Cloverfield: DVD Review (2008)

“Cloverfield”

Shot on a hand-held camera, this frenetic, jittery movie follows characters running for their lives from a towering monster destroying Manhattan as if it were a house of cards.

For those who can stomach the jerky madness that ensues, they might find that the film’s first-person point-of-view actually amplifies the action. For those who can’t, motion sickness and headaches likely will take hold.

The movie begins with a surprise going-away party thrown for popular Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who has just been named vice president for an unnamed company in Japan (birthplace of Godzilla, natch).

But when an explosion rocks Manhattan and the film’s towering, vicious version of Godzilla is unleashed, "Cloverfield" starts to amp up the heat with mounting tension.

A scene that involves hundreds of people caught on the Brooklyn Bridge is the movie at its harrowing best. At its scripted worst, the film’s shaky premise can steal you out of the moment.

Still, since the whole movie is a stretch, it’s best not to look for logic and just go with it. "Cloverfield" offers scenes of gripping terror--and a few nice moments of surprise.

Read the full-length, unedited review here.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B

View the trailer below:

Aliens vs. Predator Unrated 2-Pack: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

"Aliens vs. Predator Unrated 2-Pack”: DVD, Blu-ray

Two reasonably well-crafted, B-horror movie cheapies from Fox.

If you’re up for this sort of thing and willing to roll with each film’s illogical punches, the movies provide a visceral ride, featuring a lively pairing of two infamous screen monsters--the aliens from the “Alien” franchise and the predatory beasts from the “Predator” franchise.

In this way, the set evokes the past, specifically the time in which Universal routinely merged its classic horror franchises. In Fox’s case, they do so without the humor and a lot more gore, but what price pop art?

What unfolds is just what you expect--overblown and ripe, with everyone here given so little to work with, the performances are almost pantomime. But who cares? It’s the monsters that matter, and while at this point they absolutely are eligible for AARP, they nevertheless have retained at least some of their bite.

Unrated. Grade: B-

The Invisible Man: Season One DVD Review (2008)

“The Invisible Man: Season One”

From the Sci-Fi Channel, a series in which inprisoned thug Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca) is offered a deal he can’t refuse.

His brother will help bust him out of prison so long as Darien agrees to take an experimental drug called Quicksilver, which promotes invisibility.

Not wanting to remain in the pokey any longer than necessary, Darien decides to go for it, which leads to all sorts of complications when his brother is knocked off and Darien is left with something called “Quicksilver Madness.”

Strange times and invisibility ensue, and while it’s doubtful that H.W. Wells would recognize any of this, there’s no denying that this short-lived, well-written show had its moments.

Grade: B

K-Pax: Movie, DVD Review

Mental illness...or alien?

Directed by Iain Softley, written by Charles Leavitt, based on the novel by Gene Brewer, 120 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2001)

Iaian Softley's sci-fi drama "K-Pax" works as well as it does because of its two male leads--Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges--who keep the story grounded during those moments when it threatens to fly away.

The film is about a mental patient named Prot (Spacey) who may or may not be from another planet. That's its mystery, on which everything is staked.

It's a mix of other movies, from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "Starman." But its true inspiration is the film it mirrors so closely: Eliseo Subiela's 1986 movie "Man Facing Southeast," which also followed a psychiatrist's relationship with a man who claims to be from another world. In Softley's film that otherworld is K-Pax, which may sound like a potent laxative, but which is actually a planet 1,000 light years from Earth. Indeed, it's from K-Pax that Prot (rhymes with float) allegedly hails.

But is he from another planet? After mysteriously appearing in Grand Central Station in a sudden burst of light, it would seem so. But when Prot fails to convince authorities that he's from far, far away, it’s up to Dr. Mark Powell (Bridges) to discern the truth.

"K-Pax" is of the life-affirming genre, which means that a good deal of its story is focused on how Prot's snappy, mischievous charm has the power to lift and change lives. He certainly does so for Powell, whose marriage is a wreck, but also for his fellow mental patients, a colorful group of caricatures who are like teddy bears on Thorazine.

The film never overcomes its insistence that the mentally ill are the equivalent of sheep in a petting zoo, an idea that irritates. But it's also true that big chunks of the movie work, especially those scenes Spacey shares with Bridges, which are so strong, they punch the material into a realm it wouldn't have reached without them.

Grade: B-

The 6th Day: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

The second man

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, written by Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, 124 minutes, PG-13.

In this futuristic thriller about human cloning, Arnold Schwarzenegger is Adam Gibson, a family man who lives in a world where parents regularly clone their children’s dead pets so nobody ever has to suffer the hardship of finding Fluffy doubling as a hassock in the living room.

But when Gibson returns home one evening to find a clone of himself seated at the dinner table with his family, it becomes clear that this whole cloning business has gotten out of hand. Now under siege by a bunch of clone-happy operatives led by Tony Goldwyn and Robert Duvall, Gibson predictably hits the road running in an effort to stay alive while trying to find out why he was targeted for cloning.

Cormac and Marianne Wibberley’s script distills the ethical and moral issues surrounding human cloning into neat soundbites, some of which are intentionally funny, but most of which, in their amusing effort to be profound, only manage to bear the combined intellectual weight of the Doublemint twins.

Not that anyone will be renting this film to decide whether it’s morally right to resurrect grandpa from the grave. They’ll be expecting action, which “The 6th Day” has, but it’s never as thrilling or as ingeniously conceived as the action scenes in Schwarzenegger’s best films, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2.”

Indeed, a good part of “The 6th Day” is so caught up in ethics, it forgets it’s supposed to be an action film. Throughout much of it, audiences might be better off closing their eyes and counting the offspring of Dolly the sheep.

Grade: C+

I Am Legend: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

“I Am Legend” DVD, Blu-ray

Another day, another movie that features a virus wiping out humanity.

In this case, the exception is Will Smith’s resourceful Robert Neville. Save for his faithful dog, Neville is alone in this science-fiction/horror potboiler--or so he thinks before the undead start charging after him at night.

Based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel--which has been filmed twice before, first with Vincent Price in 1964’s “The Last Man Standing” and then in 1971 with Charlton Heston in “The Omega Man”--the movie is strong until its final third, when it lapses into a funk of cliches and sentiment that undermine much of the goodwill that came before it.

Still, since what comes before it is involving--the special effects are especially good --the movie is recommended, with reservations.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B-

View the video review below. It's the second review in a series of three reviews:

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising DVD Review (2008)

"The Seeker: The Dark is Rising"

A mess, though you sense while watching it that it could have been tweaked into something more promising had it not been twisted into something so convoluted.

Alexander Ludwig is Will Stanton, a pouty, 14-year-old American boy living in a small British nowhere with a large family of little flavor.

When into his life come the Light and the Dark--otherwise known as good and evil--Will is pressed into action to keep the dark from rising. Or else, you know, evil with reign.

Guiding him through his dull journey are the Old Ones, with Merriman Lyon (Ian McShane, wasted) and Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy, ditto) informing Will that he has special powers (which he rarely chooses to use) and encouraging him to seek out the six signs of light.

To do so, he must travel through time, find the signs in bouts of chaos, and collect them so he can build a defense against the dark side, which is personified by the Rider (Christopher Eccleston).

Trouble is, since Will is the seventh son of a seventh son, with all that implies, pulling away from the dark side proves something of a challenge--just not a very entertaining one.

Read the full, unedited version of this review here.

Rated PG. Grade: C-

Gattaca: Blu-ray DVD Review (2008)

"Gattaca" Blu-ray

Imagine a world where perfection is genetically possible. Okay, that's easy to imagine. But now imagine this: Life begins not in the womb, but in the test tube, where genetic elements are clinically tampered with to weed out any number of deformities.

In the cold, futurific world explored in “Gattaca,” those deformities might include, say, skin color, sexuality, obesity, what have you, with the end result being a child whose possibilities are so endless, corporate doors eventually will swing wide to accept this “valid” individual into their ranks.

But what if you were created from a more natural form of coupling and still wanted the perks of the genetically perfect? Such is the case with Vincent (Ethan Hawke), an “in-valid” who dreams of becoming a crew member on an expedition to Titan, Saturn's fourteenth moon.

To do so, he first must land a job at Gattaca, a space station that routinely checks the “validity” of their employees by taking blood and urine samples. Does Vincent make it inside? Of course--just in time to meet the woman of his dreams (Uma Thurman) and to be rooted out for a murder he didn't commit.

This compelling variation of “Brave New World” is stylish and provocative, a drama that looks deep into the soulless perfection of the petri dish, where it sounds a warning bell by showing us exactly where our own world might be headed.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B+

The Spiderwick Chronicles, Jumper and Definitely, Maybe: Movie Reviews (2008)

After weeks of reviewing as many Academy Award-nominated films as possible before the Academy Awards hit last Sunday, this site has sorely lacked reviewing newer, more popular fare now in theaters.

So, here’s some atonement — a rundown of three films available everywhere.



First up is Mark Waters’ "The Spiderwick Chronicles," which is based on Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black’s popular series of books. Karey Kirkpatrick, David Berenbaum and John Sayles are credited with the screenplay, but it’s likely that they don’t mention it. In spite of the talent on display here, the result is an uneven effort, to say the least.

Freddie Highmore plays two characters, twins Jared and Simon, with Jared’s bold combativeness in stark contrast to Simon’s more, shall we say, delicate demeanor. Sarah Bolger is their older sister Mallory, who conveniently knows her way around a sword, and Mary-Louise Parker is their recently divorced mother, who has left New York and moved them all into one mother of a haunted house far away in the country.

to get its hands on that book for reasons best notNaturally, that house is bulging with mysteries and problems, most of which are unleashed when Jared finds an ancient-looking book written by Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) and opens it in spite of warnings not to do so. When he does, a wealth of computer-generated freaks and monsters spring forth, with one towering, fearless ogre (Nick Nolte) especially determined revealed here.

"Spiderwick" is another in a long line of children’s books translated for the big screen, and that’s part of its problem. If you’re going to compete in an arena already owned by the "Harry Potter" and "Narnia" franchises, you’d better enter that fray determined to show you can compete favorably with them. And that’s where "Spiderwick" runs into trouble. While it earns points for being genuinely scary and having good special effects, the film isn’t nearly as compelling as its competition, the tale bogs down in its hectic switch from fantasy to reality, and there’s the sense that it might only be here to cash in.



Next up is Doug Liman’s sci-fi thriller "Jumper," a complicated mess that doesn’t offer audiences a single challenge beyond the very real challenge of getting through it.

In the film, Hayden Christensen is David Rice, a jumper whose powers of teleportation are under attack by a Paladin named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson, bleached, bellowing, boring), who is trying to kill David and other jumpers as they leap about the world while David also tries to rescue his girlfriend back in Ann Arbor, Mich.

If Ann Arbor sounds like a comedown considering all the exotic locales the movie visits — from Egypt to Prague, Japan to New York and beyond — it is, for sure, but at least it’s keeping with the movie’s ongoing run of disappointments.

With the exception of Jamie Bell as a fellow jumper (he has the sort of presence Christensen must envy), everything in this exhausting movie goes wrong, which is curious since Liman directed the excellent first "Bourne" movie. And yet here, he puts the squeeze of stupidity on us right from the start. Unless you’re willing to wade through the film’s embarrassing plot holes or are seeking one of the season’s bigger unintended comedies, skip "Jumper." It’s an abstract junker — and in an adolescent way.



But don’t miss Adam Brooks’ "Definitely, Maybe," which is one of the better romantic comedies to come along in awhile. It’s a film that at once embraces formula and, in critical scenes, dismisses it all together. It’s Brooks’ eagerness to try different approaches to the otherwise rote material that gives his movie its offbeat edge and which keeps it rooted in some semblance of reality.

Early in the film, Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds in a fine performance) is asked a few difficult questions by his inquisitive 10-year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin). Some of those questions involve sex, which she’s learning about at school, and another involves the reason Will is divorcing Maya’s mother.

That question proves to be the land mine.

Since we don’t know who the mother is, what ensues is a trip back in time to 1992 to find out. There, we see a younger Will leaving his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) to work on the Clinton campaign and apparently, when their relationship fizzles in New York, to enjoy his share of women. Those women include an office worker played by Isla Fisher and a journalist played by Rachel Weisz, two fine actresses who join Banks in playing their roles very differently and very well.

It is, in fact, a virtue of the film that none of the women come off as types. Like Will himself, sometimes we like them, sometimes we don’t, which makes for a richer experience all around. Manipulation is at work in this movie — hello, Breslin! — but it doesn’t suffocate you because Brooks increasingly finds ways to deepen his characters, including one played by Kevin Kline, who is so on and so in line with what Brooks is trying to achieve here, he nearly steals the show.

Grades: "Spiderwick": C+; "Jumper": D; "Definitely": B+

View the video review here.

I, Robot: Blu-ray Movie Review (2008)

“I, Robot” Blu-ray

Like so many science fiction movies, Alex Proyas’ “I, Robot” peers into the future and sees a wealth of technology it doesn’t like or trust.

In this case, it sees robots, one for every five people in the United States alone.

As the film opens, it’s 2035 and these gleaming automatons are everywhere, weaving through Chicago’s crowded streets with their weirdly translucent faces and good manners.

Created by Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the robots are a cheerfully enslaved race of circuitry and metal that do the work we don’t want to do while abiding by three laws--they must never injure humans or allow them to be injured, they must obey humans unless doing so would injure a human, and they must protect their own existence, unless doing so would go against the first two laws.

For most, that philosophy is sound--it covers the bases. But for Will Smith’s Detective Del Spooner, there are holes in those laws that are worth worrying about, particularly when Dr. Lanning is found dead.

The film's first-rate action and special effects sequences are thrilling, especially at the end and particularly given its high-definition transfer, which just enhances everything.

As for Smith, he holds the movie together with a performance he has given before in other, similar films, but the good news is that the script doesn't let him down. It gives him enough funny, throwaway lines to make this movie a swell crowdpleaser.

PG-13. Grade: B

Video Review: The Spiderwick Chronicles, Jumper and Definitely, Maybe

After weeks of reviewing as many Academy Award-nominated films as possible before the Academy Awards hit, this site has sorely lacked reviewing newer, more popular fare now in theaters.

So, here's some atonement--a video-review rundown of three films available everywhere: The Spiderwick Chronicles, Jumper and Definitely, Maybe.

I, Robot: Blu-ray Movie Review

Below is our video review of the Will Smith movie "I, Robot," which is just out on Blu-ray disc.

Cloverfield: Movie Review (2008)

Nothing lucky here.

Directed by Matt Reeves, written by Drew Goddard, 84 minutes, rated PG-13.

Long before the Statue of Liberty’s head is ripped off its neck and hurled down the streets of lower Manhattan, where it lands with a thud in the new Matt Reeves movie, "Cloverfield," you know you’re in for something you’re either going to love or loathe.

For the most part, the deciding factor will come down to the way the movie is filmed.

Much like its technical inspiration "The Blair Witch Project," the film’s conceit is that you witness its story through a handheld video camera — and not one armed with a steadying device. This frenetic, jittery movie is shot by characters running for their lives from a towering monster destroying Manhattan as if it were a house of cards.

For those who can stomach the crazed rush of jerky madness that ensues, they might find that the technique amplifies the action with a sense of urgency — it does, after all, put you in the middle of the chaos in ways that a third-person perspective could not. But for those who find the idea of watching a movie that seems as if it were filmed from the business end of a jackhammer, well, motion sickness and headaches might take hold.

From Drew Goddard’s script, "Cloverfield" begins with a surprise going-away party thrown for popular Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who has just been named vice president for an unnamed company in Japan (birthplace of Godzilla, natch), to which he’s about to relocate.

Rob’s best friend, Hud (T.J. Miller), has been charged by Rob’s brother, Jason (Mike Vogel), to film the farewell testimonials. With video camera in hand, Hud bumbles around the party garnering those testimonials — all while trying to make nice with grim Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), who dislikes him. Meanwhile, Rob arrives to cheers.

His elation doesn’t last long. First, his estranged girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) shows up with a new beau on her arm, and then, after she argues with Rob and leaves in a huff, all hell breaks loose when an explosion rocks Manhattan.

To the rooftop the partygoers flee, where they watch skyscrapers collapse in ways that leave many wondering aloud whether "it’s the terrorists." Soon enough, on streets choked with enough soot and debris to recall images of 9-11, which the movie uses to bolster its horror, they find out exactly what they’re up against — a beast so beautifully realized by the film’s superb special effects, "Cloverfield" starts to amp up the heat with mounting, claustrophobic tension. One scene that involves hundreds of people caught on the Brooklyn Bridge, for instance, is the movie at its harrowing best.

At its scripted worst, the film’s shaky premise can steal you out of the moment: As selfish as the main characters come off at the start (the exception is Hud), we’re meant to believe they nevertheless will journey into the heart of monster madness and risk their lives when Rob receives a distressing phone call from Beth, who needs their help and whom he is determined to save. Given all that they endure trying to reach her, it’s a stretch to believe they wouldn’t turn back midway through, if only to save themselves, but since the whole movie is a stretch anyway, it’s best not to look for logic and just go with it.

Since "Cloverfield" offers scenes of gripping terror — and a few moments of genuine surprise — many will be happy they do so.

Grade: B

The Golden Compass: Movie Review (2007)

Losing its way

Written and directed by Chris Weitz, based on the novels by Philip Pullman, 114 minutes, rated PG-13.

Much like Joe Wright's forthcoming film "Atonement," Chris Weitz's "The Golden Compass" scores best in that it's undeniably a great-looking movie.

A very good Nicole Kidman, for instance, is a golden vision of cinematic perfection, slinking with smiling menace through an imperfect movie stymied by an unnecessarily dense script and a chafe, baited ending that offers more disappointment than satisfaction.

Weitz based his script on the first book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and he uses his $180 million budget to create a world that hovers somewhere between the sterility of science fiction and the richness of fantasy. As a result, the movie can be beautiful and harrowing, but too often, it also is canned and derivative.

In many ways, "Compass" will remind viewers of 2005's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," a superior film that grabbed audiences from the start with the dramatic pull offered by its well-rounded characters and story, and the seamless incorporation of its special effects, which were among the year's best.

Though "Compass" follows "Narnia" in that it has created something of a stir within the restless Catholic League, which has since condemned the movie for what it views as atheist undertones, it otherwise is nowhere near on par with "Narnia."

What's missing isn't just a sense of magic to the production and a clear idea of all the evil working to undo young Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), who is in possession of the golden compass of the title, an alethiometer used to mine the truth in all things asked of it. What's critically missing here is soul, gathering momentum and a lasting element of danger, all of which would have helped "Compass" to match "Narnia's" operatic tone.

About the compass of the title. Lyra receives it from her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig, wasted), who instructs her to keep it hidden from Kidman's Mrs. Coulter, a glam tour-de-force who represents the Magisterium (or the Catholic Church--you decide), and who is all about crushing free will in children. So, yes, she's about as warm and snuggly as an ice pick. Or that other Coulter--Ann.

When Mrs. Coulter demands that Lyra accompany her on a journey away from Jordan College, where Lyra attends school, Lyra is seduced into believing that she'll be going to the north, where Asriel has departed for his own adventures and a friend of hers has gone missing.

Along with her "daemon" Pantalaimon (voiced by Freddie Highmore), a furry little beast that represents an extension of Lyra's soul (everybody in the movie has one of these creatures), she climbs into Coulter's sleek-looking Zeppelin and off they go--straight into trouble, the heart of which is revealed when Lyra comes to learn all that Coulter is about.

Helping Lyra fight the Magisterium is the warrior polar bear Iorek Byrnison (Ian McKellen), whose battle with the ferocious polar bear, Ragnar (Ian McShane), allows the movie a needed slice of action, as well as the Gyptians, scores of witches and even Sam Elliott as a gun-toting cowboy, all of whom factor into the final battle scene.

In less than two hours, "The Golden Compass" packs in all of this and more--too much more, really--building questions along the way that are left unanswered in one of the year's most rushed, unsatisfying endings, one that departs radically from the book. While those questions likely will be answered in future movies, the grumbling among the audience members at my packed screening suggested that at least a few of them should have been answered right there and then.

And they were right.

Grade: C+

Hollow Man: Director's Cut: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray disc Review (2007)

“Hollow Man: The Director's Cut: DVD, Blu-ray”

Nevermind the characters. The first thing to disappear in Paul Verhoeven’s 2000 film “Hollow Man” is the movie's interest in its premise, which vanishes thanks to a script more interested in gore and horror movie clichés than in exploring the tantalizing prospects of becoming invisible.

Fine special effects abound, but those effects are undermined by unremarkable characters and ridiculous exchanges of dialogue ("Let me ask you another question," says one character. “Is it about who’s going to be on top?” answers the other).

Kevin Bacon is Sebastian Caine, an arrogant scientist who, along with a team of other scientists (Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Mary Jo Randle), has discovered a formula for making people invisible.

After injecting himself with the formula, Caine disappears, but instead of exploring the moral ramifications of what it means for mankind to have the power of invisibility, the film takes the easy way out.

To serve the box office, it sends Caine on a cliched killing spree.

Rated R. Grade: C-

Red Planet: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

Finding a measure of intelligence

Directed by Antony Hoffman, written by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin, 116 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2000)

In 1924, director Yakov Protazanov filmed “Aelita: Queen of Mars,” a silent Soviet propaganda film that drew comparisons between Russia and what Protazanov perceived as the capitalist planet Mars. It featured an engineer who kills his wife (a refugee care worker), takes off for the red planet in his homemade spaceship, and falls in love with his dreamgirl, Aelita: Queen of Mars.

For its time, the film was a hugely hyped, big-budget spectacle--one that not only influenced Fritz Lang’s 1926 film, “Metropolis,” but which directly influenced Hollywood’s fascination with the red planet.

It may not be fair to suggest that the groundbreaking “Aelita” is responsible for such camp debacles as “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” “Lobsterman from Mars,” “Devil Girl from Mars” and “Planet Blood,” but it can be said that the film sparked pop culture’s ongoing fascination with seeing Mars on film, thus paving the way for those lesser films to land in theaters.

Antony Hoffman’s “Red Planet” is a continuation of that effort. The film, which is Hollywood’s second attempt this year at finding intelligent life on the fourth rock from the sun (Brian De Palma launched his syrupy, ill-fated “Mission to Mars” in February), surprises in that it does find a measure of intelligence.

It stars Val Kilmer, Carrie-Ann Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker and Terrence Stamp as astronauts sent to Mars to study the growth of algae planted earlier to create a breathable atmosphere. But when a solar flare damages the crew’s ship, all hell--predictably--breaks loose: part of the crew finds themselves stranded on Mars while another, Bowman (Moss), is stuck aboard the failing mother ship.

As rote as this sounds, “Red Planet,” which is being marketed as a sci-fi thriller when it’s actually an ecological drama about the ramifications of Earth’s ruined atmosphere in the year 2025, nevertheless manages to drum up some dramatic interest--it does a fair job in fleshing out its characters before throwing them into turmoil; its production values are first rate; and there are a handful of moments that genuinely thrill.

Still, the film is mostly too introspective, too drawn out, too leaden to suit. There was a time in film, such as in “Aelita: Queen of Mars,” when a trip to Mars was as impossible to conceive as it was exciting to imagine. Now, with Mars within our grasp, we’ve come to a point when the trip itself seems almost like a ho-hum breeze.

Maybe it’s time for Hollywood to return to other planets--say Saturn, Pluto or Neptune --and discover what cinematic life can be found out there.

Grade: C+

Pitch Black: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

Introducing Vin Diesel

Directed by David Twohy, written by Twohy and Jim and Ken Wheat, 107 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2000)

David Twohy’s sci-fi thriller “Pitch Black” sees clearly through the dark, murky world of less successful sci-fi movies.

It’s a good student who has learned from the pitfalls of the genre--weak premise, messy plot, terrific special effects at the cost of thinly drawn characters--and uses that knowledge to create a world filled with believable characters, genuine suspense, and creepy moments of horror that grab and linger within the gathering darkness.

Nothing in this film is new -- audiences have seen much of this before in other movies, particularly “Alien” and “Mad Max,” the latter of which has obviously inspired Twohy’s vision of a desolate future filled with lost souls. But Twohy (“The Arrival,” “Disaster in Time”) is nevertheless able to make it all seem fresh, sometimes startlingly so.

His film opens with a spaceship falling from space and slamming spectacularly into an unknown planet with three suns (this sequence alone is worth the price of the rental). There, the ship’s nine survivors, including the female pilot, Fry (Radha Michell), lawman Johns (Cole Hauser) and the dangerous prisoner Riddick (Vin Diesel), learn they must take cover from the darkness of a rare solar eclipse--or else.

Indeed, as they learn early on in one particularly bloody scene, this planet holds a carnivorous secret--one that’s only let loose in the dark.

Shot in the same bleached tones as “Mad Max” and “Three Kings,” and punctuated throughout with Graeme Revell’s stirring tribal score, “Pitch Black” knows what “The Blair Witch Project” knew so well--real horror is best realized in the dark.

Grade: B+

The Day After Tomorrow: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray disc Review

"The Day After Tomorrow: Blu-ray"

If ever there was a movie designed to land at the top of Al Gore’s Netflix list, this is it.

Just out on Blu-ray disc, this global-warming thriller finds mother nature huffing and puffing and blowing the world down. Tokyo is slammed with hail stones, New York City is overcome by a tidal wave, Los Angeles is riddled with tornados.

Folks, Dorothy never had it this bad and she was saddled with a gingham dress, a yapping dog and a wicked witch.

The film’s first 20 minutes are a blast, literally, with director Roland Emmerich having a grand time playing Mother Nature.

Released in 2004, the film was ahead of its time, taking the position that thanks to the atmosphere being littered with greenhouse gases, major climate shifts would alter the earth. In this case, that means plunging it into a new ice age, with the movie focusing on a handful of characters trying to survive the ensuing devastation until the worst is over--you know, the day after tomorrow.

Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum and Sela Ward star. All are fine. Better is that while the movie is trash, it isn’t a cheat. It’s fast-paced and entertaining, particularly in its first hour, a film with good window dressing and an ecological heart that makes up for the so-so script grinding away with stock B-movie characters.

Several scenes pack a punch, such as when wolves, newly escaped from a zoo, go on the prowl and then on the attack.

Or the scene that follows, when a deadly blast of sub-arctic air leeches into the city, freezing everything in sight.

Or, best yet, when Americans are shown fleeing illegally across the border into Mexico in an effort to beat the looming deep freeze. It’s the film’s most outrageous, wittiest twist, with our administration promising to forgive all Latin American debt should that country allow us in.

Genius.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B

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The Core: Movie Review, DVD Review (2003)

Taking to the terra firma with a terror

(Originally published 2003)

Directed by Jon Amiel, written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers, 135 minutes, PG-13.

In the new big-budget, B-movie disaster flick, "The Core," world annihilation is the order of the day but then so is the crash landing of the space shuttle “Endeavor,” which plummets from the sky in the film's uncomfortable opening moments to slam into the Los Angeles River.

Given Hollywood's increasing reticence to release anything that might generate even the slightest whiff of scandal or that might suggest--God forbid--that the studios are insensitive to current events or to the current mood of the country, the film's appearance in theaters comes as something of a surprise.

But not a shock. This is Hollywood after all, and nobody is ever going to accuse it of having good taste.

As directed by Jon Amiel from a script by Cooper Layne, "The Core" is a big, bawdy, end-of-the-world potboiler with a pedigree, one that includes such sci-fi bonanzas as "Fantastic Voyage," "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," "Independence Day" and "Crack in the World," to name a few.

The film is all about heart--the Earth's heart, that is (or its core, to be more specific), which has stopped spinning, a doomsday occurrence that causes all sorts of strange events, such as the sudden deaths of hundreds in Boston, an electrical storm that flattens most of Rome, the disintegration of the Golden Gate Bridge and, in the film’s best scene, a riff on Hitchcock’s “The Birds” that suggests Tippi Hedren might want to steer clear of London for a while.

In an effort to jumpstart the core before we’re all barbequed by the sun, a ragtag team of scientists are plucked from their everyday lives, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and given what can only be described as the world’s largest drill bit, a gleaming phallus outfitted with supercharged laser beams strong enough to cut through almost anything, except, as we learn in one scene, “diamonds the size of Cape Cod.”

Taking to the terra firma with a terror, this gung-ho group—played by Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Tcheky Karyo and Bruce Greenwood--starts drilling toward the Earth’s core, where they hope to deploy the bombs in an effort to start a ripple that will get the core spinning.

You know, sort of like your head is spinning now.

What’s unique about “The Core” is that it keeps its testosterone in check, going for a more pseudocerebral tone rather than one that reflects the Cro-Magnon period “Armageddon” and “Independence Day” embraced with such reckless abandon. The scientists and terranauts have none of the swagger and strut contemporary audiences have come to expect from these sorts of films, which will likely be a relief to