Movie reviews

This is an interesting sci-fi drama, about a monster devouring the inhabitants of a small town in Alaska with barely 300 people in it.

It turns out due to man's use of fossil fuels the polar ice caps are melting, which imprisoned mythical creatures from Norse legend The Wyvern, that apparently were created to feast on the dead, but were unsatiated that they moved from the dead to the living, then to all they could find even biting Odin the ruler of Valhalla, hence he banished them to be imprisoned in the polar ice caps for all eternity.

We start off when an unlucky camper enjoying a nice day of fishing cuts his finger on his hook, and walking over to the stream to examine it, his blood drops into the river and moments later the Wyvern, with what looks like the head of a dinosaur, the tail of a snake (a very powerful tail for that matter) and a body with two legs and two wings, makes the hapless man a quick meal.

We then meet some of the people in this idyllic town, Claire played by the lovely Erin Karpluk (Being Erica), who runs the local restaurant everyone congregates to, the local doctor, Dr. David Yates played by David Lewis (White Chicks) who is in love with her, while she only has eyes for Joe Suttner played by Nick Chinlund (Ultraviolet), a drifter who is waiting for an insurance payout for his truck, and holding a very sore heart over the loss of his brother in the same incident. He offers to fix the steps of Claire's restaurant for free, while she offers him breakfast on the house, he politely refuses but she insists that this is the least she can do, we get an idea of how close and friendly everyone is by the fact that some of the customers (if not all of them) don't have to pay for any meals.

Soon afterwards Dr. Yates visits Joe in his caravan, to fix his arm, but really to ask him to lay off Claire as he reckons Joe will be leaving the town as soon as his insurance payout comes through, while Claire and himself will still be in the town, Joe assures the doctor he is not interested in Claire, the doctor apologises and leaves Joe's caravan, but unfortunately he is attacked by the Wyvern, and only his arm is left for the Sheriff, Chief Dawson played by John Shaw (Happy Gilmore) and Joe to discover.

The whole town now faces a desperate race against time to get outside help, relying on General Travis Sherman played by the late Don S. Davis (Stargate SG-1), who previously had tried to get an emergency message to be aired from the town radio station after spotting the creature, but his request was denied by the town's Disc Jockey Hampton played by the lovely Tinsel Korey (The Twilight Saga: New Moon).

When the whole town eventually finds out that there is a monster on the loose, they all face the challenge of contacting help from the outside, and the even more daunting task of what to say to get anyone to believe them.

It is a lovely action thriller very similar in character to Tremors.

Labels: Don S. Davis, drama, Erin Karpluk, fantasy, film review, film reviews, films, John Shaw, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, movies, Nick Chinlund, sci-fi, science fiction, suspense, thriller, Tinsel Korey, Wyvern

This is a fantastic science fiction movie that served as a template to launch a new action star in Vin Diesel (Saving Private Ryan, something about his voice reminds me of an engine).

He stars as Richard B. Riddick, a no-nonsense convict, who is being transported by an equally rugged bounty hunter William J. Johns played by Cole Hauser (Too Fast Too Furious). The rest of the crew headed by the captain Carolyn Fry, played by the lovely Radha Mitchell (Phone Booth), are all told to steer clear of Riddick as he is considered extremely dangerous, hence the very large bounty on his head, and are told Riddick would sooner take the ship and leave every one stranded if he could, in order to save his skin.

They crash land on an apparently desert planet, with supplies running low, and the crew of the ship made up of an Imam, Abu Al Walid played by Keith David (Crash) and his disciples searching for New Mecca. In a desperate search for water, they happen to come across what looks like trees from a distance but on closer inspection it seems it is the skull of a dead animal almost like a dinosaur. It soon becomes obvious to the rest of crew that there is life on this planet, and eerily, this particular night, an eclipse will occur which would mean the nightlife will come out in search of food, seeking out fresh victims in the crew.

The captain makes a decision that they must all work together if they are to successfully get out of this planet, and that involves freeing Riddick, while Riddick's bounty hunter William keeps a close guard, weapon at the ready in case Riddick tries anything.

Riddick seems to have gotten a fan in the midst of the crew, which could end up ominously for all involved.

In the midst of all this Riddick does have a little advantage over all the other members of the crew, his eyesight is superb in the dark, however he is extremely sensitive to light not unlike the creatures on the planet, and he has to wear some made to order goggles to protect his eyesight. Since Riddick is the only one able to navigate at night when the creatures on the planet are hunting, he is the only one best equipped to gather the equipment needed to fix the ship, so they can all fly out of this dangerous planet, but Riddick seems to only look out for himself, unless Fry can convince him to show some humanity, which is not one of his strong traits.

Labels: Action, Cole Hauser, drama, fantasy, film review, film reviews, films, Keith David, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, movies, Pitch Black, Radha Mitchell, Rhianna Griffith, sci-fi, science fiction, suspense, Vin Diesel

This is a dark futuristic view of how the world could possibly become, where everyone has a surrogate, a robot with all the features of a human, that is controlled remotely by the owner, with the owner having all their senses interact with whatever the machine is encountering. The owner lives in a virtual world, where the surrogate lives his or her life for him or her, the plausible justification for it of course is that the owner is less at risk from disease and infection, and indeed any harm to their real body, they can virtually go to work, and play, with no worries about their real body, all the toll is taken on the surrogate.

From the opening credits we get introduced to the justification for surrogates, with first a machine where a monkey controls an arm containing a nut with just its mind, to people who are paralysed, controlling robots to do their daily tasks, and people in the army using surrogates for war without any fear of their real bodies being in danger.

Soon Congress signs in to law surrogates for the use in every day lives, but as usual there are objectors to this whole idea of surrogates, the main opponent of this is The Prophet played by Ving Rhames (Pulp fiction), who has set up communes where only humans are allowed. We meet our protagonist, a very young looking Bruce Willis (12 Monkeys) as Tom Greer along with his partner Peters played by the lovely Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black), who are investigating the murder of a surrogate, but in this case, the owner of the surrogate died at the same time the surrogate was destroyed. It turns out that the owner of the surrogate is non other than the son of the inventor of surrogates, Canter played by the dependable James Cromwell (L.A. Confidential).

It seems a weapon has been developed that not only can destroy surrogates, but can at the same time end the life of the operator connected to the surrogate. Tom has personally set himself the task of finding out who murdered Canter's son and getting hold of this deadly weapon, but he has a mountain to climb to get to the bottom of this, with the head of his department Stone played by Boris Kodjoe (Starship Troopers 3 : Marauder), not happy with his tactics, and Tom himself having doubts about the whole idea of surrogates, unlike his wife Maggie played by the gorgeous Rosamund Pike (The Libertine), who prefers this new life than any other, and looking at her surrogate and indeed virtually all of the surrogates, you can see why, as they all look young and flawless, there is a memorable scene where the real Tom comes into his police department and the clerk surrogate looks at him and mutters "you look terrible".

This of course is a warning about how the current state of the Internet could evolve, from people able to do many things online they previously had to do in person, to being able to do their daily tasks from the comfort of their computer.

Labels: Boris Kodjoe, Bruce Willis, film review, film reviews, films, internet, James Cromwell, machines, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, movies, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, sci-fi, Surrogates, suspense, thriller

This is a very surreal futuristic suspense thriller produced by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings Trilogy).

It stars an almost all South African cast, with Sharlto Copley in the lead role as Wikus Van De Merwe an NMU (Multinational United) who is in charge of relocating approximately 1 million aliens, whose spaceship has hovered to rest above Johannesburg, the aliens on first contact were all found to be malnourished, sick, and needing shelter.

The problem of course is housing over a million aliens, when the local populace are frightened by their looks, demeanour, and mannerisms as a local indigen paraphrased says "if there were from this planet we would understand but they are not even from this planet", they also have a penchant for cat food, as well as some sudden bursts of anger.

NMU has appointed the happy go lucky Wikus to for see the mass evacuation of these aliens, who the humans have termed "prauns" because they look like prawns.

The story is told in flashback, with several interviews from people who knew Wikus and the mass evacuation operation, you start to wonder what happened to Wikus as they all speak of some ominous event.

It turns out during the mass evacuations NMU had to serve each of the aliens with an evacuation order, where they had to sign, of course most of the aliens do not understand what an evacuation means, and there are violent scuffles, as Wikus accompanied with the mandatory NMU military personnel try to get the aliens to sign the evacuation order, in some cases according to Wikus, the aliens hitting the piece of paper away is counted as an agreement. The real reason of course for the evacuation according to the flashback interviews was to find alien weapons, it turns out the advanced weapons of the aliens are biologically engineered to be operated by them only.

Wikus also takes the opportunity during these evacuation notices to ransack the homes of the aliens looking for anything illegal, during the process he finds an object, he thinks is some kind of gas canister that could be a weapon, so he confiscates it, not before attempting to find out how it works, and getting sprayed in the face by a dark fluid. It turns out the alien who had that object was a little smarter than most of the "prauns" and the canister was needed to operate his shuttle hidden underground, back to the mother ship.

Inevitably Wikus gets involved with a violent "praun", and needs a cast on his left arm, but you notice soon after he is not looking well at all, culminating to him passing out puking black blood at a party, he is rushed to the hospital, and he wakes up alarmingly to find his left arm has adopted the features of a "praun". NMU military whisk him away to their medical facilities, where despite his protestions he is made to operate a series of alien weapons. He is regarded as the very first human and alien hybrid and the military arm of NMU are eager to harvest his organs for bioengineering. However Wikus just wants the alien arm removed, and wants to get back to his wife. He manages to escape, but chances of him going back home are made virtually impossible with all the media reporting malicious rumors about him and the entire NMU military arm looking for him.

He is left with no choice but to go back to the "prauns" he despises, in a desperate bid for help before the metamorphosis is complete.

It is mesmerising viewing, and Wikus captures the desperation of a man about to lose everything to the point of his humanity brilliantly.

It is rare science-fiction film, as it is set in South Africa, but you realise soon after the reasons why, as it parallels victimisation of the "prauns" with apartheid.

Labels: aliens, apartheid, District 9, film review, film reviews, films, Marian Hooman, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, movies, sci-fi, Sharlto Copley, South Africa, Vanessa Haywood, William Allen Young

This is a strangely enjoyable sci-fi movie. I half expected it to be similar to Jumper, and Wanted with james McAvoy and Angelina Jolie, and the plot does get a little convoluted.

It stars the lovely Dakota Fanning(The secret lives of Bees, I believe that was her sister in Phoebe in Wonderland) as Cassie Holmes and Chris Evans(Street Kings, 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four) as Nick Gant. Two Americans who have found themselves in Hong Kong, in a race against time to find another girl Kira Bird played by the lovely Camille Belle( you might find something about her eyes being strangely familiar, ofcourse she was Evolet in 10,000 BC) in the hope to bring down the secret agency that has been hunting them down, and making their lives and those of their families hell.

They all have special abilities, and this is where it can get a little confusing, Pushers can push thoughts into people making them believe what they want, and do what they want, Movers can move objects, Watchers can predict the future(ofcourse the future is subject to change), Stitchers can stitch people back together that have been injured even those injured by Bleeders, who have the ability to echo high auditory screams that can smash glasses, damage ear drums, blood vessels, and literally move objects and people, Sniffers can literally find anyone just from touching their belongings, just like a dog, Wipers can wipe memories, Shifters can move patterns of light around objects to change the shape and appearance, we get to meet a shifter played by the fantastic Cliff "The Chameleon" Curtis as Hook Waters, and Shadows can prevent people by being found by Sniffers.

From the all action beginning where the young Nick Gant has to run away from the antagonist Henry Carver played by Djimon Hounsou(Amistad, Never Back Down), to the confrontations between Nick and Victor Budarin played by Neil Jackson(Quantun of Solace, Blade: The series), it is a non-stop action flick, with interesting plot twists many are sure to enjoy.

Labels: Action, Camille Belle, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis, Dakota fanning, Djimon Hounsou, drama, film reviews, films, Movie Reviews, movies, Neil Harris, psychokinesis, Push, sci-fi, science fiction

After watching the cartoons as a kid it feels great to go nostalgic once in a while (which let's face it is one of the fundamental attractions of movies, to dream), to see if it is the same as you remembered them.
This is a retelling of the original series.
The autobots's planet has been destroyed, and Artemus Prime(voiced by Laurence Fishburne, Morpheus in the Matrix) along with a few other autobots have come in search of a device that could give life back to their planet, unfortunately, a bad autobot has already arrived first, Megatron, but was frozen in the process, discovered by the military, and responsible for all major technological advances, mobile phones e.t.c.
In their search for the device, the autobots find the only human Sam WitWicky(Shia Leboeuf)with a map to the whereabouts of the device, given to him by his grand father, he is discovered as a trader on ebay, and being autobots, can transform into any electrical device, one of them transforms into his car, which is where all the fun starts.

It is a nice fun film, especially the scenes with the US military up against the bad autobots.

Labels: alien, captain, deception, film reviews, Josh Duhamel, Laurence Fishburne, Megan Fox, Movie Reviews, planet, robot, Sam Witwicky, sci-fi, science fiction, Shia LeBeouf, Transformers