Movie Review - Oblivion (2013)

I recently saw the latest Tom Cruise action movie vehicle Oblivion in theaters.  It had to have been made in direct competition with Will Smith's After Earth for no other reason than to piss in his face, because Will Smith's movie came to my eye well before Oblivion ever did.  It was a well-done rush marketing job, that made me wonder how the ad firm saddled with selling this film got it moving so fast.  Marketing questions aside, I have noticed something about Tom Cruise: not the fact that he's had his wives picked out for him by his religion (because arranged marriages are as old as human civilization), or how Hollywood goes to the absurd lengths to tell us he's a great actor (despite only having four or five acting settings, of which "determined" is his best and makes him the most money).  Tom Cruise has recently played characters with the same name: JACK.

Mr. Cruise started playing Jack in Ridley Scott's Legend back in 1986, and it was the movie that inspired the Legend of Zelda (according to Shigeru Miyamoto). He played the titular character in Jack Reacher, and (although a stretch) played Stacee Jaxx in the film musical Rock of Ages.  Many of his characters are so close in temperament and behavior that they might as well be called JACK also.  I expect there to be a day when Mr. Cruise reveals to us all that his real name is not Tom but JACK.  With that out of the way, we can talk about our latest Jack, living above the ruins of old Earth--completely transformed and nearly empty of humans.

Mile High Club Headquarters? Possibly.

The humans of the future have fled to Saturn's moon Titan to escape the destruction wrought upon Earth by an invading alien race 60 years earlier--the Scavs.  Many Scavs still roam the surface of Earth, and attempt to strike out at large reactors built to convert sea water into fusion energy.  Most of thee facilities are guarded by drones, the spherical four-eyed white robots that fly about the skies.  These devices are programmed to shoot Scavs.  Sometimes they go bad and crash, and that's where Technician 49 (Cruise) comes in.  His name is Jack Harper, and he's been having strange dreams--of old Earth, of New York City, and a woman whom he feels a strong connection to...but has never met.  It brings him to start remembering things, which his "partner" Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) strongly discourages due to company regulations and a mandatory memory wipe for security purposes.  A red flag should pop up here, but for the grace of suspension of disbelief we soldier on with the story.

Julia (l) and Jack (r) realize they got to the observation deck
of the Empire State Building by stepping down off the ground. 
That is on the 86th floor, so that should give you a clue to
how screwed up the Earth is.

Not soon after a craft crashes into Zone 49, which is Jack's territory.  He feels the need to go in despite warnings from Victoria.  He proceeds in to find life pods scattered about the crash site.  All of them contain humans from an astronaut mission, and one of them contains the woman who has been haunting Jack's dreams of late: cosmonaut Julia Rusakova (Olga Kurylenko).  Eventually, Julia asks to have the black box recorder returned from her ship's landing site and Jack obliges.  Unfortunately, the Scavs are watching the landing site and capture both Jack and Julia.  A revelation hits them both once they meet the true faces of their captors: humanity is apparently fighting itself, and soldiers of "La Resistance" (aka the "Scavs") are led by Morgan Freeman.  And that's not the wildest part.

"Dammit, now where did I put that app?"

Oblivion is an amazing movie to watch.  It's got amazing design work from its sterile white house, to the geometric stylings of machinery (Jack's ship and collapsible dirt bike are a marvel, and don't get me started on those beautiful drones).  Much of the soundtrack is performed by my new favorite band M83, recalling the funk that is their smash hit "Midnight City".  Both of these combined remind me of the visual masterpiece that is TRON:Legacy, which is funny because Joseph Kosinski directed that film as well as Oblivion.  But there is a huge problem in the film (not counting the fact that Andrea Riseborough's irises never contract, which makes her look like a robot) with the twist at the end of Act II and the movie's denoument.

<<---NOTE: RAMBLING AND SPOILERS AHOY--->>

Movie Review - Near Dark (1987)

One of my avorite movies is the James Cameron movie ALIENS, sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien.  It was not only a wild sci-fi romp, but the characters were somewhat likable to the extreme, namely most of the characters who didn't die in the initial Xenomorph attack--I'm talking Hudson, Vazquez and Bishop.  It is a testament to the actors' craft that Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, and the great Lance Henriksen are still widely remembered for their performance even in light of that totally sweet battle at the end of the movie.  However, I did not know if they all had been in another movie together since that film.  Behold, I have watched Near Dark, and sure enough...there they all are.  This time, Paxton wore the makeup and it ended up being plastered all over the cover because it was that good...but was not nominated for an award in the Special Effects category--anywhere.  It's a shame, but it was a stepping stone for smaller things into bigger things.

Our story opens up with a shot of a mosquito feeding on a handsome hillbilly named Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasar, the future President Nathan Petrelli from HEROES) as he wakes up to a sunset.  He heads into town and meets his friends, only to be distracted by a very beautiful young country ingenue.  He finds out her name is May (Jenny Wright) and she's in town with "friends".  He tries to woo her and convinces her to come with him out of town in his truck.  They go to his dad's farm and he attempts to show her a horse--which promptly runs from the petite young woman.  Figuring nothing's up with her, Caleb tries to put the moves on May but she stops him and wants to know what time it is.  Caleb reminds her it's near to dawn and she demands to be taken home.  He wants to know why and May suddenly persists to be taken home, as if something bad will happen.  He agrees, but before he takes her any further he begs just one last kiss.  May gives him one heckuva steaming kiss...and slips in a small nip to his neck, just before she flees into the morning twilight.

Vampires from LV-426 (l-r): Jesse Hooker (Henriksen),
Diamondback (Goldstein), and Severen (Paxton)
(not pictured: Homer [Joshua John Miller]).

Caleb shrugs off that rather odd foreplay and tries to start the truck, but the engine fails to turn over and start.  He decides to walk across the town fields as the sun rises, but finds his energy sapped every minute he's out there and can't figure out why his skin is burning and smoking.  Suddenly, he is kidnapped into a runaway RV and confronted by a pack of five filthy, murderous drifters--one of which turns out to be May (who is not so filthy or murderous).  On top of being a kidnapping victim, Caleb gets the worst news he could possibly get (thus far): he has been bitten and transformed into a vampire.

From this point forward, things get interesting.  With the previous statement, I present to you my Understatement of the Year for 2013.

Above: May (Wright) and Caleb (Pasar) share a tender
embrace.  This might be a case of beating a dead horse, but...
STILL A BETTER LOVE STORY THAN TWILIGHT

This movie was one that a few friends had recommended to me, namely those from US states with rural backgrounds.  It was entertaining, and a fun experience pointing out all the actors who have marched across the silver screen (namely Tim "Dollman" Thomerson and a young Theresa Randle).  I also found it interesting to note that this is the first mainstream film for director Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct hits like the movie that got her name in lights, the 2008 military drama The Hurt Locker (starring Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters' male lead, Jeremy Renner) and the 2012 critical darling Zero Dark Thirty.  If this is the kind of movie she would direct in the future, she should have been a big name in Hollywood well before The Hurt Locker.  I suppose the accusations of a Hollywood Boys' Club preventing her from making movies are true: HER MOVIES ARE A LOT BETTER THAN WHAT MOST MALE DIRECTORS MAKE. 

To think, if Ms. Bigelow kept making movies like this, we might not deride the movie industry as mush as we do and we might've actually paid for the films we watch.  Sadly, we are too far gone and more people know of a world where you always have an option on how you watch your movies.  They will never know the feeling of sitting in a filthy non-IMAX/non-HD sound movie theater with a bunch of strangers (some of whom are smoking) over and over again to watch the same movie (because viewers in theater seats can't rewind or pause).  To know such a world of inconvenience no longer exists and has cost the movie industry brings a tear to my eye...but not as much as the ending for Near Dark.  It was sooooooooo bad, it's gonna cost the ratings score.

RATING: 7/10

Movie Review - Lily C.A.T. (1987)

I stopped by my local used book store in Miami, called Paperback Book X-Change.  It was a subdued affair, picking up books to read on my trip to work, and I decided to get some VHS tapes to transfer to DVD.  I picked up two VHS tapes: Sword and the Dragon, and an anime I had always seen advertisements for but never actually watched, Lily C.A.T.

For some reason, it didn't look as interesting as Clash of the Bionoids (AKA Macross: Do You Remember Love?), Ninja Scroll, or AKIRA.  So I skipped it, until a few days ago.  I gave it a chance and I understand why I might have avoided it for so long.

Lily C.A.T. is the story of a bunch of astronauts aboard the deep space vessel Saldes on the way to planet LA-003 on orders from the Syncam Company.  Luckily, the daughter of the president, the very blonde Nancy, is on the trip with her cat Lily.  A motley crew of redshirts are also on hand to do their jobs for the company, but they are in cryo-sleep for most of the trip.  Over the 20 years in cryo-sleep, an incident takes place and allows an extraterrestrial pathogen into the ship's air supply.  When the crew wakes up...uh, this is usually where I say "hijinks ensue", but I can't bring myself to do so in a positive way...because this anime sucks in a bad way.

Lily C.A.T.: the story of a girl and her pussy...OR IS IT?

This anime has all the elements of an homage to Ridley Scott's ALIEN and the ALIEN franchise, as well as to John Carpenter's The Thing.  The problem is that it's NOT an homage of those films, just a ripoff.  From the duct taped weapons to the almost rotoscoped hallways of the Saldes, Lily C.A.T. is not worthy of being called a homage.  It does, however, create a suspenseful atmosphere and present some of the most screwed up images anime had yet to present to an audience.  Yoshitaka Amano (of Final Fantasy fame) was responsible for character designs (evident in the female costumes and character hairstyles) and monster design.  If only the entire anime was based on his style of art, then this would be a better anime not only for the art in general, but for the sheer fucked-upness of the monster design.

WAT

The alien monster in Lily C.A.T. is a consummate hunter, waltzing up on its prey and absorbing it into its form.  It does not have much to do except have its kills be cut away from.  If it was actually allowed to kill the humans onboard the Saldes, then it would be wholly like the ALIEN franchise.  There's another element to this anime that put me on edge: if the alien's not killing everyone, who else is killing the crew?  While the anime makes a big hullabaloo about stowaways called "time-jumpers" -- criminals who fake credentials to stow away on long-haul space trips to escape the statute of limitations on their crimes -- and who they are, the real mystery is in who is trying to kill the crew.  Other than the alien, of course.  If you wish to find out, I'm sorry to suggest that you'll have to watch Lily C.A.T. for yourself.

RATING: 5/10

Movie Review: Prometheus (2012)

Ridley Scott's ALIEN films have been a grand source of entertainment for me, exposing me to the interesting works of Swiss artist H.R. Giger.  It was his art that inspired the shape of the Xenomorph, the primary antagonist of the ALIEN franchise.  Science fiction writer Dan O'Bannon provided the screenplay, allowing for the atmosphere and many of the thrills, mystery and suspense of the film.  Later writers (namely the franchise's proper writers David Giller and Walter Hill) and directors (The Avengers' Joss Whedon, Titanic's James Cameron) left their mark on the franchise, with a mixed bag of results.  Mr. Scott's latest outing with the ALIEN franchise, Prometheus touches on the background story of a very important but little-explored race of extraterrestrials who are intertwined with the Xenomorph: their indirect creators.

These indirect creators are referred to as "Engineers" by Drs. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), archaeologists that find connections between several ancient cultures on Earth that all point to a grouping of stars in the heavens.  They have interpreted it to be the location of the homeworld of mankind's creators--their Engineers.  They soon pack their bags and join a crew for an interstellar flight on the starship "Prometheus" to the location indicated, funded by Weyland Industries (precursor to Weyland-Yutani Industries in the later ALIEN films) under the instruction of the hologram of the late Charles Weyland (Guy Pierce) and mission director Meridith Vickers (Charlize Theron).  They find a planet with a moon, marked as LV-223, in 2096 and land to investigate the strange structures found on long-range scans.  Their findings reveal that the structures are ancient and abandoned alien spacecraft, and that something that left behind a litter of alien humanoid corpses and several cylinders filled with an animate black liquid.  A sensible group of people would simply walk away and fly back home, but David (Michael Fassbender)--an android--has been secretly tasked to retrieve samples or a live specimen.  In his attempts to achieve his goals, hijinks ensue.

Strangers in the niiiight...exchanging glances....

It's safe to say that Mr. Fassbender steals the show even in light of Idris Elba's performance as Janek, captain of the "Prometheus".  Much of that has to do with the marketing campaign for the movie, which featured a character profile on the android.  It showed how complex of a creation he was, from interpreting different genres of art to complex mathematical and spatial computations.  When it came to concepts that would generally make a person sad (i.e., murder), David offered tears of sadness; when it came to accomplishing a task that his human counterparts would find unethical (ex.: violating a person's physical being in some manner) to achieve a goal, David stated that he would not have a problem doing such things.  These two examples of an incongruous and conflicting thought process along with a face devoid of emotion really sold the idea of Mr. Fassbender's android character.  Not bad for an 8th-generation Weyland Industries android fresh out of the box.

The film was sufficiently suspenseful, and entertaining as an exercise of human frailty and folly when faced with one of the most dangerous things in the cosmos: desire.

Movie Review - John Carter (2012)

My first exposure to the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs' world of Barsoom came through the works of the electronica band Dejah Thoris.  I lost the track I downloaded from them years ago, but I wanted to know why a picture of a half-naked red woman covered in nothing but gold jewelry was the next picture on Google image search.  I began to look into more about this scantily-clad woman, and I experienced the book A Princess of Mars--and I have never been the same since.  The book tends to gloss over John Carter's Confederate leanings (this would have irked me in my younger years) and makes him so unbelievably awesome and wraps you up in the story about a lost Virginian, his red-skinned princess, and the planet that needed him more than anything else.  It was only natural of me to imagine what a John Carter: Warlord of Mars movie would look like, so I went looking online.
It turns out the Barsoom series' earliest books had lapsed in copyright years ago, and the movie that inspired so many science fiction writers and filmmakers could come to life!  Sadly, the first attempt I found was from the 1980's, with full-out character sketches and marker compositions.  The art reflected the technology that was to be used in those days, and I was dissapointed then happy because Hollywood could just come with CGI and make everything better.  The Asylum, a low-budget film company, tried to make a Barsoomian movie and we got Princess of Mars, starring Antonio Sabato Jr. as John Carter and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris.  It had only one shining spot, and that was the airship (note the singular form).  Other than that, everything was a poor reinterpretation.

Then Disney changed all that.

Disney came out and knocked it out of the park with John Carter (they left off "of Mars" until near the end credits), which blew me away.  It was a ride to watch and I was well-impressed with the amount of time spent on everything.  I watched and truly enjoyed myself, remembering as much of A Princess of Mars as I could as I watched to make sure nothing was missed.  Granted, I read the book online for one chapter a day until I was done, so I might have missed a few things in between all that was going on.  All the same, I was truly happy for the first time in a long time while watching the movie.  To this end I thank Disney, the people responsible for the production of the film, and anyone else involved.

Movie Review: The Darkest Hour (2011)

After visiting the brother and his family, a friend called me and wanted to know if I wanted to hit the movies.  I said yeah, and we went.  Not a lot of movies to interest me this holiday season, the least of which was the new sci-fi movie The Darkest Hour.  It looked interesting in its own way, what with the INVISIBLE ALIENS and people being disintegrated with electricity, but it had some negative outlooks by way of this medium -- the Internet.  We went to see it anyway, and I was nonplussed.

So, we're supposed to believe that four Americans -- Sean (Emile Hirsch), his buddy Ben (Max Minghella), Anne (Rachael Taylor), and her personal assistant Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) -- and a Swedish guy named "Skyler" (Joel Kinnaman) are going to coincidentally be in the same bar in Moscow at the same time when aliens land and attack for mineral resources?  My ass.  Moscow is HUGE -- I've never been and it's common knowledge that it is not a one-saloon town.  These people hold up in the bar's basement and come out after spending almost five days with each other.  When they come out they make their way to nowhere in particular, wandering about and getting into close scrapes with the alien menace.
In their wanderings, they learn that the aliens can see creatures due to natural bio-electricity, and cannot see through glass (because it's an insulator.)  The INVISIBLE ALIENS can also be detected by laying down electrical devices -- they killed all the electricity in the city, they are the only source of it and give it off like dead skin.  When the streetlights come on, you better be on the way home.  While still out, they meet up with other survivors like Vika (Veronika Ozerova) and her mad scientist friend Sergei (Dato Bakhtadze).  On another jaunt, they meet up with the heavily-armored Alien Fighters led by Yuri (Artur Smolyaninov), who are able to weaken an alien to the point where they can kill it with a rocket launcher from my favorite character BORIS.

HALLO MY NAME
BORIS
I SHOOT ROCKET

BORIS (played by Vladimir Jaglich) has no lines.  He just shoots rockets. And that's all that matters.

Along the way, supporting actors die and a way is found to escape the carnage of Moscow for equally ruined parts of Earth.  The movie ends on an obviously dead note, promising a retaliatory response in the form of "This is how it begins".  I would have enjoyed the movie a bit better if this was in the same vein as Night Watch and Day Watch -- sci-fi movies with an all-Russian cast to better make sense of the movie as a whole. 
Why attack Earth for mineral resources when there are probably plenty of mineral-rich asteroids floating in space that don't have people who can develop microwave cannons to disrupt your shielding and kill you with rockets?  Then again, why would aliens who are allergic to water come to conquer a planet that's 75% water (Signs) or fail to do the research about microorganisms (War of the Worlds - almost all versions)?  It comes down to a simple fact: we want to win when we would most certainly lose (see Battle: Los Angeles).  In that way, The Darkest Hour is the "feel-good movie of the year."