly anti-imperialist war movie written in all caps and splashed with every primary color in the Maxfield Parish color wheel, "Avatar" ends up being a toothless rollercoaster of eye candy that sexes up war, the very thing it professes to detest. "Avatar" is the perfect film to desensitize young audiences before they get the call-up.
 

Rated PG-13. 160 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

December 11, 2009 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Surrogates

Based on Robert Venditti's graphic novel, "Surrogates" is a disappointing sci-fi movie that includes a few energetic chase sequences. Gamers may take a better liking since its premise is based on one billion surrogate people interacting socially, and anti-socially, as the physical embodiment of the home-bound "meatbag" (human) wearing headset glasses to experience his or her surrogate in action in the outside world. Richard Marvin's music feels like a temp score waiting to be replaced by compositions written specifically for the film. The dialogue is bland, and the action spotty in a truncated story about Bruce Willis's Thomas Greer, a family man attempting to investigate a rare murder. Radha Mitchell does a lot with a little as Greer's cohort Jennifer Peters. Jennifer is a surrogate, and as such is the cause of much dramatic action entailing some shoddy special effects and silly plot points. In its current form, "Surrogates" could serve as the seed for a great sci-fi satire that a director like Paul Verhoeven could succeed with, given the ability to rewrite the screenplay. If you keep your expectations low, there are some sci-fi pleasures of visual appeal to be had, but it's tough getting past director Jonathan Mostow's wet noodle brand of storytelling.
Rated PG-13. 104 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

September 27, 2009 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Next »