MovieComment

Alien Versus Predator

Posted by Player under Sci-Fi & Fantasy

With all the special effects and digital magic, you’d think Hollywood would come out with a decent horror movie. Something really scary, like Alien. Instead they released Alien Versus Predator.

The Aliens are the baddest monsters in the galaxy and so what could defeat them besides Ripley, well how about the cool looking hunter alien, known as Predator? Our journey begins in 2004, when a satellite picks up energy pulses from an island in Antartica. A rich guy by the name of Weyland (yeah, like on the Simpsons), assembles a group of poor scientists and a scout to lead them on this dangerous trek. When they get there, they discover a tunnel has already been made to the bottom of the pyramid that is underground. This does not deter them, and so the venture into the unknown and discover that they have activated a complex battleground test, which is a hunting ritual for the predators. The giant female alien begins laying pods and soon the humans are captured to become host bodies for the aliens. The predators come on the scene and try to destroy the aliens as is their ritual, but over time mostly every one dies of course. The aliens are too powerful.

In between the slow start and stupid dialogue, we get some incredibly cool fighting moves from the predators as they kill aliens, but there is no awesome fight scene like in Aliens or in action films like Blade. Instead we get some rather pathetic fighting at the end and what I guess is the new Ripley.

The movie is rather short compared to Aliens and even the original Predator. This has made many fans think that a DVD release would be an extended cut, and hopefully better action!

If you thought the last Aliens movie was bad, then AvP is even worse! I myself liked the last Aliens film, but as for AvP, the characters suck, there’s hardly any spectacular scenes like in Alien or Aliens 2, so I felt cheated at the end.

The Core

Posted by Player under Sci-Fi & Fantasy

One of the early summer films for 2003 was The Core, a sci-fi action movie that featured for once, some good acting, and an interesting plot.

Hillary Swank of Karate Kid and 90210 fame (who had just come off a stellar performance in Boys Don’t Cry), leads a group of scientists into the Earth’s core to save the world. Like most action films nowadays, the plot is usually a little silly, like the whole world hangs in the balance theme. The idea here is that the the outer core has stopped spinning and with it the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere are changing in such a way that will spell doom for human life. The plan is to take a ship down to the core and set off some nukes to make the core right itself. The physics and science in the film is a little off and will most likely make some very real grad students at MIT sick to their stomachs that their studies are being taken for granted in this way.

But film wise, The Core does a lot better. It is not often you see a film that is very watchable by all age groups and which doesn’t have that much profanity in it. The film somewhat succeeds on the strength and quality of its cast, especially Swank, who honestly is very appealing to geeks and to women, in that she is smart and head strong.

The DVD release features a standard 5.1 Dolby Digital track that does not astound as much as you would think, but then again, for an action movie, there is a lot of dialogue in this movie. The picture is pretty clean but not perfect, there are some artifacts in certain places. There is about 10 minutes of deleted scenes which actually add to the storyline so they are worth watching.

Resident Evil

Posted by Player under Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Basing a film on a popular video game doesn’t always work, the various failed attempts of such movies as Double Dragon, Super Mario Brothers, and to some extent the recent Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie are all quite forgettable. Luckily Resident Evil has some things going for it.
The main attraction is definitely Milla Jovovich. You might remember her from her other movies, like The Fifth Element where she plays the red headed alien, or from such dramas as Return To Blue Lagoon. The actress slash model always gives a good performance and Resident Evil is no exception. Unfortunately, it is hard not to compare Jovovich’s character to Sigourney Weaver’s role in Aliens; essentially Resident Evil is the same Aliens 2 plot but instead of evil acid aliens, you have virus infected dead people otherwise known as zombies trying to eat you. Michelle Rodriguez plays the hard bad-ass soldier character who complements Jovovich’s main character Alice. Given this contrast, the Alice character has to be more than just tough, she has to be sensitive and smart, a less dimensional character would not work with Rodriguez already being the brawn in the movie. Given all this, then Jovovich really does manage a good performance, considering this is after all a horror slash science fiction movie.

It wouldn’t be an Aliens 2 plot movie without a computer like “Mother” or “Father”, and Resident Evil goes for the grand daddy of all evil computers, namely HAL from 2001. The computer or artificial intelligence is named Red Queen and she takes the physical form of either a red camera eye or a 3-D image of a small 6 year old. Red Queen is just one of three of the bad things inside the Hive. The Hive is an underground research facility built by the Umbrella Corp, a multi-national corporation. The movie begins with Red Queen killing everyone in the Hive and then a group of marine soldiers taking Alice and one other outsider into the depths of the Hive to investigate why Red Queen has started killing the Hive citizens. From there on we learn of the evils of genetic research, viruses, and of course a red monster who resembles the Spider-Man villain Carnage. Act 2: the characters learn they need to get out of the Hive, and Act 3: they fight their way out.

The thing about science fiction movies like Aliens and Resident Evil, is that you really need to make it look real, with plenty of tunnels, pipes that drip water and steam, and plenty of blood. Surprisingly this movie manages to do just that and even have many of the scenes in good lighting and not the usual dark and dim color of most special effects films.

Resident Evil is actually quite tame and not as gory as Blade 2. The film relies more on suspense than violence and cursing to get the point across. The soundtrack is provided via Marilyn Manson and amazingly it is not annoying, and suits most of the scenes quite well.

In conclusion, Resident Evil is an interesting film. The characters are compelling enough to watch, given the genre, and the story line is a proven sci-fi plot. I for one, love Jovovich, and will watch any movie she is in. Maybe it’s that she fights in a mini skirt that makes the fim more believable for me?

Star Wars III

Posted by Player under Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Last night, I was a bit bored with regular television, and decided to browse my DVD collection and see if there was anything I could throw on the DVD player and make for an enjoyable evening. I decided to give Star Wars III another chance. I only saw the film in the theater and once, when I originally picked up the DVD months ago. Since then our television set died and we replaced it with a beautiful Sony flat screen 1080 LCD monitor, so at last I can view widescreen movies in all their glory.

It always amazes me how different films can look at home, where DVD includes more frames and makes some action sequences more fluid and natural (I’m mostly thinking of Gladiator, which has some blindingly fast action scenes), or can totally bring out how badly an action sequence actually is. In the case of Star Wars III, the DVD brings out just how cartoon like Star Wars is, from the goofy looking jumps that the Jedis make all the time, to the overly shiny exteriors of Star Wars vehicles, it all looks very unrealistic and plastic like. This is in sharp contrast to the natural looking backgrounds of The Lord of The Rings films.

But let me get to the main point, which is how incredibly bad the new Star Wars films are. Revenge of The Sith, has a pretty simple moral to its story, but it gets totally ignored by George Lucas’s terrible directing and computer generated graphics that neither add to the story nor look good. All I kept thinking as I watch Natalie Portman cry is “Don’t worry Natalie you’ll actually be in good movies after this, like V For Vendetta, your career is not over!” Lucas had a good overall idea for the new trilogy, essentially it is the Jedi who misunderstand The Force, because they have made their religion so strict and passionless, that they no longer can trust their own instincts. The Sith only understand the opposite, The Force to them can only be powerful if it is practiced and executed with emotion and sheer will. When Anakin comes along and seems to possess both emotion and The Force, both sides try to use him, but alas Anakin is unbalanced and instead of changing their religion to help the young Skywalker, the Jedi end up losing him to The Sith. Their failure ultimately is their own inability to change with The Force. Of course in the end it is Anakin’s son, Luke who is balanced enough and which The Force ultimately chooses as the true Jedi. Ultimately Star Wars is about The Force, a religion of balance that wants both discipline and passion.

The irony is that just like the Jedi Council could not foresee their own demise, Lucas’s Star Wars creation no longer holds its place as the best trilogy ever made. The current generation of kids may remember Star Wars, but they’ll also remember Lord of The Rings and The Matrix Trilogy as being far more interesting and better done films, than Revenge of The Sith.

I will give Lucas credit for having a great scene where he shows Anakin legless and on fire. That looked incredibly cool, but of course he ruins it by having Obi-Wan say how much he loved Anakin?