Word of mouth for Inception has been phenomenal. Everyone seems interested in this smart blockbuster, as if millions wanted the green light that it is finally ok to watch blockbusters without feeling guilty about it. After earning Warner Bros a nice bundle of cash with The Dark Knight (2008), Christopher Nolan, the extremely talented English director who also gave us Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), and The Prestige (2006), apparently received Carte Blanche to do the movie that he really wanted to make. In these rare cases, directors usually aim small, preferring to try their skill at more artsy fares and indulging in a longing to create films d’auteurs…

Nolan decided to go about it a different way. Memento to the power of 10. Cinema d’auteur on a large scale. Intelligent action. Smart blockbuster. But is it really all that? Kind of.

There is little doubt that Inception is a good movie. Possibly a very good one. But it is not the masterpiece that many have claimed. If it impresses on many levels, it is mainly due to its originality and to the perfection of its many elements. But like a perfectly crafted and engineered vehicle whose stiff suspension makes the drive only moderately comfortable, Inception suffers from the cold precision of an engineer who forgot that such an insistence on perfection can sometimes suffocate emotions. Kubrick dealt with this issue his entire career but managed it successfully for the most part.

Andrew O’Hehir’s piece in Salon on Inception is very much worth reading. One of the points he makes is how Nolan completely missed the boat regarding what dreams are really made of. And it is very true that when one thinks back on the film, the dream sequences are nothing like one would expect their dreams to be. Very linear, very boring, very….blockbuster-like (Dreamscape (1984) and In Dreams (1999) captured the essence of dreams a bit better, although not by much). I was quite annoyed by some of the action sequences that seemed straight out of a James Bond film and that seemed so basic compared to the overall concept of the film. I wish Nolan had gone the more artsy route and that the entire film had taken place without guns and bullets.

But enough complaining. I liked Inception. I liked it because it is original, very well made and because it wants us to think. These reasons are very much enough to, for the most part, offset the criticism i expressed earlier. And, as the theme of this blog indicates, i tend to be a sucker for anything that is a bit out there, so Inception was a delight of mind-bending originality. I found myself thinking about the film extensively for 2 or 3 days after watching it, going over each scene, trying to put the pieces together. The result is that I tend to side with the people who think that the entire film was a dream of a man in Limbo, but ultimately, it is fantastic that it created such a stir and such debates on blogs and forums.

So, congratulations on Nolan for giving us a very interesting and powerful cinematic experience, but Memento was a better film.

Donnie Darko was an ambitious film that successfully managed to live up to its ambition. Richard Kelly’s latest, The Box, is even more ambitious than DK, but unfortunately, only partly lives up to its grand aspirations.
The premise is simple and original: one day, someone comes to your house with a box that has a big red button on it. A man tells you that you have 24 hours to push the button. If you do, somewhere, someone whom you do not know will die. And you will receive one million dollars. If you don’t push the button, the box will go to someone else. What would you do?
This disturbing concept holds the movie very well for 30 to 45 minutes. But there has to be a greater explanation for the idea and this is where Kelly starts to lose us. Although never completely off the mark, the film feels stretched and tries hard to overachieve. We are never fully convinced by the connections to NASA, Aliens, the afterlife and by the film’s attempts to enter into philosophical discussions about good and evil. Too many angles and too many stories to tell. The Astronaut’s Wife meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Arrival. So despite good intentions and obvious signs of an intelligent director who wants to challenge us, here are a few questionable things i learned from The Box:

- it is usually women who push the button
- visiting the afterlife is akin to taking a cold shower
- highly evolved alien civilizations can’t decide whether to exterminate us so they first make us play a little game, the results of which could make them change their mind (a bit like that super intelligent alien dressed as Keanu Reeves in the awful remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, who suddenly changes his mind after seeing a sign of human empathy - don’t these aliens do their homework before they get here?)
- these same aliens have mastered highly complex technologies, such as the ability to travel across the universe, to control minds, to give us a glimpse of life after death, and to give eternal life to their ‘human’ emissary, but somehow, they can’t fix the huge hole in his face
- if you keep asking people, especially teenagers, to constantly tilt their head forward and stare at you with their eyes rolled upward into their skull, at some point, they are bound to become spooky (a fact already established in Donnie Darko)
- NASA seems to be a pretty laid back place where everyone does whatever they want

So here i am in mythical Delphi Greece, minding my own business - as i usually do -, taking in the sights and hoping to get a glimpse of my future when, out of the sea of tourists that surrounds me emerges the silhouette of Louis Leterrier. He rushes towards me, screaming like a maniac, his hands reaching out towards my neck. Ever since my scathing review of his Hulk, a review that thanks to the thousands of loyal followers that my blog attracts, was brought to the attention of his agent, Leterrier is out to get me. Years of Jujitsu practice allow me to swiftly dodge his attack, and in a slow-mo Spiderman moment, i brush Leterrier to the side, his momentum carrying him headfirst into the magnificent remains of a temple wall behind me. I hear the impact, see the blood, but i have no time to dwell on his fate. A boat to Corfu awaits me, and as i leave Delphi behind, the ghostly form of a strangely dressed and bearded Liam Neeson appears on the side of the road and says ‘thank you’.

It may seem unfortunate that one can only describe a film by referencing previous ones. But in the case of 9, while every scene and visual element reminded me of something i had seen before, the craft and vision that brought all these influences together is powerful enough to make this film an interesting work of its own.

As i watched 9, a post-apocalyptic animated film about a group of puppet creatures left behind by the scientist whose work into AI and robots was responsible for the end of the human race, a myriad of cinematic works and influences came to mind: some of the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Tim Burton, WALL-E, Les triplettes de Belleville, Terminator, Casshern…

9 does not invent very much but provides nonetheless for an intense and entertaining experience, assuming of course that one is entertained by post-apocalyptic tales…

It is likely that the people who took issue with my review of Planet Terror are probably not going to enjoy what i am about to say about Kick-Ass, a film that currently enjoys a very generous rating of 8.5 on IMDB.

I recently watched Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust and found it to be an extremely entertaining piece of fantasy storytelling. And i read somewhere that Kick-Ass, the story of a teenager who decides that it’s time to stop being a coward and instead decides to help his fellow citizens by becoming a superhero with no superpowers, draws on Vaughn’s ability to build films around a solid storyline with nicely developed characters. Well, that may be partially true but i certainly don’t understand how Kick-Ass is worthy of such praise, or of an 8.5 on IMDB.

And it’s not the amount of gratuitous violence that i found the most disappointing. After all, we shouldn’t give it more credit than it deserves. There is nothing original or interesting about the violence in Kick-Ass. Tarantino precursors, lovers and followers have made sure that we have become numb and desensitized to heads being blown off and people exploding in giant microwave ovens. This type of superficial violence no longer has a meaning and is instead a purely stylistic exercise, and even this statement might be a bit of a stretch. The sad reality is that violence in films today doesn’t even have to enhance or detract or signify. It is just there. The only slight originality with the violence of Kick-ass is that is perpetrated by and on an 11 year-old girl, which, really, contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, isn’t very cool.

No, the biggest disappointment for me is that Kick-Ass doesn’t have a soul. The pace moves unevenly from one scene to the next, with one of the most annoying narration i can remember, and the characters are sometimes interesting but for the most part cliche and detached. There are some good moments but even these seem to be overplayed and they drown under a score that tries too hard to carry these scenes. After watching Kick-Ass, i was left with very little, most of these mini-episodes having disappeared from my memory shortly after. Watchmen this isn’t.

In true Terrence Malick fashion, it took nine years for the Hughes Brothers to give us a follow up to From Hell (2001). But while these long periods in between films are used by Malick (as they were by Kubrick) to plan and strategize and perfect all aspects of his next film, i am not sure that is exactly what happened in the case of The Book of Eli. A post-apocalyptic tale of a lone man crossing a Mad Max-like United States (although A Boy and his Dog came to mind as often as Mad Max did) in search of a place or group of people who will once again embrace the word of God (which is apparently what destroyed the world in the first place), The Book of Eli plays like a western with a light dose of spirituality and lots of sword and martial art fighting. But Denzel Washington is no Ghost Dog (or Blade for that matter), and while he carries the film acceptably, he does not manage to turn it into much more than what it is: an honest but fairly weak attempt at meaningful Sci-Fi. That being said, from a purely action standpoint, the film is entertaining enough and there is little room for boredom.

It would be naive to assume that Avatar only works because of the technology. There is little doubt that, in this case, the 3D aspect enhances the filmic experience. However, as Michael Bay and George Lucas, and countless others, remind us too often, placing most of the focus of a film on CGI and visual effects while neglecting everything else, can have disastrous consequences.
James Cameron, while not king of the world, is probably one of Hollywood’s princes of perfection. His reputation as a very hard man to please make him a respected, yet also apparently often disliked director who is not afraid to ask for expensive sets to be completely redone in a very short amount of time and for staff members to be dismissed right away if they fail to comply. It is somewhat unfortunate that these types, whether in Hollywood or not, are often rewarded for being unpleasant but the positive side is that it is exactly what makes them difficult that also allows them to create interesting works.

Avatar provides a fairly average story with extremely cliche characters. The acting is nothing special, the soundtrack is over the top, even a bit annoying, and some of the dialogues are ‘cheesy’. So what works? As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that the CGI and visual effects are of the highest caliber, this in itself is usually not enough to carry a film. Cameron has succeeded in creating an overall experience that is so enthralling that the mediocre aspect of some of its parts is forgiven. A bit like Star Wars in 1977, a film which after all was fairly amateurish at times, Avatar immerses us in a very believable world of fantasy, legends and myths. The acting may not make much sense but the details of the world do. It is this meticulously crafted visual and non-visual environment that succeeds in transporting us to a very interesting place for 160 minutes or so.

While i like intelligent, cerebral and artsy cinema, i also love when cinema just entertains and when it does it well. Avatar has sucked all that it could from the little book of entertaining cinema and offers perhaps the best visual effects ever created on film. But more importantly, it works thanks to the clarity of an artistic vision and thanks to the perfectionism of James Cameron.

I hereby nominate Viggo Mortensen for Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards.

Not being a real writer, i feel reluctant to blame my lack of blogging for the past month on writer’s block. I was hesitating and desperately trying to find an angle, something to latch on to, in the various films i have watched during this period, but nothing came. The sweet but bland The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), the original but ephemeral Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the annoying and commercial Twilight New Moon (2009), and even the cult and cerebral Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), all left me with no inspiration to write.

But The Road….well, The Road just completely threw me off my chair. I am still reeling from the experience of watching this film. Amazing acting, beautiful beautiful cinematography, gorgeous soundtrack and poignant and sparse dialogue. And sad. So sad.

I never read Cormac McCarthy’s Pullitzer Prize winning novel, so i am not constrained by the usual novel-to-film adaptation discussions. I can not evaluate how good of an adaptation this film is, or whether it is too literal to the novel or not. But i can judge, as far as your humble blogger can judge, that John Hillcoat, the director of The Road, has done a magnificent job at telling this desolate and somber post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive in a world that pretty much no longer exists.

I wanted to incorporate one of the two trailers for the film with this post but as i watched them again, i felt that they both dumb the film down considerably and that they do not do justice to the essence of the story. This film is not about action, survival, cannibalism or about the end of the world. Instead, it is about what makes us human and about the beauty of life, and i dare say, the beauty of parenthood. As the father of a 2.5 years old son, this movie touched me on a level deeper than most of the films i have watched in my life. The usual post-apocalyptic and horror movies aside, which should not be compared to The Road, the film reminded me of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s eerie The Return (2003) and of Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, both great and surreal works in their own ways.

It is the year 2050, and we seem to have turned Earth into Mercury. One man remains, isolated in an indestructible tower that has been built to preserve humanity’s legacy: famous works of art, DNA samples of animals, plants and fauna, and naturally, a large digital media archive…This man proceeds to tell us about the many ways in which we screwed up the planet, calling us stupid in the process. I recently came across a solar modules manufacturer whose slogan reads: don’t leave the planet to the stupid. So, is humanity stupid? Are we indeed not realizing the extent of the damage that we are inflicting on our Earth due to our consumption habits?

My field of work these days is directly related to social and environmental issues. As such, i keep abreast of the latest when it comes to global warming, habitat loss, and our fossil fuel addiction. While i leave a bit of room in my beliefs for the skeptics, i am nonetheless very convinced by the fact that we are headed in the wrong direction and that we must quickly turn to renewables and change our consumption patterns. Yet, despite these beliefs, i find these references to the stupidity of the ‘non-believers’ or of those who do not care, banal and not particularly useful. Moreover, i found this documentary to be somewhat devoid of interesting facts and compelling stories (and full of bad CGI and low-quality infographics). It is perhaps because i watch documentaries on similar subjects relatively often, documentaries that explore a particular subject in much more depth, that The Age of Stupid felt too general and broad. I was not convinced or moved by the stories (Iraq and Africa being the exception) and learned very little. The man from the future felt very gimmicky and did not help tie it all together effectively. I certainly do not think that anyone stupid would watch this and become less stupid.

The Age of Stupid made the headlines thanks to the astuteness of its marketing campaign and Indie release system. The endorsement of many celebrities and politicians helped bring this low budget documentary to a record number of screens across the globe, getting a Guiness record in the process for biggest film premiere ever. Local groups of activists here in Berlin, some of whom i know, helped organize the premiere and ensured that as much publicity as possible was generated via the blogosphere and social media platforms. And most of these bloggers rated the film highly, only too happy to find a common outlet for their beliefs and message, which they have not been able to do on such a scale since The Inconvenient Truth.

I share these beliefs for the most part but, as someone who watches lots of documentaries, from a purely cinematic standpoint, i found The Age of Stupid slightly underwhelming.

The Age of Stupid: Trailers: Global Premiere from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Surrogates raises some very interesting issues but unfortunately, does not do it in a very effective way. There is very little differentiating this film from the the average Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster. A bit less action and a few more thought-provoking moments perhaps, but still too much bad acting, poor casting and awfully written scenes that make you gasp in astonishment at such lack of respect for plausibility and consistency.

Nonetheless, for anyone interested in transhumanism, Surrogates will be somewhat stimulating. Human enhancement and the rise of artificial intelligence, along with the explosion of Genetics, Information Systems and Nanotechnology (the so-called GRIN technologies), will lead in the near future to some of the most complicated and important ethical questions that mankind has ever faced.

Surrogates describes a future where people’s only way of interacting with others and with their surroundings is through the use of Surrogates, robotic or cybernetic entities that look like younger versions of their human owners. All one needs to do is to lay at home on a comfy sofa, put on a not-very-fancy headpiece and one is immediately connected to their avatar and thus, to their ‘immortal’ younger, better looking and stronger selves. The difference with today’s virtual reality or simply net-based avatars is that these surrogates ‘live’ in the ‘real’ world, although once again, we start getting into all kinds of speculations about what real is. Surrogates is about the future but it is a critique of the present. Our increasing dependence on social media and virtual worlds is turning our conception of the word reality upside down. More and more people are choosing web and virtual-based reality over traditional reality. Some people are scared, while the younger generation plunges head fist into this new way of socializing and of experiencing life. We can not stop this pattern but we can discuss its ethics and fight for ways to make it better. Ultimately, virtual reality will become a natural part of existence, perhaps the only one and we will learn to upload our minds and to exist outside the confines of our fragile and limited bodies. After all, humankind, on the whole, has always wished for immortality and this is one way to do it.
But Surrogates does not discuss the possibility of mind uploading and presents us with a world that seems content to rot away at home while their Surrogates live on their behalf. I find that there is a logic flaw here, unless, of course, one can ultimately leave their dying body behind and just continue to live on by going from one new Surrogate model to the next. The film does not go into this level of detail - this is after all a big budget action film - which is a shame as the concept of Surrogates is fascinating.

Attention: Spoilers right from the start!

Let’s get one thing straight: there is no need to further reinforce the naive belief that so many people have that clones are exact visual/physical copies of a person and that they can just be produced to be born adults. The technology to make this happen will exist sooner or later, but Moon plays on these cliches with too much ease. Let’s leave that for mediocre films such as The 6th Day (2000).

Now that i have gotten this out of the way, i can focus on why Moon is one of the best Sci-Fi films i have watched in quite some time. The comparisons with classics such as Solaris (1972), 2001 (1968) and Silent Running (1972) are inevitable. When was the last time you saw a Sci-Fi film that required you to think? A Sci-Fi film with no action, no crazy camera movements, no overbearing and loud soundtrack? A Sci-Fi film that was courageous enough to dispense with most of the requirements that seem to be de rigueur in 21st century cinema? A couple of exceptions aside, probably not in the past 20 years or so.

Adroitly directed by first time director Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, and sublimely acted by Sam Rockwell, Moon is a superb moody piece about a man working a three-year solitary shift on the moon, on behalf of an earth-based corporation. As he is about to reach the end of his shift, and eagerly awaiting to return to his family on earth, a series of bizarre events begin to unfold. I was prepared for a lot of potential scenarios around the subject of loneliness and madness, but i was not prepared for the twist that Moon offers. With the exception of that small issue i mentioned earlier, the explanation for this man working on the moon alone and starting to suffer from hallucinations is quite satisfying. Although, one might think that the corporation would probably terminate the shift earlier than three years if they knew that there were a potential for problems to start occurring before the end of the shift. Nonetheless, the screenplay is quite clever and keeps one riveted until the end.

Sam Rockwell is as good as he usually is, and probably even better (twice as good?). I can’t imagine what it must feel like to play in a movie on your own. Only a certain type of actor can probably handle it, and turn in a spectacular performance in the process. The production design reminds us of 2001, and of a time when the future looked clean. While a bit disconcerting a first, there is something soothing about letting one’s self be engulfed in this hygienic, white and clean vision of a lunar base. It feels like surrendering to the dreams we had and were forced to abandon after the 80s made us realize that the future is dirty, wasteful and gray. But the production design of Moon also makes sense in the context of the story, and becomes even more so appropriate once the truth is revealed. And then there is the soundtrack by Clint Mansell, who has previously composed beautiful tracks for the films of Darren Aronofsky, which is haunting and ideal and enhances the sense of unease that permeates the film.

A great film.

Small budget films have the advantage of needing to attract smaller audiences to recoup their costs. As such, i would imagine, it must release some pressure to conform and compromise while at the same time enabling the type of creativity that often comes only with severe budgetary constraints. The majority of good Sci-Fi films these days appear to be associated with lower budgets, as directors and writers attempt to tell real stories around serious and contemporary issues. Science Fiction was not always the stuff of explosions and superficial entertainment, but the past 20 years or so have certainly given the genre a terrible reputation. We have Hollywood to thank for this, although we must not forget that once in a while the machinery can still produce quality films.

But if Hollywood continues to mainly spit out one brainless action and explosion-driven film after the next, other countries, such as Japan, Korea, Spain and France, unable (or unwilling) to compete on budget terms, sometimes produce very interesting, more character-driven Sci-Fi pieces. And recently, District 9, a South African production, showed us that a USD 30 million budget can go a long way if the film is built on a good base of intelligent screenplay and solid acting.

Now, from Mexico, a country that has in the past few years produced some pretty remarkable films, directors and actors, comes Sleep Dealer, another low budget film that is filled with good intents and is more entertaining than 99% of what comes out these days and pretends to be Sci-Fi. Like District 9, Sleep Dealer attempts to tackle lots of contemporary issues on a background of social criticism.

Sleep Dealer tells the story of a young restless Mexican who, wanting to be connected to the world rather than to continue living the life of his elders, heads to Tijuana to work in a Sleep Dealer. Sleep Dealers are factories where workers are hooked up to virtual reality networks that allow them to provide work remotely for many US-based companies. In this not-too-distant future, the Mexican labor workers, still driven by the dream of a better life, are once again exploited but they never cross the border to the US, thereby ’solving’ one of North America’s most pressing social issue today, at least from a US point of view. Our protagonist realizes soon enough that the traditional land-based life that his family has been living for generations is perhaps not so bad after all, and that the capitalistic and technology-driven dreams that he and other people of his age harbor are based on deceit and empty values.

So immigration, capitalism, social movement and technology are the overarching themes of Sleep Dealer. Within these, smaller thematic issues are depicted, such as mind uploading, water scarcity, DNA fingerprinting, memory ownership, death as a spectacle and the rise of shock-based entertainment, threat of bacterial infections, and more…

Too much for one film probably, but Sleep Dealer manages to pull it off reasonably well. Like with most films, we are reminded of many previous Sci-Fi efforts such as eXistenZ (1999) -virtual reality nodes as an extension of body and the experience as a drug-, Minorty Report (2002) -the visualization and interaction for memory viewing-, Code 46 (2003)-social mobility/division-, Strange Days (1995) and Total Recall (1990)-memories for sale, and even Blade Runner (1982)-Tijuana in Sleep Dealer is reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles- and Babel (2006)-are we getting closer to one another or further away?-. But whereas some films tend to just rehash or steal bits and pieces from previous works, others use the influence intelligently and create something new and fresh out of it. This is the case for Sleep Dealer.

Although i may not agree with its seemingly very black and white critic of technology, and although the film feels a bit amateurish at times, i still very much enjoyed what Sleep Dealer is trying to tell us and how it does it.

Watching Pandorum has made me realize how anxiously i await Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009). How long has it been since we have had an interesting, grown-up and cerebral film about the emptiness and scariness of space without the film resorting to superfluous tricks and cheap thrills? Around 30 years since Outland (1981) and Alien (1979), 37 since Silent Running (1972) and Solaris (1972) and more than 40 since 2001 (1968), every effort since feels hesitant, disjointed and happy to compromise for the sake of reaching out to a wider audience. Event Horizon (1997) is perhaps one of the scariest films ever made but i remember the gore much more than i remember the psychological. Sunshine (2007) had a lot of potential but eventually disappointed by turning into ‘just another horror film’. And then there is Pitch Black, Red Planet, Dante 01, Mission to Farce, and countless others, films that range from the decent to the terribly bad and that use space as an excuse for superficial entertainment.

ATTENTION SPOILERS AHEAD
Pandorum reminds us of many such past efforts. On the positive side, its production design owes much to Alien with its sweaty, smoky, dark and claustrophobic corridors where what one does not see is more terrifying than what one does see. There is also, on a couple of occasions, a reasonable depiction of the madness that can ensue after too much time spent in cold-sleep (Pandorum is the name given to such a condition). Yet, we are very far from what Solaris showed us about madness in space and much closer to Event Horizon’s extrapolations. On a more negative side, the camera movements are obscenely fast and disorientating and i continue to wonder why an increasing number of directors and cinematographers endorse this type of film making. It always feels a bit like a cope-out to me, a method to avoid thinking harder about how to create tension or confusion or even rhythm. The result of combining such camera movements with lots of darkness, smoke and selected light sources is that one spends a large part of Pandorum seeing pretty much nothing. But the most disappointing aspect of the film for me were the mutants who looked straight out of I am Legend (2007) and The Descent (2005). First, for them to have evolved in such a manner in a few decades (at least i think it is a few decades - someone correct me if i am wrong as the time frame was not made exactly clear; i am assuming this is the time for Cam to age into Dennis plus a few additional years in cold sleep) makes absolutely no sense, especially not when you consider that they all seem to have a penchant for Mad Max fashion. And second, couldn’t the creators just come up with something a bit more original and plausible?

Pandorum feels to me a bit like Sunshine did. Lots of potential, a good premise that becomes weaker towards the end, and too much energy and focus spent on the wrong parts of the screenplay. If only there had been a bit less of a ‘i am going to eat your flesh’ angle and more time spent (with less crazy camera movements) on the symptoms and consequences of Pandorum in the humans, i would have liked this film a lot more.

I had the pleasure of watching the German premiere of District 9 as part of the Berlin Fantasy Film Festival. It is not often that a Sci-Fi film rises above the ocean of mediocrity that plagues the genre so when it does happen, it is worth praising it.

District 9 is the debut film of Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson’s 29 years old protege. An action flick with a heart and a bit of social critic, the film revolves around issues of intergration between the residents of Johannesburg and a community of weakened Alien creatures that landed on Earth 20 years earlier and were forced to live in the slums of the South African city.

Made on what is today a fairly modest budget of $30 million, District 9 feels much bigger and better than most sci-fi films that cost two or three times that amount. The 600 visual effect shots are for the most part splendid and the level of detail impressive. Add to this some quality acting (Sharlto Copley is a lot of fun to watch), solid directing on the part of a young and ‘in’experienced director and a cinema verite documentary style of filming that is effective in building a sense of the real in the film while covering up nicely for potential errors, and you have a cult favorite in the making.

Yet, it is not the masterpiece that many have talked about. A few inconsistencies and one major (in my opinion) gap in the storyline prevent it from becoming already one of the best Sci-Fi films ever. Attention Spoilers Ahead. I am referring to the liquid that allows for the shuttle to return to the ship. I found it a bit of a stretch that this liquid also happens to turn a human into an alien through inhalation. Perhaps there was a good explanation for it in the film and i missed it. In which case i would need to edit this blog entry at a later date. In the meantime, i was a bit disappointed that they could not find a better way to handle the transition between the two ‘halves’ of the film. I also picked up a few other things, albeit small, which made me realize that the film still felt a tad amateurish at times. For this reason, it certaintly should not be discussed in the same vein as 2001 or Blade Runner or Alien…

But perhaps time will prove me wrong. In the meantime, District 9 is a very good film and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise usually boring and unsurprising Sci-Fi film landscape.

I hear Will Smith was offered the part of Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation but decided to turn it down due to the softness of the ’spirit of giving’ angle. Instead, Smith went for the soapy Seven Pounds (08). Too bad as i can imagine very well Will Smith playing an existentially troubled machine that thinks it is human and that decides to donate its heart to the main protagonist, John Connor.

If i just made up the part about Will Smith, it is only to illustrate how silly of a film Terminator Salvation is. While i respect Will Smith, i found Seven Pounds to be way over the top in terms of cheese factor and this latest Terminator is not far behind, although, after just a bit of reflection, i might have to say that Seven Pounds is a better film. So way to go Will, you have once again chosen wisely. The same can not be said for Christian Bale whose performance in this film certainly did not warrant his much publicized verbal assault on a crew member during the shoot. Ever since The Machinist (04), Bale has built a reputation for strongly getting ‘in-role’ and for his Method Acting intensity, but lately that does not seem to translate into a whole lot. His Bruce Wayne is uneventful and dull, as is his John Connor. But Bale is not a bad actor. He just needs to start choosing better roles.

Terminator Salvation is a poorly written film with lasily developed characters and some of the worst editing i have seen recently. Scenes jump from one to the next without much logic and with very little smoothness. Much of the script is driven by the action without much regard for plausibility and common sense. For example, the resistance penetrates Skynet with such ease, it makes you wonder what the whole fuss with the machines has been about. Then there is the sexy female character who so conveniently meets the machine and falls so madly in love with it that she makes a fairly ridiculous decision that has no other purpose than to drive the action forward. My list of complaints goes on.

McG, the director, recently had a feud with Michael Bay, my old nemesis. I suggest that instead of fighting over who has the biggest robot, they should go have a beer and exchange ideas on how to make crappy films. Bay still has the most knowledge in this area, but it looks like McG is catching up fast.

This two hour pilot for the new series Caprica surprised me. I certainly was not expecting Battlestar Galactica all over again, but i also was not prepared for such a ‘character-driven’ experience. I use the term loosely here, and mainly to highlight the move away from space as the main narrative background. Intended to gain a wider audience, Caprica may also end up leaving some BSG fans behind…

Caprica takes place on a planet that, aside from a couple of minute differences, looks exactly like our earth. Its main city, Caprica, is any 1950s North American city with a few futuristic skyscrapers added here and there for good measure. I read that the idea of using the 1950s as an influence was to emphasize the fact that all this is taking place in our distant past but to nonetheless convey a sense of excitement towards the future. Personally, i found the production design of Caprica to be one of its weakest points. There is an underwhelming sense of lack of imagination as we stroll through streets and alleys that look like the types we would see in any other TV show. I understand that Caprica takes place in our past, but that knowledge is not enough to overcome the disconnect that one experiences when seeing our present when one is in fact thinking about either the distant future or the distant past. The fact that Caprica and BSG take place millions of years ago is already quite a challenge from a production design standpoint, one that i have discussed already in a couple of BSG posts. But in Caprica, it has become worse. The creators did not even see it fit to show us a game of Pyramid. Instead, we just see a few foamy pads laying around while around 70 extras jump up and down in what looked to be an ice-hockey arena. This is of course intentional, the producers and writers either held up by budgetary constraints or intent on ‘keeping it real’ in an effort to cater to a larger audience than the usual Sci-Fi fare traditionally does. In the end, i see no reason for Caprica to look like 1950s New York or Chicago, as i saw no reason for pens, paper, cancer, cigarettes and many other things to exist in the universe of BSG. One can not have invented interstellar and faster-than-light travel and still be bogged down by so many 20th century human weaknesses and memes. And this applies to design and architecture as well. I also felt uneasy by some of the casting choices, including Eric Stoltz as Daniel Graystone, the driven and selfish scientist who brings about the beginning of the end. Stoltz failed to convince me as a technical genius and as a father, even as a bad one.

A week after having watched Virtuality, it was interesting to see again virtual reality being depicted on TV. Ron Moore has been recycling some of his ideas since in both pilots, a character dies but continues to exist in virtual reality. And in both cases, VR is used pretty much as a recreational tool where a simple headset is enough to transport the ‘user’ into an exact replica of the real world, whatever that real world may be, all five senses included. But Caprica goes much further and attempts to explore some potential societal and moral implications of not only virtual reality but also of immortality, transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The theme of religion is emphasized from the very start and Dr Graystone’s experiments provide the required foundation for the standard science vs religion debate. Where the debate becomes more interesting than usual is in Dr Graystone’s ideas about merging (mind uploading?) the encoded data of his daughter (drawing on current lifelogging trends - blogs, social networks, data capture…) with an AI-enabled robotic shell. The potential result is immortality for a new a type of being. These concepts are not too far-fetched and many people today in transhumanist circles are working on such ideas. So credit to Ron Moore for keeping it believable. I suppose Mary Shelley did not come up with the idea for Frankenstein. She must have found some old book somewhere telling tales of immortality based on Caprican rather than Summerian or Egyptian mythology.

In spite of what i consider to be weaknesses in the production values and in the casting, the pilot for Caprica had plenty of interesting moments and clearly warrants further viewing. It is hard to imagine that the Cylons were created only 60 years before the fall of Caprica, but i am sure the creators will find a satisfactory way to put it all together.

“There’s more humor probably in the first 10 minutes of Virtuality than there was in the entire run of Battlestar Galactica.” This comment made by Ron Moore in an interview with Wired Magazine illustrates exactly why i feel that Virtuality, had it been picked up as a series by Fox, would have ended up being 10 times less interesting than BG.

Virtuality is a series pilot about a group of astronauts on a 10 year journey to a nearby star system. Increasingly difficult conditions on board as well as a strange and dangerous behavior from an AI in the virtual reality systems slowly lead to an atmosphere of instability, suspicion and aggression. To make matters more interesting, or so Ron Moore thought, the group is also the subject of a reality TV show transmitted ‘live’ back to Earth.

For about 60 minutes, Virtuality feels amateurish, boring and filled with cliches and stolen ideas. The acting is very average, the casting often inappropriate (all these doctors and scientists who look straight out of the pages of Seventeen or Vogue - the selected Elite of Earth?), the characters are poorly developed and feel like we have seen them a hundred times before in films and TV shows, the dialogues are uninspiring and the camera movements are such that one wonders if the DOP was drunk or on speed.

But the film picks up a bit in the last 30 minutes, as the writers felt understandingly that they had to take us towards some kind of climax to increase their chances of the pilot being turned into a series. However, one can easily imagine that the first 60 minutes would be a more accurate reflection of the quality of the entire series, and as such, i unbelievably find myself agreeing with the Fox network, or at least with the executive who pulled the plug on Virtuality.

Some films continue to be made as they were meant to, that is, within an artistic and philosophical framework and mindset. Some others are developed as products, with profit and entertainment as the main objective. Clearly some artistic films can be entertaining but rarely is a ‘product’ film very artistic or philosophical.

When Robert Wise directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, the blockbuster was only a few years old and auteur films were still prominent. Wise’s effort remains today one of the most serious undertakings at meaningful, earnest and reputable Sci-Fi. 30 years later, one of Hollywood’s hottest properties, J.J. Abrams, has tried to bring his magic touch to your parents’ favourite space saga. Undoubtebly inspired by the success of rejuvenated James Bond and Batman, the producers of Star Trek felt that it was time for the franchise to become more ‘modern’ and to draw on current cinematic trends and on overall changes in cinematic tastes

As I discussed this latest instalment of Star Trek with a colleague who had really enjoyed the film, I struggled to articulate why a movie filled with quality action, decent acting, top-notch visual effects and with an overall obvious respect for the franchise and what it represents, could have left me so disappointed. But it became clear to me after a while that the reason was simple: this film was developed as a product, and not as a piece of art. As such, it felt convenient, easy, and at times superficial and fluffy. It was made of pre-existing parts that one can assemble together to shape the product. Now, it must be said, Hollywood can produce both good and bad products and this Star Trek happens to be a good product, a well-crafted one built by experts. But it is a product nonetheless. A product for entertainment purposes, for immediate consumption and limited cognitive depth. The creativity goes into the action sequences and the special effects but is barely present in the script and in the overall storyline. There is nothing fresh about time travel and parallel universes, at least not in the way it was presented to us in this film. And as a friend of mine pointed out, there was little creativity in coming up with an interesting enemy or nemesis. Let’s just put a bit of make up on Bana’s face and have him snarl at the camera.

A few sequences made me whinge, as when Spock saves the members of his family who looked like they were having tea and cookies nonchalentely while their planet crumbled around them. Thank god Spock showed them how to exit their own cave or else it appears that they would have gone on with whatever it is they were doing before Spock barged in. And then there is the whole sequence about old Spock meeting Kirk miraculously in some cave. Somehow Spock happens to have a torch to repel the monster that had been chasing Kirk through the snow (Empire Strikes Back anyone?). Spock also knows about the outpost next door where they find, you guessed it, beam me up Scotty. So that’s how it all happened. Just like that. People who liked the film will say that it had to be all explained and that Abrams did just that. But i will say that it should not have been all explained, not if it means having to stich sequences together in a way that feels forced and artificial. Indeed, Abrams explained it all and he still managed to provide 120 minutes of jokes and action. I say, something had to give.

Star Trek is far from being a bad film, and i might even watch it again some day. It is definitively better than many films i have reviewed on this blog. Yet, it is also quite inferior to recent Sci-Fi efforts such as Watchmen or The Dark Knight or even to the Battlestar Galactica series

I can’t claim to have the pulse of the younger generation but i sincerely hope that Push has not been received too warmly by teenage girls in awe of Chris Evans or by teenage boys who may find the thought of watching Dakota Fanning walking for 90 mins around Hong Kong with a very short skirt on appealing. I am actually wondering if reaching for the teenage market was in fact the intention of the director, Paul McGuigan, or if it just seems this way due to the mediocrity of this film.

Push is one of those movies that is so bad that one can’t help but to wonder how it was even greenlighted in the first place. One can also legitimately ask how a director who, although far from being considered good, has managed to make a couple of not-too-terrible films, can so easily spiral out of control into an abyss of cliches, predictability and, well, stupidity…It is as if his entire carreer had just been erased and he was back in film school, trying to make the cool film that everyone will be impressed with. Except that, because he is a mediocre student, his film is the last thing from cool and instead is filled with atrocious acting, silly and amateurish editing and obvious and poorly chosen music.

Because the subject matter of paranormal abilities is burried so deep below several layers of trash, there is no opportunity to even discuss it in the context of this film.

As a critic, i know my limitations. That is, i must remain aware that directors create something and that critics do little other than praise or bash what has been created already. I respect the act of creation (and of creativity) and i keep it in mind at all times when i appraise a film. However, there are times when even this awareness is not enough to keep me from thinking that with the same resources and with a short training, i could have done better.

For your viewing pleasure, a fun short from the masters at Pixar …

Attention tons of spoilers ahead.

Well, BSG is over and i feel a sense of loss that i will no longer be able to immerse myself regularly into this well-crafted, intelligent, challenging and believable world of lost humans, Cylons and hybrids. But after four years of raising salient questions about politics, religion, racism, terrorism, war, technology, good and evil and almost everything else that is pertinent in a post 9/11 world, the conclusion of this much revered show has left me somewhat dissatisfied. It has also made me wonder about the writing process for a TV show, a subject I know little about.

I think the majority of viewers will agree that BSG is an incredibly well-written show. Dialogues, character development, plot movement, the flow of the scenes, all have been admirably handled and are the main reason why BSG is considered to be one of the best shows ever written for TV. Yet, I can not help but ask myself if, in spite of all this, a lot of the plot points were not just thrown together at the end, the writers having sacrificed long term coherence for short term impact, viewers and season renewal. There are simply too many loose ends at the end and too many resolutions that feel forced. That being said, the overall idea of having them land on our Earth to become our ancestors is actually powerful and interesting. But after years of building the suspense and raising our expectations about Hera, the Opera House, Kara, Baltar and 6, the resolutions from this last episode have a bit of an anti-climatic feel to them. So it was all about chasing Hera through the ship and the CIC? These fantastic and grand visions were about the CIC? Disappointing. And the religious and spiritual undertones which were effective until now because they were just that, undertones, and perhaps because they suggested something more, ended up being in fact an end in itself. Unlike some viewers, I am not criticising the idea of bringing religion more concretely into the series, I am simply stating that as with other elements in the last episode, the way the religious angle was brought to a close did not feel properly thought-through and smelled of last minute resolution. It had worked until now because we weren’t quite sure what it was all about. We might have suspected, but the mystery kept it interesting. By turning these religious possibilities into a concrete reality, the mystery has been removed (assuming you don’t associate mystery with lack of answers) and with it, the only thread by which many viewers were still hanging to the religious angle.

I won’t even go into the idea of abandoning all technology so quickly, without any apparent discussion or rebellion by anyone, these space farers suddenly in love with the idea of farming and living in tents for the rest of their lives, assuming they don’t get killed first by the multitude of dangers that populated the African Savannah 150,000 years ago. One of these days, I will watch the entire show again and it will be interesting to see how much does and does not make sense. I suspect there are a lot of inconsistencies.

Yet, and this is where my criticism ends, this shaky ending far from cancels out all the marvellous aspects of the show. BSG has taken us on a wonderful journey over the past four years and it has helped restore Sci-Fi’s good name. It has proven that Sci-Fi does not have to be shallow and mainly visual effect-based, that it can challenge us intellectually and affect us emotionally as good and as deeply as any non Sci-Fi drama. So goodbye BSG and thanks for all the fish!

Georges Melies is considered the father of visual effects, and quite understandably so. Le Voyage a Travers L’Impossible, like Melies’ more famous Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), is a fascinating use of a medium that was only a few years old at the time.

I can only marvel at Melies’ creativity and courage for taking the moving image out of what must have been a pretty conservative context and for turning it so quickly into a canvas for storytelling, visual experimentation and imaginative ideas. Based on a Jules Verne story, this film may not make much sense by today’s standards and can feel a bit hurried (Melies directed over 500 ‘films’ in his short career) but it deserves our admiration nonetheless.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2007 Montreal film festival, this directorial debut by Nic Balthazar deserves credit for creating an interesting experience for about 80% of the duration of the movie. Unfortunately, he throws it all away at the end with a cheesy feel-good ending that feels very poorly handled.

BenX is the story of a young man who suffers from Asperger Syndrome, a milder form of autism. Bullied at school, unable to ‘blend in’ and to socially relate to his peers, his principal means of interacting, and really, of existing, is by immersing himself into the game Archlord (Overlord) where he becomes the character BenX and where he has the freedom to do what he can not do in ‘traditional’ reality. Although he has a good friend in the world of Overlord (Scarlite), his increasing inability to deal with life prompts him to contemplate ways of commiting suicide.

BenX is not a small challenge for a first time director. Taking on autism, school bullying, teenage angst, and the influence of the internet and of video games on our lives and on how we interact with each other, is indeed a tall ordeal. Balthazar manages pretty well on the whole, although his sometimes hectic cuts and camera movements can feel overly eager and ambitious. The acting is solid enough but nothing more. And the script holds together decently until the last part of the film, at which point it falls apart in ambuiguity and clumsiness. Overall, a respectable film that nonetheless still feels too often like a first time effort.

Novels are notoriously difficult to adapt successfully to the screen. It is not so much a question of whether the visual language of cinema can tell more or less than the written word but rather that it does it in a different way, touching on different connection points to our emotions and intellect. Most people who have read a novel and watched a film based on that novel end up usually disappointed as there is little chance that a film will be able to entirely re-create the world that the written word can sometimes open to us. But great appreciators of cinema will know when the writer and director of a film have succeeded in utilizing the power of the moving image to best interpret and render the essence of a novel. Not necessarily to literraly and faithfully adapt it, but to transport the meaning, intention and atmosphere in the best possible way, based on the possiblities of the cinematic medium.

That is not to say that all novels can be turned into films, nor that it should always be attempted. Especially when the essence of a novel is closely dependent on a very particular style of prose (little punctuation and lack of quotation marks around dialogue) and when the author (a Nobel prize winner) specifically removes many traditional frames of references such as character names and cultural and geographical points of idendification to enhance the power of his message. In short, Fernando Meirelles should probably not have attempted to turn José Saramago’s influencial novel into a film.

Blindness tells the story of how humanity suddenly loses its sight. One by one, the nameless residents of an unnamed city become blind and must learn to live with one another under extreme conditions of chaos and lawlesness (and of course, of blindness). One woman, played with usual consistency and intensity by Julianne Moore, retains her sight and is confronted with the question of what it means to be the one who sees in the kingdom of the blind.

Watching as many movies as i do means that i get exposed to a lot of different styles and cinematic experiences. And through my emphasis on ‘Sci-Fi’, i get my fair share of the disturbing and the unnerving. But that did not prepare me for how tough of a film Blindness is. I found the film so disturbing, and unfortunately at times, so cheaply disturbing, that i had to stop halfway through it to take a break. Saramago and Meirelles illustrate our collective spiritual blindness and lack of empathy by using examples of the absolute worst evil that Man can do. For about one hour, we are subjected to scenes of human degradation that reach a level of such intensity that one can’t help but wonder if the point couldn’t have been made equally as well without resorting to such extremes. I personally found some of the scenes insulting and even perverted.

Yet, there is something haunting about Blindness, something that stayed with me long after the film was over. No longer anger but rather fascination and curiosity towards a message which, although cruel, offers a glimmer of hope and presents the possibility that we as humans have a choice, the choice to learn how to live with one another and to create a better world for all.

A regular topic on this blog is that of bad versus good trash. What makes, for example, Eagle Eye (2008) and The Day the Earth Stool Still (2008) bad trash and what makes Wanted good trash? Why are the cliches acceptable in the later but not in the first two? Even though there are many reasons why a film can be bad, there is however usually one overarching common reason: bad trash films tend to take themselves seriously and try to reach emotional and intellectual heights that are far beyond what they can achieve based on the resources available (such as skills and intelligence of the director and actors and quality of the screenplay). There is nothing more annoying than directors who have no understanding of their abilities and who end up inserting childish and immature emotional and philosophical nonsense in their action flicks.
Good trash, on the other hand, tends to know its limitations and has the intelligence to try not to pretend that it can be more than what it actually is.

Thus, Wanted does not attempt to tell us about emotions or human frailty or love or what makes the world go round or this or that. Wanted just wants to entertain through action, dark humour and visual effects. It makes no apology for what it is and it does not try to marry this action with any kind of depth; it is what i would call good and honest superficial entertainment.

One feels several influences in this film about an average young man (played perfectly by James McAvoy) who learns that he is the son of an assassin, himself a member of a secret guild that dates back hundreds of years. Part of the overall concept and many of the action scenes are reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), some of the gun-fighting sequences bring Equilibrium (2002) to mind and one can detect attempts here and there at a bit of a Flight Club (1999) pace and feel. Other action flicks will undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with Wanted, but in the end, Timur Bekmambetov who previously directed Night Watch (2004), manages to come up with enough visual candy, good acting, great action sequences and just the right amount of dark humour to make Wanted a fun experience.

Perhaps they should have added a disclaimer that no rats were harmed during the filming of this movie…

Utterly pointless and excruciatingly bad.

Outlander is an expensive B-movie that tries to be more than that. It fails at it but does not feel overly arrogant while trying. That is not to say that it constantly deals with its subject matter in an effective way but it seems to be satisfied with targeting a certain audience and to provide this audience with as solid of an experience as possible. Of course, when it comes to a story about a man from the future crash landing in 8th century Norway, there is plenty of room for subjectivity in how one appraises the merits of such a film.

What makes Outlander better trash than for example Eagle Eye (2008) or The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) is that it does not pretend to know how to deal with big philosophical questions and it does not tie its story to the ‘real’. By releasing itself from the shackles of reality, that is, by taking place in a fantasy world, Outlander does not have to meet the stricter believability standards of films that relate to our modern society.

That being said, Outlander is still a very average film. Instead of aiming for the level of The Navigator (1988), or even better, for the level of Planet of the Apes (1968), the best time travel movie ever made, the movie turns into some kind of Predator-type monster flick with weak undertones of Excalibur (1981), a Beowulf (2007) that can not use animation as an excuse for its weaknesses. A strange but interesting mix that could have worked better had the director not decided that an avalanche of gore was in order. And that James Caviezel should play in the lead role…

One of the many wonderful aspects of Cinema is its ability to reflect a culture’s present tendencies and fears. When studied in the context of history, Cinema offers an evolutionary roadmap of the various social and economical trends of a society. Whether German cinema of the 1920s or American cinema of the 1950s or French cinema of the 1960s, they all have something extremely powerful to say about the societal changes that took place in those times in these particular countries.

If you ask an American today which themes define her society, it is likely that terrorism, war, paranoia and the increasing ubiquitousness of technology in our lives and its impact on our privacy will feature prominently. In a way, the nature of the paranoia has only slightly changed from what it was in the 60s and 70s when Frankenheimer and Pakula crafted remarkable films such as The Manchurian Candidate, 7 Days in May, Seconds, Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men. But the means and methods have clearly evolved and we today live in a society that is greatly reliant on technology and where the rise of social networks and of global interconnectivity are making us vulnerable to Cyber crimes, the consequences of which have the potential to be more dangerous than what our most conservative estimates can predict. What the web knows about you today is already frightening enough to rightly justify concern for the future.

With Eagle Eye, Hollywood is showing its ability to capitalize on modern trends and on the public’s fears. Unfortunately, as is often the case, it does so in a superficial way that distorts and simplifies the issues being presented. In a film that Tony Scott would have been proud of but that would have made Stanley Kubrick vomit, an AI created by US Intelligence (a term which the film makes clear can be an oxymoron) looses its marbles and decides to take action against its own government. In doing so, it hijacks the lives of ordinary citizens and, in a series of completely preposterous and nonsensical events, assumes control of everything from airports and subway systems to cell phone networks. Only Shia LaBeouf (who seems to have a knack for playing in really bad movies) can save the world from doom. And also the ingenious idea to empty the cooling fluid that the AI depends on to survive…Even a bit of criticism at the Bush administration can’t save this film from its own mediocrity.

Despite my clear lack of knowledge regarding the inner workings of a film studio or of a production company, this is nonetheless how i envision the approval for City of Ember must have happened:

Pitch Guy: So picture this. The world has destroyed itself but a group of people survives and builds a new society underground…
Studio Exec: you mean like in Logan’s Run?
PG: Yes. Well, no, not exactly. Time passes of course, but the society is cut off from progress so it is more based on technology from the past and on old-fashioned values
SE: I see. So a bit like A Boy and His Dog?
PG: Hmm, i suppose so. But just a little bit. It is not a suburbian mentality like A Boy and His Dog. This takes place in a small, dystopic, claustrophobic and buzzing city with strange architecture and
SE: Sounds like Dark City to me…
PG: Hmfff, kind of, but it is not dark, well not really dark, it is more rusty and old and dusty and…
SE: Did you ever see The City of Lost Children? Amazing production values….
PG: Yes i did. Nice film. But you see, City of Ember is also a great adventure because two kids find out how to get out…
SE: Kids? Kids as in Jumanji, The Goonies, Narnia, The Golden Compass, Lemony Snicket, The…
PG: Yes, yes, but the angle here is slightly different because…

At this point, the Studio Exec chokes on his Latte Machiatto and gasps desperately for air. The Pitch Guy understands that this is his only chance, grabs a pillow and places it over the Studio Exec’s face who dies shortly thereafter. Before calling for help, the Pitch Guy manages to fake the Exec’s signature and places the pitch page in the Go Ahead tray.

Anyone got a better explanation?

At the risk of losing whatever little credibility I have in the dark and obscure circles of amateur film critique, I am going to come out and say that Tom Cruise is an interesting actor to watch. I am not going to go as far as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian who stated that he is a brilliant character actor and a great actor, but I think Tom Cruise deserves more credit than he usually gets. His off-screen antics have gotten in the way of people’s fair appraisal of his acting talents. And while these are still limited (I noticed years ago that one of his favourite methods for acting surprise and disbelief is to repeat his lines twice, a la Jimmy Two Times), he is nonetheless able to sometimes deliver some exciting performances as he did in Born on the 4th of July (1989), Magnolia (1999), and Lions for Lambs (2007).

In Vanilla Sky, based on the better Spanish film called Open your Eyes (1997), Cruise shows that he is not afraid to be a bit more edgy, although, in all fairness, we are still talking about a Cameron Crowe film. The first half of the film is artificial and annoying, depicting mostly an exasperating romance between a rich and vain playboy played by Cruise and a Euro artsy-fartsy girl played by the other Cruz, Penelope (whose acting charisma only seems to come out whenever she is not playing in an American film). This hollow yarn appears to have been taken over the top deliberately (I hope) to provide a starker contrast to the second half. Cameron Diaz’ scenes offer the only interesting moments until the film kicks into second gear, at which point Cruise starts to let loose and takes us into darker and edgier territory.

Attention Spoilers Ahead
The reason I enjoyed Vanilla Sky is not because I thought it would be interesting to be the only person in the world who does. Rather, it is because it deals with a subject matter rarely encountered in cinema, at least in mainstream cinema: using technology to defeat death. This is the story of a dead man who has used his wealth to be preserved cryogenically until, at some point in the future, technological progress will allow for his body to be brought back to life. Now, this would make for a pretty boring film if this man were not able to continue ‘living’ in a simulated world that feels exactly like reality. Is it not clear how exactly the technology to enable a dying person to upload his mind into a perfect virtual reality has come to exist so quickly before the technology to keep one alive after a particular car crash…but who cares, it still allows for some interesting speculations, provided that one enjoys thinking about such things.

Cryonics may still seem like the stuff of Science Fiction to most people, but several companies today offer such services, although without the mind uploading bit which I suspect will take a while longer to develop, and their mastery of the process is improving every year. For around 120,000 dollars one can get his body preserved with the hope that some future technology, probably nano-based, will be able to bring that body back to life, along, somehow and hopefully, with the consciousness that used to accompany it. This may not be as crazy as it sounds. Rapid and mind-boggling advances related to what are known as the GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotic & Cognitive, Information Systems and Nanotechnology) are reshaping the health and socio-political landscape of our society on an exponential scale. What we have achieved technologically in the past is only a fraction of what we will achieve in the future. According to Ray Kurzweil, who believes in the coming of The Singularity, the exponential increase in technological advancement that our world is witnessing means that we will not experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century. Instead, we will experience ‘20,000 years of progress, or about 100 thousand times greater than what was achieved in the 20th century’ (Kurzweil. The Singularity is Near. 2005). At this rate, who knows what will be possible in 500 or 2000 years. Therefore, no one can say for sure today that reviving the frozen dead will not be possible in the future. Personally, I see no reason to doubt that it will happen. My concerns are more based around the difficulty of bringing back a person’s consciousness. What would be the point of coming back if one has no recollection of the past and of one’s self? Traditional reincarnation can already provide for this, so Cryonics, or a field working in association with it, need to go beyond and allow one to preserve his or her self throughout the ages. But memory implants, mind uploading or a yet-to-be-thought-about technology should overcome this obstacle, leaving only ethicists, sociologists and politicians to debate the pros and cons and the impact of such a massive revolution on society as a whole.

Vanilla Sky is not a great film. It is probably not even a good film. But I found it very entertaining nonetheless and the possibilities associated with keeping one’s mind and thoughts alive in a simulation of the real world until that person’s body can be brought back to life, left me thinking and wondering.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a pathetic film. As I much as I love Hollywood for its mystic, history, glamour and for the fact that it continues year after year to enable the creation of marvellous films, I also sometimes hate it for being able to not only green light such trash but also for purposefully creating in the first place such a non-sensical and emotionally deficient waste, tailored to please the common denominator, thus totally disregarding in the process good acting, scene plausibility, intelligent dialogues and well developed characters. I won’t even get into the dishonour a bad remake does to the original film upon which it is based, in this case, one of the best Science Fiction films of all time.

Stiff Keanu Reeves as the stoic Alien already tells us that we are embarking on a risky adventure. Some might see a certain logic in casting someone who does not know how to act (although once in a while Reeves is capable of raising his acting to the level of ‘enjoyable enough’ as in The Gift (2000)) for the part of an alien who supposedly does not initially understand emotions, but I would rather classify this as bad and naïve casting. Or more likely as marketing-based casting. After all, Brad Pitt, who has since shown that he is capable of good acting in such films as Kalifornia (1993), Fight Club (1999), Snatch (2000), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) and Burn after Reading (2008), proved through his horrid performances in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Meet Joe Black (1998) that playing blasé and stoic characters (as well as an Austrian character in Seven Years in Tibet (1997)) is not the stuff of average actors.

With the addition of the money-driven and inappropriate casting of Keanu Reeves, The Day the Earth Stood Still also boasts an impressive list of clichés, issued straight out the bad blockbuster manual: the racially mixed infuriating child who will do the most maddening things at the most inopportune moments but who, as even the average viewer will have guessed from the start, will finally overcome his emotional issues and become only slightly less annoying; the bright and single mother who has problems raising that irritating little…mentioned earlier and who seems to know all the right people since she will become the main point of contact for the alien (someone in this whole disaster of a production still had enough good sense to ensure that she does not end up falling in love with the alien); the know-it-all and closed minded politicians who will of course make all the wrong decisions; the beyond repair and impotent military establishment which, as usual, will find bigger and bigger rockets to throw at the problem; the good, tolerant and just scientists who, if it weren’t for the politicians and military, could make the world a much better place; and last but not least, the alien who is so intelligent that, after some small, uninteresting and morally infantile chats with a couple of people, discovers the meaning of emotions and realizes that humans are not such a bad lot after all. My son is 19 months old and has an EQ far superior to the level of this film.

In comparison to the relevance of this film to contemporary environmental issues (its superficial message that we are killing our earth and its ending that seems to lightly suggest – and this was not made very clear - that stopping all technology is the answer to these issues, are an affront to the problems we truly face), Emmerich’s The Day after Tomorrow (2004) seems like a scientific treatise, which of course does not say a whole lot about Hollywood’s ability to take these issues seriously.

I am a lover of great cinema but also of great cinematic trash. This, on the other hand, is bad trash and as such deserves every single bit of negative press it has so far received. In the meantime, I shall pull out the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still from my DVD shelf for a little trip down nostalgia lane…

Spin, which won the Hugo Award in 2005, is a novel that often feels more like speculative fiction than science fiction. Like much of the work of Kim Stanley Robinson and of Margaret Atwood, Spin takes place in a hypothetical present, and uses current themes and concepts and a solid narrative with strongly developed characters as a backbone for more fictional and apocalyptic speculations.

These speculations revolve around the unexplained appearance of a membrane around the Earth, apparently placed by some extra terrestrial intelligence whose motives will only be revealed at the end of the book. Outside of the membrane, the universe expands at a rapidly accelerating rate, implying that without the membrane, the Earth will quickly fry under the rays of our exploding sun. However, the origin of the membrane remains unclear to the people of the Earth who are condemned to live without understanding why, how, and especially how long. How long until the membrane disappears, signifying the end of the human race?

It is within this existential end-of-the-world context that Wilson develops the story of three friends whose lives will evolve differently under the constant presence and threat of the membrane. Each will use the inescapable uncertainty and ambiguity that now permeates life on earth to make different decisions and to interact with the world according to their own motivations. Yet, their path will cross often, and the truth behind the appearance of the membrane will bring them together in their search for answers.

Despite the fact that Wilson brings additional themes to his story such as conscious self-replicating nanomachines, humanity’s depletion of Earth’s natural resources, the terraforming and colonization of Mars (the depiction of which is in my mind one of Spin’s few weak points), and the connection of various parts of the universe through wormhole-like gates, it is the tale of the three friends confronting the realities of a doomed world that dominates Spin. It is not often that a Science Fiction writer tries and succeeds in bringing such depth to his or her characters. Wilson has done just that with Spin and has done it on a canvas of interesting apocalyptic conjectures and ideas that are reminiscent of Greg Bear’s The Forge of God.

The name M. Night Shyamalan is starting to sound very pretentious.

Although the name is a bit difficult to remember, people usually still manage to mumble something about M and Night followed by some uncomprehensible nonsense. But this confusion adds to its mysterious and intriguing aspect, as it did for the people of Eastwick who tried hard to remember the name Daryl Van Horne. The mystic increased as the director gained international fame with The 6th Sense (1999) and then with Unbreakable (2000). After these two films, M. Night Shyamalan could fully live up this his name by having it displayed in large print above the title of his films, with studio marketing people proudly displaying ‘a film by M. Night Shyamalan’ or ‘M. Night Shyamalan presents’ as if the director, after only less than a handful of films to his credit, could be compared to a Hitchcock or to other Hollywood directing legends.

Unfortunately, Shyamalan has failed to live up to the mystic of his name and to the hype of his reputation. While The 6th Sense was a good, not great, movie, Unbreakable started to show a few weaknesses while Signs (2002) clearly demonstrated that the director was either going through a really bad spell, or that, and this is more likely, the 6th Sense had been a fluke. His films since have proved the later and his most recent, The Happening, is just one more nail in the coffin of this so called new master of horror.

The Happening, about an unknown and never explained suicide-inducing toxin spreading across the North East of the US, has some good moments, especially in the first 30 minutes, and offers an interesting take on man vs nature. However, Shyamalan can not keep it up and proceeds to ruin the next 55 minutes by instering silly comic scenes whose purpose is a total mystery to me and by using so many cliches that one can not help but to feel that the director is trying very hard to scare us. The desire to scare overcomes to need to remain realistic with the result being that the viewer questions rather than feels. In addition, Mark Wahlberg, whom we know is capable of pulling some interesting performances as he did in The Departed (2006), feels totally lost and confused as a romantic scientist and the chemistry between him and Zooey Deschanel is equivalent to mixing bleach with vinegar.

This family adventure is apparently much better in 3D. Supposedly, putting on a pair of the funny looking glasses has the effect of directly placing the bad acting and silly script in the background, emphasizing instead the action and visual effects. Now, I am all in favour of the democratization of 3D and of its increased use in modern cinema. However, let us hope that it does not lead to a overabundance of bad movies. After all, there are already too many of them.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is loosely based on Jules Verne’s novel of the same name, and feels more like a bad version of The Goonies (1985) than a serious attempt at honouring the memory of the father of Science Fiction. As I winced during several of the poorly written scenes, I could not help but to be reminded of the cheapness of At the Earth’s Core (1976) and of First Men in the Moon (1964), which is a real shame since Verne’s story, in the right hands, could be turned into a fascinating and highly entertaining film.

Still, there are a couple of good moments in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Brendan Frasier does his thing, and there is enough escapist entertainment to convince one to watch it until the end.

For reasons unknown to me, as I tried to recall the various Batman films and their progression over the past 19 years (excluding the 1943 and 1966 versions), I began to draw a very loose association with the James Bond franchise. Not in terms of content naturally, but rather in terms of tone and mood. First came the darkness of Sean Connery, then the silliness of Roger Moore, followed by the suaveness of Pierce Brosnan (I am conveniently omitting two more James Bond, I know) and today we once again have rawness and darkness with Daniel Craig. It feels to me that the Batman franchise has followed a similar path, with Christopher Nolan’s two Batman films picking up where Tim Burton’s left off, and possibly even going further. In between, we had the very forgettable and silly Batman films of Joel Schumacher, which I am sure Clooney and Kilmer are still to this day trying very hard to erase from their memory and filmography.

At my own peril, I will take the comparison between the latest James Bond film (I have not seen Quantum of Solace (2008) so I am referring to Casino Royale (2006)) and The Dark Knight further.
They both try to demark themselves from the legacy of the franchise and try to create something fresh. They both attempt very hard to emphasize human conflict and to marry emotional depth with raw and effective action. And last but not least, they are both extremely minimalist in their approach. While both running at 2 ½ hours, there is little fat in either of them, with the accent being on relentless pace and action. Only the bare minimum of information is given as scenes are trimmed for speed and progression.

Christopher Nolan’s relatively brief career has been remarkable so far. The brilliant and already cult classic Memento (2000), the moody and visually striking remake of Insomnia (2002), the decent but provoking The Prestige (2006) and the two Batman films, all are clearly the marks of someone with a high level of control, skill and understanding of the cinematic medium and of its techniques. Darkness also seems an underlying thread of these films, in visual terms and through their subject matters.

With The Dark Knight, Nolan delivers a very accomplished film that epitomizes the high quality entertainment film. Most aspects of the movie are solid and the result is a non-stop thrill ride. Unfortunately, this focus on pace means that occasionally, the scenes flow from one to the next in a somewhat abrupt and not always logical way, leaving the viewer with some unanswered questions. Like a comic book that has a limited capacity for background information, The Dark Knight jumps from major scene to major scene, leaving out many things in between.
As a closing note, it is worth mentioning the performance of Heath Ledger. His death prompted a wave of calls for an Oscar nomination, with people stating that his performance had been no less than magnificent. I initially took this with high dose of skepticism. However, having now watched the movie, I can say that Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker is indeed spectacular and when considered together with his performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005), hints at what could have become a very very fine actor.