Battlefield Moon

The guy that directed Battlefield Earth directed this. I'm sure for some that's review enough of any movie.

"Stranded" (2013)
directed by Roger Christian
written by Roger Christian and Christian Piers Bentley
starring Christian Slater, Amy Matysio, Michael Therriault, and Brendan Fehr

How Is It?
It's almost as if they kidnapped a Roger Corman sci fi movie from the early '80s but made it worse. No, really. It's derivative in every possible way, but what sets it apart from most of those films it attempted to parrot, it has no soul of its own. It's a hollow, drab, gray, uninteresting movie. (It's still not as bad as this one, though.)

The Players
This is the depressing part: The ensemble of four good actors got stuck with a bad script and a director with a very checkered track record. Nobody was written a character to play. The movie is about four cardboard cutouts stuck in a crippled mining base on the moon. Slater plays the typical base commander. Therriault plays the typical engineer with a drinking problem. Therriault plays the typical level-headed, logical medical officer. Matysio gets the most to draw from out of the gang. She gets to play both the brave, capable first officer as well as the damsel in distress. It's just that the writing is so bad, so flat that all of their characters have only as much dimension as the descriptions of them you just read.

Behind The Camera
Roger Christian is am industry recognized, award-winning set decorator and production designer. He directed the cult horror classic "The Sender" (1982) as well as the universally decried and derided "Battlefield Earth" (2000). So the sets in this movie looks good, as does the lighting. The moonbase exteriors and other miniatures work are quite good. For the just over $2 million the film was made for, it looks pretty good. Looks. The look of the movie is where all the money wound up. Not enough of it made it into script rewrites, which is as much of a shame as it is becoming more common in movies. The look of a movie is its frame, and the script is the picture, the colors, textures, brushstrokes, and theme. "Stranded" is a frame without anything inside.

The Verdict
It would have been a different movie, could have been a different movie, a good movie, if only the script wasn't so derivative, joyless, and boring and there was anything there to watch. Avoid.

Three to start again...

"Frankenstein's Army" (2013)

World War 2 rages on, with the Communists storming through Eastern Germany, and while answering an advance unit's request reinforcement one Soviet unit finds far more than they ever bargained for, a secret Nazi lab in full swing making new kinds of super soldiers. The film's well made and fairly entertaining but does sag a bit in the middle, taking some too long playing one note before gearing up again for the run to the end. All in all, it really is a cut above average, even if just. Rentable.

"The Moleman of Belmont Avenue" (2010)

Two rather bumbling brothers have run their inherited brownstone apartment building into the ground, and adding to their woes, something's trying to eat every living thing in the place, starting with the tenants' pets. It lives in the basement, and it's up to the boys to stop the menace. It's not exactly a grabbing premise, and unfortunately the film keeps in line such. It's not a bad film. It's certainly not a good one, though Robert Englund stands out as Confab, a mildly creepy and at the same time cool older ladies man. The problem with the film is that only Englund seems to fire on all cylinders. Besides his performance and a few moments here and there, the film's really not that fun. Not recommended.

"Manborg" (2011)

I will only say that the poster says it all and that this film was made for $1,000 (Canadian). Beyond that, it's the best film on today's list and better than several I have reviewed on this blog. Watching it, it's the 1980s all over again. It's a marvelous pastiche. The nearly nonexistent budget is obvious in every frame, as is the ludicrous amount of fun, work, and love that went into it. "Manborg" is nothing but laugh-out-loud fun all the way through. It's definitely worth renting and/or buying.

Coming Soon: "Twenty-One Questions" (2012)

Here is the trailer for a short film I'm in that was shot last October. It's by the folks at Strawhouse Pictures and should be out to festivals in October. It's a science fiction comedy that's generally a conversation between a time traveler and a bureaucrat. I play the bureaucrat.

Should the uploaded video be of a quality not suitable, you can go check it out on Vimeo here.

Enjoy.

Alien 5 (a.k.a. the first film)

A dying trillionaire sends a space mission to explore the possibility of meeting humanity's parent race on a distant, newly discovered planet. There are tunnels, shadows, slimy things, dupicitousness, and a big giant face. Hilarity, as ever, ensues on LV-223.

"Prometheus" (2012)

directed by Ridley Scott

written by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts

starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce

How it is?

I have to come right out with it. The visuals are amazing, but they can't cover up the problems with the script. (My inner scifi fanboy really hated to say that about "Prometheus", but there it is.)

The Players

At the top there are Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, and Idris Elba. Fassbender as the Weyland Corporation's premiere android model, David, steals the show. His is a touching and simultaneously sympathetic and casually menacing performance as the android who seems maybe to want to be human... or at least equal, more than a servant. Theron's portrayal of Vickers, the Corporation's no-nonsense executive representative on board the Prometheus, is spot on and arcs well over the course of the film. Idris Elba as Janek, the captain of the Prometheus, is as close to an everyman as the we get in the film, and his performance as the good captain brings a practical, grounded humanity to the film that is missing for the most part in other main characters.

At the other end of the spectrum there are Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green, but it's not necessarily a matter of lacking performances but rather cardboard characters as written. Rapace's character, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, was the lynchpin of the whole mission, her theory of an extraterrestially seeded Earth. The theory was more interesting than the character, and the character seemed to be sort of another attempt at bringing scifi and movie fans another Ellen Ripley. Rapace/Shaw simply didn't get enough traction, what with everything else going on in the film. Marshall-Green's character, Shaw's love interest, Charlie Holloway, wasn't substantial enough a character for him to be much more than cardboard. That's not a fault of either and everything to do with the script. And then there's Guy Pearce as Weyland Corporation's aged namesake, Peter Weyland. Pearce manages well with the character through a lot of prosthetic makeup, although Weyland's presence is relatively slight, in both screen time and story contribution.

Behind the Camera

At the top there is Ridley Scott. He is an astonishing film director. With Dariusz Wolski (cinematographer) and Arthur Max (production designer) he made an amazing visual follow-up/prequel to the rest of the Alien franchise. The attention to detail, every little thing practical and digital, was as is his career reputation suggests, mightily impressive. The film moves along at a fair clip the whole way through, with appropriate rising and falling action so the audience gets neither exhausted or lost. Well, mostly neither. The kicker for the film is the writing is where it doesn't quite hold up.

At the other end of things, there are there's the writing. In a nutshell, Prometheus is either a bit overcomplicated or a bit shoddily written. The skeleton of the story is simple enough and intriguing. There were just too many layers added, for whatever reasons, by screenwriters Spaiht and Lindelof, and rather than an interesting ensemble of characters, each with contributions to make, there were a few interesting characters and some other ones thrown in because story formula demanded it. It just never really gels. (Gosh, my inner fanboy is reeling at this.) The writing simply doesn't measure up to Scott's direction and visual scale or what anyone was expecting, really, and that's a real shame.

The Verdict

Prometheus seemed to be more about asking questions than about characters being confronted by those questions and acting accordingly, which is what weakens it. It felt like a conflicted film, a strong visual sense that wanted to show things and get across ideas and a script that didn't know how to stage or explain them effectively so it tended to play with what were sometimes rather obvious tropes. I am notoriously unforgiving of what I believe to be slack or poor or substandard writing, especially from people who ought to know better, and Spaight and Lindelof's script is a decidedly average at best, and the rest of the film can't escape from it.

Due to the strength of the performances by Fassbender, Theron, and Elba and the combined expert visual and technical machinations of Scott and the production crew, the film still comes in looking better than average. It's just that it feels awfully forced in places, trying to cover over the things that really don't really work but were kept in anyway. Alas, the film couldn't live up to the hype.

A Lonely Guy, Two Dead Women, and Three Guys and a Video Camera (It's not what you think.)

"The Woman in Black" (2012)

Technically well executed film, competently directed. Good story but average script. The film is quite atmospheric, gloomy, and visually delicious, but its shocks and scares were by and large stock and predictable and so not really shocking or scary. Excellent performances by the cast, Ciaran Hinds in particular, emphasize the gloom and mystery of the story, but oddly, the story itself didn't hang together well, especially with the ending that disappointingly didn't match the rest of the film. The 1983 book and the 1993 BBC radio drama are much more frightening and tightly written. Average.

"Chronicle" (2012)

Finally we have a 'found footage' movie that fires on all cylinders. It concentrates on telling a simple, good story very well. The characters are interesting and have reasonable arcs, and the script is generally quite tight. The cast is excellent, and the special effects are used to help in telling the story and not just there for spectacle. They are spectacular, however. It all comes together to make "Chronicle" much, much better than average. It's more than a science fiction special effects fiesta. It's a very interesting "What if?" story about human nature. Highly recommended.

Big things have small beginnings that make for big films.

"Prometheus" (2012)

It took thirty-three years for it to show up, a prequel to "Alien" or at least something to give a shot at explaining the background. It's Ridley Scott's instead of someone else's, which means the likelihood of real quality is much higher than average. I'm looking forward to seeing this one.

The Thursday List: My Shelf Edition (Pt 2)

"Aliens" (1986)

This film was an integral part of my development as a kid, a science fiction buff, an actor and writer, and a movie fan. It's a sequel unlike its predecessor in style and can work by itself as a standalone film. Its script is top notch, and it's a technically superbly executed film. All of it has held up well over time, the special effects in particular. It's a smashingly entertaining cinema experience.

"Alien 3" was included on a recent Thursday List and so will be skipped for this segment.

"An Innocent Man" (1989)

A pretty solid drama, this is one I came across quite by accident back in the '90s while channel surfing one night. It's a simple story, effectively told, and featuring a very good cast, with Tom Selleck and F. Murray Abraham at the fore. The script is well written and tight, and it's well directed and gets everything right on cue. It's kind of predictable, but it's genuinely engaging and so is better than most. I like it.

"An American Werewolf in London" (1981)

This was one of the first movies I ever saw on cable television and was the source of some of my fiercest nightmares as a pre-teen. Sometimes deadly serious, sometimes comic, sometimes deadly serious and comic -- it's a highly effective, quickly paced, very well performed, and extremely fun horror film. It was the first VHS tape I ever bought, the third DVD and third Blu-Ray I ever bought. A solid film. One of my favorites.

The Thursday List: My Shelf Edition (Pt 1)

I don't have an enormous library of movies. Well, I don't have nearly as enormous a library of movies as I would like. Let's put it that way. The following is the start of the list that will be on Thursdays for a while. I'm going to detail what I have and why.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

Easy. This is one of the best, most influential films ever made. For all intents and purposes technically perfect, it wove special effects seamlessly into a marvelous story, balancing the two perfectly in a way, alas, not seen again until 1982's "Blade Runner"... and then not much after. It's #2 in my Top Ten and was the second Blu-Ray disc I ever bought. I watch it once or twice a year. It's that phenomenal.

"2010: The Year We Make Contact" (1984)

It's an '80s movie, and it looks like one... a lot. And it's dated... a lot. That said, it's solid, well conceived and executed, entertaining, in one of two scenes rather moving, and the cast is exceptional. It was also one of the first movies I ever watched when my parents go HBO. So in addition to being a very good film it's one of this film geek's sentimental favorites.

"Alien" (1979)

Again, easy. This is one of the top ten science fiction films ever made, as well as one of top one hundred films ever produced. I owned it on VHS, and then on DVD. I now have the Blu-Ray, and I'll get it on whatever format comes next. "A simple story, brilliantly told." That's it in a nutshell. Add to that a striking visual design that hasn't aged a bit in over thirty years and one of the greatest shocks in the history of cinema, and that's why it's in my collection. 

The Thursday List: The Renewal

"Alien 3" (1992)

Plagued by pre-production difficulties that would have killed most other franchises, "Alien 3" and its fledgling director David Fincher forged ahead and created a solid, however underrated, third film in the "Alien" saga. It's not super suspense and scares, and it's not gung ho shoot'em up action. "Alien 3" is a slow burn, a bleak, dark tragedy playing out in the coldness of space on a barren prison planet. The script, while not terribly innovative or wowwing, is good, and the acting is uniformly brilliant throughout. "Alien 3" also has its own trademark audiovisual style, as its predecessors did themselves, and it works. Compared to "Alien" and "Aliens" it falls rather short, but taken on its own, as it should be, "Alien 3" deserves a better rap than it gets. Recommended.

"Blood Simple" (1985)

This debut film of directors Joel and Ethan Coen is a masterpiece of neo-noir cinema. Suspicion, adultery, thievery, murder, double-crosses, and characters that are at the same time really stupid and really, really awful people. "Blood Simple" is dark, and it's mean, and it's unforgiving, and it's visceral, and it's truly brilliant to watch it unfold. The cast is truly exceptional, and the late M. Emmet Walsh's private eye Loren Visser is one of the most evil and treacherous villains ever to stain the silver screen, and he's almost kind of likeable, in a twisted kind of way. Treat yourself to this film. It's a classic. Highly recommended.

"The Negotiator" (1998)

The running theme today is "an excellent cast", and that's what this film has. "The Negotiator" is a police procedural plus a whodunnit in the style of "Die Hard" but with less overt humor and more intrigue and suspense. The script is tight. The pace is quick. The cast is in top form, especially Kevin Spacey and the late J.T. Walsh. It's a solid roller coaster ride, evenly spaced action and suspense, up until the end. Recommended.

The Thursday List, Episode 8

"The Haunting" (1963)

A scientist, two psychic sensitives, and a skeptic go to check out a very haunted house indeed, and no hilarity ensues whatsoever. Robert Wise's 1963 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is considered by many, including this reviewer, as the best haunted house movie ever made. A solid story and script coupled with amazing technical direction plus an excellent cast give this film an atmosphere of unease, darkness, mystery, and psychological horror that just about can't be beat, and the best thing is that by and large it's a slow burn from beginning to end. It's masterful. Highly recommended.

"The Legend of Hell House" (1973)

There is no such slow burn in 1973's "The Legend of Hell House". Once it gets going, it keeps going and doesn't really let up, just gives you enough time to breathe. Adapted by Richard Matheson from his own novel, this film has the same premise as "The Haunting" but approaches from a different angle and much more ferociously. The cast shines, especially Roddy McDowell, and the direction is determinedly '70s and very effective. It may not be the best haunted house film ever, but it's close... and probably the most fun to watch. Highly engaging, highly energetic, and... Highly Recommended.

"Event Horizon" (1997)

A bit overambitious but well done and with a great attitude, "Event Horizon" is probably the best haunted house in space movie ever made. It's more than a hair over the top and sometimes tends to try to hard, but there's something about the film that just screams underdog. It's got a good script and direction, and the cast does pretty well. It just keeps barely not quite coming completely together. Having watched it more than a few times, I believe there's a good, fun, healthy attitude about the film, and it's really great fun to watch, especially with friends, which makes raises from average to slightly above average. And so while your mileage may vary, I say... Recommended.

The Thursday List, Episode 5 (Early Edition)

"Soylent Green" (1973)

Usually ecological disaster movies are crap. They're preachy and irritating and weakly written. "Soylent Green" isn't one of those. It's the ecological disaster movie all the others are trying to be. It's solidly written and directed, and it features the final and quite moving film performance of the legendary Edward G. Robinson. The worst thing about the film, aside from Charlton Heston's mediocre performance for the first half of the film, is that it's so dreadfully 1970s, with the fashions and the language. And if that's the worst part of the film, that's doing pretty good. This film's a classic for good reason. Recommended.

"Dead Again" (1991)

"Dead Again" is a neo-noir psychological thriller and one of my favorite movies. It stars Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, and Sir Derek Jacobi and is a veritable master class in film direction, screenwriting, and performance. It's gorgeously shot and features scenes both in color and in black and white while the plot develops and the action moves back and forth between the 1940s and the 1990s. It's a tight, lean story, very engaging, and should have you quite rapt until the very end. Highly recommended.

"The Mangler" (1995)

Robert Englund and Ted Levine in a horror movie based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Tobe Hooper. Holy cow! This should be pretty good. Except that "The Mangler" is a laundry folding machine... that gets possessed a demon... and terrorizes the people at the laundry service, while a detective (Levine) tries to investigate and the owner (Englund) tries to find it new victims. Holy crap. Now it seems like it should blow. To be fair, it's an all around very competently made film. It's just clunkily written, but more than that it just doesn't work as a story. I've not read the short story, though. I'll wager it worked a lot better there. The movie blows. Avoid.

At least it's better than "Neighbor".

A guy and his girl go visit the guy's old friend at his exclusive apartment in the big city. They meet some new, generally shallow people, and things go kind of downhill from there. Oh, and then... space aliens invade. And no hilarity ensues.

“Skyline” (2010)

directed by The Brothers Strause

written by Liam O'Donnell and Joshua Cordes

starring Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, and Donald Faison

How Is It?

There's not much to say, really. It looks way better than it ever had any hope of being. The production value of the film is high, and nothing else about the film even comes close to it. The only things not done on the cheap in the film are the special effects. It's pretty bad, really.

The Players

Eric Balfour plays Jarrod, and Scottie Thompson plays his girlfriend, Elaine. Donald Faison plays Jarrod's best friend and old partner in crime, Terry. All three a decent enough actors. It's just with the lackluster script and pretty hackneyed story at hand, it was probably all they could do to go through the motions. They aren't the stars of the “Skyline” anyway. The aliens are, and directors Greg and Colin Strause made sure that's obvious. The actors are just there to get the audience to the next special effects shot, a grave disservice to them and to us viewers.

Behind the Camera

The writing is mediocre, at its best moments. “Skyline” is a rehash of every major alien spaceship invasion movie of the past fifteen or so years, and nowhere does it even try to be original. The dialogue is clunky, and the entire script is far too long. The biggest problem of the script is that it seems to have been made to service the visual effects desires of the Strauses. It comes across as a story and script built around preconceived “cool moments” and/or “awesome visuals”, not a solid (at least least serviceable) story and script from which such moments and visuals would be inspired. For the most part, when the characters are talking the film is really quite boring. The script seems accidental.

The physical production cost of the movie was around $500,000. The special effects budget was somewhere between ten and twenty million dollars -- going into CG aliens, space ships, aerial battles, and lots of blue lights. It looks good, of course. Though the aliens and the ship are blatant rip offs of popular movie alien baddies we've seen many times, it was millions well spent. It's a technically well made film, but as directors, whose jobs are supposed to include drawing the audience in and sustaining interest, Greg and Colin are breathtakingly lacking. There is no sense of atmosphere in “Skyline” other its emotional vacuity. The Strauses made a video game, not a movie – and not a very good video game at that. Decent video games at least engage you and keep your interest throughout.

And the film's ending, if indeed one could call it that, is just absolutely cringeworthy.

The Verdict

“Skyline” is a prime example of the all too familiar problem of spectacle over substance. It's not a good story, nor is it well told. There's no story to speak of. The whole film is an excuse for big CG effects, and that just doesn't cut it.

“Skyline” is like “Birdemic”, just with better effects and no fun in watching it whatsoever.

"Hey, Sweden!"

If you appreciate great filmmaking, even slightly appreciate it, then you owe it to yourself to see this film. Note to the squeamish: Just be mindful of the special effects. With one mild exception, they work quite well.

“John Carpenter's The Thing” (1982)

directed by John Carpenter

written by Bill Lancaster

starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Donald Moffat, T.K. Carter, Charles Hallahan, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, David Clennon, Peter Maloney, Joel Polis, 
Thomas G. Waites

How Is It?

Not only is this film one of the greatest science fiction and horror films of the 1980s. It is one of the best science fiction and horror films ever made. On top of that, it is inarguable that it is one of the best overall films of the latter half of the twentieth century. Watch it, and you'll see clearly: This is how you make a movie.

The Players

Before I get into any descriptions or praise of the actors involved, it must be noted that this is an ensemble picture. Instead of a hierarchy, it's a tapestry, and all of the actors turn in excellent performances. So I'm not going to single out any of the them. It'll just have to suffice to say that each of them brings a uniqueness and a completeness to their character, a level of relative eccentricity, nuance not often seen in genre films – or even in many straight dramas, alas. In short, we really rather like all the guys at Outpost 31 and root for them, even though we know going in that Very Bad Things are going to happen to them, and the actors really do make it look effortless.

Behind the Camera

The writing is superb. Bill Lancaster's script is smartly written, tightly structured, and well-paced, not a moment wasted. It's a prime example of “a good story, well told”. In the hands of good actors and a good director and crew, there's nowhere to go but up.

From a technical point of view, the film is a sight to behold. Yes, there are a few minor technical niggles one can make, but when you look at the overall movie experience of “The Thing” they disappear. Carpenter's direction, Dean Cundey's cinematography, and Rob Bottin's special effects are simply spot-on. (Bottin's effects were practically groundbreaking.) It is a real compliment to and says much about them that it isn't really until after you're done watching the movie that you start thinking about what you were watching. The technical side of the production so complements the actors and action in front of the camera that your attention is on what's going on, not on the style. I value that highly.

The Verdict

I believe the verdict has been apparent from the outset of this review. “John Carpenter's 'The Thing'” rates as one of the twenty best films I've ever seen. Horror and science fiction are my favorites, surely, and I admit that bias. That said, the quality of the film goes well beyond whatever confines there are to genre. It's a marvelously written, excellently made, gripping and atmospheric and the same time fun, highly entertaining movie. (And it has a really cool wolf-dog in it as well.)

Unless you're really squeamish, this movie is for you.