Life

                
'The Blob' meets 'Alien' on board a suddenly expansive ISS in 'Life', the mostly overlooked sci-fi suspense horror from 2017. We don't spend too much time on the discovery or acquisition of the alien structure (there are no planet-side scenes, apart from right at the end), instead getting right into its development into a killing machine. 

I've been looking forward to the DVD release of this all year (when easiest to stream, without them just being recorded from a cinema or having timestamps all over them), not because it looked particularly ground breaking, but simply because I like stories about a small group of people trapped in a space ship with some kind of threat. It's just a premise of which I don't easily tire. It's not very original, but it isn't really trying to be, and there are enough visual nods to classics of the genre to make it clear that 'Life' is self aware without it becoming annoying ala 'Gravity'. The actual plot is simplistic so far as to feel old fashioned, with each crew member being picked off until the last few finally form a plan to get rid of the thing.

                              

                    
The characters are underdeveloped, but nevertheless convincingly portray academics (for whom slightly broken social skills are practically part of the job description). I'm glad that they didn't really bother trying to do the 'Alien' everyone talking at the dinner table scene, because films like this try that all the time and it rarely feels natural.
The alien itself was pretty cool, especially the way it ingested it's prey (and I like the way that it stays so small for so long, and that we get an extended period of prodding it scientifically). I guess it turns out to be smart, because it does the old switcheroo at the end, but we don't really get that impression throughout most of the film. The ending was a negative point for me, I thought the twist was revealed badly. The confusion over which pod is which felt silly and as soon as it started it was clear to me that they'd switch them and have the alien landing on Earth. Also it's all right at the end, it didn't really have any meaning (beyond “surprise, it's intelligent!”) and I highly doubt there'll be a sequel, so I didn't really care.

                    

Life: 49.4

Red Planet

                      

They did a great job here of somehow making a space movie set on and around Mars, featuring an evil robot, backstabbing team members, and flesh eating alien bugs, boring. We start with a long explanation of a pretty basic future scenario (Earth is overcrowded, so we're trying to terraform Mars, one stage of which is oxygen producing moss, which mysteriously disappears so we send a team up there to investigate) and the film isn't finished with us, and we're treated to bouts of terrible stilted explanatory dialogue delivered by the robotic actors throughout the rest of the movie.

All the exposition is really what first kills it for me. The actual characters completely lack character, and just spend their time talking in dated Internet verse at one another about awkward world building.

                         

                      

There were actually a few good cast members, but their performances were crippled by the terrible script. There were also several problem elements, where there only really needed to be one or two. These range from natural disasters to an evil robot to a very obviously evil teammate to evil alien bugs. They can't seem to stick to any one villain for longer than half an hour, and this along with the dated effects and dull action sequences creates a huge disconnect for me.

                

Red Planet: 20.0

Infini

                  

'Infini' is a low budget Australian sci-fi horror that combines elements of 'Blade Runner', 'The Thing', 'Alien' and even 'The Shining' in quite a pleasing way, but fails to be wholly entertaining or memorable.
Starting with some explanatory text, we find that the Earth is overpopulated and lots of people are forced into working for security forces that sort of teleport them to distant outposts to fix them or rescue people or whatever. There's a big catastrophe, and a squad is sent to the furthest outpost from Earth where they find that the frozen shit has  very much hit the space fan. It sports a wilfully unorganised narrative, which I think many viewers will find unpleasantly jarring, but I kind of enjoyed the lack of structure, reminiscent of the infected people's state of mind. Every character is infected fairly early on, pretty much removing any hope. Watching their actions I gradually lost my sense of rooting for one character over another as they were all mentally unstable, and the main reason for viewing became physiological study and morbid curiosity.

                      

                        
I enjoyed the tone though, and it was  a good looking movie (the sets really suited, very industrial and 'Alien'-esque). Their take on zombies were cool too, I found the self mutilation and taunting scarier than classic zombies (possibly because I'm just so used to regular zombies, but I did like the psychological element here for sure).
While most of the characters weren't thoroughly explored, they didn't broadcast their simplicity to me either. Their throwaway dialogue wasn't trying too hard to present one as the funny one, one as the bad ass, the coward, the leader, etc.
I don't want to make it seem like this film is perfect, though. The condition is quite simplistic (at least at first) - it's basically just played out as the sane part of the infected person fighting to control a growing desire for mindless violence - but I liked the concept. There's some sloppy editing too (I'm thinking the repetition of the final speech and the flash forward at the start here in particular), and this is where the low budget shows most, but overall they did a good job of it and the acting was solid and really carried the film.
It gets increasingly introspective towards the end, which is nice. I didn't really connect to the whole family love win out out over base desires thing, but it's a nice message I guess. The final twist of them being replicated completely and finishing the mission to return the Earth was fan-freaking-tastic. The best part is that they all seem to be at least partly aware that they've changed somehow, and that they could be taking whatever change happened to them back to Earth, but they just want to be home safe with their families and not dead after all, and we don't even know how much of them are really human. The threat wasn't the bomb, it was them all along. They are the payload, because selfishness wins out against both love and hate.
I mean it's left a little more open than that - maybe the alien life form was finally taught empathy, reconstructed the humans, and sent them on their way - but that's not how I interpreted it.

                

Infini: 50.9

Kill Command

            

we're into familiar territory here with washed out colours and futuristic marines lacking in depth of personality (there's the leader, the nice one, the creepy one, and the one that gets scared and tries to run away). Some time in the near future a squad is sent out on a training exercise with a mysterious cyborg woman who's along to evaluate their performance and fuck around with their guns, or something. The problem here is that while we start off following her, her motivations for the majority of the film are foggy, and none of the secondary characters are really interesting enough to take over and become primary protagonists. It almost feels like we needed another character to be new to both the soldiering side and the tech person side of this world, for the viewer to really connect with. We have our colonial marines and we have our Bishop, but we don't have a Ripley. The one soldier that I did find half-way likeable actually dies before the first hour is over.

             

              
They get flown out to a remote training facility, but find that all the machines there have turned on their creators. Not particularly original, but it provides a limited mystery to drive the plot and keeps the action flowing. The design of the machines is pretty cool and feel like a natural evolution from where they are now (though honestly most of the robots seem about 20 years in the future while crazy cyborg lady is more like 100). The effects are fine too, and some of the battles are enjoyable and create tension. Their limitations aren't layed out to us at all though, the viewer doesn't fully understand the amount of control the leader robot has over the others for a good while, and it isn't until the final battle that we're told (in one of several chunks of awkward exposition from cyborg woman) that if they kill the leader robot the others all die too, or turn off, or something. The EMP comes out of nowhere too, and what about all those other leader bots in stasis? don't they all share information? So why not just wake up more than two others?

         
Not a total waste of time, but little more than a visually pleasing thoughtless sci-fi action romp. The kind of film I struggle to watch while doing anything else, but not the kind of film I'll likely remember in 6 months.

          

Kill Command: 36.3

Demonwarp

                    

Bigfoot. Zombies. An alien. What more could be asked of a film? The plot (as best as I can figure it): an alien crash lands and starts being worshipped by a priest, who feeds him the hearts of topless women. The alien also turns some guy into a bigfoot who runs around and kills people who turn into zombies that come back to the alien's cave/space ship to work for him as technicians. The main characters are a small group of interchangeable teens in their mid-20s who are topless about 35% of the time. That's over a third. It's as fantastic as it sounds. 

The acting is wooden and difficult to interpret (at the start I couldn't tell if those other guys were drunk too, or if they were just that bad at acting), the writing stinks, and the plot is all over the place (several characters never even meet the main group before being killed, making their presence in the film completely pointless). The copy I saw was really warped (I guess the tape had gotten wet at some point or something) which resulted in the camera wobbling and zooming about oddly. I'm not sure how much of that was intentional to create a sense of unease (doubt it), how much was bad camerawork, and how much was damage to the copy, but whatever the case it proved to be one of the more interesting elements of viewing.

         

        

I was bored a lot of the time. Occasionally 'Demonwarp' is unintentionally hilarious (much of the final act was brilliant) but there are long stretches of filler throughout the main act. Many of the characters were totally unnecessary, and there were lots of weird twists and turns in their relationships with one another (it sort of felt like the director occasionally forgot how each character felt about the others). Overall I'd definitely watch it if you're into bad movies, but don't worry about talking throughout.

                

Demonwarp: 12.2

Independence Day: Resurgence

                     

Looks like getting invaded by aliens was the best thing that ever happened to Humanity. After they get rid of the aliens in the first one world peace is achieved as everyone works together to cannibalise alien tech to defend their planet against future attacks. It's basically 'Star Trek' future, but then more aliens come to fuck it all up again. 

            

                   

I actually liked this one more than the original. It was more fun - but not intentionally so. While the original was bad, this one edged into being so bad it's good occasionally. The feeling wasn't consistent though, and about 80% of the movie was only so that that it was... bad. 

The characterisation was still extremely basic and bland, and just like in the original there was too much jumping around between disperse characters for my liking (I like this more in novels or TV shows that have more time to tell their story, but in a movie it really just results in under-developed characters that we don't care about). Most of the original cast stuck around for this one, but Will Smith , and I'm not complaining, but that and the focus instead on a group of young pilots meant that there was no real main character to focus on. 

I liked some of the funny moments though, and some of them were even intentional! The Whitehouse narrowly escaping destruction was cute, and the scene of Judd Hirsh driving his little boat along with massive tidal waves and explosions going on around him was hilariously bad. Another such moment was that 'Red Tails' level scene where the guy in the plane recognises his stripper-come-doctor mother on the top of a hospital building amid the total destruction of the whole city in time to see her fall to her death. 

Brent Spiner is back, and I really enjoyed him. “We're gonna get you to sick bay” was a highlight, and his character was fun throughout.

                   

                     

In the end though, there was too much happening in not enough time. I liked a lot of the elements, or I at least liked the idea of them, but everything was under-explored. This stretched out would have made a fun, silly, TV series.

                  

Independence Day: Resurgence: 36.4

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

             

Do you remember STAR WARS? So does Disney! 

             

“Lets just get this over with, shall we?” 

               

Holy fan service Batman, this sure did have a lot of things from 'Star Wars' in it. I don't know why “you'll be dead” guy or R2 and C3PO were even in this, those bits were weird and a little embarrassing. 

So after a pretty strong start with 'The Force Awakens', Disney started safe with their stand alones, keeping 'Rogue One' full of references to the original series, and bringing back loads of characters us losers will recognise. So much so that 'Rogue One' ended up feeling like a prequel (didn't they make a cartoon series about this, or something?). The problem with prequels is: did this story ever really need to be told? Well, no. I mean it's art, which (arguably by definition) is unnecessary, but as with the case for any story it's the way that it's told that matters.

         

         

There are two clear routes that this film could have taken, as far as I'm concerned. This could have been a fun spy/heist movie (Like 'Oceans 11' or... 'Mission Impossible' - hey I said “fun”, not “smart”) where a rag-tag group of rebels infiltrate the Death Star, maybe impersonate an officer or something, have to crawl around in ventilation shafts and dupe someone into helping them in some overcomplicated way. In this world wise cracking robots and silly references and cameos would feel at home. I wouldn't take the film seriously, but I'd enjoy it a hell of a lot more. 

The other route would have been a darker brooding war drama with real, relatable characters that you build an emotional connection with. It could be set from a very limited perspective, we don't see any of the big players, just the horror and tyranny of the Empire at work. You could even have a sort of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' moment where one of our protagonists find out that there are real people under those storm trooper masks, and that they're just as scared and confused as the rebels. Or they could do a 'Full Metal Jacket' and start us off in a makeshift rebel (or Imperial) boot camp, where we follow a group of green cadets through training and into the field. Or do both and make the movie three hours long. Hell, I don't know.

            

             

But Mickey Mouse is a greedy bugger. He tried to have his Vader-cake and eat it too, and now he's obese and vomiting it up onto children. The characters lacked any depth and so of course I didn't care (or even notice, a few times) when they died. The cameos and references to the original series were so frequent and transparent that it quickly felt lazy. At the same time, the amount of violence and death (of EVERY main character) means that this'll be a difficult film for little kids to enjoy, because little kids are pussies. 

So the target audience seems to be 30-35 year old fat guys with beards, who orgasm when they see ATATs. That's fine, I have nothing against them, and it's certainly a great 'Star Wars' fan movie.

                    

                 

Disney played it too safe with 'Rogue One'. What we should be seeing at this point is some real innovation, something of a completely different style and tone to the rest of the series. 'Star War' has never been the most serious thing, so I think at this point I'd be making gory 80s style horror films set in the same universe, or artsy stuff. I don't know, just something to shake the universe up and establish these supposedly stand alone films as being properly separate. 

I didn't hate the film, it just didn't live up to expectations. If it wasn't a 'Star Wars' movie it would just be a strangely structured forgettable sci-fi. I didn't feel anything for the characters, but the action was all fine. The dog fighting at the end was particularly exciting and well shot (this director has a great sense of scale that I've noticed in things like his 'Godzilla'). What everyone talked about was the cartoon Tarkin - I didn't actually hate him. It wasn't perfect, but it was fairly impressive and they kept him mostly in the dark. It was a very Lucas-esque move, testing new effects tech in his movies, for better or worse. The Leia shot at the end was on the nose though. Too obviously fake, it pulled me out of the film and muddied the ending.

               

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: 67.1

Screamers

                 

An unoriginal B style low budget sci-fi that's occasionally fun. We know what we're in for with 'Screamers' when it opens with the classic explanatory text crawl. It feels like it was made at least ten years too late - I think this movie belongs in the 80's with a smaller budget and a larger quantity of tongue in cheek. 

It has a slightly overcomplicated background, but basically the Earth has collonies all over the place, and one of them is on some planet with a precious fuel in the ground. When you mine it radiation or something comes out, so they refused to, so a big war started between the inhabitants of that planet and the corporation that owns the mines. The corporation bombs the guys on the planet and the guys on the planet make these tunnelling robots to kill people, who end up improving themselves to the point of looking like people.

               

                     

There's lots of other background information, most of which is given to us via the long exposition dialogue chunks dispersed throughout, but that's already more than you need to know. All you really need to know is that there are evil replicants everywhere. A green marine acts as an audience surrogate, and with his arrival comes awhole lot of extra information that I felt was basically unnecessary. It was at this point that I started to see how odd the pacing of this movie was. It both starts and ends haltingly, in several steps with stretches of filler in between. As it ends we get a lot of false final showdowns, but at that point it felt unintentionally awkward rather than an intended surprise.

The dialogue is terribly cheesy and the characters are simplistic, but it was a fun story and I liked the design of the bare robots (there was one short scene of a stop motion one that I thought was fantastic, but sadly they only used it once). There are no big twists, other than the realisation that random people are robots. I found the kid mildly creepy though (the phrase “can I come with you?” quickly becomes disturbing), and I enjoyed the scene when they were burning and shooting a horde of them.

                     

Screamers: 35.9

Oblivion

                  

'Oblivion' is a good looking, high budget sci-fi that is nonetheless a dull rehash of countless tropes.

          

            

I like the pace. It took its time to set the scene and didn't rely on continuous action. Tom Cruise obviously has a lot of name recognition, but other than that I think he brought very little to the movie. I don't have strong feelings either way for Cruise; he's usually quite good at choosing roles that he works in, but he's a bit bland in this. He's in plenty of great films, but I don't love them for him, if you know what I mean. The characters are all pretty boring, actually, but they're all meant to be either brain washed clones or bunker-bound survivors, so it's understandable.

It feels like it was doing its best to be a proper sci-fi, in a very corporate Hollywood kind of a way. It was perfectly watchable, and I appreciate that someone was trying, but the movie doesn't have enough of a sense of self. It would have benefited from being someone's vision, rather than seemingly the product of a boardroom. 

It was obvious that there was going to be some kind of a big twist. It almost felt like a throwback at times - not in style, but in plot at least. If you've seen a few of these sorts of films you'll see the twist coming, and it makes the resolution as much of a bleak bummer as any classic sci-fi. Good pacing, beautifully shot, and well produced. It's far from original, but it's definitely watchable.

                       

Oblivion: 47.7

Surrogates

              

'Surrogates' looks slick, and the cinematography creates an expensive sci-fi thriller aura. The premise is also pretty good, though its execution and the world building is often terrible. Once we get into the details of the premise - that robotic “surrogates” have become a thing (safer, your choice of body, etc) it begins to break down (like, what, everyone in the world owns one of these things? The only people who don't use them all the time are the ones who protest it on a religious/moral level? What do these things cost, a dollar?) Also, all the tech other than the robot people is the same as it is today, making the robots really stand out and creating a fault in the believability of the fiction. The rest of the world needs to fit the sexy robots, really.

          

          
It also totally lacks subtlety, and fails to look too deeply into the morality problems that the film's premise creates (which is arguably the main component of any good sci-fi).
It still provides a reasonably engaging thriller plot though, and gives Willis plenty of opportunities to crash cars, jump through fires, and generally do what he does. I don't he was the best choice to lead the film though, as a more subtle and less action-orientated actor could have starred in a more thoughtful and character-driven movie.

             

Surrogates: 35.4

Alien: Covenant

                   

I'm not too sure how to feel about this one. I liked 'Prometheus', but watching this made me feel like maybe I didn't after all? I mean.. there was a Xenomorph in this one and the plot mostly made sense, so it's better, right? 

On the other hand: fuck you, audience. I liked 'Prometheus', I liked 'A Field in England', I like artsy and I don't think a cohesive plot is important if the film doesn't need it to be. After the outcry over 'Prometheus' they stepped back a little and played it safer with this one. That's fine, and 'Prometheus' certainly went overboard in plenty of places, but to me this film has a little too much 'Rogue One' about it.

               

                

Where 'Prometheus' went full 'Lost' with the number of unanswered wacky mysteries, 'Covenant' doesn't create too many more, and takes steps to answering several of the biggest ones. I appreciate this side of the coin, but the other side is shinier for me - the side that has a Xenomorph headbutting the cockpit of the ship and then being blown out of the airlock at the end. It wasn't as overt as it was in 'Rogue One', but it was present. This kind of fan service is understandable though, especially when it's part of an over-correct. To be fair, a lot of the references to the originals were fairly low key, and I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than I have to. In my defence, I have become more sensitive to it thanks to the wave of 2000s and 2100s bad remakes. 

The design was great, and all the sets were very much in keeping with the style of the original 'Alien'. All of the visual elements are beautifully put together and the effects were fantastic. There was a pervasive bleak feeling to the whole film, which works well for the series (especially when they were first exploring the planet - that eerie feeling was fantastic, and that was possibly my favourite portion of the movie). 

I also loved the opening - that's basically my dream home, Wayland has taste - and any scenes with Michael Fassbender in it, especially when he's playing David. I didn't like Walter quite so much, possibly just because he's less conniving and evil, but he was a far closer to original androids like Ash or Bishop in his mannerisms.

                    

                         

It lacked the realistic overlapping dialogue and suggestion of a comfortable lived-in relationship between the characters of the original. We had a very slow build up, but instead of exploring the crew (much) we get a lot of details on their mission and the workings of the ship. Personally I love details like this, but I would have appreciated some more character connect too, and I think the slow build up will have bored many viewers (the friend I went to see this with commented on this in the negative, at any rate). It turned out that many of the humans were in relationships with one another, but I never even realised this (and this happened - no joke - at least two or three times) until one of them died and the other one became upset about it. The acting was fine though, and the way that the plot was constructed made the film enjoyable and exciting, especially towards the second and third acts.

                          

Alien: Covenant: 66.7

Gattaca

                
So it's the world of tomorrow, and genetic modification of designer babies has created a new class system of augmented entitled rich people and downtrodden naturally conceived people with shorter life expectancies, high rates of cancers, and lower IQ's. I like this concept, and found it fairly believable, though I think that in-life augmentations would also give people a boost and the differences would basically still be class based.
We're guided through this world by the monotone voiceover of the main character - the futuristic surroundings are all very drab, with sharp angles and washed out pastel colours. The upper class tend to act as sterile and emotionless as their surroundings, while the lower class show incrementally more humanity. The film shows us how the entitled upper class talk down to and generally shit on their fellow humans, and makes it clear that no one sees anything as being wrong or strange about this while allowing it to look as revolting and alien as it should to the viewer. The actual characters are infected a little too much by their emotionless masks at times though, as there's a slight distance maintained between them and the viewer that makes it difficult to connect. While I wasn't so keen on it at first, however, I loved the relationship between the two leads, and the stark contrast in their upbringing.
              

              
The plot is fairly simple once the premise is set up, and a lot of the film plays out in simply exploring the world (something I'm very happy with, as it's a great medium to do that sort of thing in). Once we get the themes of false identity, class differences and repressed emotions solidified the film touches on each repeatedly without jamming any of it down our throats so much. There are just lots of nice little scenes to highlight them (such as his old boss not recognising him once he's working there, and Jerome screaming insults at a detective and getting away with it once his high status is confirmed).
There's some nice imagery in here too. The rocket launches are like a distant beacon calling Vincent to them, reminding me of the lighthouse in Tony's coma dream in 'The Sopranos' calling him towards death.
                    

                       
That that cop turned out to be his brother was dumb, I thought. It worked as a good background for his character and as a way of introducing us to this world, but I don't think it was necessary to have him show up at the end and for them to have a swimming competition for the film to make its point.
Other than a few flaws like that (and if you don't like a generally depressing tone this film just isn't for you - it was dour and self serious, there's no way around it) this is a pretty good movie and a solid sci-fi piece.
                    
During the credits, the letters “a”, “t”, “c” and “g” are highlighted slightly. These are both the letters that make up the title of the film and the four nitrogen bases of DNA. Neat.
                   

Gattaca: 72.8

The Blob

                 

In the same strain of other great remakes like 'The Thing' and 'The Fly', 'The Blob' is a great portrayal of a neat idea. It starts with the classic comet bringing an alien threat to Earth situation (though there's a twist on this later, and many of the smaller elements of the plot are quite subversive). It was either going to be a teenage couple making out in a car or a homeless guy and his dog who first finds the meteor. In this case it was the later. The main characters find the homeless guy and take him to the hospital, there the blob grows and eats football guy. It then makes its way to his friend and another girl in the date rape mobile, eats them, grows. You can see where this is going.

        

        

What I like about this film is that several of the deaths were really unexpected, and even the minor characters had enough of an introduction for us to get a sense of them (and not necessarily care about them, but recognise them when they're being absorbed). 

There are lots of nice little set ups that are payed off later on (other than the odd red herring - I'm thinking of the snow machine here, but the whole boss character was fun, as honestly I expected him to be one of the first to go, when he actually doesn't turn up again until the end, when he suggests they go get the dump truck to transport the frozen blob pieces into storage). Examples of these are the the store guy turning out to be the girl's dad (possibly my favourite ribbed condom joke in a movie), the mum making her kid wear that hoodie with a zipper, and the jump over the gorge. There's very little waste in the story, and the result is a film so engaging that it feels like you've only been watching for around an hour when suddenly the movie is ending and you want more. 

The movement of the blob was really nicely done too - all practical effects, of course, and it's strengths and weaknesses are laid out for us fairly early on. All round it's a very engaging horror, and while not being particularly thoughtful it was certainly enjoyable.

                      

The Blob: 54.2

Predator

               

Vietnam meets 'Aliens', action meets horror, and Schwarzenegger meets Predator in this classic testosterone fuelled tropical thriller. 

The story is straight forward - An alien comes to Earth in search of dangerous prey (people) and interrupts a load of humans who are busy fighting one another. All but the first scene is set in the rain forest, and the setting is used to great effect, often being as much as a menace to the characters as the gorillas or the alien is. Suspense is built very well, especially in the first forty minutes, and the abundance of close shot sweaty faces creates a great feeling of claustrophobia despite the outdoor surroundings. If you come into it expecting continuous action it can be dull at times though, especially towards the start where there are lots of lingering shots of dense forest, and the final fight scene that I felt dragged on a bit too long.

                     

           

This is one of the best, possibly THE best, Arnold movies acting-wise. Where he's playing a real human, anyway (obviously the terminator was great but he didn't have to act like a person for that - acting like an emotionless robot is his speciality). Other than the Schwarzenegger standard, the acting in this often boarders on hammy, and this is one of the elements that give it the feeling of a traditional dumb 80's action film (as well as the style of all the action, especially the big assault on the guerilla base fairly early on in the film). Carl Weathers is by far the most competent actor in this, and apparently Schwarzenegger took a lot of cues from him. I was always bummed that Billy dies off screen though - I don't any reason for it, and he was kinda built up to be this badass survivalist guy (even cutting his chest prior to fighting the Predator) but all he gets is an off-screen scream? Missed opportunity I'd say, especially considering how nicely shot that fight would have been on the tree bridge.

A really memorable part of 'Predator' is the score, which was made by the same guy who had recently done the one for 'Back to the Future', and thanks to a limited release post movie was in high demand for a long time. Most of the effects have stood up quite well over time too (though maybe not the early 'TNG' style electrical effects). The invisibility effect in particular was very experimental and still looks pretty great. The costume was fantastic, especially the face with the moving mandibles and the detailing around the hairs.

                  

                 

The whole Predator character, the way that he moves and looks, raises this film heads and shoulders above the competition. It's very well realised in a way that doesn't pull you out of the film (so often the monster is stilted in movement and poorly made-up, and doesn't provide a believable adversary). Some of the hand acting looked a little clunky, but other than that it was spot on.

Overall this is a solid genre crossing action flick with some very quotable moments. It's become more of a classic over time, and I appreciate that it's not trying to be anything more than what feels natural (much like things like 'Die Hard').

                       

Predator: 81.7

Super 8

                 

'Super 8' plays better on paper than it does on the screen. That is to say, if I read the script for this film I'd probably say something along the lines of: “oh, I see what you're doing here. It's like a Spielburg-esque tame sci-fi horror film for kids. Yeah, that's cool, we don't see enough of that any more”. Scripts can't really convey how a movie is going to feel, though, and this one felt off.

                  

                      

First off, it was very flashy. Abrams directed, and you can tell, as it occasionally veers into scenes of mass destruction, explosion, and lens flairs. A more subdued approach would have worked better I think, as the rest of the movie is trying to be 'ET', and not so many huge destructive spectacles are needed for this kind of kiddy sci-fi adventure. It was very retro, both stylistically and with its plot elements and whatnot (the group of kids - main one, fat one, nerd one, girl, the alien monster, the secretive government elements, etc) but the really obvious way it was done felt a little manipulative. Not in a sinister kind of a way, just in an over played, pandering kind of a way. 

As far as plot goes, nothing too new here. That's to be expected with a throwback like this though, and it kept my attention despite not being hugely engaging. A highlight was the kids, who I found really relatable thanks in part to the high quality child actors (I talk about child actors like I talk about venison) and their interest is making what will surely be an unwatchable short movie (memories). 

So yeah. Very retro. It did its best to bring us back to the 80s, but tried too hard and felt a bit false - not all the way through, but often enough for me not to come away in a great mood about the film.

                 

Super 8: 47.6

Arrival

                

'Arrival' was a pleasant surprise hidden among so many dumb sci-fi action films about aliens invading Earth that were made around the same time. 

It's nearly a hard sci-fi. There's very little action (and it mainly takes place off screen), with the film focusing on the problems of communicating with an alien race. Twelve ships appear hovering over the Earth, each in a different seemingly random location. Each one opens every 18 hours and the two aliens inside can be viewed and interacted with.

I like that we don't see the ship at first, just a long build up of glimpsed news footage and finally her reaction to seeing it, from the screens point of view. Obvious '2001' comparisons aside, the ship is of a nice simple design, towering over the natural landscape. Once they're in the ship a lot of shots are upside down (from the point of view of the characters). Along with the droning ambient music this creates creates a great feeling of unease. The suspense is built before the final reveal of the aliens. I like their design, as they're actually quite alien, but it's also rather understated in keeping with the rest of the film.

                

                 

I didn't really care for her backstory all that much (as is often the case with me) but the way that the “memories” of her daughter were mixed in with related events in the present was nicely done. The twist that many of what the audience took to be memories were in fact the future was an excellent one, and I had only partially guessed it (I was thinking the scientist guy was maybe the father and I thought it would be time travel related as there was so much talk of the aliens having such a different concept of time, but I was thought maybe she would go back in time and save her daughter or something that like - I much preferred the plot they went with, it was far smarter). 

There were very strong themes of circular time, language, and working together in this film, and they were brought to the forefront by the simple yet often beautiful cinematography and washed out colours. The plot was also fairly straight forward, but it plays out really nicely, and I like that they didn't spell it out for the audience. The character's emotions are very much on display, which I could give or take, but at least it's not super Hollywoody where everything is melodramatic and eye-roll inducing. I'd have been fine with a harder sci-fi that focused even more on the alien tech and details about their language and how the humans went about learning it (and more on how each country reacted, maybe more detail about how the Chinese communicated through Mah Jong - that sounded interesting). 

Overall a great sci-fi that's worthy of the name, with a solid concept, great acting from the female lead, and engaging cinematography.

                    

Arrival: 78.6

Battlefield Earth

                       

John Travolta stars in one of the dumbest science fiction films I've ever seen. It's the future, and humanity has been taken over by aliens who are mining Earth's gold, for some reason. Humans have been pushed back into the stone age, despite living around so much shit that is still around - like cars, old courses, whole cities, working guns and planes, etc. 

The aliens seem to have some kind of corporate structure, but at the same time they're very primal and remind me of Uruk hai but dumber. I don't know how they've mastered space travel, or even structured society, as none of them seem to do what the others say, and on all levels of command they're slacking off of betraying one another all the time. Everyone in this film are idiots, basically, which is one of the major problems (that and the terrible concept execution, the hammy acting/dialogue, and the poor casting). 

                   

                   

John Travolta's character is an alien with a convoluted plan to steal gold and then get a raise, and get to leave Earth, or fire his boss and get to leave Earth. I don't know, I tuned out. He wants to leave Earth, and he's going to secretly mine extra gold to do something for reasons possibly but not necessarily connected to the leaving Earth thing. 

So that's the antagonist. The protagonist is a male human who gets made more clever by Travolta's alien machine so that he can mine gold, I think. Then he goes to a library and figures out how to fly planes. Then other things happen, but I've left the room. There are also other characters. 

I don't think you'd enjoy this movie unless you appriciate ones that are so bad they're good. I liked it for this, as the entire thing is played straight, and the few moments of intended comedy are delightfully cringey. Watched as an actual cohesive story though (or gods forbid a sci-fi film) it doesn't even begin to hold up.

                          

Battlefield Earth: 7.5

After Earth

                 

A neat concept, but terrible, terrible execution. Terrible. 

               

So it's a thousand years after humans left Earth for reasons. Then Will Smith and his son (who is just as terrible as he is) come back or crash or something, and everything is terrible and they want to leave. I wanted to leave, too. The moral or the story is not to force your kids to do what you've failed at. Will Smith can be funny, but he can't do serious very well, and he sucked even more than usual in this. His kid did even worse, but in a similar way. 

The movie is both dumb and dull. The effects are flashy but terrible for the year of release. The plot is fairly non-existent, with very little happening for the middle portion of the film. We start with a cool crash sequence, but then that's about it. “Everything has evolved to kill humans” Smith says, but why? Humans haven't been on the planet since the 21^st century, right? So... what? And how did all the animal and plant life evolve so much in a thousand years? Shouldn't it take at least fifty times that long for them to be even noticeably different? What? What's happening?!

           

                    

I'm mostly curious about the backstory of this one (oh, I'm done with talking about the content - it's dull and superficially pretentious and you shouldn't watch it). Did Will Smith make his son do this, or did he sort of let him do whatever he wanted? (the plot certainly feels like a child wrote it) Was his son at all on board, or is he angry at his father and perhaps being shit on purpose? I'd watch a making-of documentary about this film (so long as it was made by a third party and was less than twenty minutes long). Whatever the case it's messed up and weird, and I hate that someone like Will Smith has enough money and influence in Hollywood to do something like this. Terrible.

             

I said the word "terrible" seven times in this review, which may be a record.

                

After Earth: 8.2

Demolition Man

           

This is the most entertaining Taco Bell advert I've ever seen! 

         

Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock (delivering a tolerable performance for once) lead in this comedy action sci-fi flick about a badass cop from the near future of 1996 who gets frozen as punishment for apparently causing the deaths of an entire plane (or bus? I wasn't listening) load of civilians. He is then brought back in the ultra PC and sterile distant future of 2032 to combat Snipes, a 'Mad Max'-esque villain. 

I like the world concept for this one, and as it often goes the best part of the film is in the first half hour when we're being introduced to everything. The future is a very clean prim place, where you can complain at a booth if you're not in a good mood or you have low self esteem, where you get automatically fined for swearing, and where salt and trans fat is illegal. It's fun seeing Stallone wake up in this world and clumsily make his way about it, but then once he starts to get the hang of it the film becomes more of a generic sci-fi action film. The violence and explosions uild to a crescendo that ends with Snipes being frozen and his head getting kicked off and smashing to “don't loose your head” from Stallone. Sigh.

                    

               

Fine. It's fun. It could have been clever too though, ya know. This iteration of a future world is one explored less often in film, so this felt like a missed opportunity in that respect. The introduction was great, but it felt like the writers quickly ran out of steam when it came to explanations, and then we find out that one guy made everything and everyone like this? And he's not the president of the world or anything, he's just in charge of the LA area, so what's happening in the rest of the world? We never know, but for some reason all of society is on the verge of collapsing when this guy dies, despite the majority of the population honestly believing in his ideals anyway. I don't get why the movie has to end in a big assumed change to the system.

                   

Demolition Man: 48.0

Ghostbusters

                  

So this is one of the best comedies of all time. It's perfectly cast (to the extent that the movie really feels crafted around the leads), perfectly written, brilliantly dry, wonderfully shot and excellently scored. The quadruplet of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and (director) Ivan Reitman really make this movie (oh and Ernie Hudson was good too - actually, so was Moranis and Potts and Weaver, though Peter's intentions in that romantic plot line never felt totally legitimate to me, Dana deserves better.) It's not a film about ghosts at all - all of the sci-fi elements are just backdrop to these guy's amazing chemistry with one another.

              

           

There was a lot of ad-libbing going on, which often turns me off, but they're obviously so happy with one another that it works. Murray delivers characteristically great punchlines (as well as consistently maintaining an air of dry humour), Ramis plays the socially dysfunctional straight man (though limiting his contribution to this is a little insulting), Aykroyd is believably weird (because he is, and I love him). The plot starts fairly grounded, and gradually escalates in insanity until the final reveal of the giant Stay Puft marshmallow man. This film isn't just not scary, it actively combats both horror and the supernatural. Science is what defeats the ghosts (and multidimensional gods) in the end, not reading backwards from the book of evil. Comedy plays a similar role, as none of the ghosts (save Slimer) are particularly funny - it all comes from how the characters act in these situations. I like it when my expectations are met with the reverse like this, and this film does it so well that I often compare it to 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' on that point. 

                   

                             

And I love that these guys are just normal people, you know? They don't do crazy flips or anything - they don't even really know what to do most of the time. They're likeable and feel real, which is just what you want in a protagonist. 

The idea of battling ghosts with scientific equipment isn't such a big deal anymore, with all those shitty paranormal inpector TV shows, but back then it was a neat original idea, and combined with the brilliant comedy of the three main characters, has made 'Ghostbusters' a timeless classic.

                  

Ghostbusters: 90.0