Review: Looper

Directed by Rian Johnson

Starring

Bruce Willis - Old Joe

Xu Qing - Old Joe's Wife

Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Joe Simmons

Emily Blunt - Sara Rollins

Paul Dano - Seth Richards

Frank Brennan - Old Seth

Noah Segan - Kid Blue

Piper Perabo - Suzie

Jeff Daniels - Abe

Looper is set in the near future.  It starts with a voice over saying that time travel hadn't been invented yet but would be in 30 years.  It would immediately be made illegal so the only ones to use it is organized crime.  

Loopers are hired by a shadowy crime syndicate.  Their job is to kill agents sent back in time by their employers in the future.  

Simmons' world starts to break down when the agent sent back from the future is himself from the future. The older version of Joe avoids being shot and sets off to kill the younger version of the syndicate boss in the future.  

Time travel movies with similar plots are very uncommon mainly because of the juggling you have to do with time lines and characters.  Most that try fail miserably.  But Looper seems to keep all the "balls" in the air and do it reasonably.  Levitt fumbles around at time, but Willis is bankable.  His character is singularly driven in Looper and Willis comes through as believable though it is difficult to re-council him as the older version of Joe Simmons.  There are scenes intercut that show old Joe being ruthless, plus we see young Joe doing the same.  So there is plenty of character drift for sure.  Also the tech is a bit hard to envision from present day.  Plus the take over of Society in the short period described is pure fantasy in my mind.  But that is nit picking.  The bleakness and hopelessness is certainly well portrayed.  

So as a movie and a science fiction movie I think, it is worth checking out.  The rental DVD / blue ray then is certainly worth checking out.  However the rental has no extras so if you are like me, this is something that I feel is important so I feel like something is missing...But the movie itself is worth checking out.  Willis and Levitt are competent.  

Review: Hunger Games

Directed by     Gary Ross

Starring     
Jennifer Lawrence
Josh Hutcherson
Liam Hemsworth
Woody Harrelson
Elizabeth Banks
Lenny Kravitz
Stanley Tucci
Donald Sutherland

From the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins

Games is a post apocalyptic very reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.   So much so in fact that if you are familiar with the story at all, you may find it distracting you from the movie as a whole.  But in fact, I can think of several classics that can be used as a comparison.  Say for instance, Brave New World, Many of the scenes are the “country rube” reacting to the “huge” city.  You can even see some of “The Demolition Man” mixed in.  So yes, my very first comment about the film is that it is derivative.   It is like Survivor gone mental.

But, back to the movie.  It is called Hunger Games because it seems (but poorly explained)  that the Districts that participated in an uprising were and are still being controlled by “starvation” or hunger if you would.  To reinforce the hunger stranglehold, each district must pay tribute of two children who must fight the other districts to the death.  

Alliances are made, unlikely loves grow and in the end a heavily telegraphed ending.  

Based on what I have read, there are already plans in the work for a 2 and 3 and by the performance in the box office, they should do ok.  

But in all honesty, if you are a Science Fiction fan, this movie will fall flat for you right from the premise.  It is supposed to be hundreds of years in the future, which is not borne up in the tech or even society...Far less adventurous films have done far far better at portraying a future society, like the fifth element or Priest.  

Hunger Games did not leave me hungry for more.  Poorly executed and ill conceived plus the extras on the rental are non-existent!  A 7 at best.  If you have unlimited rentals or streams, watch it on a big screen, otherwise give it a pass.

Schizofredric a short film from Andy Poyiadgi

Here here one of the best, and most likely the strangest short films of 2010. Schizofrederic from director Andy Poyiadgi, winner of an audience favorite award at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival in Seattle this year. The movie's plot is simple if a bit twisted. Frederic's life is going nowhere fast. Until he signs up for a little "trans dimensional" therapy that he finds online. Like Frederic, your impression of online self help programs will be forever changed. lol


SCHIZOFREDRIC - Dir: Andy Poyiadgi
Uploaded by SFLTV. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Review: Eureka Seven Good Night, Sleep Tight Young Lovers - Blu-ray

Eureka Seven Good Night, Sleep Tight Young Lovers
Director: Tomoki Kyoda

Kaori Nazuka as Eureka

Yuko Sanpei as Renton

Fans of the Eureka Seven anime series might be a bit confused with this release. To give you an idea of how it great the divergence is from the anime series it might be best to list the synopse from animenetwork.com

• Renton, son of scientists, and Eureka, a girl who can't live under the sun, are raised together when very young and become very attached to each other. One day, Eureka is taken away. Powerless at the time, Renton vows to rescue her. He enters the military and is soon assigned to the Independent Youths Unit 303 of the First Mobile Forces thanks to his exceptional performance alongside his Nirvash, a bio-mechanical armor/control system. Unknown to Renton, there is a plot to extinguish the alien invasion that is currently happening. It involves not only him, but Eureka too.

You could almost call this release a reboot. The writer and director will even admit that this movie bears only a superficial resemblance to the original anime series. Many of the character that appeared in the original series are included in the movie however most are radically different the movie. It is safe to say that as a general rule the story line and characters are a story unto themselves.

Here is Bandai Entertainment's synopses
This is another version of the story of Renton and Eureka. For almost half a century, mankind has battled a mysterious organism from space called “EIZO.” In 2054, there is a young soldier on board the fighter aircraft commanded by Holland, GEKKO, of the renegade group GEKKOSTATE, who is battling EIZO. The young soldier’s name is Renton. He boards Nirvash and heads for the battlefield. He has only one dream: to rescue his childhood friend, Eureka, who was kidnapped eight years ago and return to his hometown. Fate, however, brings tribulations to test the young love between Renton and Eureka --mission and emotion, truth and lie, past and future, life and death, reality and dream and even Holland – the entire world stand in the way of the two as the final battle with EIZO approaches…

That being said, the movie is certainly worth a look. If you enjoyed the look and feel of the original series you will find many of the same elements here. But that really should not be a deciding factor. The decision should be, if you never saw Eureka Seven would this movie be worth seeing and would it stand on it own merit? The answer is an emphatic yes.

Eureka Seven Good Night, Sleep Tight Young Lovers takes the whole arc from start to finish in two hours which is what one twelveth of the tv series. Not saying that speed is the key here, but the story line is every bit as complex so my hat is off for the screenwriter.

The Blu-ray version is not half bad. The graphics and audio are great. The extras are a bit lite, but the "making of" featurette is fun just for the differences in Japanese vs American production companies.

Trailer: Source Code directed by Duncan Jones

Remember Duncan Jones? Come on.... Moon? With me now? Ok, here is the trailer for his newest mind twisting film called Source Code.

Hayao Miyazaki's early post-apocalyptic film "Nausicaä"

IO9 points us towards a film, ground breaking for it's time and still wildly influential in film making today. IO9 blog point out that Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Can now be viewed free online.

Hayao Miyazak created movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, (I can not suggest strongly enough that Spirited Away is a MUST SEE) Nausica is one of his earliest efforts and is absolutely brilliant. The Manga influenced anime film concerns Earth a 1000 years in the future after a bio-tech war that caused a eco-disaster. Human civilization has been destroyed, small human settlements survive, widely separated from each other by a toxic environment flora and fauna that seemed bent on destroying what is left of humanity.

Here is the Wiki article and the complete IO9 article Here is the movie link

Valley of the Wind review

The first thing I want to say about this movie is that it isn't the New World Pictures 1980 edit of the original film. From what I have read, the film that was released in 1980 was a heavily edited to the point that many of the narrative and plot elements were lost or reduced. The links I have on the blog are for the 2005 re-dubbed and uncut release. I think this is an important distinction to make because the two different edits for all intents make two substantially different films. The 2005 release is how director / writer Myazaki intended.

So what did I think of what many are calling Myazaki's life's work? For it's time it must have been considered ground breaking and considering the main message of the film – way ahead of its time.

The film has a pretty heavy handed environmental theme. With the advent of global warming, it is fairly well accepted that man has played a major role in unbalancing the environment. But for a early 80s movie to champion the idea is a neat hat trick. That being said, the environmental message of the film is pervasive. Hardly a moment passes without some reference to the main thread of the movie which escalates towards the end of the film into an outright harangue on the evils of man and the beauty of the animals (who up until a few moment ago were hell bent on making every human within reach as dead as possible)

I really loved the look and feel of the movie. What we would recognize today as steam-punk, represents the level of tech of the human world. You get the feeling that everything is kind of a one off hand built feel. The flora and fauna reminded me strongly of Fantastic Planet, both elements were enthralling to watch.

However the price you have to pay for those captivating moments is mounting environmental body blows culminating in a soliloquy from the blind woman Obaba who tearfully recants her hate and fear of the Ohmu (gigantic armored caterpillar like insects who until a few moments ago were killing anything that moved) because she didn't realize how “beautiful” they were.

The proselytizing quite frankly put me off. I generally enjoyed the film, but have never warmed up to heavy handed message movies. You however might be different and the film may indeed be perfect for you. For me, at the end, I was flinching and twitching.

Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

Review: Hot Tub Time Machine
Directed by Steve Pink
Produced by Matt Moore, John Cusack, Grace Loh, John Morris
Written by Josh Heald, Jarrad Paul, Sean Anders
Starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Chevy Chase, Crispin Glover, Lizzy Caplan, Lyndsy Fonseca


Have you ever watched a movie that you later would be embarrassed to admit that you saw? No I am not talking about you alone at night with a Ron the Hedgehog porno classic but I am talking about a film that I feel like I need to shower after watching.

And what you say can be so nasty? Hot Tub Time Machine. John Cusack’s career is in the toilet and he wants us to join him in swallowing this turd.

Lets talk about this steamer for a sec. Four loser friends in a drunken attempt to recapture their “golden” years of the long past 80 (80s?! when were they ever the good ole days?! That's your first hint that this is going to be an ankle grabber) shuffle off to a wretched ski resort and find a moldering long unused hot tub outside their suite. Said tub mysteriously starts operating and much drinking a vomiting ensue. Our lackluster losers sober up in the 80s where the malfing tub has deposited them. And now for the next hour we are pummeled by every four letter word in their arsenal, drugs, nudity and more drinking oh and fighting..... I think someone says butterfly effect a couple of times but the rest is a sloppy chaotic mess all but incomprehensible. Ah but in the end Chevy Chase does a couple of walk ons as a hapless hot tub mystic, and saves the day and everything works out in the end. Mostly.

What can I say. I admit it I watched this travesty in cellulose. If anyone in this film had ANY career before this one, its gone now. Oh and the blu-ray? NOTHING. NO EFFORT was made. No extras, no commentary, no deleted scenes. NADA so goose eggs for the disk and I rate the movie maybe a 3, 4 if I want to admit that I laughed at the consequences of a football bet and a squirrel (yep, good for you! Impossibly black and Gary Coleman’s forearm in a single movie scene it seems will make me laugh) Other wise this movie is a complete waste of time. Drop the disk and back away and we will never speak of this again...ok? Good.

Own your own Tron Lightcycle!

Hey, remember those cool light cycles from the first Tron movie? Ever wish that you could own one of those bad boys? Well the first Lightcycle were all CGA so there was little chance of anything but a knockoff that barely resembled the one in the movie. So, move up a few decades and tech catches up with construction. Add to that a brand new Tron movie and the time becomes ripe for a reintroduction of the Lightcycle. And so, if you have 35 large burning a hole in your pocket, you too can own a genuine Tron lightcycle. Not a knockoff but one of five that will be built for the new movie.

From the article:

• The lightcycles are to be built by Parker Brothers Choppers, each will be individually numbered from 001 to 005, and each will come with a different color neon highlight. Only five will ever be built.

You will be able to specify the size engine you want or if you really want to crank up the tech you can go electric.

100 SF Films - Free to watch - online

Amanda Harris sends in a list of science fiction (used rather loosely here) 1oo in all, that can be watched online for my favorite price point, zero!

Films range from the 1980s to films from the early part of the 1900s. Movies like A Trip to the Moon 1902 to 2010: The Year we Make Contact from 1984.

Plenty of good stuff here so if interested, check it out!

Got some good news and maybe not so good news. The good news We may still yet see a Foundation movie. The potentially bad news? Roland Emmerich of 2012 and Independence Day fame has optioned the rights. I have heard this twice so I guess there is a good chance that this may happen. What scares me is that Emmerich, in an effort to lessen misgivings has promised "Not to ruin Foundation". Wow that's a load off me! I would have settled for I will do the very best job I can and honor Dr. Asimov's memory and treat his work with the respect it is due.

Read the 42 Blip article

Can you see Spiner as Questor?

Oooooooooo here is something fun! From Trek Movie Report comes some interesting news from the Roddenberry / Star Trek camp. Remember last week I reported that the Questor tapes were going to be remade? Well guess who Rod Roddenberry wants to star in the new movie? Brent (Data) Spiner! Yeah! Does that work or what?!!!

Now before you get yourself in a bunch, Spiner (now 61) has not expressed ANY interest in the role and Roddenberry admits that director Tim Minear "may be looking in a different direction".

Be interesting to see how this plays out though. For complete article, go to TrekMovie.com

Review: Knowing staring Nicolas Cage

Knowing
running time 116 minutes

directed by Alex Proyas
staring Nicolas Cage Rose Byrne Chandler Canterbury Lara Robinson

Knowing is on the surface a fairly simplistic end-time movie. However some of the issues dealt with in the movie itself are fairly complex and sophisticated.

Nick Cage's character John comes into possession of a strange piece of paper covered by what at first seems nonsense numbers. This paper was created 50 years ago by a little girl and place into a time capsule. At first the numbers seem to have no meaning until, by chance John notices a string that dated 9/11.

After that John is able to tie many of the numbers to past events, its at this point he notices that several of the number sequences are in the future. John witnesses a few of these events but is not able to prevent any. John is then motivated to search out the little girl's daughter to help him understand what is going on.

In a sub plot we learn that John's son Caleb has been hearing what he calls whisperers as is the daughter of Diana, the adult daughter of the girl who created the number paper. The Whisperers become much more evident to John and Caleb as they near the last date on the paper.

The ending is full throttle and at times quiet and mysterious and turns out as you suspect and not quite as you suspect at the same time. Its a movie that doesn't lean heavily on cgi and special effects - even though many of the integral moments are just that...cgi - and at the same time treats the viewer with a modicum of intelligence, letting you work out the little details for yourself. That in and of itself is a rare commodity these days.

And the DVD? One with extras is getting hard to find as well! Not the case here! Very impressive. We have the basic director narrative, though it's more of the thought behind the movie, a real good "making of" featurette and surprisingly, a piece of apocalyptic philosophy in historical reference. Quite interesting.

So overall? With a theme that could easily beat you over the head with special effects, cgi pyrotechnics and thoughtless violence where in the end the Earth is saved by a gigantic paper plate (I swear I had that mentioned to me by someone who just saw a version of the movie I was glad this one wasn't having the planet compared to a plastic plate and saved by a big paper plate in space...I swear I am telling the truth!) we are allowed to think and make up our own minds, this movie scores big for me. Plus add in an excellent special features selection and I can 9.5 or a 10. What am I waffling on? Well some of the cgi was clearly cgi if you catch my drift and the sparklie creatures at the end....that was old when Ron Howard did it what 20 some odd years ago? It kinda bothered me that there were effects being used that might be older than the audience watching....but it wasn't enough for me to even come close to panning the movie. Good addition to the dvd library.

Review: Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation
Director McG
John Connor (Christian Bale)
Marcus (Sam Worthington)
rated pg13 116 minutes

This is the fourth movie in the Terminator series. This time we have a very radical departure for the Terminator franchise. This time we move into the future and meet the adult John Connor as organized military resistance to Skynet is failing and it becomes clear to John that he must make a push to organize and guide what is left of human resistance to the machines.

Curiously the movie doesn't start with Connor in the future, but the mysterious Marcus in present day, who is scheduled for some unknown reason for lethal injection - donates his body for medical research. Marcus wakes up to a world in chaos. In his efforts to discover what happened, saves and befriends not Connor but a teenage Kyle Reese.

After Reese is captured by Skynet, Marcus befriends a downed resistance pilot in hopes of finding Connor and aid in rescuing Reese. For those that may not have seen the movie, I am not going to give away some crucial elements in the movie. Needless to say there are more plot twists than a murder mystery.

The first thing I can pleasantly say about the film is that it is the best movie in the series since the first. With the first Terminator, we were always guessing and never quite sure what was really going on. Reese was great for clearing up some problems, but often causing more questions to arise than he cleared up. The follow on movies played it very safe and really didn't introduce anything new. Sure a new terminator here or there but it was still bad old Skynet sending back bad ole Terminators to get Sarah or later John. Now we are treated to a whole new piece of the Skynet/Terminator time-line. Terminator fans will really find this fascinating.

So, how is Salvation as a movie? Well considering the whole franchise is pure action / drama, Salvation holds the course rock steady. But it takes a few chances brings a whole new time-line segment and comes really close to ensemble acting. So for me that was a pleasant departure. Yeah the ending was like telegraphed 3 movies ago, but at least you are not groaning "not another one!?"

Don't get me wrong, its a fan movie and doesn't even pretend to try and stand on its own merit, but the box office showed that no one should have worried...but if you have never seen a Terminator movie (really? were you in a coma?) go watch the first movie...the others are a waste (if for no other reason than you are trying to figure out whats going on...) and you will already know all you need to.

Not even going to bother rating the DVD...I rented the WS version and it should be the ONLY you view, blue ray or regular because the action is non stop corner to corner. The movie is worth watching and dvd worth renting just for the action and with the DVD that's all you get. Do I have any bitches? Surely! Like someone smack the editor please! One of my favorite character actors, Michael Ironside (not the first time he worked with Arnold in a sci-fi flick) had virtually no on screen time. You could say that about Arnold, but that was all CGI. Editing in the beginning at least was chaotic, but seemed to relax in the second half. Oh you could nit pic I suppose, but it really is a pretty well made film.

Overall I would give it an 8 just because it really is not a stand alone film and NO special features. But if your a Terminator fan This is a worthy rental.

Complete Metropolis to be seen first time in 80 years

According to this IO9 article, the original full length Metropolis by Fritz Lang will be shown for the first time in 8 decades at next year's Berlin Film Festival.

The original did not do well in it's first release and many people in the government at the time felt that the movie contained too much propaganda so almost 30 minutes were excised from the original film and was afraid lost. That was until the discovery of an uncut 16mm print last year that has since been restored.

The showing next year will be the first time that the film has been view uncut since 1927.

Review: Minority Report - I finally sat through it!

Believe it or not, I just got around to watching Minority Report. For those of you that live in a cave like I do, Minority Report is a 2002 science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia in the year 2054, where "Precrime", a specialized police department, apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called "precogs". The cast includes Tom Cruise as Precrime officer John Anderton, Colin Farrell as Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, Samantha Morton as the senior precog Agatha, and Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess.

This movie was a commercial success and was a multi-award winning film, however awards like the Academy Award were not for science fiction but for sound editing... and that might be indicative of what I felt troubled me about the movie. Tom Cruise again shows he has no acting range. You could take his character here and drop it unchanged into Top Risky Mission if you catch my drift. Plus the fact that the movie is different enough from the story that I had trouble relating to the characters. It's set in a different place, a different agency and the main character John is unrecognizable (you get a clear impression from Dick on howAnderton should look and act ....which is not Cruise)

The movie is really just an action flick. Even in Blade Runner, Ford's character is allowed to question and suspect the status quo. That being said, the action and overall look of the film is really good. What is really telling is that the tech which I have to say is quaint. Now, before you call me on this, let me explain. I suspect that Spielberg used something akin to what I would call "the Star Trek " extrapolation. Look at tech existing now, and look at how Star Trek used it's tech....then add on 40 some odd years. What I mean is, look at how communications, computers, entertainment and transportation changed from when Star Trek was on to about now.....and you can see the changes and growth and also how really wrong Star Trek got some of it, because of the fundamental changes in technology. Spielberg did a good job of extrapolation of the technology but got the time frame almost laughably wrong. Now, given that movie was made in 2002 and almost none of the tech used was even close to being mainstream so I can see it being a dazzling 50 years into the future.... We are in seven short years, well familiar with touch screens and gesture control is already being done with no need for lights for reference points...Large flash cards are all but innocuous. Robots in law enforcement may not have reached the level of sophistication, but at their present level of adoption, I would suspect that level will be reached in 10 years or less.

Of course science fiction movies continue to offer real break away visions of transportation both mass and individually. We have not even come close to the vision that were offered in the sixties, so again I feel Spielberg may have missed by more than 50 years in jet-paced policed and vertical roads....50 or better 100 years too early, if ever.

So, in the end, what did I think? von Sydow, Farrell and Witwer all put in good performances, Cruise was predictable. The plot telegraphed itself, but as far as mindless entertainment much like "Total Recall" it certainly does a workman like job of it. I certainly am not sorry I waited so long....perfect late night movie on tv cause I can't sleep scenario.

The Terminator : Timeless piece of history?

When Arnold uttered those now famous words, one wonders if he knew to what extent? Well the National Film Registry, for one, seems to think so. The Terminator is one of 25 other films, to be protect from deterioration that otherwise strikes nitrate and acetate-based films. Also on the list of films targeted for preservation: the original 1933 Invisible Man.

According to the BBC article:

• The Library of Congress is working to digitize and preserve endangered film and audio files. It also acquires a copy for preservation in its own vaults.

• The nation has lost about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90% of those made before 1920.

• The registry, established by the Library of Congress nearly 20 years ago, works with film studios that own the rights to the selected films to ensure original copies are kept safe.

• Among the oldest films to join the list this year are the ground-breaking 1929 film Hallelujah, featuring an all-black cast, and 1910's White Fawn's Devotion directed by James Young Deer, the first documented American Indian movie director.

<- bbc article ->