PROMETHEUS – 2012 – A MASTERFULL ALIEN IMAGINATION

“Ridley Scott is still a director with a strong and individual vision. Prometheus proves that he still has a passion for science fiction as a genre and as a way of telling multifaceted stories that are both inhumane and humane.”

Science fiction, horror and action

Starring - Noomi Rapace, Elizabeth Shaw, Michael Fassbender/David, Charlize Theron/Meredith Vickers, Idris Elba/Janek, Guy Pearce/Peter Weyland, Logan Marshall-Green/Charlie Holloway, Sean Harris/Fifield, Rafe Spall/Millburn, Emun Elliott/Chance and Benedict Wong/Ravel

Director - Ridley Scott

Writers - Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof

Rated R - sci-fi violence including some intense images, and brief language

1 hr., 4 min.

Prometheus is Ridley Scott’s long awaited return to science fiction and it was definitely worth the wait! Director Ridley Scott has dabbled in all three of my favorite genres: science fiction – Blade Runner, horror – Alien and fantasy – Legend. Out of these three, only Legend is a failure, while Blade Runner and Alien are not only successes, but are considered by many (myself included) to be modern film classics. For this reason, I was looking forward to seeing Prometheus more for what Scott would do in the science fiction genre, than what he would do with the story as it related to Alien. Is Prometheus a prequel to Alien? Yes, it definitely is in regard to story, but not so much in its stylistic or thematic approaches.

“A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race…” or so says the promotional description for the film. The team of explorers is a crew of scientists and ordinary astronauts. The ship they fly in, the Prometheus is paid for by the Weyland Corporation. The crew are all employees of Weyland Corporation as well; with the exception of David, who is an android that was built by them. The founder of Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland has funded the expedition to a star system that was found in several ancient illustrations discovered by the archeological couple Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway. It is his and their belief that the “engineers” are a race of superior alien beings, who have seeded the Earth with their own DNA in order to promote intelligent life there and that the planet that they are traveling to will lead them to the engineers home world. Once there, they hope to be able to ask the engineers why they were created and for what purpose. When the crew awakens from hyper-sleep, they are already in orbit around the distant moon LV-223, their destination. They land the ship on LV-223, close to a huge structure that resembles an ancient building, but is much more.

To reveal any more of the story of Prometheus would give away too many of the interesting plot revelations and narrative twists. I will say that the story itself, while thought-provoking on its own - and indeed produces a fair amount of interesting ideas - is not the strongest element of Prometheus. Part of this is due to a lack of a definitive payoff at the end of the film. All the big questions that are asked at the beginning of the film are not satisfactorily answered at the end of the film.  I do wonder why these deeper questions were brought up, only to be mostly ignored throughout the film. Still, the character story arcs, for the most part, are wrapped up satisfactorily and that is an important aspect of the film.

The reason that the characters are so important to Prometheus is because each of the characters represents a differing viewpoint to the idea that aliens may be the originators of the human race. The central viewpoint character is Elizabeth Shaw, one of the archeologists who have gathered the ancient Earth artifacts that contain the message from the engineers. Throughout the film she wears a cross on a chain around her neck, signifying that she has faith in a higher power. Because of this, she looks to the aliens not as gods, but merely as the hands of god and not mankind’s true creator. Her drive to get to the truth behind the engineers is what carries Prometheus. In contrast to Shaw is David, the android manufactured by Weyland Corporation, who is programed with the singular purpose of finding an engineer alien alive and gaining information that is vital to his programmer. David, being an emotionless android, never questions the purpose of the mission or appears to care for its success or not. What makes David interesting is his pacifistic outward demeanor that seems to hide a deeper and more ominous purpose. Meredith Vickers is the head of the mission and the lead representative of Weyland Corp. Her cool demeanor and anti-social behavior give her an enigmatic air, as she apparently sees Prometheus and her crew only as investments. Her external motivation seems only to see the safe return of Weyland property and she seems skeptical about even the existence of the engineers. These three characters are the driving force of Prometheus, because as the film progresses and the story becomes more complex, each of these characters demonstrates more depth of character and purpose than was initially apparent. Prometheus is a film that definitely derives as much story from its characters as it does from its philosophical elements or external conflicts.

Prometheus is not all internal character struggles or theological vs. scientific ruminations. It also has many physical conflicts with the various alien creatures that the crew encounters on the alien satellite. While the film takes some time to set up these encounters, once they do occur they continue on almost without ceasing. Fans of Scott’s ability to craft atmospheric dread will not be disappointed by several sequences that take place on both the terrain and on Prometheus. One of the most disturbing and frightening sequences in the film features Shaw in a mêlée with an alien creature in a truly unique manner. Prometheus not only delivers visceral alien thrills on multiple levels, but in manifold ways and methods.

Ridley Scott is still a director with a strong and individual vision. Prometheus proves that he still has a passion for science fiction as a genre and as a way of telling multifaceted stories that are both inhumane and humane. Anyone who has a love of science fiction and its depiction in cinema should see Prometheus.

TECHNICAL: Acting – 9 Directing – 10 Cinematography – 10 Script – 9 Special Effects – 10

VISCERAL: Visual – 10 Auditory – 9 Intellectual – 9 Emotional – 9 Involvement – 10

TOTAL RATING – 95

BATTLESHIP - 2012 – NOT A HIT, BUT A NEAR MISS

"I liked Battleship enough to recommend it for those inclined to be forgiving of simple emotional roller-coaster-ride type of sci-fi action films."

Science Fiction, Action and Adventure

Starring - Taylor Kitsch/Lieutenant Alex Hopper, Alexander Skarsgård/Commander Stone Hopper, Rihanna/Petty Officer Cora 'Weps' Raikes, Brooklyn Decker/Samantha Shane, Tadanobu Asano/Captain Yugi Nagata, Hamish Linklater/Cal Zapata, Liam Neeson/Admiral Shane, Peter MacNicol/Secretary of Defense, John Tui/Chief Petty Officer Walter 'The Beast' Lynch, Jesse Plemons/Boatswain Mate Seaman Jimmy 'Ordy' Ord and Gregory D. Gadson/Lieutenant Colonel Mick Canales

Director - Peter Berg

Writer(s) - Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber

Rated PG-13 - intense sequences of violence, action and destruction, and for language

2 hr., 11 min.

I’ll admit this right up front: I had no intention of seeing Battleship at the theater. I had the same impression about this film that many others had. Based on the trailer, this film looked like a Transformers-clone and – although I am a fan of the Transformers trilogy as the ultimate guilty pleasure – I wasn’t interested in a copy-cat film this soon after Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). Well, timing is everything as they say and two things came about that allowed me the pleasure (sic) of seeing Battleship: I was on vacation and I had nothing to do on Tuesday on which day all films are $5 at my local theater. Was Battleship worth even $5 dollars? Yes, but I don’t think I would have missed out on anything seeing it at home; especially since there were only five people in the theater with The Bride and I to witness the Battleships kicking alien ass! Whoops! I didn’t mean to spoil the ending!

Seven years earlier, NASA has transmitted a super-amplified signal to a distant “goldilocks” planet in hopes of finding intelligent life outside our solar system. Jump to 2012 and they get their answer… in the form of five enormous spaceships; four of which land in the waters near the Hawaiian Islands, with the fifth having hit a satellite, which causes it to crash in a populated center or Hong Kong.

Shortly before this occurs, we are introduced to two brothers. One is Commander Stone Hopper, the Commanding Officer of the USS Sampson, who is the older brother of Alex, who is currently unemployed and living on his brother’s sofa. While celebrating Alex’s birthday at a local bar, Alex gets into trouble stealing a chicken burrito for a beautiful woman at the bar; who it turns out is the daughter of the United States Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Shane. Somehow, this convinces Stone to force Alex to enlist in the Navy. In very little time, Alex has risen through the ranks and become a lieutenant and the Tactical Action Officer aboard the destroyer USS John Paul Jones.

There is a large international fleet on tactical maneuvers off the coast of Hawaii, when the previously mentioned spaceships crash into the waters only hundreds of yards away from a group of Navy vessels. Lieutenant Alex and a small crew take a dingy to investigate a floating section of the alien wreckage. The alien spaceships become alert and prepare to fire weapons on the surrounding ships and suddenly all hell breaks loose. The aliens create an enormous force shield around their spaceships and now only the ships within the shield are able to fight the alien spaceships. Of course, among these vessels are Alex’s ship and his bother Stone’s ship – both destroyer class vessels. Through an amazing series of dramatic maneuvering and classic cinematic coincidences, Alex destroys the alien ships and the communication satellite dishes that the aliens were attempting to use to summon their larger space fleet.

If all this sounds really dumb to you, you’d be correct! Oddly, it doesn’t matter one whit while watching Battleship because the enormous energy and sheer enthusiasm of the film’s cast and creators beat you into submission until you find yourself loving every minute of the action almost despite yourself!

As with all the alien invasion films that have been released in the past few years, Battleship offers no explanation as to why the aliens suddenly start blowing up the surrounding ships. The reason we assume that they came to Earth at all was because we beamed them a message into space at their planet and they arrived in answer to that message. Unfortunately, we’re never told what the message was that was beamed to their planet; but is it too much to assume that it was a peaceful message? So why all the hostility? Well, they do land right smack dab in the middle of several Navel battleship fleets during a war exercise. I guess with all those big guns pointed at them, the aliens didn’t take that as a precursor to friendly conversation.

All joking aside, the battle sequences are quite exciting and because the aliens use a projectile like weapon, the battleships actually have a fighting chance. Not much of one, as the alien munitions appear to be almost infinite, but at least they have a fighting chance. One funny and odd thing about the alien projectiles – which fire whole at the ships, embed themselves into the hulls of the ships and then explode in synchronized succession – they look a lot like the pegs that were used in the original MB Battleship game to mark hits and misses. I can only assume this was intentional; but I’m a little surprised I didn’t hear any snickers in the (admittedly small) crowd in the theater.

Battleship did not do well at the box office in this country. It only pulled in around $25 million dollars in its first weekend in the United States. With a reported $209 million dollar budget, Taylor Kitsch is already becoming known as a blockbuster killer. Between the disappointing John Carter and now Battleship, they say he can’t act and isn’t a strong enough actor to carry a major motion picture. I disagree with this assessment. Taylor is fine as a male lead. In Battleship, they went right for the James T. Kirk type if hero; the selfish bad-boy, who straitens out and learns leadership and teamwork in the military. They overdid the bad-boy stuff early in the movie; almost to the point of making him completely unlikeable. But his character does win you over eventually. Liam Neeson was obviously used to sell the film in commercials and have a “name” on the billboards, as he is sadly underutilized in the film. He has only a handful of scenes and he comes off as a one-note character as a result. The rest of the cast are good enough so that you root for them to victory, but none of them really stand out either.

The special effects are excellent to good. I liked the design of the ships and in particular the smaller ships. The large rolling tank-like spheres were cool and the destruction they unleashed was quite impressive. The alien’s attack was very defense oriented, as they only went on the offensive when attacked. I assume because there were only four spaceships, they felt they were outnumbered and had to wait until they could get their message into space for alien reinforcements.

I liked Battleship enough to recommend it for those inclined to be forgiving of simple emotional roller-coaster-ride type of sci-fi action films. If you want deeper, headier science fiction, look elsewhere. If you want lots of alien gun fights and explosions, with a feel-good ending straight out of the first Star Wars movie, than by all means watch Battleship!

TECHNICAL: Acting – 8 Directing – 8 Cinematography – 8 Script – 7 Special Effects – 10

VISCERAL: Visual – 9 Auditory – 9 Intellectual – 6 Emotional – 8 Involvement – 9

TOTAL RATING – 82




 

MEN IN BLACK 3 – 2012 – THIRD TIME IS THE CHARM

“MIB ³ has everything that you could want from this series:  Ray gun fights, spaceship battles, sci-fi gadgets, cool aliens and most importantly lots of laugh-out-loud jokes!”

Science Fiction, Comedy and Action

 

Starring - Will Smith/Agent J, Tommy Lee Jones/Agent K, Josh Brolin/Young Agent K, Jemaine Clement/Boris The Animal, Emma Thompson/Agent O, Michael Stuhlbarg/Griffin, Mike Colter/Colonel, Nicole Scherzinger/Boris' Girlfriend, Michael Chernus/Jeffrey Price and Alice Eve/Young Agent O

 

Director - Barry Sonnenfeld

 

Writer - Etan Cohen (uncredited) David Koepp, Jeff Nathanson and Michael Soccio

 

Rated PG-13 - sci-fi action violence, and brief suggestive content

1 hr., 43 min.

It has been ten long years since Men in Black ², but I for one think it was worth the wait. Director Barry Sonnenfeld has only directed one other feature film since MIB ² – 2006’s RV – so it was nice to see him return to the cinema with his most successful film franchise. Rumors were that Will Smith was not interested in returning to the role of Agent J and that was why there was such a long wait between MIBs 2 and 3. However, it was more likely that getting both Smith and Jones schedules to match was a more likely cause, as they had publicly admitted to want to return to MIB in 2008. The script, which was originally written by Etan Cohen in 2009, went through several rewrites, right up to the time and through shooting MIB ³, which began in November of 2010. The idea of the time travel storyline was credited to Will Smith by Sonnenfeld, who says Smith came up with the idea during the shooting of MIB². Whoever came up with the idea, it was a good one as it allowed Tommy Lee Jones’ character’s background to be fleshed out more.

 

MIB ³ begins by showing the interstellar criminal Boris the Animal escaping from a prison on the Moon. After crashing his spaceship in New York City, Boris attacks K in a Chinese restaurant telling him, “You’re already dead… you just don’t know it yet”, before disappearing in an explosion. The next morning, Agent J calls K, but doesn’t get an answer, so he goes to K’s apartment and finds a young family living there. J returns to MIB headquarters, asking K’s whereabouts, but no one knows who K is, with the exception of new Chief Agent O, who informs J that K died in 1969.

Earth is suddenly attacked by hundreds of Boglodite spaceships. Agent J asks Chief Agent O why they haven’t activated the ArcNet shield and Agent O realizes that Boris must have traveled back to 1969 to kill Agent K and keep him from activating the shield, which would allow his fellow Bogoidites free reign over the Earth. Agent J finds the son of Obadiah Price – the creator of a time-travel device – and forces him to give him his sole remaining device, so that K can return to the day before Boris killed K in 1969.

J tries to avoid K in the past, but of course the younger Agent K arrests J during a car chase while in pursuit of younger Boris. J tells K the truth and K calmly tells J that he will help him to capture Boris and save the Earth’s future invasion by the Bogoidites.

Men in Black 3 succeeds because it develops both the complex plot and the deep relationship between J and K. The time travel story isn’t just window dressing to show J’s comical reaction to the late 1960’s cultural growing pains (which it dose), but to also tell the story of how Agent K became the sullen introverted person in the future. I really liked the way the story blended both these elements, without ever bogging down the pacing of the action or resorting to maudlin melodrama.

Much of the success of MIB can be attributed to Will Smith’s ability to slip back and forth effortlessly between comedy and drama. His scenes with both Tommy Lee Jones’ present K and Josh Brolin’s past K are both funny and touching. Little character touches like the country song that K is listening to in his car is the same in both the present and the past help to create a connection to the two actors that resonates with both characters. Enough can’t be said about Joss Brolin’s performance as the younger K. He doesn’t do just an imitation of Jones’ K, but actually seems to become the character. This makes the time that is spent in 1969 just as enjoyable as the time spent in the film’s present. While Emma Thompson’s Agent O isn’t given much to actually do in MIB ³, her character is very important to the story, so I was impressed by what Emma Thompson did with her character. I really enjoyed a new character that was introduced in MIB ³: the mysterious alien Griffen, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. Griffen is an Arcadian who possesses ability to see all possible futures and it is not as useful an ability as it might seem, as he has a tendency not to see the real timeline until the last possible second.

MIB ³ is filled with all the usual alien high-tech gizmos as in the past two films, but my favorites are the uni-motor bikes that K and J drive in 1969. Rick Baker contributed over 100 alien makeup effects for MIB ³ and every one of them is amazing! There is so much to look at in this film that it is easy to become distracted from the story itself.

Speaking of the story, one noticeable lack of a story element in this MIB film was a love interest for Will Smith’s J. I honestly didn’t even notice this missing element until the film was over, because the story was so focused on the relationship between J and K. There is a minor love element to MIB ³, but I won’t spoil it here; but it is a nice one.

MIB ³ has everything that you could want from this series:  Ray gun fights, spaceship battles, sci-fi gadgets, cool aliens and most importantly lots of laugh-out-loud jokes! This is not only the third film in the MIB series; it may the best one as well.

TECHNICAL: Acting – 9 Directing – 9 Cinematography – 9 Script – 9 Special Effects – 10

VISCERAL: Visual – 9 Auditory – 9 Intellectual – 8 Emotional – 9 Involvement – 9

TOTAL RATING – 90

TRAILER TUESDAY! FALLING SKIES - SEASON TWO PREVIEW!

Falling Skies, the science fiction alien invasion drama on TNT, will be returning for a second season of ten more episodes, starting on June 17, 2012 at 9:00 PM.

I had some reservations about this show in the early episodes of season one, but as the show progressed, I grew to enjoy it more and more. While I still find the main character Tom Mason to be a trifle dull, he is at least likable and somewhat relatable. I understood his obsession with recovering his son Ben, but I was glad when that storyline was resolved half-way through season one. Mason even demonstrated overt affection towards Anne Glass in the final episode of season one, which was a classic case of better-late-than-never. I really like Pope, the classic anti-hero of the show, and I was happy when he gradually integrating himself into The Second by making himself useful as more than just a good cook. The cliffhanger ending where Mason was taken away willingly by the aliens was a bit of a drag – especially knowing I was going to have to wait almost a year before seeing if he would survive the encounter – but the suspense was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he is the lead of the program.

Here is a three-and-a-half minute preview of the first episode of the second season of Falling Skies, which features a fast-paced battle between members of The Second and the alien Skitters and the alien robot Mechs! Enjoy!

THE DARKEST HOUR – 2011 – AN ESCAPIST ALIEN INVASION

"There are many different elements of The Darkest Hour to enjoy! Foremost and most obvious are the marvelous locations that the film was shot on. I personally liked the design of the various alien technologies; which were all consistently based on light or energy. I really liked how Emile Hirsch’s character Sean grew from a shallow-seeming underachiever at the outset of the film into a quick-thinking selfless leader. Possibly the preeminent aspect of The Darkest Hour is its brisk pacing and efficient plot. Every scene provides pieces of information on the aliens, their purpose and the progression of the invasion."

Science Fiction, Horror and Action

Starring - Emile Hirsch/Sean, Olivia Thirlby/Natalie, Max Minghella/Ben, Rachael Taylor/Anne, Joel Kinnaman/Skyler, Gosha Kutsenko/Matvei, Veronika Ozerova/Vika, Dato Bakhtadze/Sergei, Nikolay Efremov/Sasha,  Pyotr Fyodorov/Anton Batkin, Georgiy Gromov/Boris, Artur Smolyaninov/Yuri and Anna Rudakova/Tess

Director - Chris Gorak

 

Writer - Jon Spaihts

Rated PG-13 - sci-fi action violence and some language.

1 hr, 29 min.

This film has been unfairly criticized for its unimaginative aliens and lack of characterization. The same could be said for any alien invasion movie ever made. The important thing about this gene of film is that the alien creatures look and act differently enough from the humans to pose a plausible threat; and that the characters are likable and relatable enough to want to see them survive the alien threat. The Darkest Hour succeeds in both respects.

Ben and Sean are two college friends, who decide to start a social networking business. Ben is the brains of the business and Sean is the face of the operation. They partner with a young Swedish businessman to enter the budding Russian free market. When Ben and Sean arrive to meet Skyler in Moscow, they find out that Skyler has already sold a knockoff version of their application software and due to the non-existent copyright laws in Russia, the friends can only drink away their woes at a local nightclub. They meet an American woman Natalie there and her Australian friend Anne, who are in Moscow to show Natalie’s art. The power abruptly goes out in the nightclub and everyone dashes out to see the sky filled with bright light, which quickly breaks off into hundreds of smaller spheres that plummet to the ground.

One of these light spheres alights near the crowd of young people outside the club and a police officer bravely confronts the alien object to intercede himself between the civilians and the possible threat. The police officer is immediately disintegrated against an invisible force barrier that surrounds the sphere, which sends the crowd running in a panic for the relative shelter of the club. More and more of the alien spheres hurtle ground ward and begin killing dozens of the frightened people. Sean finds a hole in the wall of the nightclub that leads to a basement storeroom and he leads Ben, Natalie and Anne there. Once behind the heavy steel door, they hear loud banging at the door and open it to reluctantly let Skyler in their shelter.

Hiding there for days, they finally leave to find that Moscow is completely devoid of people. Venturing further out into the city in search of a proper map, Ben and Sean become trapped by one of the alien spheres under a car. As it passes over the car, they notice that the sphere causes all the lights of the vehicle to alight and they quickly devise a warning system for the aliens out of incandescent light bulbs. They use the map from the car to find the American Embassy, where they had hoped to find help in finding a way back to America, but it is just as desolate and demolished as the rest of Moscow. They do find a logbook there near a wireless transmitter and discover that the alien invasion is a worldwide event. The group decides they need to find another way out of Moscow and they enter a high tower building to get a superior view of the city. Skyler is leery of being trapped in the building, so he stays on the ground floor while the others climb to the roof. They hear Skyler being attacked by one of the spheres, firing a rifle uselessly at the alien’s force shield. Skyler bravely leads the alien away from the rest of the group and they witness his death as they get away.

Sean, Ben, Natalie and Anne head towards a building with lights in the window, hoping to find someone alive. Once inside, they’re attacked by another alien sphere, but are helped by a Russian teenaged girl to escape into an apartment that has been transformed into a giant Faraday cage that hides them from the aliens. The girl introduces them to Mr. Sergei, who rescued Vika from the streets. Sergei explains to them that the aliens are generating an electrical field that not only makes them invisible, but also shields them from conventional weapons. Sergei then proudly demonstrates his microwave gun that destabilizes their shields enough to kill the aliens inside. They show Sergei a working radio they found at the embassy and play the frequency that repeats a message in Russian for him. Vika and Sergai interpret the message, which broadcasts that a nuclear submarine is waiting in the Moscow River to take refugees of the alien invasion to safety.

Sean, Ben, Natalie, along with the capable Vika escape Sergei’s building – which regrettably he and Anne do not – and are helped by a small but skilled Russian militia to find the Russian submarine promise of escape from the alien infested city of Moscow.

There are many different elements of The Darkest Hour to enjoy! Foremost and most obvious are the marvelous locations that the film was shot on. From the stunning exteriors of the Academy of Science Plaza to the impressive interiors of the Lenin Library, The Darkest Hour makes wonderful use of the city of Moscow to create a real feeling of alienation for the American and Australian protagonists in the film. The scenes of them wandering Red Square, which is shown to be completely devoid of any trace of humanity, are effectively eerie.

I personally liked the design of the various alien technologies; which were all consistently based on light or energy. The gigantic towering light funnels, that appear to be sucking the very life essence of Moscow itself, were disconcertingly efficacious. The opening sequence, where the massive vaporous light field in the night sky dissipates into hundreds of the energy spheres and begins at first to gently fall to the surface; only to quickly dive bomb the people on the ground and immediately disintegrate them, leaving only floating particles of dust was very imaginative and powerful. I thought that keeping the aliens themselves hidden behind the invisible energy shield for most of the film made them even more menacing than if they had been revealed early on in the movie. Because genre films and particularly science fiction films, portray alien technologies and biology with CGI so frequently now, I think our mind’s eye has become oversaturated with these images to the point that every films’ aliens begin to blend into one another. It is easy to criticize a lack of originality with the alien design work on The Darkest Hour, but honestly, when was the last film that truly impressed you with its innovative design work? Every film now is just a variation or modification of what we’ve seen in other science fiction films, so I think it’s just a cop out to disparage a film like The Darkest Hour for its lackluster special effects, when it is we as film aficionados that are being lazy in our critical analysis.

While I do think it might have been better if the central characters were more varied in age, ethnicity and vocation, I do think that the featured foursome were more than adequate at presenting the audience with relatable personalities and viewpoints. I really liked how Emile Hirsch’s character Sean grew from a shallow-seeming underachiever at the outset of the film into a quick-thinking selfless leader. I also appreciated that Olivia Thirlby’s character Natalie wasn’t just a bimbo to be rescued; nor was she throwing herself at Sean at every opportunity. In fact, at the beginning of the film she is more attracted to Ben because on the surface he seems to be the more stable and successful of the two male leads. Only after it becomes apparent to Natalie that Ben is actually very dependent on Sean for providing strength of leadership, that she – and we the audience – see Sean in a different light. My favorite characters in the film are some of the Russians; the foremost being Georgiy Gromov who played Boris the leader of the Russian militia. His obvious familiarity with American pop culture lent his character a real charm in relating to the Americans that he is put into a position to help. Boris demonstrates his appreciation for American films when after he and his small band of soldiers kill an alien he quips, “Welcome to Russia sucka!” I thought the young Russian actress Veronika Ozerova, who played the resourceful Russian refugee Vika, portrayed her character with just the right blend of quiet toughness and hidden terror that never once verged on overacting. Even with his relatively brief screen time, Dato Bakhtadze’s electrical engineer and amateur inventor Sergei was a fun and sympathetic character.

Possibly the preeminent aspect of The Darkest Hour is its brisk pacing and efficient plot. Every scene provides pieces of information on the aliens, their purpose and the progression of the invasion. These build on the each other, until the end of the film, which culminates with a satisfactory conclusion that still leaves open the possibility for a sequel. While, as a science fiction fan, I feel the film could have benefited from another character like Boris to better explain the alien technologies, I can’t quibble too much with the way this information was disseminated in bits and pieces throughout the film.

As you can no doubt tell by the length of this review, I truly enjoyed The Darkest Hour and recommend it to anyone who is looking for a pleasant bit of escapist alien-invasion science fiction!

TECHNICAL: Acting – 8 Directing – 8 Cinematography – 9 Script – 8 Special Effects – 9

VISCERAL: Visual – 9 Auditory – 8 Intellectual – 8 Emotional – 9 Involvement – 10

TOTAL RATING – 86

THE THING – 2011 – A PALE IMITATION OF THE REAL THING

"The biggest problem with this film is that there is no suspense because you know how the film must end before it even begins. What makes horror work is not knowing who is going to survive the antagonist, so this vital aspect of the plot is removed from The Thing. All we are left with is trying to identify with these characters and hoping that they will at least make an effort to survive that is interesting and exhilarating. For the most part, The Thing disappoints in this regard as well."

Science Fiction, Horror and Action

Starring - Mary Elizabeth Winstead/Kate Lloyd, Joel Edgerton/Sam Carter, Ulrich Thomsen/Dr. Sander Halvorson, Eric Christian Olsen/Adam Finch, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje/Jameson, Paul Braunstein/Griggs, Trond Espen Seim/Edvard Wolner and Kim Bubbs/Juliette

Director - Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Writer - Eric Heisserer

Rated R - strong creature violence and gore, disturbing images, and language

The Thing is a prequel to the 1982 film of the same name. John Carpenter’s The Thing is considered to be a modern classic sci-fi horror film and when I saw it in the theater in June of 1982 I would have concurred with that assessment. I watched The Thing again last year in HD on Netflix in preparation of seeing the “prequel”, and it was not the film I remembered. While I still appreciated the nicely squeamish alien effects and the general feeling of isolation and growing paranoia that Carpenter generated in the film, the characters felt underdeveloped and the film just didn’t have the same emotional impact on me the way it did twenty-nine years prior. The more I read about the reverential approach that the director of The Thing prequel were taking to make their film, the more I became disinterested in seeing this Thing.

Trying to keep an open a mind as possible, I watched the blu-ray of The Thing and still found myself very underwhelmed. I just couldn’t help but think to myself why was this film even made? I actually could understand it better if they made a straight up remake. After all, the 1982 The Thing is a remake of the 1951 The Thing from Another World, both of which are liberal adaptations of the short story "Who Goes There?" by the science fiction editor/writer John W. Campbell Jr. There have already been two other science fiction novels that have been remade multiple times. The Body Snatchers, the 1955 science fiction novel by Jack Finney, was made into films in 1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007. I Am Legend, the 1954 Richard Matheson novel, was made into films in 1964, 1971 and 2007. Hollywood obviously has no shame when it comes to recycling the same stories over and over again, so why not another The Thing as well?

Instead, the writer became obsessed with telling the story of the Norwegian camp from the first film, as Heisserer explained in interviews that in writing the script it was necessary for him to research all the information that was revealed about the Norwegian camp from the first film, down to the smallest details, so that it could be incorporated into the prequel in order to create a consistent backstory. Considering that this backstory of the Norwegian’s is a complete fabrication of 1982 The Thing’s screenplay writer Bill Lancaster, I think by going even further away from the source material for inspiration to make an entire feature film is senseless. What makes this story even more uninspired is that it essentially tells exactly the same story as the 1982 The Thing, only with different characters!

The film opens with two of the Norwegian research team literally falling through the Antarctic ice onto the buried alien spaceship. An expedition goes looking for the missing men and finds instead the frozen body of a misshaped alien creature. Dr. Sander Halvorson, the head of the Norwegian team, recruits an American Paleontologist Kate Lloyd to help excavate and examine the alien body. Kate is flown to the Antarctic base by fellow Americans Carter, Derek and Griggs.

The alien is excavated from the ice, but left frozen in a block of it when brought into the camp. As the Norwegians drunkenly celebrate their find, Derek sees the alien inexplicably burst free of the ice and escape the building. The Norwegians and Americans split into small search parties and as soon as two of the Norwegians find it, it kills Henrik with Olav running away for help. The others return and use a flame thrower to burn the creature to death. Halvorson and Lloyd examine the remains and discover that the alien’s cells are still alive and are consuming and imitating Henrick’s cells.

The scientists devise a method of testing the blood to determine who the alien is imitating, but the lab is destroyed, so Lloyd devises another method to tell human from alien imitation. Despite their best efforts, one by one the humans are killed by the alien, leaving only a few left to keep the alien from contaminating the rest of the world.

One of the few interesting things about this Thing is the alien spacecraft. We see a glimpse of it in the beginning of the film, but the final act of the film makes use of it even better. Unfortunately, because this is a prequel, the events at the end of this film must not conflict with the beginning of the 1982 film and what could have been an interesting twist at the end is ruined. The biggest problem with this film is that there is no suspense because you know how the film must end before it even begins. What makes horror work is not knowing who is going to survive the antagonist, so this vital aspect of the plot is removed from The Thing. All we are left with is trying to identify with these characters and hoping that they will at least make an effort to survive that is interesting and exhilarating. For the most part, The Thing disappoints in this regard as well.

If some filmmaker in the next ten or fifteen years decides the time is right for another Thing film, I for one hope that they create their own original and fresh take on the film and not resort to slavishly imitating another filmmaker’s past glories.

TECHNICAL: Acting – 7 Directing – 7 Cinematography – 8 Script – 7 Special Effects – 8

VISCERAL: Visual – 8 Auditory – 8 Intellectual – 7 Emotional – 7 Involvement – 7

TOTAL RATING – 74