Moon (Major Spoilers)

Major Spoilers, the younger, more brash brother of Major Tom who gets invited to fewer parties and is a distant cousin to General Failure of Microsoft Windows fame... 

Only just got round to watching this as a LoveFilm rental, and boy was it worth the wait. 

This is *proper* science fiction.  None of that "evil aliens from beyond the stars" rubbish or "black hole's are actually inter-dimensional gateways" drivel or even "the Earth's core has stopped rotating, let's throw a nuclear bomb at it." nonsense.* 

The story is rather far fetched.  Not the whole clone cycle, I rather thought that was a clever idea, but more the fact that a company would run a moon base with only one astronaut.  There are a dozen reasons why that's a terrible idea.  It reminded me of an old sci-fi short story I read about a moonbase where one scientist had secretly developed a plant that could grow in the vacuum and radiation.  His activities only aroused suspicion when he started taking moon walks alone, which the company forbade for the simple reason that you might fall and puncture your suit in a location you couldn't reach on your own. 

The fact that I was thinking this only a few minutes into the film shows that I was already pigeon-holing this alongside 2001, Gattaca and Silent Running.  Like I said, proper sci-fi. 

And of course, as the story progresses, it becomes clear why he's alone on the moonbase, and why the company isn't worried about him having an accident. 

As previous reviews have said, there are a few loose ends left unresolved.  While normally this annoys me, the details here are small and insignificant, so there's no real reason to get upset about them.  In particular, I gave some thought to why the older clone is falling apart.  While it's possible he was engineered to only survive three years, his symptoms reminded me of radiation sickness, which led me to a whole new train of thought:  Is there a radioactive source in the base, is the reactor leaking, or is the base shielding defective?  And that would mean Gerty is being lied to as well, since his entire reason to exist is to keep Sam alive. 

Gerty is a brilliant concept for a computer, I really felt for that little guy.  The emoticon display that lets Sam know how Gerty is feeling was brilliant, and thinking about it, he's almost the polar opposite of HAL 9000.  While both appear unemotional, they both hide real emotion (Gerty cares about Sam, HAL is afraid to die).  HAL only cares about the mission, Gerty only cares about Sam's well-being.  But Gerty is able to lie and conceal the truth.  HAL can't.  Well, he tries after he's ordered to conceal the mission's real purpose, but this is what drives him to paranoia and murder.  But Gerty is able to disobey orders that conflict with his programming, whereas HAL is driven mad by this contradiction. 

Basically, if you enjoyed 2001, Silent Running or the majority of Mission to Mars before the stupid ending, I daresay you'll enjoy this.  The story starts characteristically slowly, but gradually builds to a pace that almost pulls it out of the genre, and there's never any point where you could put your finger on when this transition occurred.  The ending, particularly the final middle finger that's flicked, doesn't feel tacked on, it's just the culmination of the characters' journey.** 



Score: A 
Will definitely be added to my film collection on my next expedition to HMV-land.   
Which reminds me, 

OQ:  Either way you look at it, he's either a nut-job or an illegal alien and in either case, he needs to be locked up. 


* There's a whole sub-genre of popular sci-fi, and I use the work "popular" quite wrongly, where the basic plot can be described as "Problem X has been caused by humans and is going to kill us all.  Small crew save the world by setting off a nuclear bomb."   
Mostly these show up as TV movies, another phrase used quite wrongly, and they all have the same ending.  Either one member of the crew sent to solve the problem dies, or all but one of the crew dies. 

**That apostrophe is definitely in the right place. 

G.I. Joe - The Rise of Cobra

I fear that Hasbro may be confused about who their core audience here is.  One of the adverts prior to the trailers was a cringe inducing advert for G.I. Joe toys, complete with that irritating American voice over man extolling the sound effects and "real firing missiles" of the toys.  However G.I. Joe - The Rise of Cobra is a 12A film, so there normally won't be that many kids in the audience who would be of the right age to be interested in action toys.  You show me a twelve year old kid still playing with action figures and I'll show you a kid whose going to be still living with his parents when he hits 30. 

Moving on.... 

It's great when a Hollywood studio turns a cherished cartoon from my youth into an action packed blockbuster, and it's even better when it actually works.  It's like the studio are saying "This is for you.  Just you Kevin.  This is to make up for having to get up early and all the rubbish Saturday morning television you sat through for this to come on, especially ITV who split these cartoons into two halfs and put twenty minutes of NOTHING in between the parts." 

I wouldn't say that G.I. Joe is a better summer blockbuster than Transformers 2 partly because it doesn't feature giant robots beating seven shades of hell out of each other, but mostly because Sienna Miller in a skin tight leather outfit does not trump Megan Fox running in slow motion.  I'm sorry, but there it is.  I'm not going to sugar-coat this fact. 

I will say that G.I. Joe is a very entertaining popcorn movie.  There's plenty of action and the explodey, hints of a love interest or two, couple of unexpected twists and some brilliantly outlandish fights.  The accelerator suit sequence you've seen in the trailer is particularly impressive.  The really odd thing is that for an action film that keeps jumping to do back story of the characters, it's easy to follow.  It's been put together really well. 

Christopher Eccleston's acting isn't nearly as distracting as I thought it would be based on the trailer.  And for a meglomanic evil super genius, his plot is actually fairly sensible. 


So, the only movies made from cartoon from my childhood left to do are M.A.S.K., Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold. 

Score:  B- 
Loses marks for a couple of pretty bad acting parts, and Christopher Eccleston's silly accent. 
Gains marks for the action sequences and the not-so-neat ending. 


OQ:  Knowing is half the battle.... 

Trailers: 

District-9:  The trailer for this is fantastic!  Really, just have a look for it online.  Amazing. 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

This was touted by one of my friends as "More robots, more action and more Megan Fox", so why wouldn't I go and see it?

It delivers on all three scores, and is a good sequel to the first film which expands on the story, however it has failed to learn from the mistakes of the previous film. Huge metal robots fighting each other is great, but often they are moving so fast in the combat that you can't see what's going on. I had to wait for a high def version of the first film to truly appreciate it, and I believe the same will be true here.

Without giving away any spoilers, the Decepticons are back, and they're searching for something. The story follows on well from the first film, with many plot threads picked up again. Jon Voight's absence was handled quite well, I thought.

The same mix of humour, action and adventure is retained from the first film, and expanded upon. There are a few surprising appearances, and there are even more transformers in this sequel, which was to be expected, I suppose. As a result, many of the robots don't get a lot of screen time.

There's a fairly enormous collapse of the fourth wall near the end of the movie which could have been avoided by some simple location planning and fore-thought. Plus, and this may simply have been the Odeon's stupid audio set up, but I left with a bit of a headache due to all the explosions.

As usual, there already seems to be an influx of cheap toys onto the market to support this film, including a new console game. One can only hope it's better than the first game. Having said that, this wouldn't be hard.


Score: B

OQ: "Don't tempt me..."

Terminator Salvation

I was a bit apprehensive going to see this due to the bad reviews it's been getting in places and to be honest when I left I was confused because this film is really quite excellent.

Terminator fans have been saying that the timeline is inconsistent with the one already established in the previous films, but I don't see this as a problem. There's always been an inconsistencies between the Terminator films versions of the timeline, some of which are added deliberately and some accidentally, and they all combine in to the mix to create a fluid timeline that keeps changing because Skynet keeps screwing around with its time machine. There was actually an interesting article on the Sci-Fi Channel (US) website going in to some detail about the inconsistencies, particularly around how old the characters are*. There is actually a line from the trailer that was dropped from this film (mistakenly, in my opinion), where John says "This isn't the future my mother prepared me for." The implication being that something Skynet has done in the past has radically altered this future.

There are a couple of parts of the film where reality comes crashing in through the door like a ten ton elephant. One at the very start with the titles where the Terminator theme gate-crashes the opening theme. It feels very shoe-horned in. And another when Connor is crouched on a ruined bridge at night where I half expected him to leap off and open his cape to glide down. I have to say that Arnie's digital cameo in this is handled excellently. I wasn't expecting it, I though it would be a glancing shot of him in the middle distance. It's not, and it's brilliant. Looks really great.

The only thing I can think of that might cause Terminator fans to be unhappy with this film is that it is a break from the standard formula. Well, that and that this film was directed by 'McG'. The first three movies are essentially "chase" movies, with an unstoppable villain relentlessly pursuing the heroes. They worked because they drew on a basic human fear, drawing from a common nightmare about being unable to get away from someone no matter how fast you run. Terminator Salvation is a break from this formula, and to be honest, it's a welcome change. The standard format barely worked for Terminator 3 and I can't really see it working again for the franchise. There's always the worry, of course, that in mentioning this "mythic" war but never seeing it in previous films, it gets set it up as being so epic that when you finally see it, no matter how well it is filmed, the war never seems big enough or sufficiently vast. It's a trap that Star Wars fell into with the Clone Wars. Terminator Salvation has rather neatly got around this problem in a novel way. Even being able to put Skynet into the movie for the first time, without really drawing back the veil of mystery surrounding it, is handled rather well.

Score: B++

OQ: Watch me...

*In fact, the implication from the various films is that by 2029 (the period you see briefly in Terminator 2), Skynet is losing the war badly and has become desperate, hence the time travel to kill John Connor in the past. It's a last ditch effort by Skynet to win the war.

W.

An interesting, if somewhat blinked view on one of the most controversial presidents that the USA has seen. I too was a little perplexed that the film concentrated solely on the Iraq war for the segments set during his presidency, but I realised that Oliver Stone was not trying to make a documentary. There are plenty of those about Bush Jr. already. Stone is trying to show the man behind the presidency.

I really really hope that the characters of Cheney and Rumsfeld are exaggerated, because if they're like that in real life, then the world is a far scarier place than I thought it was. Cheney is portrayed as some kind of sinister puppet master, pulling at W's strings, and Rumsfeld comes across as someone you'd normally see in a straight jacket.

Probably the most disturbing part is when the group are in the situation room and discussing the invasion of Iraq. Colin Powell's desperate attempts to bring some kind of sanity to the situation, repeatedly pointing out that Bin Laden is hiding in a cave in Pakistan somewhere, and being told by Dick Cheney that the American people want revenge for 9/11 and don't particularly care if Iraq was involved or not.

The special features are well worth a look. They too are shorter than I'd have liked, but are very interesting, especially the section about how many believe that Bush nearly broke the American government system by assigning too much power to the executive branch. There's not too much about the breakdown of intelligent gathering that lead to the invasion, except to say that it is incredulous that the US military would defer to a report from British intelligence, which came from a single source, rather than their own intel gathering network which was actually contradicting that report.

Angels & Demons

Brief Review

Saw this at the weekend with my sister. It's good. I enjoyed the first one, and I liked this one. It's a tad darker in places, both in story, visuals and physical lighting.

Soundtrack is a bit over the top at times, otherwise it's well scored.

Still think I liked the first one better, the mystery was done with a little more thought, but overall it's very enjoyable. Critics are saying that Ron Howard has managed to make running between a museum and a church seem exciting. Which is kind of a stupid flaw to pick upon, since plenty of entertaining films involve a race between a researcher and 'the bad guy'.

Ewan McGregor is very good in this, easily outshining Tom Hanks. Female lead is fairly forgettable.

Score: B-
Entertaining, worth a watch and has a brilliant climax.

OQ:
I'm sure you will serve him wisely.
I will serve him briefly...

Star Trek

Disclaimer: This review may be coloured by the fact that I had organised to see this on Saturday with friends, only to be thwarted by a dodgy electrical fault in Cineworld's emergency lighting system which closed the multiplex for most of the day. You'll have to use your own judgement on this matter.

I just know I'm going to get flamed for this......

There's a lot to like about the new Star Trek film. The ships look AMAZING. The special effects are brilliant. The new transporter effect in particular is very nice. The acting of the main cast is superb, and the jokes are well paced, appropriate and kept in line. McCoy in particular is excellently portrayed. The action is....actiony. It's full of whizz bang poppery. It's very well done, is what I'm trying to convey.

Sadly, as a Trekkie, there's also a lot not to like.

When it comes to breathing new life into a series, there are four commonly recognised way to do it:

• Spin-off In a spin off you create a new show based on characters or concepts from the old show. Sometimes works well (Stargate: Atlantis, CSI, and of course Star Trek itself), sometimes is a horrendous mistake (Joey or Team Knight Rider*).
• Rebrand Replace some or all of the principle cast, possible alter the name slightly and relaunch in a new season. Can be fantastic (Stargate SG-1), can also be a disaster (SeaQuest 2032**).
• Reboot Reset the universe and declare that the original show does not exist in this context. This is probably the trickiest to pull off, but can reap the most benefits because it doesn't have to concern itself with canon rules established in the original and can tell the stories the way it wants to. Best example would be Battlestar Galactica, but also Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which ignores Terminator 3).
• Revamp In a revamp, you still create a new series, but tell the stories in a different format while keeping the original series "canon". In other words, you bring the series "up to date". Examples would be Enterprise, which revamps the Trek universe, but keeps everything that follows it chronologically essentially intact. The new Knight Rider is another example. Both old and new Knight Rider were set in the time they were made, so they reflect the culture at the time, but they both exist in the same timeline.

The trouble I have with the new Star Trek film, is that it is trying to revamp and reboot itself at the same time. And I'm not sure, but I think it may be throwing in a little rebranding into the process too.

I think if this film had just been about Kirk, Spock and McCoy's first mission, I would have accepted it more, even if the ship looked different, because it would have been a revamp. Or if they'd decided to ignore all of Trek canonicity and reboot the series, I'd have been fine with that too. But in creating what is a highly tenuous link to the Trek we all know, they've tried to have their cake and eat it too.

Why is this a problem, you may ask. Well, it's because Star Trek fans are geeks, and it is here that I must digress into a brief side alley. As long as there has been Trek, there has been a divide between Trekkies and Trekkers. No-one will be able to tell you the difference, because frankly no-one really knows. Kate Mulgrew, Leonard Nimoy and Gene Roddenberry all had radically different ideas, but the way it was explained to me was Trekkers are fans of the original TV show (and films). Trekkies are fans of all of Star Trek. Because of the events that follow Star Trek: Nemesis, creating an alternate timeline, for many Trekkies, is sacrilege. Because it either implies that the events leading up to and after Nemesis are no longer going to happen, or that the events you are currently watching are part of a "doomed" timeline that the future Federation is going to correct. However, for Trekkers, this isn't a problem because they largely ignore everything that happened after the original series. So time travel that undoes everything after Kirk's era isn't a issue for them.

And that's the problem. Time travel in a Star Trek film. It's got to be the biggest cliché imaginable, and they don't do it well.

And it's not just that. The film is full of absurd plotholes. A transporter that can compensate for a ship travelling at warp speed, but can't deal with someone accelerating through gravity. While Zachary Quinto's Spock is excellent 90% of the time, the 10% of the time it doesn't work, it really doesn't work. I can accept a Spock emotionally compromised by the destruction of his home world, but a Spock that is engaged in a romantic relationship?

Star Trek doesn't just ignore Trek canon (which I would have been fine with), it also ignores the physical rules of the universe already described in detail. So you've got warp drive that behaves more like Star Wars' hyperdrive, you've got shields that don't seem to do anything, you've got phaser pistols which for the first time in history seem to have a recoil and you've got a transporter that operates on a range of different principles during the film depending on what it needs to do to progress the plot. Perhaps one of the most obscure ideas introduced is that the viewscreen on the bridge is now literally a window.

This entire argument may sound very beardy, but we are talking about Star Trek fans here. We are some of the beardiest people on the planet, and enjoy nothing more than debating philosophical differences between the series, testing each others' knowledge of all things Trek and generally trying to out-beard each other; a task which I regularly outshine my peers at, much to the dismay of my mother who hasn't quite given up hope of being a grandmother one day.

This film is like Never Say Never Again. It's James Bond, and yet it's not James Bond. It features familiar characters, and yet is missing equally essential characters. It's instantly recognisable, yet at the same time it is weird and foreign.

So while I cannot say for certainty that I liked the film (I honestly don't know), it does raise some difficult questions for me. Which as a Star Trek fan is brilliant, because it means I get to argue with people on the Internet***.

Score: [error]
I'm planning to see this again on Wednesday. That should say something about the film. Although your guess is as good as mine as to what it says.

OQ: I take it you have prepared new insults?

*I still get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about Team Knight Rider. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst television show I have ever watched and the people responsible should be hunted down and shot.
**Actually SeaQuest did this at the start of both season 2 and 3 when they changed cast members. It's just that the rebrand at the start of season 3 was so much bigger and managed to wreck the original concept so utterly.
***I can actually hear my mother's groan of despair at that concept, which is quite a feat because she's 450 miles away.