Sci Fi

Apr 25 2013

Cloud Atlas

I watched Cloud Atlas over the last night and this afternoon. Cloud Atlas is a German science fiction drama film written, produced and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. The movie is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell and has 6 different plotlines set in six different time eras. The movie spent 4 years in development at a budget of $102 million and and was released on October 26, 2012. The cast is a stellar line up of Tom Hands, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, South Korean actress Doona Bae, Keith David and smaller roles by Susan Sarandon & Hugh Grant.

How to start telling this story that is interlinked & interconnected in one way or the other? It is easier to separate the sections and tell the story. The first & set in the oldest era is in the year 1849 where Adam Ewing, an American lawyer has come to do some business for his father-in-law Haskell Moore. Ewing is appalled at the public whipping of an African slave Autua, who later stoves away on the ship in which Ewing is traveling back to the US. Ewing feeds the slave and gets him a job as a sailor on the boat. However Dr. Henry Goose slowly poisons Ewing, claiming it to be the cure for a parasitic worm, aiming to steal Ewing’s box of goal coins. Autua saves Ewing before he can be given a fatal doseage by Dr. Goose and recovers with the help of his new friend. Once back home, he and his wife reject her father’s businesses that deals with slavery and go off to join the Slavery Abolishment Movement.

The next section is set in 1936 as Cambridge student Robert Frobrisher, a bisexual English musician, leaves his university to work under the employment of the elderly composer Vyvyan Ayrs and to also work on his own compositions. Frobrisher compose his masterpiece The Cloud Atlas sextet while in Ayrs house and to his dismay Ayrs wishes to take credit for Frobisher’s work, and threatens to expose his scandalous background if he resists, which would mean that no one would want to listen to his work. After reading part of Ewing’s journals, Frobrisher shoots Ayrs and flees to a hotel where he finishes his work on  the sextant and shoots himself dead, just before his lover Rufus Sixsmith reaches the hotel. Many years later, 1973 to be exact, an much older Sixsmith, who is a nuclear physicist meets journalist Luisa Rey and confides in her about a conspiracy regarding the safety of a new nuclear reactor run by rich businessman Lloyd Hooks. Sixsmith is killed by an assassin sent by Hooks before he could share a report proving this conspiracy to her, however another scientist Issac Sachs meets Rey and sends her a bunch of Sixsmith’s files including a copy of the report. Sachs is soon killed in an explosion while Rey is run off the road into the sea but she escapes and with the help of the nuclear plant’s head of security, Joe Napier (who happened to be a friend of Rey’s father) she evades the assassin and uses the report to exspose the plot to use a nuclear accident for the benefit of oil companies. She also reads a bunch of letters that Frobisher wrote to Sixsmith in the latter’s files.

The 4th section is set in London in our present, 2012, where 65 year old publisher Timothy Cavendish attends a party where his gangster author whose book he has published, murders a critic and is sent to jail. The gangster’s goons hassle Cavendish for the profits from the book, which he has already spent. So he goes to his brother Denny for help. Denny, carrying a grudge against his  brother for sleeping with his wife, tricks Cavendish into hiding in a ‘hotel”, which is actually a nursing home where he is held against his will, but Cavendish escapes with the help of 3 elderly friends he made in the place. This is the most comedic of the 6 sections which is really funny. A little later Cavendish receives a manuscript of a novel based on Rey’s life and writes a screenplay about his own story in the home. We then go to 2144 in Neo Seoul, Korea where a Sonmi-451, a genetically-engineered fabricant or clone, server at a fast food restaurant is inspired by a fellow clone to dodge the expected servitude. Sonmi is released from her compliant life of servitude by Commander Hae-Joo Chang, a member of a rebel movement known as “Union”. The two begin a love affair and watch a movie based on Cavendish’s life. When she finds out that rebellious fabricants like her are killed and “recycled” into food for future fabricants, make a public broadcast of her story and says that the system of society based on slavery and exploitation of fabricants is intolerable. Chang is killed in a fight and Sonmi is captured and executed by the government after an interrogation.

Finally we got to 2321 in which after more than a century of what is suggested as a major world war & holocaust, Zachary lives in a small village in the valley in a primitive society that worships idols of Sonmi. Most of humanity has died Zachry is plagued by hallucinations of a figure called “Old Georgie” who manipulates him into giving in to his fear, and he watched scared as his friend & a young boy are killed by the cannibalistic Kona tribe. With medicines from Meronym, a member of the “Prescients” – a society holding on to remnants of technology from before the Holocaust, Zachary’s neice Katkin is cured and as repayment, Zachry agrees to guide Meronym into the mountains in search of Cloud Atlas, a communications station where she is able to send a message to Earth’s colonies on other planets. At the station, Meronym reveals that Sonmi was a mortal and not a deity as the Valley tribes believe. When Zachary returns home he finds the Kona has decimated his village but Katkin has survived and Meronym helps him escape the returning Kona, and they leave earth for one of the colonies in a giant spaceship along with the rest of the Prescients. The epilogue & prologue scenes are of an old Zachary telling this story to his grandchildren at the of which an older Meronym, his wife, comes to greet him.

The movie can get very confusing and one might lose interest here and there. I do appreciate the movie but it feels a little bit disoriented & uneven with the scenes changing from various eras. However I still liked it enough to give it a 7.5 outta 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 1

Apr 15 2013

The X-Files : Fight The Future

At the height of The X-Files popularity in 1998, right after season 5, the first movie was released. Titled The X-Files : Fight The Future the movie was actually shot before season 5 but the film’s story takes place between seasons 5 & 6, with events following season 5′s finale. Chris Carter decided to make a feature film to explore the show’s mythology on a wider scale, as well as appealing to non-fans. His original plan was to end the show at 5 seasons and do more movies based on the alien mythology but the network wanted more seasons and being one of the most popular shows of all time it made a lot more sense. Director Rob Bowman was at the helm with Carter & Daniel Sackheim co-producing the movie based on a script that Carter co-wrote with Frank Spotnitz.

The film starts off over 35,000 years ago in an area which will be called North Texas. A cave man enters a cave and runs into an extra terrestrial. They fight and the caveman wins, stabbing the creature to death, but he is also infected by a black oil-like substance. Fast forward to 1998 and a group of young boys playing in the same area find one of their group to have fallen down a hole in the ground. The boy finds a human skull and as he picks it up, the black oil seeps into his skin and up to his eyes, causing them to go black. Four firefighters descend into the hole to rescue him but do not come out and soon a team of biohazard-suited men arrives on the scene. Meanwhile Fox Mulder & Dana Scully are still recovering from the closure of the X-Files and assigned to other cases. Called to investigate a bomb threat in Dallas in the federal building in that area,  Mulder discovers the bomb in a vending machine. Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud (Terry O’Quinn) stays behind to disarm the bomb as Mulder and Scully evacuate the building. Unknown to the agents, Michaud makes no effort to disarm the bomb, which detonates.

Back in DC, the duo are chastised by the superiors because, in addition to Michaud, five people were apparently still in the building during the bombing. A separate investigation is held but Mulder encounters a paranoid doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), who explains that the five victims were already dead, and that the bomb was allowed to detonate in order to destroy evidence of how they died. At the hospital morgue, Scully is able to examine one of the victims, finding evidence of an alien virus. Scully & Mulder head back to Texas to the scene of the crime and are led to a strange train hauling tanker trucks and they follow it to a large cornfield surrounding two glowing domes. They enter the domes, only to find them empty. Suddenly, grates leading to an underground area open in the floor and a swarm of bees chases the agents out into the cornfield. Once outside they are chased by helicopters and they barely manage to make their way out and head back to DC. With news of Scully being transferred to Utah, she & Mulder devastated at being separated are about to have a tender moment when Scully is stung by a beer that was lodged in her shirt collar and she looses consciousness.  Mulder calls for the paramedics but when an ambulance arrives, the driver shoots Mulder in the head and whisks Scully away. Waking up in hospital, Mulder is told the bullet only grazed his temple and leaves with the help of The Lone Gunmen.

With the aid of the Well Manicured man (John Neville) Mulder is able to track Scully’s location to a secret base in Antartica. The Well-Manicured Man is then killed in a car bomb, before his betrayal of The Syndicate is discovered, but not before he is able to pass along a vaccine to combat the virus that has infected her. In Antarctica Mulder discovers a secret underground laboratory run by the Cigarette Smoking Man and he uses the vaccine to revive Scully. But by doing so he also disrupts the stable environment of the lab and reviving the cocooned aliens who chase after the duo. Mulder manages to drag Scully out to safety and – the lab turns out to be part of a huge alien vessel lying dormant beneath the snow; the vessel pushes up through tons of ice and snow and travels straight up into the sky. Mulder watches the ship fly directly overhead and disappear into the distance, as Scully regains consciousness. Some time after she has recovered back in DC, it is clear to the duo that their investigation & testimony has been ignored but their partnership is no longer threatened to be dissolved. he only remaining proof of their ordeal is the bee that stung Scully, collected by the Lone Gunmen. At the end of the movie, we see the Cigarette Smoking Man in another crop outpost in Tunisia, getting a message that the X-Files has been reopened.

The movie is bound to be confusing to people who haven’t followed the alien mythology (if not the entire show) at least in the tv series so far. Even having done so, the movie is far less than satisfying and a bit of a mess. I’d give it a 7 outta 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Apr 11 2013

Armageddon

Ah, Armageddon. Originally I planned on watching it as a possible destruction of the world by a comet/asteroid double bill along with Deep Impact but I put it off for no particular reason. This movie came out in 1998 and I remember seeing it once in the theatre and once more on cable, perhaps a year or two later and then haven’t seen it since, which is atleast over 12, almost 13 years. Compared to Deep Impact, I remember this movie as being loud, over the top, filled with cliches, a Hollywood extravaganza, bad acting and typical one liners that could mean anything and one god-awful scene in which still brings nightmares to us viewers. And then as I watched this movie again after this long a gap and the titles flew on the screen, I see Michael Bay – and it all made sense!

1998′s science fiction disaster drama film, directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures and starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affeck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thronton, Owen Wilson, Peter Stormare,William Fichtner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Keith David, Jessica Steen and Steve Buscemi. Whew that is a long list!

• There are massive meteor showers hitting New York City, the East Coast and Finland. NASA discovers that along with the space debris, a Texas sized (in the US, everything large is compared to Texas) asteroid is on a collision course with earth in just 18 days. Their plan is to plant a nuclear device deep inside the asteroid while it is on it’s way to earth and detonate it. NASA contacts Harry Stamper (Willis), considered the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, for assistance and advice.
• Harry listens to their plan and tells head scientist Dan Truman (Thornton) that he cannot possibly train the astronauts to do the drilling using sophisticated equipment right before the mission. Rather he volunteers to join the mission and bring his crew along with him. The crew which includes AJ (Affleck) who Harry is trying to keep away from his daughter Grace (Tyler) join in but only if their long list of demands are met. After some rigorous training and some fun the team go into space – with two small teams of astronauts and the crew in two space shuttles, Freedom & Independence.
• They dock with a Russian space station manned by a lone cosmonaut Lev Andropov (Stormare) to refuel but a fire breaks out and the crew escape just as it blows up, meaning Lev joins the mission. As the two ships try to land on the asteroid,  Independence hits the debris field and the hull is punctured and it crashes and both NASA and the other crew believe it have been destryed. Only AJ, Lev & Bear (Duncan) survive and they use the mobile drillers or “armadillo” to ride and meet the other crew.
• Freedom meanwhile missed the landing spot by 26 miles which means that they have to drill through much thicker iron ferrite rather than softer stone which is what was planned. As they drill the fall behind schedule and the shuttle commander Col. Sharp (Fichtner) is order by the military to initiates “Secondary Protocol”; to remote detonate the nuclear weapon on the asteroid’s surface, which apparently will not have any effect. Harry & Col. Sharp fight and finally agree to still try drilling but crew loses their Armadillo and its operator (Campbell) when it strikes a gas pocket and is blown into space. Just as it looks like all hope is lost, AJ, Lev & Bear arrive to complete the drilling.
• With time running out a dangerous rock storm hits the crew and damages the remote detonator for the bomb. One has to stay behind to manually detonate the bomb while the others escape. After all the non-flight crew volunteers, they draw straws, and A. J. is selected. As he and Harry exit the airlock, Harry rips off A. J.’s air hose and shoves him back inside, telling him that he is the son he never had and he would be proud to have him marry Grace. Harry is able to have a goodbye moment with Grace via video (“daddy no!” ) before the video goes out, a storm hits the area but Harry manages to detonate the bomb splitting the asteroid in two and they pass earth without causing more damage. Freedom lands, and the surviving crew are treated as heroes. The film ends with A. J. and Grace’s wedding, complete with photos of Harry and the other lost crew members present in memoriam.
• Throughout the entire second half of the movie Live Tyler’s character Grace does a lot of dramatic staring at nothing in particular. No lines, no emotions, no expressions – just staring! Fascinating! And sometimes in different colours as she just happens to be near glowing screens of blue or green!

More cliches than you can count, lots of posturing and fist pumping and loud cheers & claps. The ridiculous crew has more eccentrics than is ever possible in a small group of men. Apparently before going off to save the world, walking in slow motion with dramatic music (or cheesy music) must happen. The stupidest, most annoying and most unlikely set of heroes to ever save the earth. Loud noises, loud people and blowing up, destroying stuff. Ironically in a movie filled with cliches loud mouthed Americans who talk one liners that don’t make sense – it’s the Russian who is the most loud and most annoying! Apparently the way to start up a space shuttle worth millions is to hit it loudly with a spanner! And finally, the gayest moment in the life of Ben Affeck when his character crys out I love you Harry” – to the man who almost killed him at the beginning of the movie but now suddenly claims that he is like the son he never had and please marry his daughter. Really?

7 outta 10 for the special effects and the awesome soundtrack!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Mar 17 2013

The Guyver & Guyver : Dark Hero

Well yes I add this to science fiction as well since it’s about aliens and spaceships and the origin of humans and how aliens have affected our creation. The Guyver is a 1991 scifi-action movie based on the Japanese anime series Guyver. The idea behind Guyver is that a powerful alien race came to earth in the distance past before mankind ever existed. Their experiment was to created the ultimate organic weapon and thus created mankind. With the addition of a special gene into man, they created Zoanoids – humans that can change form at will from humans to humanoid mutant creatures. The leader of the Zoanoids at present is called the Zoalord who has formed a powerful corporation called Chronos to aid in his agenda for world domination – while humanity remains ignorant of the existence of the mutants. Among the alien remains on earth was found the guyver unit – a bio boosted body armour that makes the wearer superhuman. But the Zoalord has no idea how to activate it and has his scientists working on it.

In the first movie, The Guyver, a scientist Dr. Tetsu Segawa, steals the unit from the research lab in order to give it to his contact in the CIA, agent Max Reed (Mark Hamill) but is killed before he can reach the agent. Dr. Segawa hid the unit among some trash & garbage boxes. Reed and the CIA try and find out the murder and question the scientists daughter. Sean Barker, a martial arts student, and boyfriend of Dr. Segawa’s daughter Mizky, accidentaly finds and activated the Guyver unit while being bullied by a street gang and becomes the Guyver when the unit fuses with him. With incredible strength, speed, agility and weapons along with the armour, the Guyver must protect his love interest from the Zoanoids. The only weakness in the armour is the glowing ball on the helmet – removing it causes the armour to collapse and Sean is killed and dissolved when the head goon Zoanoid does it to him. However his dna is saved in the unit and later at the Zoalord’s lab when another Zoanoid tries to fuse with the unit, Sea is recreated and fights his way out. He kills the Zoalord and his thugs but agent Reed is killed as he was exposed to Zoanoid experiments to turn him into one himself and was pulled out too quickly. Although Sean and Mizky leave safely, it is revealed that one of the Zoanoid goons has survived and that they have infiltrated the CIA as well.

This movie is so badly acted and the actors chosen are almost idiotically ham acting – especially the Zoanoids goons, which includes Michael Berryman. Mark Hammil, with a mustache, was criticized as making “an unearned paycheck for a onetime A-picture star” in a lame movie that only has some good action scenes and costumes. Jack Armstrong is useless as a hero. Vivian Wu plays Mizky and comes across as a real dumb version of the ‘lady in distress; an Oriental version of the dumb blonde who just screams and cries in the movie. And she speaks like her tongue is too big for her mouth. Jeffery Coombs also has a small role as one of Zoanoid scientists. Really bad acting but the Guyver is cool and there are some good fight scenes. 4 outta 10!

The sequel Guyver : Dark Hero came out in 1994 and is lot more serious compared to the campy feel of the original. A year later a troubled and tormented Sean (played by David Hayter) is struggling to come to terms as the Guyver. He has lost friends and his love due to his outbursts and lives alone, fighting crime but also susceptible to moments of pure rage. He sees on tv about what seems like an animal attack that people think is a bear in the woods and is drawn to an archaeological dig in Utah that turns out to be funded by Cronos. Sean makes his way to the area and meets Cori (Kathy Christopherson), one of the archeologists who agrees to take him to her father, the lead archeologist at the dig and gets him a job there. At the underground cave, student archaeologists are unearthing the cave paintings, which resemble guyvers and other alien images, similar to ones that appear to Sean in his dreams. They later unearth a fantastic looking alien spaceship that looks like it’s organic. At night Sean hears a man being killed and attacks the Zoanoid that seems to haunt the grounds.

The next day the people explore the alien ship and Crane, the lead representative from Chromos at the site, gets his hands on what the corporation wanted all along: another Guyver unit. Sean meanwhile approaches one of the room that pulsates and it talks telepathically to him; he asks for the unit to be removed but it offers him no answers. Anyways, the Chronos employees seem to be in charge and take the new guyver unit away. Cori’s father is a Zoanoid himself but is blackmailed by the corporation employees to be silent. Cori discovers that what the employees plan to do, she is caught by them and is taken away. Her father mutates and attacks the others but is outnumbered. Sean, who is looking for Coris, sees them and activates the guyver unit and fights them off and kills them. He, Cori and her father return to the dig where the Chronos gang has everyone at gunpoint. Atkins, an FBI agent under the guise of an acheologist, rescues the others but is held up the Zoanoids himself, when his fellow agents are killed. Crane asks Sean to join them but is refused and then the Zoanoids fights the Guyver & Cori’s dad. Crane uses the second guyver unit on himself and seems to become more than a match for Sean but in the end Crane is destroyed by an energy force that blasts from the Guyver’s chest.

Sean, who had learned about the origins of how the Guyver units came to be, about the aliens coming to earth and creating both the Zoanioids and the humans, sends the spaceship back into space, much to agent Atkins chagrin. Coming to terms with his origins and more at peace with who he is now, Sean leaves the dig area with Cori.

The second movie is much more fun, more violent and bloody and has awesome fight sequences. 7 outta 10! The Guyver is cool and I hope they remake this movie series sometime with a bigger budget and better cast & storylines.

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Mar 15 2013

Star Wars Old Cast To Return?

With reports out that the trio of main actors from the original triology of Star Wars movies – Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia and Mark Hammill as Luke Skywalker – will reprise their roles in the 7th movie of the franchise, there are comments both for and against this move. An aging trio will be looked upon to act as a transitory bridge from the old trilogy to the new one with the first movie, episode VIII supposed to come out in 2015. And while a lot of fans seem to love that idea, I am not so sure of it myself.

Well if the 3 had minor supporting roles which are more like a nod to the franchise’s origins I think that might work. The main cast of much younger characters could be the children (or grandchildren) of Han & Leia and uncle Luke having trained them in Jedi school. It’s actually been way too long from Return of the Jedi (1983) to now to actually have them in it and be the main storyline – as much as some of us would have wanted them to be. The only clear way I see is to have them play character roles, perhaps even have then appear throughout the next 3 movies who advice and help but not be the main heroes.

I’m looking forward to more movies from that franchise but am skeptical as to how well it’s going to be done. Having said that I’m not one of those who hated the prequel trilogy and that’s also because I don’t happen to worship the original trilogy. They aren’t that  great! even though I do like them a lot. So let’s see what’s gonna happen.

Update:  On February 5 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed the development of two stand-alone films, each individually written by Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg. On February 6, Entertainment Weekly reported that Disney is working on two films featuring Han Solo and Boba Fett.

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Mar 15 2013

Men In Black 3

I have loved the first two Men In Black movies and seen them several times on cable since their releases. Set 15 years after the first movie and 10 after the second (as in true release) Men In Black 3 is the second sequel and most successful in terms of revenue. Released in May of last year, the movie sees Barry Sonnenfield and Steven Spielberg returned as director and executive producer respectively with Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones returning as Agents J & K with Josh Brolin appearing as a younger version of K. Jermaine Clement plays past & present versions of the villain Boris The Animal, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve & Michael Stuhlberg have supporting roles.

So what do we have in MIB3:

• Boris the Animal escapes from a maximum security prison base on the moon by having his girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger and does she really have such bodacious bosoms) deliver a cake to him, in which hidden is his organic and alive weapon. He seeks revenge on earth and especially on agent K who captured him back in 1969. Boris also lost his left arm in the confrontation with K. K is also responsible for the deployment of the ArcNet, a defense system that protected Earth from invasion and ultimately led to the Boglodites’ extinction.
• Agents J & K have a confrontation with Boris who withdraws but warns K that he is “already dead”. When J tries to do research on Boris back at the MIB hq, he finds that some of the information is denied to him. When questioned he is told by both K and, new head of MIB, O to leave it alone.
• Boris gets a device to travel back in time to 1969 o help his past self kill K and prevent the ArcNet’s deployment. As a result J finds himself in an alternate reality (J is the only one who remembers the two realities) where K has been dead for 40 years and there is an imminent Boglodites invasion with no ArcNet to protect earth. Using a similar device to travel to 1969 and save his partner. He meets up with agent K’s younger self (Josh Brolin) who mistrusts him but when J tells him the truth he is convinced. The get the ArcNet, in the form of a small disc-shaped device, from an alien named Griffin and protect him from an attack by Boris.
• J, K & Griffin travel to Cape Canaveral in Florida, where the Apollo 11 rocket is preparing to lift off and land the first humans on the Moon. K has to plant the device on the rocket and once it is in earth’s orbit the device will auto-activate.   Griffin uses his abilities to convince the local military personnel, which includes a colonel, to allow them access and aid them in their mission. Both the versions of Boris attack the agents while they are reaching the top of the rocket’s support structure. J knocks off the current version of Boris from the top of the structure while K shoots off the younger version’s arm and and he too falls off the structure, and place the ArcNet device on the rocket just before it launches. Future Boris is incinerated by the rocket’s exhaust.
• As J makes his way to meet K, he sees the past version of Boris ambush K and the colonel and shoots the colonel dead. K then kills Boris and turns around to see the colonel’s young son amed James approaches the scene looking for his father. K, who neuralyses and comforts the child, and J who sees them from afar realizes that the young boy is J. Sad at seeing his real father’s death J is comforted to know that K was a kind of surrogate dad to him.  returns to the present day, where K is still alive, and joins him at a diner, subtly thanking the older agent for all that he has done for him. As the movie ends, we see a smiling Griffin sitting in the same diner.

Most critics & fans have praised the performance of Josh Brolin which was shrewd casting I must say. I enjoyed the movie but miss the fun of the first one. Still enjoyable and I give it a 7.5 outta 10! 

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Mar 13 2013

Deep Impact

Deep Impact is a 1998 movie directed by Mimi Leder and starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Leelee Sobieski, Ron Eldard and Morgan Freeman (as the US President). Most of you must have seen it on cable if not in the theatres, as they kept showing this movie for many years on cable all the time. The movie shares a similar premise to Armageddon, which also came out in 1998, although there it was an asteroid that threatens the destruction of all life on earth (you say tomato I say… ) and although the latter made more money (perhaps due to the more famous cast) this one was slightly more appreciated by the scientist community and well, even I like this one more than the latter, which is a cheese-fest as far as I am concerned.

I hadn’t seen this film in several years, perhaps since watching it a few times in 1999-2002 period but most of the movie was fresh in memory as I sat down to watch it again last night. For those of you who remember it, a young high school student and amateur astronomer Leo Biedermann, discovers a new bright object in the sky while on a school project and shares his discovery with astronomer Marcus Wolf who realizes that the object is a comet on a collision course with Earth. While trying to get the information out, he however is killed in a car crash but the government does find out about it a little later. A year later ambitious journalist reporter Jenny Lerner picks up the story about the resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury (James Cromwell in a tiny role) and rumours about ‘Ellie” thought to be a mistress and approaches him about the official story being that his wife is ill. As she leaves Jenny is accosted by FBI agents who take her to US President Tom Beck. Beck tells her to wait two days before making the discovery public, thinking that she got wind of all the details. Turns out that ‘Ellie’ is not a mistress but is ‘E.L.E” – Extinction level Event, much to the shock of Jenny.

Two days later the president has a large press conference which is widely televised and reveals the truth;  the comet, named Wolf-Biederman, is 7 miles (11 km) wide—large enough to cause a mass extinction, and possibly wipe out humanity, if it hits Earth. He also announces the joint venture with Russia to build a space craft called ‘the Messiah’ to transport a team of astronauts, who will land on the comet and destroy it by exploding it with nuclear weapons. After landing on the comet, the crew members plant nuclear bombs 100 meters beneath the surface. When the bombs are detonated, the ship is damaged and loses contact with Earth. Instead of being destroyed, the comet splits into two smaller rocks nicknamed “Biederman” (1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide) and “Wolf” (6 miles (9.7 km) wide), both world-threatening. A last-ditch effort to use Earth’s missile-borne nuclear weapons to deflect the two chunks of the comet also fails. The president declares martial law and  reveals that governments worldwide have been building underground shelters. The United States’ shelter is in the limestone caves of Missouri. The US government conducts a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans aged 50 and under to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers, and officials.

The movie is much less about the heroism of unlikely candidates that save the world and more a softer, thoughtful and personal approach to the impending destruction of life on earth. Jenny who has been estranged from her father, who had divorced her mother and remarried a much younger woman, gives up her spot in the evacuation to a colleague who has a young baby, and chooses to reconcile with her father and face death on the beach near their summer house where they share a lot of happy memories. Her mother choses to enjoy a nice meal, dress in her finest jewellery and outfit and kill herself weeks before the event. Leo and his family are take to the caves but his new bride Sarah’s family is missed out on the list. She stays back and initially Leo’s family forces his to leave without her but Leo hitches a ride back and finds Sarah. Sarah’s parents make her leave with Leo on a motor bike and take her baby brother with them and save themselves. The smaller comet the impacts in the Atlantic Ocean creating a megatsunami and millions of other people perish as the tsunami destroys the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, Europe, and Africa.

The astronauts in the Messiah decide to to undertake a suicide mission with the remaining nuclear warheads. After saying goodbye to their loved ones by video conference, the ship reaches the fragment and enters a fissure to blow itself up, which breaks Wolf into much smaller pieces that burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. So although a lot of cities & land were destroyed and millions were killed, most of the earth survives and reconstruction & rebuilding starts for the world to recover. Jon Faverau, Blair Underwood, Kurtwood Smith, Vanessa Redgrave & Denise Crosby have minor supporting roles as well. I like the film and think it’s a better movie and holds up better all these years later. 7.5 outta 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Mar 5 2013

Battleship

So Inspired by the long-time popular board game by Hasbro, Battleship is directed by Peter Berg who also co-produced the movie. The film stars Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, John Tui, Brooklyn Decker, and Tadanobu Asano and released by Universal Pictures. I cannot say just how much I was looking forward to the movie when it was first announced but the reviews – both written as well as the ones I watch on Youtube – weren’t very promising and my hopes were dashed. I’ve never played Battleship, infact my only awareness of it is from the Tintin comic book Flight 714 in which Captain Haddock plays the game while on a flight with a cheating billionaire. Released in April, 2012 the movie has made around $304 mil.; a decent enough amount for most. However considering it’s $209 mil budget, the industry would consider the returns as quite disappointing.

The storyline is about another alien invasion film with extremely advanced alien villains, who came to earth after we broadcasted a  powerful signal from a communications array in Hawaii to a recently discovered exo-planet called Planet G by NASA and thought to have similar conditions to that of earth. That was in 2005 and now in 2012 they have reached earth. Here’s what I don’t like about the recent spate of these alien invasion movies featuring almost mechanical & one-dimensional aliens, who don’t get any character development or even lines to speak and their whole motivation for invading us seems to be just because we’re an alien race to them. Why do they do that? We can’t talk to them, communication attempts aren’t even done and it’s just a story of David vs Goliath. And ofcourse in most cases we win! Rather than a military and/or Air Force against the aliens, this time it’s the US Navy and with some help from the Japanese and one character who is a living poster for injured veterans, an Army veteran who’s legs were blown off while in combat. And ofcourse(!!!) the aliens are no match for match for an American vet with prosthetic legs and an attitude that could melt the hull of their ships!!!

In 2005 our hero, Alex Hopper, is a slacker who messes up everything he has ever been doing and loving rebuked by his older, more responsible Navy officer brother who sees the capabilities in him. On his birthday a drunk Alex offers to buy a chicken burrito for the object of his affections and breaks into a closed supermarket and is caught by the cops. His brother gets him into the navy where he hopes the discipline and rigors will shape him up into a better & responsible man. The girl, Samantha, just so happens to be the daughter of Admiral Shane, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Coincidence? I think not! So fast forward to 2012 and Alex’s ship joins the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) in Hawaii. His brother Stone Hopper is commanding officer of another ship in the exercise overseen by Admiral Shane. Hopper is in a rivalry with some of the Japanese sailors, especially Captain Nagata, Commanding Officer of a Japanese vessel. Alex is in a relationship with Samantha and dangerously close to being kicked off the Navy for his negligence, tardiness and when he gets into a fight with Nagata, he is told that post the exercise he will be discharged. This is when the aliens attack; 5 alien ships approach earth and their communications ship crashes in Hong Kong, causing heavy damage and casualties there, while four others land in the water near Hawaii. A huge mothership creates a force field, trapping the three warships. The aliens destroy the Samson, killing several sailors & commander Stone Hopper and the Japanese ship Myoko. The John Paul Jones is damaged killing it’s captain and several others. This leaves Hopper, as the highest ranking remaining officer in command of the ship, much to his reluctant and the disbelief of the others.

Some of the aliens on the other ships have taken control of the communications array in Oahu, Hawaii. Samantha, a physical therapist, just happens to be accompanying the retired U.S. Army veteran and double amputee Mick Canales on a hike to help him adapt to his prosthetic legs quite near the array and they see the aliens in action. And they just happen to run into scientist Cal Zapata who informs them that the aliens are using the array to signal back to their home planet. He retrieves a radio that will allow Sam and Mick to contact the John Paul Jones and relay this information. Meanwhile Hopper & his men rescue the Japanese sailors who survived their ship being blown away, from the water and confer with Nagata. Nagata suggests using NOAA’stsunami warning buoys around Hawaii to track the aliens and as night falls the John Paul Jones opens fire and destroys two of the alien ships. After capturing one of the aliens they find out that the aliens are sensitive to sunlight, and decides to lure the third alien vessel close to shore, where they shoot out its bridge windows as the sunrise blinds the aliens. In the ensuing battle, both ships are destroyed. The humans reach the shores and needing a new ship, they acquire the only remaining naval vessel, USS Missouri, which had been decommissioned and turned into a museum. With the help of retired old officers, the crew get the old battleship ready and go after the mother ship. Apparently the highly technologically advanced aliens are no match for old navy vets and rock music – specifically AC/DC!

he battleship evades the mothership’s gunfire and destroys the force field and the ship’s turrets. Alex uses the last shell to destroy the communications array on the island, leaving the Missouri defenseless. Just as the alien mothership is about to destroy the battleship, jet fighters from the RIMPAC fleet arrive and save the crew by destroying the weapons fired from the vessel’s last turret with the forcefield being down. The aliens are destroyed by the combined efforts of the naval forces. At the end of the movie a ceremony is held to honor the Navy personnel and Alex, who is promoted to Lieutenant Commander, is presented with a Silver Star and accepts Stone’s posthumous Navy Cross and is also given command of a ship of his own. After the ceremony, Alex asks Admiral Shane for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The admiral initially refuses but invites Alex to lunch to discuss the matter, referencing how Alex and Sam met. Post rolling of the credits, 3 schoolkids and a handyman run in terror as an an alien hand reaches out of an object they have just opened. Sequel, perhaps?

Despite all that, I did enjoy the film. You just have to put aside the predictable plot, the American armed forces promotion and the forgettable performances by some of the cast, especially Rihanna. Why must all African-American rap singers & RnB female singers make movies? Is there some unwritten rule in Hollywood? They are terrible at it. In case she says all the predictable stuff; as the missile approaches the alien vessel, the camera closes in on her and she says “boom” – sound effects as well? and pumps her fists at the right times. No acting skills. The action is fast paced and fun but don’t expect anything great from the film. I give it a 7 outta 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Feb 27 2013

Dredd

Directed by Pete Travis and written and produced by Alex Garland, Dredd is a 2012 film based on the British comic 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd. In a futuristic vast dystopian future, the earth is mostly a wasteland and humanity is closed off in huge Mega cities. Crime, corruption and violence rules and  only force for order are the Judges, who act as judge, jury and executioner. Back in 1995 the first attempt at bringing this comic to live action film was a commercial & critical flop in Judge Dredd, with Sylvster Stallone as the eponymous anti-hero. Totally unrelated, this 2012 film tries to succeed where the first attempt failed. We have Karl Urban as Dredd with Olivia Thirlby playing a rookie Judge on an assignment and assessment run with him. Lena Hedley plays the villain-ess MaMa.

• Mega City One is the setting of our film, a violent metropolis with 800 million residents and 17,000 crimes reported daily. A new drug called ‘sl0-mo’, which slows the user’s perception of time to 1% of normal, is the hottest seller on the streets. They are sold in asthma inhaler type dispensers and look like colourful liquids. The person behind Slo-Mo is a former prostitute turned powerful drug lord Madeline Madrigal, also known as “Ma-Ma”. She executes three rogue drug dealers by having them skinned, infused with Slo-Mo and thrown down the atrium from the top floor of a 200 storey slum tower, which also serves as the base of her operations. This is when Judge Dredd comes in.
• Dredd is assigned to evaluate rookie Cassandra Anderson, a powerful psychic who failed the aptitude tests to be a Judge. They get the call to investigate the death of the 3 drug dealers in the slum tower. They arrest a thug named Kay, whom Anderson’s mind probe reveals to be the one who carried out the drug dealers’ execution. Dredd decides to take him in for questioning. In response Ma-Ma has the tower locked down by taking over the security control room and having the building’s blast shields activated, cutting of communication & escape. She orders her men to kill the two judges.
• Dredd and Anderson fight their way through, killing dozens of armed thugs. At the 76th floor Ma-Ma  with Vulcan cannons that rip through the walls, killing numerous residents. The Judges are able to breach an outer wall and call for help. Anderson intervenes and uses her psychic abilities to read Kay’s mind, learning that the tower, Peach Trees, is the centre of Slo-Mo production and distribution.
• Two judges arrive at the building but are denied access  by Ma-Ma’s computer expert denies them entry by persuading them the call is part of the security drill. Meanwhile some armed teenagers attack Dredd, enabling Kay to take over Anderson’s gun and escape with her as hostage, and brings her to Ma-Ma’s base on the top floor. Ma-Ma then calls in 4 corrupt Judges, Lex, Kaplan, Chan and Alvarez, who she has worked & paid off in the past and when they arrive at the building, they are let in. Chan finds Dredd and they fight when his cover is blown. Meanwhile, Kay tries to execute Anderson with her own weapon, but the pistol’s DNA scanner does not recognize him and blows his arm off. Anderson escapes and later encounters Kaplan, whom she promptly kills after reading her mind.
• Elsewhere, Dredd kills Alvarez but runs out of ammunition, and is shot by Lex in the abdomen. Lex moves in to execute Dredd, but Dredd stalls him long enough for Anderson to arrive and kill Lex.The two then find the computer expert who gives them the codes for the building & confront Ma-Ma. She tells Dredd that in the case of her death, a device on her wrist will detonate explosives on the top floors, destroying the building. Dredd reasons that the detonator’s signal will not reach the explosives from the ground floor, so he forces Ma-Ma to inhale Slo-Mo and throws her down the atrium to her death. In the aftermath, Anderson accepts that she has failed her evaluation by getting disarmed, and leaves. The Chief Judge asks Dredd about Anderson’s performance; he responds that she has passed.

Got all that? It’s a messy, grimy, colourful, chaotic movie with lots of slow motion – people getting shot, blood spilling out and bullets ripping flesh and ofcourse the massive falling to her death scene for Ma-Ma at the end. I watched it late at night and found the going a bit tedious and the film predictable. It got some good reviews but failed at the box office. I can see why. I love the comic and had some hopes for this movie. 5 out of 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0

Feb 17 2013

The Avengers

It’s taken me this long to watch what is now the 3rd most grossing movie of all time. Yes, I know. But since I do not go to theatres since 2005 the only way for me to get this was to wait a while until the dvds were released. But then, once the dvds were available here – I kinda lost interest as I had seen so many clips, read a lot about it and seen too many comments, review videos and images on it. You can get burnt out of a movie because of overexposure. So I waited this long to get it but I did enjoy every second of the film, I must say. So The Avengers, a 2012 Action/Superherp/Science Fiction movie, produced by Kevin Feige, directed by Joss Wheadon who also wrote the screenplay and rewrote the original story by Zak Penn, stars Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston,  Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson.

This movie doesn’t let you take a full breath, relentlessly bombarding with stunning visuals, action, spectacular special effects and some comedy. It is an amazing movie that does not disappoint and even leaves room for some character development. It is a deserving of all the money that it has made and shows off the rest of the world just what us fans of his knew all along – Joss Wheadon is an awesome director and he has made that jump into blockbuster movies really well. Ok so for some points on the movie:

• So just like in 2011′s Thor, Loki is the main villain here and he gets to battle all the Avengers superheros while aided by a scary & powerful alien army.  Loki encounters the Other, the leader of an extraterrestrial race known as the Chitauri and in exchange for the energy source known as the Tesseract, he is promised a Chitauri army with which he can subjugate the Earth. Loki uses a portal to get to earth & takes the Tesseract and uses his scepter to enslave Selvig and several agents, including Clint Barton, to aid him in his getaway. Nick Fury & his agents Maria Hill & Phil attempt to get it back but fail, causing Fury to activate the Avengers.
• Natasha Romanov is tasked to bring Dr Bruce Banner in from Calcutta (in another Hollywood depiction of India as just a colourful slum), while Phil visits Tony Stark and Fury himself goes to see Steve Rogers. Loki is caught in Stutgart after a brief fight when his brother Thor appears to take Loki back to Asgard. Iron Man & Captain America convince Thor to bto S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying aircraft carrier, the Helicarrier. There Loki is imprisoned while scientists Banner and Stark attempt to locate the Tesseract. It is clear however that the heroes are not a group yet and tension arises in disagreements and when it is revealed that SHIELD plan to create weapons against possible hostile aliens.
• Barton and some of Loki’s men attack the Helicarrier and disable a couple of the engines and causing Banner to get angry and turn into the Hulk and go on a rampage, attacking both Romanov and Thor who fights it out with him. Loki escapes, killing Phil on the way, as Romanov knocks Barton out, releasing the mind control that Loki had on him, while Captain & Iron Man restarts the engines. Fury uses Coulson’s death to motivate the Avengers into working as a team.
• As Loki begins his planned take over of earth, a huge portal opens above the skies, leading to a Chitauri invasion fleet. ogers, Stark, and Thor evacuate civilians with assistance from Barton, while Banner transforms back into the Hulk and goes after Loki, eventually beating him into submission. Meanwhile, Fury’s superiors attempt to end the invasion by launching a nuclear missile at Manhattan. Stark intercepts the missile and takes it through the portal toward the Chitauri fleet. The missile detonates, destroying the invaders’ mothership and leaving their forces disabled on Earth. Stark’s suit runs out of power and he falls back through the portal, but the Hulk saves him from crashing to the ground. Romanoff deactivates the portal to prevent further invasion. In the aftermath, Thor returns Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard and the rest go their separate ways though Fury assures his superiors that they will return if needed.

There is a post credit scene in which The Other confers with his master about the invasion and the resistance from the Avengers and the mysterious alien grins evilly at the camera. This is surely the path that the sequel is to tread. I’m happy to see Jeremy Renner for the first time since 1995′s Senior Trip and a 2000 episode of Angel. The comedy in the movie is welcome and ofcourse the best is the Hulk, a scientist who beat up two gods in Loki & Thor. Infact I laughed so hard in the best scene of all – on being told that Loki is a god, Hulk picks him up by a leg and thrashes the crap outta him and says “Puny god”! Scarlett Johannsen, Tom Hiddelton, Mark Ruffalo, Cobie Smuthers, Robert Downey Jr were all great in the film. To be honest I though the weakest links were Chris Evans & Chris Helmsworth – they were good but the others were great!

Everything looks great in the film and it’s safe to say that it’s one for the ages. I give it a 9.5 outta 10!

By Roshan • Movies, Sci Fi • 0