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Entries Tagged as 'Film'

‘Predators’ (2010)

I saw it and I was impressed. And I say that as someone who falls squarely on the Alien side of the fence when it comes to ’80s high-concept horror.

The problem with both previous Predator flicks were that there was very little high-concept. In both preceding entries (Predator and Predator 2), the Predators and the humans were on Earth.

In the first film, the Predators interrupted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hunt for something or other, and in the sequel, they appeared in a very hot L.A. summer, getting in the way of a police investigation of some sort. In each, it is strictly humans vs. Predators. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Drama, Film, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller by Victor Sparrow
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‘Pandorum’ (2009)

It’s unofficial, but the disappointment that was ‘Event Horizon’ (1997) now has a sequel.

The misguided mash-up that resulted in Hellraiser — in Space… by Executive producers Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt have now given us Alien-meets-Serenity-meets-The Descent-meets-Defying Gravity-meets-2001:A Space Odyssey-meets-The Abyss-meets-Cube-meets-Sunshine, allowing the worst aspects of each film a moment for a pirouette of inexplicability. 3 of those 7 movies had serious story problems.

Like the 4 different posters in the movie’s advertising campaign, the PR can’t seem to determine whether the movie is science-fiction, horror or something else completely. While that combination might sound somehow enervating, the fact is that where those producers missed with their horror-fied remake of Andrej Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’ is exactly where this duo have missed with ‘Pandorum’. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Film, Horror, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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‘District 9′ (2009)

district_9 All the reports that I’ve read have said that director Neill Blomkamp and Wingnut Films elected to do ‘District 9′ while they were in a holding pattern while they were waiting on a green light from Microsoft to do a live-action adaptation of the Halo video-game.

Imagine a couple million dollars of filmmaking equipment, and empty studio and several tens of state-of-the-art technicians waiting on some Seattle lawyers, and you get the idea. though the film is a little more substantive than that. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Fantasy, Film, Foreign, Horror, Meta-fiction, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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‘Up’* (2009)

Pixar’s tenth film in 15 years, ‘Up’ charms with its tale of Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner (voice)), an old man befuddled and disgusted by the changes around him, and Russell (Jordan Nagai (voice)), a wilderness scout bent on earning his last badge for “assisting the elderly.”

Threatened with the forcible removal from his house, the last remaining one in the midst of a high-rise construction zone, Carl takes the drastic step of attaching thousands of helium balloons to his house so he can fly off in search of the adventure he and his beloved departed wife Ellie never got to take, the journey to Paradise Falls [Read more →]

Tags: Animation, Comedy, Fantasy, Film, Sci-Fi by Anne Dougherty
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‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ (2009)

I didn’t read ‘X-Men’ as a kid (I was more of a ‘Fantastic Four’ nerd myself) so I can only judge this film based on how well it hews to the bible it has already set up in the first three ‘X-Men’ films. By that standard, ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ succeeds…mostly.

Wolverine is by far one of the more interesting of the first-generation X-Men. He’s cranky; he carries his own moral code around like an invisible cloud often circumventing plans and strategies to do what he believes is right; he’s confident, and he’s practically indestructible. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Comic Book, Film, Sci-Fi by Anne Dougherty
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‘Star Trek’ (2009)

I’ve long since quit my enthusiasm for things Trek, but J.J. Abrams has made a much-needed and refreshing reboot of the franchise; however this renewal seems to owe as much to the original Star Wars trilogy as it does Trek.

Granted that Abrams and his writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman add a little time travel quirk that creates an alternate reality for this new Trek, it does come off with a bit more verve than the original series had some 40 years ago. Both the writing and the SFX have improved, just as Desilu Studios never gave Roddenberry $75M to shoot a single episode. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Drama, Fantasy, Film, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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‘Hellraiser’ (1987)

Yeah, I saw this one during it’s theatrical release, back in 1987, and above all, I recall leaving the theater in desperate need of some mental hygene given the movie’s uncomfortable explorations of incest, S&M and the consequences of selling your soul.

While the franchise’s demons, the Cenobytes, appear within the film’s first 5 minutes, we only get a glimpse — they are by no means central to the story. Rather, Pinhead and the Cenobytes are simply the vehicles of hubris:The cenobytes both identify and punish those who are willing to overreach. Though the SciFi Channel insists that all genre movies reveal their creatures within the first 15 minutes, that formula — dictated by commercial requirements — is really irrelevant because ‘Hellraiser’ is an epic drama that circulates around Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) and her evil stepmother, Julia (Clare Higgins). [Read more →]

Tags: Adaptation, Drama, Fantasy, Film, Horror, Meta-fiction, Sci-Fi, Thriller by Victor Sparrow
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‘W.’ (2008)

‘W.’ is unlike every other film Oliver Stone has made. Typically, Stone uses his biopics as a window onto American history — lived history and what those characters meant within their historical context — ‘Salvador’ was as much about the Reagan era as ‘The Doors’ was about the Johnson era and the mission creep of the Vietnam War. The thing about ‘W.’ is, is that there is neither frame, picture nor metaphor: The George W. Bush presidency is the present, there is no complete, objective view of what he has meant to the country other than $2 trillion dollars in aggregate debt and the fulfillment of Republican tropes about an ineffective and failing Federal Government and its too soon to know if the lessons of Bush II will reverberate in the rest of the culture. [Read more →]

Tags: Biopic, Drama, Film by Victor Sparrow
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‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight‘ is the latest addition to the trend of painfully overplotted comic book movies. I’m not exactly certain when the habit of inflating a paper-thin pulp story into a full-blown bildungsroman. But since the late ’80′s it’s been necessary for each comic book movie to have at least two villains and as many as 4. (Notably, Tim Burton’s 1989 movie only had one villain, The Joker.)

While this installment of Batman seems to be the most successful commercial film since James Cameron’s ‘Titanic‘, you’d think that such a movie would have to have a simple storyline to keep selling tickets at such a rapid pace, week after week. Not so, here. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Comic Book, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film, Sci-Fi, Thriller by Victor Sparrow
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‘The Fog’ (1980/2005)

John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog‘ (1980) was, of course, one of seminal horror pictures of the 80′s. ‘The Fog’ was Carpenter’s third feature film to be followed by ‘Escape from New York’ in 1981 and his remake of ‘The Thing’ in 1982. Shot for $1 million 1980 dollars (300% the value of 2008 dollars) it would have made $63,000,000 if released today. [Read more →]