In 2054, the vast majority of the human population will own and control a robotic surrogate to interact with the world while staying remote and safe at home. With the first violent crime in years, two FBI agents (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell) are on the investigation. Surrogates sets up some interesting “what if” questions about our own society that lives anonymously online and engages in virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. At 89 minutes (with opening and closing credits), Willis, along with supporting actors Ving Rhames and James Cromwell, keep the fast-paced movie certainly watchable until it all comes crashing down at one of the most ridiculous and selfish endings I have ever seen.
Posts Tagged sci-fi
Surrogates
Feb 13
Babylon A.D.
Jan 10
Vin Diesel and Michelle Yeoh continue to squander their potential by starring in this nonsensical jumble of science fiction about a grizzled mercenary hired to smuggle a girl from a Central Asian convent into New York in the near and dystopian future. Babylon A.D. is aggressively worthless Even those seeking a quick fix of scifi and action will have even the lowest of expectations squashed. It is an astonishingly vague and joyless movie with a monotone script that feels like filler, intended to be inserted into a better movie. What little action there was is uninspired and lackluster. There are no jokes of any kind. There are no interesting characters, intriguing moments or clear motivations. I generally understand that the movie had something to do with saving the world, but honestly could not tell you if the world was successfully saved or not. My 90 minutes, I can tell you, are lost and gone forever.
A live action version of the cartoon, G.I. Joe feels depressingly like a love letter to Michael Bay. You know the drill, soldier: All shots of women start with the feet and pan up; One of the Wayans plays “the black guy” (except the other black guy); And there are merciless winking references to the animated series.
Make no mistake: G.I. Joe is bad, even painful. Still, in comparison to that other cartoon adaptation from Summer 2009, G.I. Joe is at least watchable. The action is surprisingly kinetic in most scenes (though the effects are startlingly inconsistent, as if the budget was slashed unexpectedly) and it is restrained enough to end before the 2 hour mark. If you must sink this low, it is better to watch this one than that one. My recommendation would be to watch neither.
Avatar (Real-D 3-D)
Jan 1
James Cameron directs an ambitious science fiction epic about human efforts to wrest mineral-rich deposits from the tribal denizens of a jungle planet, called Pandora. Critics of Avatar will note that its ambitions are limited to its visuals and that the story never diverges from its archetypal roots: there is an earnest human soldier and a fierce warrior princess; there is an aggro human general for whom explosives solve all conflict; and there are “spirit trees.” Strictly speaking, the criticism is not misplaced: every beat of the story can be predicted by anyone paying marginal attention, and the characterizations are paper thin.
But while we have seen this story before, we have never seen it like this. Avatar depicts Pandora with an unprecedented level of visual richness; it never feels like a slapdash of expensive computer-generated effects. Go see Avatar because it feels like being transported; you will not to see anything like it for years to come.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Jan 1
Apparently disatisfied with the overly exhaustive treatment of Wolverine in the last three X-Men movies, Wolverine presents the title character’s origin story, with Hugh Jackman returning to don the adamantium claws.
Much like the most recent X-Men Movie (Last Stand), Wolverine manages to be more whimsical and entertaining than Bryan Singer’s oppressively boring X-Men films, but is nonetheless mind-numbingly dumb. The plot contorts itself into a nonsensical tangle of “twists,” ornamented with a relentless parade of unecessary cameos, each desperately praying for their own spin-off.
More fundamentally, it makes little sense to give Wolverine (a character conceived to be shrouded in mystery) an exhaustive origin story. The result is a somewhat incompetent execution of a movie that no one really asked for. Skippable unless you really must turn your brain off for an evening.
District 9 (2009)
Aug 16
District 9 is the best science fiction movie in years. It begins in the near future, with over a million stranded space aliens having been forced to live in a Johannesberg ghetto. But that lofty premise is made accessible by its near-to-ground presentation; District 9 does for space aliens what 28 Days Later did for zombies. Awkward, uncharismatic performances and liberal use of handheld cameras and surveillance footage create the feeling of watching a documentary, even when space ships and lasers come out. Also, while the Apartheid analogy could hardly be more direct or explicit, it eschews any of the usual heavy-handedness, and never feels preachy.
Go ahead and see it, sooner rather than later.
My criticisms of the first movie persist: I do not understand why boring humans are the stars; nor why Bay scripts exhilarating action and brings it to life with state of the art fx, only to twist, contort and shake his camera to obscure what happened and to whom. I previously intimated that faith to source material is of minimal value to me, but I am perplexed that a television show based on strong, distinct character design (necessary to market an army of robot toys), should be adopted into movies with generic, confusing and indistinguishably designed robots.
Yet Transformers 2 manages to be substantially worse than its predecessor. The first was merely dumb; this one is indecipherable, nonsensically twisting and morphing like its robots, all the while brazen with self-contradiction and the laziest of transparently plot-convenient hokum. I previously suggested that Michael Bay had mastered casual racism, but Transformers 2 shows that he was just getting warmed up: this time he assaults decency with jive talking Transformers who cannot read. One of them wears a gold tooth. I am not making that up.
But worst of all, Transformers 2 drags mercilessly. On paper, Transformers 2 is 2.5 hours long, only seven minutes longer than the first. On screen, it feels like dying, just waiting and waiting and waiting.
Don’t see this movie. Not even as a joke.
Star Trek – IMAX (2009)
May 10
J.J. Abrams resurrects the preeminent science fiction franchise with a reboot/prequel/origin story of the classic James T. Kirk Enterprise. Compared to other Star Trek films, Star Trek is a great success, more accessible and watchable than its predecessors. There is a tradeoff here, though: as a franchise, Star Trek is known for its philosophical quandry and sociopolitical allegory. While those musings were frequently clumsily handled, they are disappointingly absent here, replaced by polish and more traditional interpersonal conflict.
Comparing Star Trek to Abrams other work is less flattering. Those hoping to be grabbed with the immediacy of Mission Impossible 3, which Abrams directed, or the unique perspective of Cloverfield, which he produced, will find Star Trek more average. There are niggling complaints: mediocre action, questionable plot developments and junk/inconsistent science. But what really keeps Star Trek good, instead of great is that it fails to create above-average suspense, an odd failing from the king of “grab you” entertainment (Lost and Alias are also Abram’s creations).