DISTRICT 9: REVIEW

Some movies come too soon or too late for their time. Others capture the moment. DISTRICT 9 is the latter.

Oh, it ain't perfect. It's two movies joined together- the first being a super intense mockumentary about the potential for awfulness in human beings; the second being a rock'em-sock'em alien blast-zone. Some will find the first too serious or dark; others will find the second half a let down compared to the issues raised in the first half. Some came for the social commentary; others for the blood spurt. And some will be mad that the movie isn't one or the other.

But this is the Summer of 2009. This is playing field where G.I. JOE, as over the top and houndingly bad as it is, plays as relief up against the bloated axis of celluloid evil known as WOLVERINE, TERMINATOR and TRANSFORMERS. Even for summer pulp, we want a hot burger, and instead we're getting cold leftovers spiced up with pop rocks (STAR TREK aside). Even Jaws had some interesting facts about sharks before they ate your face off. Where are the Iron Men of yesteryear?

This is all a long way of saying that DISTRICT 9 would be good in any year, but this year it's not only good, it's necessary. It's based on no one's TV show, comic book, toy or James Cameron. Not that any of that is fatal, it's just we haven't seen any big budget spectacle free of these qualities. And by big budget, I mean it cost 30 million dollars (!), which is roughly 1/5 the cost of WOLVERINE. To say it is better than WOLVERINE is an insult to the word 'better.'

Set in more or less the modern day, only with a 20 year rewrite of history, DISTRICT 9 has aliens land in South Africa in the 80's. Their ship is out of gas, and they're not welcome but there's no place for them to go, so they set up a refugee camp that's never got quite past the temporary stage. The Aliens are not cute or cuddly. They eat catfood like we eat McDonalds. They have hugely destructive weapons, which only they can use, but they don't have access to. They're called Prawns in the same tone and measure that people used to say "mick." Things go from awkward to dismal. The movie begins with the latest bright idea from the humans, which is to move them from District 9- the slum they currently inhabit- to District 10- a slum far away from the city. Out of sight, out of rage.

Wikus Van De Merwe (played by the unknown, fantastic Shartlo Copley) is the poor bastard they pick to lead the operation, who is narrating to an unknown camera crew, The Office style, about his job. He is a kind of chipper, low level manager type, capable of the most awful racism (well, alien-racism) (xenophobia?) (whatever) that is all the more shocking because it is so casual. I mean, he seems nice. Right up until he lights an alien nursary on fire, and cheerfully tells us that the popping sound we're hearing is eggs exploding.

Now hold on- these aliens are here to take our jobs/lives/plant eggs in our stomachs! Nope; this movie is smarter than that. The nursery looks gross, but it's only using electricity and a dead cow to propogate their young. No humans need die. They can eat us, but they'd rather not. They're basically peaceful. And when you're watching this little civil servant report the frying of an intelligent species with a smile, that's when that little voice in the back of your head starts chirping This Is WRONG...

This goes on for about an hour, as Wikus has something not-very-nice happen to him and is force to adapt. He makes a friend, an alien named "Christopher", for all the aliens have been given Christian names (in a deft move that uncomfortably reminded me of what America did to its natives). Slowly, both the audience and Wikus get to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that we have met the enemy, and it is us. As a poor budding law student, the over-reliance on getting people (aliens) to sign forms they do not understand to provide cover for unspeakable things really hit home.

All nice and legal, see?

The movie could have played it easy, by making the aliens cute or the 'bad guys' over the top general jerks. But man, are those aliens creepy. They're cousins of the Ridely Scott mold, right up until you meet an alien toddler who is chirping about going home. And most of the human antagonists are played straight, as cold but focused professionals. Not the boogeyman of Dick Cheney, but the cool focus of a Kissenger or Rumsfeld, up against superior alien technology. Only two characters ever cackle evilly, and they play as people, not types.

And then, after taking a long hard look at humanity, Wikus and Christopher get some guns and blow the hell out of everything.

I have seen many movies where someone blows the hell out of everything this summer. But not like this. The action is clear, real, viseral, fantastic and horrible. It's BLACK HAWK DOWN re-channeled through James Cameron's ALIENS. That it takes place in the heat of midday only adds to how much it hurts. Wikus makes for an oddly human protganist, a man who had nothing of a hero but plenty of a bastard in him, forced to do what it takes to survive, in ways he could not imagine. It's easy to give us a Gerald Butler and say, look, he was bad but now he is good, because he has muscles and a noble look. It is much harder to give us a wormy white collar casual racist and watch him, foothold by bloody foothold, become a better being.

Lost in much of this bloodsport are the ideas that the first half generates. There is a divide in thinking here: did the movie lose its nerve, or is the badda-boom the release we needed after so much general nastiness and hard questions? Or is this a lot of words to waste on a movie about giant lobsters who landed in South Africa?

Whether or not the decision to switch from docu-thriller to action-jackson was the correct one, there are other flaws. The movie drops and picks up the mockumentary when convenient to itself. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and possible plot holes. It raises issues about genocide and apartheid that are more or less answered with human beings exploding. It will piss off alot of people, or make them lose their lunch. Personally, I found the use of Christopher's son to be overly manipulative. This will not be everyone's cup of tea. If you can't stand sci-fi gore, I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.

But for 30 million dollars, first time (!) full length director Neil Blomkamp has done better than any of the other big guns this summer. Star Trek was the prettiest and shiniest re-boot, and has breathed new life into a defunct series. G.I. JOE amused me. HANGOVER amused me much more. UP moved me. But only DISTRICT 9 made me think while kicking my ass.

It's not what this movie is; its what will be possible because of it's success. If studios can get this kind of return on a rather small investment ($51 million domestic, pre-DVD and international, and counting) who knows what other bright filmmakers will be given the keys and the freedom to make something this good.

Should it have done more? Maybe. Should have been smarter or less gory? Arguable. Is it "better" than CHILDREN OF MEN? Probably not, but who cares? District 9 proves you don't need stars, a lot of money, or a popular toy line from the 80's to make excellent SciFi AND enthralling summer movie bubblegum. That is enough.

RATING: * * * * * (out of 5)

P.S. I am a film and sci fi nerd, and I plead guilty to possibly being a little overexcited. But I am a smart enough movie and sci-fi nerd to know whem I'm being pandered to. And believe me when I say I walked in with high expectations, and they were more than met.

P.P.S.: There is a phrase called a "boo" movie, where things jump out of the dark and go "Boo" and lots of people in the audience, including me, go "eek." Some people will not see a boo movie, even if they might like the subject matter otherwise. Wimps rejoice, DISTRICT 9 is not a "boo" movie. It's gross, and there is some real horror, but it's not from things grabbing you in the dark.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN: REVIEW

"How dare you come into this office and bark at me some kind of junk yard dog?! I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!" - Clear and Present Danger

That's pretty much what most critics (or at least 79% of them) have screamed at TRANSFORMERS 2: STUFF BLOWS UP. Really, they're screaming at Michael Bay. Why? Because no matter what they say, no matter what they do, they cannot destroy this man.

Fact: Every Michael Bay movie except the first BAD BOYS and THE ISLAND has made over 130 million dollars, domestically. And BAD BOYS made 75 million overseas. So really, the man has had one flop, THE ISLAND.

Fact: Pretty much every movie he has made except THE ROCK has been critically roasted.

Fact: When it comes to Michael Bay movies, no one gives a shit about the reviews.

Fact: Critics hate feeling powerless.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Critics have power over a lot of movies. Well reviewed broad mainstream movies rarely flop. And when broad mainstream movies with well known older actors get tepid notices, (see: TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3) they don't do as well. The good reviews for DARK KNIGHT brought in a huge audience that wouldn't have showed up otherwise. The reviews for CATWOMAN helped bury it.

But Michael Bay blows stuff up, teenagers pay attention. They get what they are promised (explosions), they leave happy. And except for THE ROCK (which I love), critics kept stabbing with their knives. And his movies made millions. So it went for years, until he decided to combine his explosion prowess with robots that turn into cars. You know, for kids!

Now, he is literally unstoppable. Kids and explosion addicts don't care about reviews, they care about the big badda boom. And the critics hate him, hate him, hate him (HATE HIM) for it. And they hate him more because he obviously does not give a rat's ass. He doesn't whine about being a misunderstood artist, he smiles and counts his millions. Any studio would want to work with him. Why not? They always get rich, as long as the movie can be explained in a tag line.

Lost in all this back and forth Bay-bashing is the movie itself, which is not very good. But given how much rancor was being directed towards it, you would think it was the second coming of BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Don't be fooled: it isn't. It is plot-less, it is overlong, it is repetitive and it is a bad Transformers story. But, if I had my druthers between watching WOLVERINE or TERMINATOR 4 or TRANSFORMERS 2 again, I'd choose the third, if I had to choose.

Why?

It's more fun. WOLVERINE and TERMINATOR were hampered by a sense that Very Important Things were going on the entire movie. Nothing very important goes on in Transformers, even though the fate of the world depends on Shia LeBouf's brain. It has never heard the words "over the top." First Michael Bay throws in the Kitchen Sink. Then he blows it up. So much stuff blows up in this movie, and some of it looks really cool. And the movie can still get mileage out of the Transformers Brand. Cars turning into robots turning into cars is cool, Optimus Prime is still cool, damn it all. And the performers mostly keep their shit together for most of the movie, which cannot be said for anyone in WOLVERINE or TERMINATOR.

But is it a good movie? Oh, lord no.

About the plot... there isn't one. TRANSFORMERS 1 had a (in retrospect) beautifully simple plot. Find the cube to save the world. Once they found the cube, keep it away from Megatron. It may not have been brilliant, but it was clear. TRANSFORMERS 2 has the equivalent of three or four different "things to find", in addition to plot threads about loyalty, faith, growing up, and Barack Obama is a Weenie. (There are many snide comments about the President negotiating with Decepticon terrorists) These threads are picked up and abandoned at random. The "things to find" are found often, then lost, with little to no effect. More than four times during the 2.5 hours, I had no idea what was going on.

And the additions to the cast of robots are NEVER PROPERLY INTRODUCED. The best sequence of the first movie was the introduction of the Autobots, where they first land, take their shape and say their names. It was almost magical. Here, we get a whole list of new characters without names or personality traits, who exist to be destroyed. We get no sense of any personality for most of the new good guys, except for the "twins", who are the best slice of racist pie since Jar Jar Binks. Seriously: one of them has a golden tooth, they make many jokes about popping caps in people's asses, and they don't do much readin'. As for the new bad guys, they barely say anything at all, except for poor Soundwave, who gets to sit in space and be the equivlanet of the Decepticon 'can you hear me now' guy. When a poorly animated cartoon designed to sell more toys has more personality than a 200 million dollar, 2.5 hour monstrosity, you are in serious ca-ca. Also, when a robot named "Wheelie" is only the third most annoying character in your movie, you are also in... well, you know. A stinky 2.5 hours.

About the 2.5 hours... Seriously? Michael Bay looked at the running time on the first movie and said, "what this needs is more"? I guess it would make sense if that running time was used to tell an epic tale, but this movie basically has two modes: uneven 'comic relief', and explosions. There is no reason to have there be more, except that Michael Bay demands it. The last 45 minutes involves an action scene in the desert. Some of it is utterly incomprehensible. What Tony Winner Julie White is doing in the desert running from explosions, I do not know.

But the bad stuff you knew. You knew it when you opened the first reviews. The question is (or was for me), but is it any fun? Kind of. Is it bad? Not as bad as you'd think. Is there any reason to see it? Not really. Even if you're a huge fan of the show? Not really. If you want to see a good TRANSFORMERS movie, rent the first one- it's better in almost every way. Or the actual TRANSFORMERS movie, the animated one, which WAS better in EVERY single way.

I saw this movie for 5 dollars at a 1pm matinee at a crappy rundown theater. That's about right.

RATING: 2 stars (out of 5).

P.S.: A moment of silence, please, for Jerry Bruckhemier, Michael Bay's old partner in crime. Based on the first few days, TRANSFORMERS 2 will be the biggest movie of the summer. Jerry Bruckhemier's big summer movie this year is a movie about secret agent guinea pigs. Michael Bay wins.

P.P.S.: The Fallen is a lame, aztek-looking evil robot who is much less impressive than Megatron. Unicron, you are missed.

I WISH I HAD MORE TO DO IN THIS MOVIE, MEGATRON.

New Final Thoughts: I stand by the original review, but this movie has gotten worse in my mind. That G.I. JOE is more fun is kind of the best egg you could throw at Michael Bay.

VGMRP: ALONE IN THE DARK

Some say Uwe Boll is the new Ed Wood, Jr. I say... Yes!

Top Ten Moments from Alone In The Dark:

10) The Cabbie Assassin
Minutes into the movie, the lead bad guy picks up his phone and barks "Kill him!" We find out shortly that he is speaking to a bald assassin, who awaits Carnby (Christian Slater)'s arrival at the airport... in a yellow cab. Yes. The deadly killer awaits in a yellow cab, so he can be easily spotted while trying to kill Christian Slater with his death-cab. A crappy car chase ensues, and the incredulity increases when the evil taxi rams Carnby's taxi and the fender is dented, but seconds later when they turn a corner, the taxi is undamaged. After the inept car chase, Christan Slater throws the Cabbie Assassin through a window. Not to be outdone, Cabbie Assasin bursts through a door, Hulk-style, and punches an old man on general principle. Logic: 0, Ridiculously awful awesome fight scene: 1

9) Christian Slater is... Edward Carnby!
Ah, sweet, career destroyed Christian Slater. First, he tells a small child on a plane to basically go to hell, and then says in a narration "I bet you think I was an asshole to that kid back there!" Then he gets to say "I was tracking poachers across their lines in the Amazon when I hooked up with some ex-Chilean military trafficking artifacts on the black market. " He also wears the same costume throughout the entire movie, a trenchcoat and a black tank top. I'd say he needs a shave, but what he really needs is some whiskey. Or maybe I do.

8) Continuity Be Damned
You have to be paying a little bit of attention to catch the cab smash up continuity error. That would be when Cabbie Assassin's cab smashes into Christian Slater's Cab, only to be repaired second later. But it's hard to miss the giant hole of credibility at the end. Picture this: we see fields of slaughtered good guys in the dead of night, a walkie-talkie blaring messages to nobody. We see Christian Slater and Tara Reid climbing up to safety while Stephen Doriff is sacrificing himself to kill the monsters. Cut back to the empty field at night. Cut to the bomb going off. Cut to Slater and Reid coming out of a hole just in time- in BROAD FREAKING DAYLIGHT. We go from midnight to noon in seconds, and all it took was Stephen Dorrif's corpse.

7) The Random Ice Factory
Because Uwe Boll saw THE MATRIX that one time, he decided to use bullet time to show when he gets shot. It's probably the most expensive shot in the movie. Carnby fires two bullets, and we track them in slow motion. Why two bullets? So the first bullet can smash a block of ice, and the second bullet can travel through the ice particles. Why the Ice? Because it looks cool, damn it. Don't mess with Uwe Boll.

7.5) The Bullets Dont Actually Kill The Cabbie Assassin
That's right! We use bullet time to see the bullets hit the guy and then it doesn't do anything! The evil cabbie assassin and ends up skewered on spikes.

6) Tara Reid Sucks
No one's very good in this movie- Stephen Doriff looks disgusted with the material, and Slater's barely sober throughout-but Tara Reid wins the prize for trying hard and achieving so little. She has many bad moments, but the worst is when she mispronounces "Newfoundland" as "New Found Land." Not since Denise Richards was Dr. Christmas Jones, nuclear physicist, has science been so mistreated.
She also gets to hug Christian Slater, only to slap him seconds later and scream "I thought you were dead, asshole!" I miss Taradise.

5) The Support Characters from the Ed Wood Playbook

One of the hallmarks of Ed Wood, Jr.'s crapsterpieces are the johnny-on-the-spot supporting characters, awkwardly framed and spouting out backstory to our heroes. Mr. Wood usually had cops saying, "Whats this crazy talk about ghouls coming back from the dead these past few weeks, Sergeant Davis, and congrats on that promotion!" Here, we get four different unimportant characters rushing up and giving us awkward exposition, often in one unbroken shot, while every one else stands around waiting for someone to yell cut. So we have Character C telling Character B in front of Character A, "Why, Character A? She's the best archeologists in these parts!" Keep in mind that Character A is Tara Reid, playing an archelologist. It's a small consolation that soon after Character C talks, he/she/Stephen Doriff is killed.

4) The Dune-Esque Text Crawl.

The movie begins with the following narration, that we also see on screen:

"In 1967, mine workers discovered the first remnants of a long lost Native American civilization - The Abkani. The Abkani believed that there are two worlds on this planet, a world of light and a world of darkness. 10,000 years ago the Abkani opened a gate between these worlds. Before they could close it, something evil slipped through. The Abkani mysteriously vanished from the Earth. Only a few artifacts remained, hidden in the world's most remote places. These artifacts speak of terrifying creatures that thrive in the darkness, waiting for the day when the gate can be opened again. Bureau 713, the government's paranormal research agency, was established to uncover the dark secrets of this lost civilization. Under the direction of archaeologist Lionel Hudgens, Bureau 713 began collecting Abkani artifacts. When the government shut down his controversial research, Hudgens built a laboratory hidden within an abandonded gold mine. There, he conducted savage experiments on orphaned children in an attempt to merge man with creature. Hudgens victims survived as "sleepers" - lost souls awaiting the moment of their calling. "

Yeah.

3) The 'Ambigious' Ending

So, after Steven Doriff's corpse blows up with so much dynamite that it turns night into day (see number 8 above), Uwe Boll decided to get all artsy and end on a downer note- the aliens/ghosts/monsters/whatever have overrun the earth! Or at least the canadian city they got permission to film in! But the awesomely awful thing is, Uwe Boll forgot that his monsters don't kill to eat, they just kill to kill. So there are no bodies. Anywhere. Now that might be explained by the subtitle that says, "8:48 am, city evacuated!" But it doesn't explain all the cars in the middle of the street, left empty, with no bodies around. I think what happened was this- they got permission to shoot the streets early in the morning, with no one around. When someone pointed out that it just looked like a quiet sunday, and not the apocalypse, someone said, "What the hell, let's put an empty truck in the middle of the shot." And Uwe Boll said "I love making movies!"

2) The Villain's Shitty Plan

So you've got this mad professor. And he infects these kids with some kind of evil spirit alien thing. So that he can control them and some undetermined time in the future. And Christian Slater wants to stop that. I'm with you. The problem is, they get 'activated' halfway through the movie, and become weird zombie-esque guys... who get mowed down with machine gun bullets. And killed. And that's the last we see of them. The last 35 minutes doesn't even mention them. Mad professor can appearently control the alien things. If this was the case... what was he doing wasting 25 years with the kids? So that they could get mowed down my semi-automatic rifles? Was his actual plan to just open the door to the evil world? So he could get mauled? If you hold your breath long enough, it starts to make sense.

1) The "Protect the Perimeter!" Guy.

His name is Agent Miles. Right before our three "stars" go to face the evil, in the dark but not so alone, he is told, nay, demanded to PROTECT THE PERIMETER. His jaw tightens. Yes, he will, he says to himself. After getting in a petty lover's quarrel with the guy working on the generator, he bravely tells the other extras wearing paintball armor (seriously: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369226/trivia) to PROTECT THE PERIMETER. This involves having lots of automatic rifles trained in the direction of the computer generated creatures. He has computer generated helicopters at his disposal, but they are no match for the computer generated creatures who have learned to jump into them. He also has a wall of tires at his disposal, and tells his men to wait until they've cleared it. This is so they can set off explosions behind the tires, out of our sight, and we hear the monsters squealing without having to actually animate them. What makes this whole sequence so special is that instead of following our characters who are, you know, Alone In The Dark, Boll keeps cutting back to Protect the Perimeter guy losing lots of troops to vicious pixels, until he is the last one left. The Perimeter is not Protected, but it doesn't impact our heroes in any way. The whole sequence is completely, wonderfully pointless. I guess the strategy was, "we paid for the CG, we're going to USE the CG!"

Listen to me: ALONE IN THE DARK is a real piece of shit. But with a bottle of Jack Daniels, in the right light, she's a star. One star, to be exact. But a star nonetheless.

STAR RATING: * (out of Five)

P.S. ALONE IN THE DARK is based on a creepy but dated video game about a detective locked in a mansion, trying to solve his way out before monsters get him. The gameplay was clunky but the experience got a lot of mileage out of the eery silences, the complex puzzles and the inherent mystery. This movie has no silences, complexity or mystery. But it does have a Perimeter.


PROTECT THE PERIMETER!

VGMRP: WING COMMANDER REVIEW

Jesus.

I recently wrote about Star Trek and Space Movies being fun again. When is space not fun? When you're watching Wing Commander, that's when. We're not just talking a bad Video Game Movie, we're talking about one of the worst space movies ever made. There's lots of crash, bang boom; but there's an equal amount of "ugh", "you're kidding me," and "who gives a shit?"

Directed with love and incompetence by game creator Chris Roberts, Wing Commander attempts to bring the C-level saga of the Wing Commander games to the big screen, with dispiriting results. Wing Commander, the game, was a rip-off of Star Trek plotting (the Klingons-as-Russians Cold War) with Star Wars combat (lots of little starfighters shooting at each other, lots of anonymous pilots screaming, "I can't shake themmmmm AAAARRGGHHH-!!!"). The play mechanics weren't bad but the story was derivative, and with each game more convoluted and pointless. That was okay, because hey, you got to blow things up and fly around like a fighter pilot. The only thing from a story perspective that was worth a damn was the performance of Mark Hamill, simply because when given a script of fine cheese, he knows how to be a ham.

I regret to inform you Mark Hamill is not the star of Wing Commander: The Movie. I further regret to report that there is no reason to watch this movie, not even to laugh at how bad it is. The effects are good for a video game but bad for a movie, which mean they look fake without being hilariously so (you feel like it's a late 90's CD-ROM game on the screen). The script is mediocre and thoughtless through and through, with lots of poor writing, but nothing that's memorably bad. Nothing reaches the insanity of Super Mario Brothers, the vamping of Raul Julia in Street Fighter, or the shocks-the-conscience bad taste of Postal. Maybe Mark Hamill would have made something hilarious out of it, but instead we of ham we get the black hole of screen presence of cinema known as Freddie Prinze, Jr. Behold:

Commander Babe: Disobey my director and I'll have you court marshalled.

Freddie Prinze Jr.: Like I care.

The end result is a grab-bag of leftover story concepts from better sci-fi projects and a production design that was purchsed from the Space Salvation Army, coupled with men in curious uniforms shouting "hard to port!" as their ships try to avoid space torpedoes. The torpedoes make lots of WHOOSHING sounds despite the fact that space is a vacuum where sound cannot travel. The suspense of disbelief re: sound in space is stretched to the breaking point during awful sequence when everyone is told to be quiet, because "a space destroyer is hunting us!" They all stare and listen to the pinging above, like they're in a submarine. Never mind that they could be having the party of the century and NO ONE WOULD HEAR THEM, because in space, no one can hear Matthew Lillard scream. And he screams a lot in this movie.

In other words, WING COMMANDER doesn't have the wit to be epically bad, only epically boring.

For extra credit, the movie also rips off its plot from U-571/Enigma by having the main point of the plot being a stolen 'navcom machine.' See, if the Kilarathi/Klingons/Empire get their hands on it, why, they could control space travel and therefore win the war? What war, you ask? Oh, they want to destroy us. Why? Because they hate our freedom. Or something, I don't know. When they finally find the 'navcom' on a Kilrathi ship, they're so excited that they found that they leave it on the ship, leading one to wonder why the hell it was so important. Maybe it's because they're in such a hurry to get off the alien ship due to the quality of the aliens themselves: when we finally see them, they look shitter than the vampires in I Am Legend. Should they win the war, the universe will be populated with nothing but ugly, ugly children.

Anyway.There are two hard-won truths here:

1) unless your explorers/adventurers/rebe

ls/Wing Commanders/space plumbers touch down somewhere, on some planet, space movies become little more than actors on cheap sets looking at green-screens with varying levels of concern. Even Shatner had to land the ship every once in awhile.

2) Some video games shouldn't be adapted because they're plotless shoot'emups (Postal, Doom); others shouldn't be adapted because the material is both too ambitious and too thin at the same time. Wing Commander falls into the second category, where a credit prologue sequence tries to tell some 300 years of interstellar history, and at least a third of the dialogue is spent discussing the history and racist attitudes towards Pilgrims. But wait, aren't we hunting the Kilrathi? What is a Pilgrim anyway? What do they worship, exactly? Why am I watching this movie?

In short, Chris Robert's science fiction fantasies may have been enough to get you to the next level, but they're not enough for a major motion picture. It's the same lesson we learned yet again in Terminator Salvation: if you don't care about the characters, you don't care about if they get blown up by shitty antagonists.

There is not a single thing I can say for it in its favor; nothing that is good, fun, done well or even memorably bad. No clips to YouTube. No overacting to savor.

I saw this movie 10 years ago, and was pissed. Some 10 years later, I'm happy I only watched this crap via 10 youtube clips instead of renting it, but I would have been happier if I hadn't watched it at all. Hell, I would have been happier watching POSTAL again. At least that movie has monkeys. They were monkeys that were sexually assaulting Verne Troyer, but they were still monkeys, damn it.

STAR RATING: Zero Stars (out of 5)

P.S. Fox had such a low opinion of their own movie that they attached the first Star Wars: Phantom Menace trailer on it to get people to show up. They showed up, paid to watch the trailer and left. I remember a printed sign at the Box Office that said, "no refunds will be given for Wing Commander after the Star Wars trailer is shown." Happier days, before we knew what legacy Phantom Menace would bring.

P.P.S. Like Top Gun, all the pilots are hotshots who spend a lot of time taking off their breathing masks so that they can dramatically, slowly put them back on again. Why they need an extra breathing hose when they're in deep space, I do not know. Why the camera for all the cockpit scenes is zoomed in so close on the actors so you can't see what's outside their window I can guess: so they they wouldn't have to film the extra greenscreen.

Like I care!

TERMINATOR: SALVATION REVIEW

Giant dick, meet Robocop Lite!

TERMINATOR: SALVATION Review

"I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours." -Ebert

And how!

A lot of effort went into this movie, from the special effects crew and the technicians. You can tell that the director, the unexplainably self-titled 'McG,' cares about the Terminator saga. But what a joyless slog it is. When Macbeth bitches, this is what he's talking about.

The plot is best explained as above. It's worked before, it doesn't work here. Let me focus on the details. First, Christian Bale's performance as John Connor is a failure. I didn't care about him at all. I didn't believe he was a messiah, I didn't believe he was a hero, I didn't even believe he was human. But I did believe he was an actor who knew the project he was working on was, how you say, not so good. Bale is Bruce Wayne. Bale is Batman. Hell, Bale is even Patrick Bateman. But Bale's John Connor is a one-note dick, a joyless emotional robot who speaks in his Batman voice THE ENTIRE MOVIE. His speech about losing our humanity is laugh-worthy. How can he inspire humanity when he can't even inspire a movie audience? Hell, we've followed Shia LeBouf to fight Megatron; but Bale's John Connor couldn't lead a bunch of drunken law students to McDonalds. WHICH IS VERY EASY TO DO.

So that's half of the movie shot. Next, we have Marcus Wright, or the cyborg with feelings. As every trailer has already told you, he thinks he's human, but he's not. This is foretold in a prologue that is laced with symbolism, or at least Helena Bonaham Carter owing someone a favor. Sam Worthington does what he can- I've never seen him before, but ad campaigns promise I will see him again- but his story has been told before, and better. His character is made of the newest parts, but his story is off the shelf Frankenstein-Robocop-Blade Runner. What does it mean to be a machine who thinks he is a man? According to this movie, it means you get really upset when Helena Bonham Carter lectures you about your programming.

This leads to the third, and ultimately biggest problem with T4: Skynet. The supposedly biggest, baddest terminator of them all. The spawn of mechanical Satan. And yet, god help me, she (for she is played by Ms. Carter) is the crappiest villain out of all the Terminator movies. She is machine evolution backwards: after first learning to build and develop the Governor of California as a killing machine, she is left with a bad bond villain speech. She is trying to kill John Connor, see, and all her other plans have failed... so she's going to keep his father in the future, Kyle Reese, locked up as bait for John Connor to come within their grasp. This involves a convoluted plot to LET John Connor sneak in to Skynet, so it can... let him get close enough to destroy Skynet. Nevermind that the evil computer could shoot him countless times, or shoot his father, or use her Robocop-lite to shoot him, or any other ways that they could kill John Connor.

It's a dumb plan. Not only is not worth of supposedly the first computer to attain self-awareness, it's not worthy of Die Hard 2. So, basically, we have John "the giant dick" connor and Marcus "I'm not as interesting as I look" Wright fighting Sky "I'm about as smart as the villain in National Treasure" Net. Whoop de shit.

Let's be clear. This isn't Wolverine. The special effects are top notch, the plot is relatively straightforward, there are fewer lines that inspire huge groans and there are no musicians showing up in unexplainable costumes. It is competentBut if you're going to make a 200 million dollar popcorn movie (like Iron Man) and have zero moments of levity or self-parody (like Dark Knight), you better know what you're doing. You better have characters you care about, you better have a point and you better think things through. Explosions, even well done explosions, are not enough.

Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I need more than just a constant series of explosions. Then again, maybe not- I'm the guy who liked Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Starship Troopers. I got nothing against robots beating the crap out of each other. But if you don't care about the tiny little people running around, or if the robots aren't named "Optimus Prime", after a point, it's just noise. And not even real noise; most of it is computer generated noise.

You did, McG. You made Michael Bay look good. I cared more about the characters in Armageddon than any of the survivors in this hunk of expensive junk.

RATING: * * (out of 5)

P.S. Arnold does make a cameo thanks to the 200 million dollar budget, without actually being in the movie. It's awesome, and the closest thing than a real Terminator moment we get.

P.P.S. The resistance has remarkably uneven powers. Sometimes they can summon air force bombers on radar, other times, they have to resort to short wave radios. Sometimes they have to hide on a submarine, sometimes they can have open air force bases. This either means that Skynet is even more incompetent than we thought, or (more likely) the screenwriters really didn't think about anything other than 'oh yeah, this would be cool.'

Vote Schwarzenegger.

STAR TREK: REVIEW

Nerds rejoice: Space is fun again.

I'm serious. Space, and by space I mean lots of ships flying through it very quickly, hasn’t been for fun years. I don’t mean just Star Trek movies. Think about it: Star Wars I-III. Alien vs. Predator I and II. Wing *shudder* Commander. By my count, the last good space movie was The Fifth Element. That was in 1996. There’s been a lot of pain in terms of the watching spaceships explode department. It’s been crappy acting, effects, and George Lucas screenwriting the past 12 years.

All of that ends now. Star Trek may not be brilliant cinema, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It is also shiny, well-paced and a lot of things go boom. This already makes it superior summer entertainment. But as an added bonus at no extra cost, the dialogue induces no vomiting!

In fact, not only is the dialogue good, the acting is better. This is more than a pleasant surprise, it’s a new standard. Put it this way: you might have thought, while watching Attack of the Clones and wincing at the horrific acting and amazingly dull dialogue, “well, it’s the price I pay for watching a spaceship movie.” Now it is clear that, no, we can have our space and have acting too. J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek proves those George Lucas’s new Star Wars movies just plain sucked.

Oh, Star Trek ain’t perfect. The plot is (at times) a coat-rack to which to hang lots of bang, zoom and boom. The villain is pretty standard issue angry ugly guy. There is some business with creatures on an ice planet that seems forced. Time travel is used to duct tape over plot holes, some embarrassingly large. The movie doesn’t really have a central idea or concept. And five bucks to anyone who can tell me what the hell Winonna Ryder is doing in this movie.

But honestly? Who cares? The badass more than pays back the meh. The special effects are amazing, everything looks real or at least fun. It's never boring. The younger Kirk and Spock are excellent. We like them. We want to watch them do more. We see why they clash, and why they are friends.

The other original crew members are fun, too. Simon “Hot Fuzz” Pegg and John “Harold and Kumar” Cho do not disappoint, but special credit goes Karl “Doom” Urban, who is spot on as Bones McCoy. (Yes, he says “Damn, it Jim!” Yes, it’s awesome.)

The story also has surprises, some fun, some nasty. We’ve seen planets blow up in Star Trek before, but it’s usually followed by some time travel to save the day. Not this time. Like I said, bang, zoom and boom. But unlike most space movies, the boom and bang parts have real consequences. So lo and behold, when the special effects go nuts, you actually care. And, to your surprise, you do.

It's the summer. Movies are supposed to be fun, we also hope they will be good. Seeing Star Trek after Wolverine is like someone giving you a cold corona with a lime after you accidentally drank a skunked can of Papst Blue Ribbon at a bbq. It may not be perfect in form or execution, but god damn, did you need it.

RATING: * * * * (out of 5)

P.S. Lots of fun references for fans here. My favorite was seeing Kirk’s fabled Kobayashi Maru test. Over the top? Yes. But fun.

P.P.S. Leonard Nimoy is the classiest man to ever wear rubber ears.

I AM LEGEND: REVIEW (SHORT)

Emma Thompson, seen only in video-tape flashback, invents a vaccine for cancer. It ends up killing or horribly mutating most of the world, except for one man. This is one of the more plausible developments of the movie, and I wish it was explored more. The whole world wants a cure for cancer, and who wouldn't line up to drink the Kool-Aid? (Side effects include: starring in a Will Smith movie.)

So Will Smith is literally the last man on earth, marooned on the island of Manhattan, the only human who can walk in the daylight. At night, he must lock himself in, and hope that the nightmares- both in his head and outside his house- go away.

It's a hell of a setup. There are many philosophical implications to it, largely ignored during the movie, save some lame talk about "God's Plan." But give Smith some credit, he is incredibly watchable on his own, and it took some gumption to get this story filmed. After all, Cast Away- the only movie that comes to mind for comparison- barely made its money back, and most people remember it purely for the volleyball. Here, most people will remember this movie for the dog, Sam. Lesson learned: never work with animals, or humanized balls.

The movie is gripping, until it isn't- about an hour into the 90 minute movie. The special effects are fantastic, until they're not- about an hour into the 90 minute movie. Sense the theme? Basically, you're talking an original thought spun out about as long as it can be (which is an hour), followed by a standard 30 minute zombie/vampire movie.

This would be fine, if the creatures weren't so damn lame. It is amazing to me that they could spend so much to make us buy the New York of the Future, and shortchange us on the monsters. Simply put, the creatures are digital, they are uninteresting, and they are crappy. I kept waiting for one of the vampires to actually speak, or have a plan more complicated than "Kill the Human", but, alas.

Still, if a movie does one thing better than anyone else ever has, it's worthy of praise. And I Am Legend sets a new standard for New York of the Future. It officially replaces Vanilla Sky for "best creepy deserted New York scene", it makes Day After Tomorrow look like Escape From New York in terms of special effects, and Will Smith makes the Last Man on Earth schtick work. You totally buy that he is real, that the city is real, that the dread is real. The problem is, the monsters aren't real. They aren't scary. They're just kind of silly.

Am I glad I saw it? Sure. Do you need to see it, if you haven't? Nah.

RATING: * * * Stars (out of 5 )

P.S. Small quibble: in New York of the Future, everything is falling apart, except for the Fords, Mac computers, and DVDs of Goodnight and Good Luck. Those are still fine and shiny, so we can be sure to see which brands last longer.