Green Lantern

Spoiler Level: Medium

Sorry I've been away so long.  I burned out on blogging and it's been a busy summer. But I didn't want any more time to go by without posting my real review of Green Lantern, especially since I went to so much trouble to do my April Fools fake review.

I loved it.

The movie's been completely trashed by fans, and I just really don't get why. This is everything I wanted a Green Lantern movie to be, and I've wanted a Green Lantern movie for a long time.

I was worried that the power rings would only be used like laser guns.  Nope-- the constructs are here, and lots of 'em, and they look great.

Oa is absolutely breathtaking. I was worried that with the crowds of CGI Lanterns that they would all look too much alike; I needn't have worried. Lots of great alien Lanterns stood out, including ones I didn't expect to see, like Chaselon and Olapet.

The story worked great. There's lots of outer space action, balanced out with a very human Hal Jordan. (The scene where Carol meets him in costume for the first time is priceless.) Some people have complained how the action cuts back and forth between Earth and Oa, but that didn't bother me at all. I liked the way Sinestro was handled a lot, and I hope with all the energies of a Blue Lantern that there will still be a sequel so we can see the development of the Sinestro Corps. Hector Hammond's new origin works great with the layout of the movie, and his hyper-intelligence is still alien based, so that's close enough for me. He's the perfect embodiment of Hector Hammond's character, getting creepier and more disturbing as his powers increase and his body decreases.

Just to be fair, there are three things I didn't like about it:

1. The ending of Hal's first battle with Hector Hammond was confusing; I'm still not exactly sure what happened there.

2. Hal sees the helicopter is crashing, runs off to become Green Lantern, and then the helicopter spends a good minute or two crashing and sliding around before he shows up.  What happened? Did he have to recharge the ring first again?

3. While on Oa, Hal recites some information the ring downloads into his brain about Tomar Re's Sector, and how it contains multiple galaxies, which makes perfect sense if you're dividing the entire universe into 3600 sectors.  However, we then see a later scene saying something along the lines of "Sector 1234: The Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy." Well that doesn't work at all. If each sector needs to cover multiple galaxies, then shouldn't the Milky Way be completely in sector 2814?

So there! See, I'm not giving the movie a free pass just because I'm a huge Green Lantern fan.

What I am is a very grateful Green Lantern fan.  I wanted a live action Green Lantern that was able to use today's special effects to make Green Lantern come to life on the big screen just like the comics, and this movie delivered. From Oa to the Corps to the constructs to Parallax, this movie was everything I wanted to see. I'm disappointed that it's doing so poorly that even if it does get a sequel it's unlikely to get the money it would need to look as good as this one, but at least we got this one.

AVP-R Aliens vs Predator - Requiem

Spoiler Level: High

I was totally prepared to not like this movie.  It's hard to find anything good said about it on the web (but you know my feelings on that-- "I am fanboy, hear me bitch,") and to be honest I wasn't thrilled with the premise.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Aliens and Predators fighting it out, but I don't want it to be on present-day Earth. These are freakin' Aliens with a capital A and alien Predators. I want to see them fighting it out in their natural habitat of outer space. I went along with the contrived concept of a Predator-built Alien Tomb on Earth in the first one because I really wanted to see a bunch of Predators and Aliens have it out, and since that was all I wanted from the movie I enjoyed it enough.  My complaint wasn't that it was only rated PG-13 and not violent enough; my complaint was that it wasn't set in space in the future.  And so this film comes along, and not only is it still set on modern-day Earth but now in a town and the big deal seems to be that it's now rated R, so it can be much more violent!  So I never got around to seeing it when it came out.

But now Predators is out on DVD and I want to see that, and since AVP-R is the only movie I haven't seen from both franchises I figured I'd watch it first.

And you know what?  It didn't suck!

Maybe my standards were low.  Maybe fandom's standards are too high.  Maybe I'm too easily pleased.  Maybe it's all of the above.

For starters, I didn't expect it to be a direct sequel to Alien vs. Predator. I didn't expect it to follow up directly on the Predator-Alien we saw hatch at the end of that movie, so I found the fact that it was to be very cool. It also made sense why it would take place in an American town on Earth, since the "Predalien" makes the ship crash and all the face huggers escape. (Although I'm a little hazy on why the drop ship left Saturn and headed back to Earth in the first place.)  So again, while I'm not thrilled with the premise of an Aliens movie taking place on modern-day Earth, they way it came about made more sense to me than in the previous film.

When I walked out of the first AVP film, some of my friends were talking about how disappointed they were with it.  I said "I just wanted to see some Aliens and Predators fight.  I'm happy."  In that sense, I'm just as happy with this film, as the one lone Predator who received the ship's distress call has to face off against an infested town full of Aliens, a super Predalien, and the planet's locals (ie, the human stars of the movie).  That makes for a cool movie of Aliens and Predators fighting.

On the down side, once that's all established it becomes every other horror movie of some alien menace picking off townsfolk one by one.  The only thing it has going for it here is that the menace is Aliens and Predators. Not long into the movie I started playing the Scream game where you figure out who's going to die and who isn't based on horror movie rules.

The other big drawback is the movie is shot so dark that it's really hard to tell what's going on a lot of the time. When you're only going by shadows it becomes hard to tell if the dreadlocks you're seeing belong to the Predator or the Predalien.  That frequently got very frustrating.

But those elements notwithstanding, I think I actually enjoyed this one more than the previous movie, since it doesn't take place in a tomb but in a wider environment with Aliens running around everywhere.  But then again I always did like Aliens better than Alien, for pretty much the same reason.

I also liked the way it was handled.  The locals start to realize they're in over the head and call in the National Guard.  The National Guard gets wiped out, and after reviewing their camera footage the military decides the only way to contain the infestation is to nuke the city. So now they have the only three survivors in custody, a Predator weapon, and footage of the Aliens. That's got potential. Will it have any impact on Predators, or will that film ignore this film entirely?  Beats me, but I'm glad I watched this one first, just in case.

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Thor

Spoiler Level: Medium

Another great Marvel movie, and a great start to the 2011 summer movie season!

I'll confess I've only read a handful or issues of the Thor comic book.  Most of what I know about Thor came from the Avengers, and most of what I know about Asgard came from the fantastic New Mutants Special Edition #1 in 1985.  Oh, and I remember watching reruns of the old Thor cartoons from 1966.  So while I'm no expert, I know enough to appreciate all the things they got right.

And wow, did they get a lot right. The costume, the hammer, spinning the hammer, the relationship between Thor and Loki, Jane Foster, the references to Dr. Donald Blake, Odin, the Odinsleep, Sif, the Warriors Three... well, okay, I have a beef with the Warriors Three.  Volstagg is way too thin.

What is, for me, the definitive Volstagg moment.

I absolutely LOVED the Rainbow Bridge.  I was afraid they would consider it too cheesy and not use it, but they found a way to make it faithful and still look cool by today's standards-- it's a giant crystal bridge, pulsing and flowing with every color of the rainbow.  Fantastic.

Being the first Thor film, it's also a great origin tale in its own right, as we see Thor go from over-confident, over-eager, and yes even arrogant, and watch him grow into the hero he's meant to be.  As I said, my knowledge of Thor isn't extensive, so this works as a proper introduction to the character's history for me.

And damn, Chris Hemsworth is the same actor who played George Kirk in Star Trek ('09)?  Wow.  He didn't even blip on my radar in that movie, but here he's hot.  And I normally don't go for guys with beards.  What a difference long hair, an accent, and a good shirtless scene can make.

There's some great additional Marvel Universe easter eggs in this movie as well, but I'm not going to reveal them here. I think we've all gotten used to the cameo by Nick Fury by now as the build-up to the Avengers movie continues, but the others completely surprised me.  Marvel is doing a fantastic job of tying these films together in little ways and truly making it feel like a bigger interconnected universe.  In a lot of ways it reminds me of when comics were new to me.

My only real regret is that I didn't get to watch The Incredible Hulk Returns before seeing this movie. I've still never seen it, and I really wanted to see the only other (and widely regarded as terrible) attempt at a live-action Thor before seeing it done here, where I had confidence that they were going to do it right.

And do it right they did.  On to Captain America!

Super

Spoiler Level: Medium

Have you heard about this movie?  If it wasn't for a friend of mine being a fan of James Gunn and Nathan Fillion I wouldn't have.  It's the story of an average loser named Frank who loses his wife to a drug dealer. 

The thing is, Frank's a little unhinged.  After he has a vision where God uses naughty anime tentacles to tell him to become a super hero, well... what choice does he have but to become one?  So he comes up with his super hero persona, the Crimson Bolt, and goes on a vigilante spree, thwacking thieves, drug dealers, child molesters and anyone else breaking the law with his trusty wrench.

Now I am not a fan of gore, and I really don't find blood funny.  This movie has a lot of blood, and yet it made me laugh, and laugh hard.  Why?  Is it a Three Stooges kind of thing? Disbelief that he's actually doing it? Wish fulfillment, getting to see bad people get what's coming to them?  Most likely it's a combination of all of these.  All I know is that this movie is at times funny, at times brutal, and at times brutally funny. 

Oh, and disturbing.  Very disturbing.  It has not just one but two rape scenes, and no, they're not funny in the slightest, although they are about as polar opposite as rape scenes can get.

It's not a super hero movie for the faint of heart, but it is a humorous look at what might happen if someone who was just slightly off balance tried to be Batman, what would probably happen to him, and what he might accomplish, both good and bad.  If you can find it-- and if you can take it-- it's definitely worth seeing.

This film is currently showing at art house cinemas and is available via On Demand.  I went with a bunch of my friends to the Harris Theater in Pittsburgh, where it will be showing until May 5; you can find details and show times at their website. On a personal note, it's been a long time since I've gone into the city with my friends to watch an art house movie, and I'm really glad I did.  All five of us enjoyed it and had a good time.

Rain Without Thunder

Spoiler Level: High

Set in the year 2042, this film is made in a semi- documentary style, and tells the stories of the women of Walker Point. In the year 2017, Congress passed the 28th Amendment stating that unborn fetuses have all the same rights as a person.  As a result, abortion is now considered homicide.  Walker Point is a prison for women who are guilty of having had an abortion.

What makes the film so compelling is that it shows how closely a woman's right to choose is tied to the complete spectrum of women's rights.  Once the government decreed that an unborn fetus must be protected, women lost the right to do anything while pregnant that might endanger the child, such as smoking, drinking or working. Or to chose what forms of contraception they could use-- anything that isn't barrier-based and prevents a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall is illegal. Or to even go to a different country where abortion is still legal.  It may sound unbelievable that it could go that far that fast, but the steps presented here come across as frighteningly possible.  I tend to forget that in many states (mine included) women haven't even had the right to vote for 100 years yet. When you look at how long it's taken us to get as far as we have, it's not so unbelievable that we might slide backwards, especially in the face of the rallying cry of "protecting the children."

Another interesting element of the film is that it was made in 1992, yet in many ways predicts the conservative movement that's come around with the start of the (W.) Bush administration in 2001. The difference here is that the film puts forth that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar; that people will accept moderate change more than radical change, and that with the proper drive behind it, moderate change can take us backwards just as much as it can take us forward.  In the real world of the early 21st Century, we've become more polarized and radical in our arguments. I never saw any benefits to that before, but this film makes me think that perhaps the two sides being so vehement towards each other might actually be helping to keep each other in check.

Along those lines, while the film definitely has a pro-choice slant, it doesn't try to candy-coat abortion.  There are graphic descriptions of both abortions and the back alley abortion clinics.  It's disturbing, but it should be.  No matter what side of the line you fall on, abortion is not something to be taken lightly, and this film doesn't.

You ever have one of those moments where you recognize an actor but can't place him or her, and it becomes such a distraction that you have to stop the movie and look the actor up on IMDB before you can go on watching?  That happened to me with the character of Prosecuting Attorney Andrea Murdoch.  I knew I recognized her, and she was someone I knew well, but I couldn't place her for the life or me.  So I stopped the film and looked her up. Turns out she was Iona Morris-- the voice of Claudia on Robotech!  So no wonder I was confused-- I can pick her voice out from anywhere, but I've never seen her real face before.  (Well, apparently I've seen her in three episodes of Star Trek, but she was under alien make-up in Voyager and only a little kid in the classic Trek episode "Miri.")

Iona Morris

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Amazingly enough, this film has not been released on DVD.  Amazon still has some used VHS copies, or you can watch it like I did-- yes, Netflix Instant Streaming service again.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Spoiler Level: Medium

This is one of those films I wanted to see when it first came out, but like most movies I didn't get around to it.  The trailer looked very impressive.

Well, the film lives up to the trailer.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World perfectly captures the spirit of the Nintendo generation otaku.

Scott Pilgrim is your average twenty-something. He's in a band with some friends, he's had his share of romances, and he has no career to speak of.  Then he meets the girl of his dreams.  The only catch is he has to fight each one of her Seven Evil Exes to the death.

It's a story straight out of a manga (or in this case, an Amerimanga, based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley), and never before have I felt a live action film captured the tone of manga so perfectly.  And that even goes for anime versions of manga, since anime has its own tone.

But what really pushes this film over the top is the other genre it emulates-- the old 8-bit video games.  The Universal Logo rolls out to 8-bit music at the beginning of the film, the fight sequences are set up like Street Fighter matches, and the exes explode into coins when they're defeated, with point values over them that increase with each new ex.

Visually the film is very striking, using special effects for every day scenes, looking like manga brought to life.  It's a technique used to a lesser effect that met with scorn in Ang Lee's Hulk and to a stronger effect in Speed Racer.  In both cases I liked it, but a lot of people I talked to didn't.  Based on the DVD sales of this movie, I suspect fandom has embraced it this time, most likely because of the gaming angle.

The characters are endearing, the dialogue is witty, the acting is well done. The humor lies in the film's ability to both over the top and yet low-key awkwardness at the same time-- for example, at one point Scott makes a dramatic entrance against one of the evil exes-- and then kind of stops, looks to his friends for confirmation, and then gets back to being dramatic.

It's a fun film from beginning to end, and I'll bet a lot of people will be cos-playing these characters for a long time to come.

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Source Code

Spoiler Level: Atomic.  There's really no way I can discuss my thoughts on this movie without giving away several key elements of the plot.  And for once, I'm only a week behind when it was released.  So only read on if you've already seen it or if you don't care what you learn!  And if you do care-- this is a great movie.  Go see it.  Okay, you can go now.

Source Code is directed by the same guy who directed Moon?!? I didn't realize that until just now when I got the poster image.  Well that explains a lot.  Both are very human stories about one man whose life isn't what he thinks it is, who are being controlled by people without their knowledge, and who eventually take their lives into their own hands, irregardless of how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked against them.

Captain Colter Stevens is an unwitting participant in an experiment.  He's being sent back in time, where he arrives in the body of teacher Sean Fentress on a doomed train in Chicago, a train that was destroyed by a terrorist earlier that morning.  Colter's job is to figure out which one of the passengers planted the bomb.  He only has the last eight minutes of Sean's life to accomplish this-- and if and when he fails, he'll be sent back to try again, and again, and again.

It's Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day, but with a deeper twist.  Because Colter isn't just going back in time.  When his mind is linked up with Sean's, for those eight minutes he's creating an entire new alternate reality, separate from his home reality-- a reality that those running the experiment call the Source Code. Any changes he makes there have no effect on his original timeline, but since history is the same in both worlds, he can explore the world inside the Source Code in depth and bring back information on the terrorist so he can be caught before he strikes again in the original reality.  But what about those other quantum realities he's created?  Do they only exist for eight minutes, ending when he dies, or do they continue on without him?

The more time Colter spends on the train, getting to know the people on it-- especially Christina, the beautiful girl sitting next to him-- the more determined he becomes to find a way to save them all. It's hard for him to accept that even if he saves them inside the Source Code, they'll still be dead when he returns to his original reality.  On his final attempt, he no longer cares-- he just needs to save them all in one reality for his own conscience's sake. And he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, as that reality continues on, with him now getting to live out the rest of his life with Christina.

Except there's one person he didn't save-- Sean Fentress. Colter may not have meant to, but he's now quite literally stolen Sean's life.  Now, sure, Sean was going to die anyway, but what about Sean's friends and family? One of the subplots of the film is about Colter trying to reach his father when he goes back in time, since he hasn't been able to contact him while he's been a part of the project, and it's a very moving part of the film.  But what about Sean's father?  Colter isn't going to know a thing about him or any of the other people in Sean's life.

The film also raises another intriguing point when it's revealed that since Colter came from the original reality (let's call it Reality A), in the altered reality he now lives in where he rescued everyone on the train (let's call that one Reality B) there's no need to send him.  Therefore Reality B still has a Colter waiting to be sent.  Now let's follow that for a moment-- Reality B now has two Colters. So when Reality B has a crisis where they can use Colter-B, Colter-B will begin creating new realities just like Colter-A did.  Colter-B will be sent into a different person's body, since it will be a different crisis, and the odds of Sean Fentress being in both crises are unrealistic. So let's assume that, being the same man of ability, emotion and conscience, he succeeds in the same way that Colter-A did in creating a Reality C that continues on.  This Reality C's divergent point would have started with both Colter-A and Colter-B in it, so Colter-B would now be living out his life in another person's body, leaving no need for that universe's Colter to have been sent... meaning there would now be a universe with three Colters!  And so Reality-C wouldn't launch their program until a third crisis came along, resulting in the cycle happening all over again. And again... and again... and again.  How long until there's enough Colters existing in one reality that he ends up meeting one of himselves? Would the Source Code Project even realize the full implications of what they were doing before they'd altered the entire human race into alternate versions of one man?

This is all the stuff I found myself thinking of after the movie ended.  And that's what makes this movie great.

The Adjustment Bureau

Spoiler Level:  High

This is the first time I've walked into a movie cold in a long, long time.  All I'd seen about it was the promo poster pictured here, and the only thing I'd heard about it was that it was written by Phillip K. Dick.  Those two items were enough to get me to go see it. To be completely honest, I even kept forgetting the name of the movie I was going to see. That can be the best way to see a movie sometimes, because everything comes as a surprise.

David Norris is a politician running for Senator from New York, when two major things happen to him-- he runs into a woman he feels destined to be with named Elise, and he stumbles across an organization that controls what's Really Going On.

The Adjustment Bureau is following a Plan, and we mere humans aren't supposed to know anything about it.  Now that Norris knows, he needs to keep his mouth shut about it and just go back about his life.  Which he seems like he'd be willing to do, except for the fact that the Plan calls for Norris and Elise to never see each other again.  And that's the part Norris can't accept.

From there the movie becomes an action thriller, with Norris trying to find and build a life with Elise again while constantly evading the Bureau's efforts to keep them apart yet not being able to explain why he's doing the things he's doing. 

The film raises lots of great questions about predestination versus free will.  Earth is obviously someone's experiment, 6.91 billion people with their own capacity for free choice, all subject to random chance, yet at the same time all being subtly manipulated without their knowledge, steering individuals to make the choices that the Adjustment Bureau wants them to make.  Exactly who and what the Bureau are is never fully explained, although it's clear that they've been guiding humanity since its inception, under the guidance of the Plan laid out by the Chairman.  Is the Chairman God, and are the Agency His angels?  Possibly; if nothing else, they're most likely the cause of humanity's belief in God.  Are they something more sinister?  Possibly; how can anyone deny two people true love and still be good? But the Plan all seems to be for the greater good of humanity, so they're definitely not evil. It doesn't just ask if we really have free will, but more importantly, do we deserve it?

And this is where the film's strength lies.  It's a fun action movie with unusual motivations that make you think and wonder, and I use wonder in the sense of both being curious and of being in awe of something bigger than you.

Green Lantern

Spoiler Level: High

Anyone who knows me knows I don't believe in or advocate illegal downloading, but when I read last night that a work print of the upcoming Green Lantern movie had been leaked to the web I had see it.  Everyone who knows me knows I have become a HUGE Green Lantern fan over the last decade, and I don't think I've looked forward to a movie this much since Phantom Menace, so I had to download this and watch it ASAP.

Perhaps I should have learned from history.  Sadly, this movie makes Phantom Menace look like Empire Strikes Back.

Ryan Reynolds does a fine job, and the special effects that were completed in this print looks decent, but the changes they made to the Green Lantern mythos are just so far off the mark that it makes me long for the days of the Incredible Hulk movies, where Daredevil was a ninja and Thor was two people.  Yes, it's that bad.

I can handle some changes, like Hal Jordan being more manic and cocky than he is in the comics, becuase (a) the character needs to grab mainstream audiences and that's what's popular, and (b) Hal's personality got changed around a lot depending on who was writing him anyway.

Long-time readers know I've always been understanding about changes for a new medium, but the changes here are pointless at best and insulting at worst.  Oa is no longer a planet, it's a now a pocket universe on a "higher plane of existence." I guess so it's easier for the Guardians (who are now also green) to watch the entire universe at once.  Green Man looks nothing like a, well, green man anymore.  Why?  What's the point of that? If you were so in love with your new design, why not just make him a new GL?  Then there's Kilowog, who Dennis Haysbert plays with a Scottish accent.  Well that's just great, a big mostly-green stubby-eared CGI guy with a Scottish accent. Kilowog has become freakin' Shrek! And Sinestro is gay, and constantly hitting on Hal.  Not in a funny, played-for-laughs kind of way either, but in a creepy, look-how-you-can't-trust-this-guy kind of way.  Now Sinestro doesn't become a bad guy yet in this movie, but anyone who knows anything about Green Lantern knows that Sinestro is Hal's number one nemesis, so that combined with the way he's portrayed here makes it come across as homophobic. And I'm all for gay rights and equality and visibility (hell, I'm a card-carrying member of the HRC) but giving Sinestro an extended gay love scene was just too much.

For what it's worth, Hector Hammond is portrayed as a total perv yet totally straight, which I guess was their attempt at doing a balanced portrayal.  And it is consistent with the way Hammond's been portrayed by Geoff Johns in the comics, so at least they got something right. 

Oh, and the musical score sounds like screeching cats.  Literally.  It sounds like James Newton Howard took a dozen cats, stretched them out on a rack and started whacking them with a mallet in a demented desire to get each one to yowl at a precise pitch. What the hell is up with that?  Didn't John Williams totally kill the "space sounds bizarre and eerie" approach in the 70's?  If they're trying to go retro, it doesn't work at all.  Then again, I didn't like the musical score to the Battlestar Galactica remake either, so what do I know.

Other than all that, the film has potential.  Like, say, in the way that Attack of the Clones was an improvement over Phantom Menace.

Lastly, I want to point out that this is exactly why you shouldn't download movies.  This is just a work print, so with some carefull editing (is there time for reshoots?) what comes out in July might not suck this bad.  And it could be that being such a big Green Lantern fan, my expectations were just too damn high. But if you absolutely, positively think you can not wait like I thought I couldn't, then here's the link to the bit torrent for the Green Lantern movie.  But don't say I didn't warn you.

So all in all, it's probably better to not pay any attention to this post anyway.

UPDATE:  April Fools!  I actually like Phantom Menace.

Paul

Spoiler Level: Medium

Oh, man. I laughed so hard I nearly passed out.  No lie.

Paul is a great movie because it works on two levels.  One on level, there's the obvious homage to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., and to the fanboy subculture in general.  There so many in-jokes I could never count them all.  A few zinged over my head, but not many.  (Or not enough, some might argue.)

But unlike Free Enterprise, for example, the film doesn't require you to get them.  Many of them are played in such a way that even if you don't get the reference, the way they're delivered is funny all on their own.  (Okay, Higher-than-Medium Spoiler Level here as an example.  Highlight it to read it.) For example, when Blythe Danner faces off against Sigourney Weaver, she exclaims "Get away from her, you bitch!"  Out of my group, three of us laughed because it's Sigorney Weaver's most famous line from Aliens now being directed back at her.  One of us laughed because it was Blythe Danner being portrayed as a little old lady, and here's this little old lady taking charge and kicking butt. And there's numerous scenes like that. I remember finding Spaceballs disappointing because I felt Mel Brooks explained all the jokes.  The jokes aren't explained here, so either you catch the reference or you don't-- but even if you don't, the scene has been crafted in such a way that the line is funny all by itself.  It's the perfect solution, and one that could only be achieved by people who genuinely love the source material they're lampooning.

And then there's the characters themselves-- Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two Brits dealing with America for the first time, Seth Rogan as (the voice of) the rude & crude title character Paul, Kristen Wiig as Ruth Buggs, a devout Christian who has her world turned upside down. Not to mention the people who end up chasing them, including Ruth's father, government agents, and angry rednecks.  That's the film's other level; it is, first and foremost, a flat-out comedy.  You could never have watched a single frame of science fiction in your life and you'll still find a lot to laugh at here.

This definitely goes in the list of top fanboy movies.  Come to think of it, the only other two on the list are the brilliant aforementioned Free Enterprise, and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.  And come to think of it again, I don't think I've laughed at a movie so hard since Kevin Smith.  And that's saying a lot.

Beyond the Time Barrier

Spoiler Level: High

This is an old black-and-white movie from 1960, one year before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.  It's a product of its time, playing on the concept of man going into space being a complete unknown, and (of course) serving as a warning against the use of nuclear weapons.

Major Bill Allison is flying the first space plane, designed to fly straight up into space.  During the flight, his plane ends up breaking the time barrier, and he arrives back on Earth 65 years later, in the year 2024.

And here is why I find these kind of movies fun-- we get a look at what they predicted Earth's future would be like.  After the first manned moon landing, the Earth banded together and colonized Mars and Venus in 1970.  But fallout from nuclear weapon testing has worn away the protective layers of Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the Earth being bombarded by cosmic radiation.  In 1971, this radiation caused a plague, causing people to mutate and resulting in future generations being born deaf, dumb and sterile.

Ahhh, if only the Earth had banded together after the first moon landing, instead of only going a half a dozen times and then never going back again. I also loved how they were predicting colonies on Mars and Venus just ten years into their future.  I'm guessing we didn't know how brutal the conditions on Venus are back then? However I have to give them points for coming close to predicting the hole in the Ozone Layer and Global Warming.  And even Major Allison's jet is similar in concept to Virgin's space plane.

Most of the dialogue and some of the acting is pretty bad, so much so that I was surprised this movie was never used on MST3K.  Heaven knows my wife and I were playing MST3K with it on our own. The science is pretty laughable as well.  ("Gravity has no effect on time!") And then of course there's the cigarettes, with Air Force officials lighting up in the hospital.  But that's part of what makes these old SF movies fun.

As to things I genuinely did like about the movie:  They actually had access to an Air Force jet, which was pretty impressive, and the model work when the jet is dropping its stabilizers looked a lot better than I expected.  There's some very cool paintings used to show the future city, which granted don't fit in with the actual movie footage well, but are still neat to look at.  And the future city is obsessed with triangles.  The place is full of them, the doors, the walls, the support pillars, everything is triangles, even the dissolve wipes from scene to scene, all of which makes for some very neat camera angles.  I liked the triangles.

So really, it's not as bad as an Ed Wood movie, but still bad enough to be fun, and good enough that I never got bored with it.

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Battle: Los Angeles

Spoiler Level: Medium-High

First off, I want to apologize to all my readers.  It's been a good ride, I'm glad you've kept reading my posts, and I'm going to miss you all.

For, according to Roger Ebert, I am an idiot and you should consider spending less time around me.  Because I can not tell a lie; I enjoyed this movie.

It's not high art or anything; from what I've read, director Jonathan Liebesman wanted to do an alien invasion story that treated the military more realistically, something along the lines of Saving Private Ryan with aliens.  Now I will confess I have yet to see Saving Private Ryan (it doesn't have spaceships in it), but I always got the impression that was a very emotional film, which this film definitely is not.  We get to meet every single member of the platoon before the fighting begins, but to be honest once they got into their combat gear I couldn't really tell which one was which or remember who had what story.  So I really wasn't able to have a whole lot of empathy for them as characters once they start getting killed in combat.  But once the platoon is reduced to four or five soldiers and they start referencing each others histories I was able to figure out who was left and keep track.

No, what Battle: Los Angeles succeeds at is giving us a very gritty take on War of the Worlds, completely from the military angle and with lots of boom.  We get the occasional TV news footage to show us that this is happening all over the world, and there are some civilians that our heroes have been ordered to rescue, but even those civilians are seen solely from the perspective of the marines' interaction with them-- they have no opening shots telling us about their lives, and when they're rescued and handed off they're out of the film.

Which, for me, is where this movie succeeds over Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds.  Spielberg tried to do an alien invasion story that was a family feel-good movie, with the estranged dad trying to reconcile with his wife and kids.  Now I can respect that the original book focused on a man having been physically separated from his wife during the invasion and trying to get back to her, but an end-of-the-world alien invasion story is no place for a feel-good "get to know your kids again" kind of story.  By contrast, there are kids in Battle: Los Angeles, but they're obviously going through a traumatic experience and, while one little boy and his father are featured quite a bit, their relationship is not intended to be the main part of the film.

The movie suffers from the usual Hollywood conceits; this one platoon manages to learn all the critical intel and has opportunities to attack all the right spots to turn the tide in the war.  And of course, the invaders have the crucial weakness of a Master Control Center, but at least in this case it only controls the spaceships in the LA area and not the entire alien army all over the world.  In that sense, this movie does a little better, in that it doesn't have a lot of the glaring flaws in logic that always seem to be in movies these days. (Such as Jeff Goldblum's laptop being able to interface with an alien computer network in Independence Day, for example.)

Speaking of the spaceships, I loved their design.  They could all join together as a disc or have sections that would break off into individual fighter drones.  The aliens themselves looked fine; it was a design that looked very alien, but what I really enjoyed was their tech.

So with no disrepect intended to the esteemed Mr. Ebert, who's a real critic and not just some fanboy with a blog, I got out of this movie exactly what I was hoping for-- a shoot-'em-up between humans and spaceships with lots of cool special effects.

Cloverfield

Spoiler Level: Low

See?!?  We CAN make a good monster movie in the US!!!

I've been shooting home movies since 1988.  I have 119 volumes so far.  And my camera work is infamous among my friends for being terrible.  So I was really able to relate to the way this movie was shot, it instantly grabbed me. The opening party sequence lulled me in perfectly, and I really did jump when the first explosion hit.

The reason I feel Cloverfield really works as a monster movie is it's totally from the perspective of the poor schmucks you always see running away from Godzilla.  It's not from the point of view of the heroes and scientists and reporters and astronauts who are trying to save people from the monster or fight the monster or even understand the monster; these people aren't out to save the world.  They just want to get away from it and survive.

And the end music is so Godzilla-esque!  I absolutely loved it.

I haven't got to watch all of the special features yet, but the bit I did see had J. J. Abrams saying that he was inspired by a trip to Japan, and how amazed he was that Godzilla is such an icon over there.  He said he felt America needed its own really good monster like Japan has.  And the Cloverfield Monster itself succeeds on all levels.  It's big, tough, mean, nasty and unstoppable. 

But if Godzilla had stopped after his first movie, he'd never have become an icon.  Apparently plans to expand on this film have stalled, which is a real shame, because there's so much more that can be done with it.  We could see these events from the military perspective; we could see the monster stomp a totally different city; we could see what happens when the monster starts meeting other monsters.  And all that's without even explaining exactly what it is.  Although I'm not opposed to an origin film, I think it would be cooler to get a few new clues with each installment and have its backstory come out slowly.  But for that to happen, we have to get more stories at all.

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Inception

Spoiler Level: Kinda' on the high side, but in a more general sense.

Very cool.  I've always been fascinated by dreams, and this film really takes the concept of lucid dreaming or dream walking to new heights.  (Or is it depths?)

I rather liked the idea of having a totem to let you know if you're in a dream or not.  I've got a similar thing, only in reverse-- I can fly in my dreams, so there have been times when I wonder, "Am I dreaming?" and if I can lift off the ground and hover there, then I know I'm dreaming, and if I can't then I know I'm not.  And yes, I have tried when I'm awake. 'Cause sometimes life is just so weird (or so good) that you're really just not positive.

When you go into a movie about dreams, you're already expecting the most obvious twist-- that the entire thing was a dream.  This movie plays into those expectations quite well by not going for the obvious, but instead simply planting doubt.

I loved the layers upon layers upon layers.  I was hazy on a few details, but when my wife walked in for the last half hour and I had to explain everything that was going on up to that point I seemed to have it all down, so I guess I understood it all okay.  Still, it's a movie that I'd probably get more out of seeing a second time.

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TiMER

Spoiler Level: Medium

You gotta love Sci-Fi Chick Flicks.

What drew me to TiMER is that it's a "what if" story; around twenty years ago or so, a company invented a device that, when implanted, counts down to when you're going to meet your one true love.  There's a brief explanation given on how it can tell based on body heat or something, but the point isn't really about how a TiMER works; the point is how such an invention changes the world.

For your TiMER to work, your one true love (generally referred to by people simply as your One) also has to have a TiMER implanted; once you both have one, it starts counting down.  The TiMER will reach zero at midnight before the day you're going to meet; then, at some point during the next 24 hours, you'll meet him or her, and when you do both your TiMERs will make a matching chime.  So now you both know.  It literally takes the guess work out of relationships.  Divorce is a thing of the past.

The story itself follows two step sisters, Oona and Steph.  Steph's TiMER says she won't meet her true love for another 17 years, while Oona's TiMER is nothing but blinking dashes.  Apparently, her One still hasn't gotten his TiMER.  At least, that's what she hopes; the only other alternative is that she'll never have a true love.  As a result, neither one sees the point in getting involved in a relationship that's not going to work.  Steph spends her time having one night stands, and Oona spends her time dating any TiMERless man she can find no matter how disinterested she is in them, in the hopes that one of them will turn out to be her One.

And the reasons why some of the men are TiMERless is part of what makes the movie so fascinating.  Relationships are at the core of our society, and now that the TiMER will let you know who your relationship is going to be with, every facet of how society functions has changed.  People hold giant parties on their zero day, often with the attitude that their One is going to be at that party.  And while no one gets divorced anymore, the number of casual encounters is way up, because people don't see the point in investing themselves in a relationship that they know won't last.  And what of all the children of divorced parents?  Oona's mother is divorced and remarried to her One, and Oona astutely points out that if her parents had known that they weren't going to be each other's One, she would never have been born. 

The romantic story is great just for that reason; like all good SF stories, TiMER uses science to hold a mirror up to our own society and really examine why we do the things we do; in this case, why we sometimes fall in love with the wrong person, and how that could still be just as important as finding the right person.

The world could use more Sci-Fi Chick Flicks.

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TiMER is currently available on Netflix Instant View, and probably lots of other On-Demand services as well.  Support independent films and check in to this one.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Spoiler Level: High

Does this count as science fiction?  Well, it's the story of Operation Jedi, a special military program where a unit is trained to develop their psychic abilities, so yeah, I'd say it counts.

Except it's only partly fiction.

It's a dramatization of a real military program that actually happened, called the First Earth Battalion, fictionalized here as the New Earth Army.  Jeff Bridges' character Bill Django (based on real life Lieutenant Commander Jim Channon) has a goal of changing the military into something new, a force that turns aggression aside before the need for combat arises, using new age attitudes and unlocking the inner abilities of the mind.

George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady (based primarily on Glenn Wheaton), a retired soldier from the program who meets Bob Wilton (played by Ewan "Obi-Wan" McGregor, and based on Jon Ronson, the writer of the original book).  The two meet in Kuwait and end up heading into Iraq together, giving Wilton the chance to learn all about the New Earth Army program.

And there's where the fun really begins.  Cassady's flashback scenes to the New Earth Army program are all from his perspective, so we see them all as successful.  And you think, wow, this guy is really on to something here, this is incredible.  Then you see him try to apply it in the real world and you think, wow, this guy is completely delusional.  And that's where the humor comes in.

If I can get a little too personal for a review and speak to my peeps in the fanboy community here... we know these people are real.  We've met them.  Hell, some of us are them.  I think if you did a survey, you'd find most of us in fandom are at least open to the idea of psychic abilities being real, with a sizable percentage believing yes, absolutely they're real, and a somewhat smaller percentage going as far as to say they have them.  I've known quite a few in my time who believe they have psychic abilities, and although one or two them were a little unhinged, the majority were very well balanced, educated people.

Personally, I have to put myself in the open-minded category; I've always been a believer in the persepctive that "there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," and I've seen a few things over the years that have made me raise an eyebrow in wonder, but my inner skeptic keeps me from being a full-on believer.  I've never seen anything that could be repeated per the scientific method's requirements. As Michael Shermer pointed out in his wonderful book Why People Believe Weird Things, we tend to remember the hits and forget the misses.

And to be frank, the concept of psychic abilities is something that people in our community really want to believe.  I don't mean that in the slightest derogatory way; the idea that there's something special, some great potential inside us that can be unlocked is naturally appealing.  And unlike starships or dragons or vampires, where it's easy to point to the details of it and say "it doesn't exist," this is a concept that resides inside the human mind, so the idea that there's someone out there who has mastered it is nearly impossible to disprove.

And that appeal is where the humor lies in this movie, especially for those of us in the fandom community.  Is this guy the real deal, or someone who's just bought too heavily into the fantasy?  We want to believe in him, but man, sometimes you just can't.  Sometimes he just reminds you of that guy at the con who won't stop talking to you about how he's planning on building a working transporter.

And in the end, the message that really comes out of it all is that as long as your heart is in the right place, as long as it inspires you to be a better person, it doesn't really matter if it's real or not.  If it works for you, and in turn helps you be just a little bit nicer to your fellow man, that's what counts.  The parallels to religion are obvious, if not overtly touched on; we see the New Earth Army program from two approaches, one lead by a man who wants to better the world and the people in it, and then by one who sees the potential tactical applications of psychic abilities, such as killing someone from a distance just by staring at them.  For good or ill, you're going to get out of it what you put into it, be it religion, the military, your mind or your life.

In the end, it doesn't matter if it's real; what matters is what you decide to do with your belief.

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Surrogates

Spoiler Level: Medium

Very, very cool.  I love stories that are willing to shake up the entire world.  In this film set 14 years in the future, android bodies are created that can be mentally controlled by an operator.  These "Surrogate" bodies were originally designed to help people with disabilities, but the technology soon spreads to the military, who loves the idea of sending soldiers into war without endangering the actual soldiers.  From there it spreads like wildfire to the general populace, to the point where 98% of the world's population are using them.  Why endanger yourself in the world?  Stay home, stay plugged in, stay safe, and still experience everything the world has to offer through your Surrogate.  The remaining 2% of the population who don't want to use Surrogates are now living on reservations.

It's a fascinating concept, and while the film is mostly an action film, it has the mystery that most good science fiction stories have and is peppered throughout with decent dashes of social commentary.  War has become nothing more than a VR game.  And while it's never stated outright, the implication is made that the government isn't hesitant to resort to military force anymore because lives are never in danger.  To take that to its logical extension, there's probably very little interest in ending any war that the country has gotten into.

Also, the humans-only reservation is very poor, which led me to wonder, are they poor because they've abandoned the outside world when it turned to Surrogates, or are Surrogates something the poor simply couldn't afford?  Again, this subject is never broached at all, but what we see gives me clues and makes me wonder.

The film does a good job of asking what makes us human, as Bruce Willis's character Tom Greer finds himself forced farther and farther outside life as he knew it in his Surrogate.  Humans are instantly recognized on the street, because they look imperfect.  The cities are full of nothing but young, perfect, attractive people.  And the more Greer finds himself having to experience the world in his own imperfect body, the more he comes to appreciate it, both good and bad, and the more he comes to resent not being able to connect with anyone else except through their Surrogates.  It's no wonder the remaining non-Surrogate users have banded together.

The ending is typically Hollywood, but the span of 14 years that the Surrogate program lasted leaves room for lots of these concepts to be explored in more depth.  This is a concept that would make for a great series, where the questions this movie raises could take the time to explore the possible answers in much greater detail.

The Green Hornet

Spoiler Level: High

Okay, my usual disclaimer... once again, I'm not familiar with any of the source material.  I've never heard the radio show, I've never read any Green Hornet comics, and I've only seen clips of the TV series.  So I can really only evaluate this movie on how well it works completely on its own.

In that regard: pretty good.  Not great, but definitely enjoyable.  There are buddy comedies out there, and buddy action movies, and this is most definitely a buddy comedy action film.  It is not a super hero movie with witty moments; it's definitely a comedy from start to finish.  It's not  just for laughs; it definitely has action from start to finish.  And it is most definitely the story about the friendship between Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) and Kato (Jay Chou).

The thing is, it does successfully juggle all three aspects.  It's genuinely funny and made me laugh quite a lot, the action is intense and very cool to watch, and the friendship between the lead characters is never dull.

I was surprised with how violent it is; it's a very, very strong PG-13.  It manages to say a lot of naughty words in just about every scene without dropping the F-bomb, but hey, that's Seth Rogen for you.  It also manages a very high body count without very much blood. There are lots of great scenes with the Black Beauty, which is their tricked-out car loaded with machine guns, missiles, a flame thrower and lots of other cool gimmicks.  Chase scenes can be pretty boring if not done right, but when it turns out there's hidden machine guns in the car doors, that keeps it pretty interesting.  And Kato has some fantastic martial arts scenes.

The only ball that may be considered dropped here is Lenore (Cameron Diaz).  She's there to be the expert in criminology and journalism that Britt & Kato need, and of course to be the center of Britt and Kato's rivalry.  But she never really gets fleshed out as a character.  She's not interested in either of them; why not?  Is she just out of a bad relationship?  Is she just serious about keeping things professional?  Are they just not her type? It's never really said.  In fact, nothing's really said about her life besides that she's studied criminology and wants to be a journalist.  Now, to be fair, I'm not too bent out of shape that the movie doesn't explore a romance between her and either of the guys-- there's enough in the movie already, and adding a romance might have been too much.  But for being such a prominent character, she could have used just a few more scenes of exposition to make her seem a little more human.

The only other gripe I have is that Britt never really gets it together; he has a wonderful scene at the end of the film where he begins to come into his own, and we start to see him as the hero he wants to be... and then he flubs it.  It's a bit disappointing to see him constantly fail throughout the film.  I suppose that would be the only place where the balance between the comedy and the action doesn't work.  Britt's heart is in the right place, he's risking his life in a hail of bullets... at that point I want to cheer for him when he makes it, not laugh at him for failing yet again.

But other than those quibbles, the film was a lot of fun to watch.  My friend and I chose to see the 2D version, because I'd heard that the film had a few scenes shot in 3D, but the majority of it had been shot in 2D and had the 3D effects added on.  It's real easy to tell which scenes were shot in 3D, and to be honest I didn't feel they lost anything by being in 2D.  And I mean that as a compliment; they still looked that cool, even without the glasses.

Oh, and one side note... I didn't intend for this to be a green-themed week, but I wound up reviewing Green Arrow, Green Hornet and Soylent Green all in the same week!  If I had realized that was what I was doing, I would have waited until St. Patrick's Day!

Soylent Green

Spoiler Level: Medium

"Soylent Green is..."  Is there anyone out there who doesn't know the rest of that famous line?  Heck, if you Google Soylent Green, it comes up as a suggestion prompt.  How's that for a spoiler you can't avoid?  For me, the first time I heard it (that it really stuck with me) was from a Saturday Night Live sketch where John Goodman played a movie producer on a talk show discussing all the sequels he made to Soylent Green.

So I have to admit, for a long time I figured there was no point in watching the movie if I already knew the ending.  But then I started to want to see it; after hearing only the punchline for years, I wanted to at least hear the set up once.  So last weekend I finally sat down and watched it.

Well, now.

That was a surprise.

To everyone out there who thinks, like me, that just because they know what Soylent Green is then they know what this movie is about...  It doesn't matter if you already know.  Not one bit.  This movie is still just as shocking and horrifying even when you do know.  Because the point of it isn't what Soylent Green is; it's about the kind of world that think that Soylent Green was a reasonable solution to their problems.

It's a story about overpopulation.  The weight of humanity has broken the back of the Earth.  New York City alone holds 4 million people, 2 million of which are unemployed.  People fill the stairwells because they have no where else to sleep.  All the resources are used up, and nothing works anymore.  Attractive women are practically property of the rich, and so dehumanized they're actually referred to as "furniture."  Charlton Heston plays Ty Thorn, a police officer who's considered a good cop.  He steals from crime scenes, searches without a warrant and beats suspects he knows aren't allowed to lift a finger against him... and he's considered a good cop.  And the scary part is, for this world he actually is, because things have gotten so bad the people don't know of a better way to do things anymore.  It's a frightening view of humanity in decline, and what makes it frightening is it's not so far ahead as to seem unidentifiable.  Their world is just close enough to ours that it's entirely possible to see how it could happen.  And, heaven help us, why the Soylent company would think Soylent Green was a solution to their problems.

So if you're like me and had been putting off this movie because you thought knowing the ending would lessen its impact... stop waiting. Go watch it.

Robot Stories

Spoiler Level: Fairly High

Robot Stories is an anthology film, featuring four different stories of four different types of robots...  but really they're stories about people.

The first story, "Robot Baby," is about a family who is interested in adopting a child... but first they have to spend a month practicing with a robot baby.  As a result, potential mother Marcia is forced to face her own lack of maternal instincts due to her poor relationship with her own mother.

The second story, "The Robot Fixer," is the story of a woman whose son is in the hospital lying comatose.  In an effort to reach him, she begins to re-assemble his collection of Microbots toys (played nostalgically by the Micronauts toys).

The third story, "Machine Love," is about the latest office androids of 2027, the iPerson.  The iPerson is designed to learn and expand based on its surroundings, but the people in Archie the iPerson's surroundings couldn't care less about him.  What lessons will he end up learning?

The fourth and final story, "Clay" is more of an artificial intelligence story.  In the year 2027, people can have their brains scanned so their minds live on after their bodies wear out.  But what happens if you don't want to be scanned?

Each tale is a wonderful character piece, not so much offering a commentary on humanity as a whole as it is a look into the individuality of each of us.  It's a wonderful movie and touching movie.

...And with this post, I now have successfully posted 31 reviews for December, the most posts I've ever done in one month, which also brings my biggest year of blogging reviews to a close.  (165 in 2010! Woo-hoo!) 

I'd also like to thank everyone who's been coming to read these reviews-- according to my stats, December 2010 has been my biggest month ever, with 3901 hits in the last 30 days!  I realize that according to the Traffic Sources links it's mostly been people being drawn to my blog for my images, but I'm cool with that.  Hopefully a percentage of you have stuck around to read the reviews that went with them and enjoyed what you saw.

So, I'm ringing in 2011 with a very special project that I've been working on over the last few months.  Tune in on January 1, 2011 for the start of It's Called Entertainment's "Top 100 Science Fiction TV Shows" Countdown!