Pandorum

2009
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Le, Eddie Rouse
Director: Christian Alvart
Runtime: 108 Minutes
Distributor: Overture Films
Rating: R

The sophomore English language feature from German director Christian Alvart, Pandorum is essentially a haunted house movie in space. US audiences are yet to see Alvart’s first picture, the psychological horror-cum-creepy kid movie Case 39, although given the write-ups it’s received over in Europe that’s probably a good thing. Displaying a deft hand at ratcheting up some tension and superior ability when it comes to moving the camera around, Alvart’s picture is hamstrung by a woefully weak script and a novelty plot device kicking things off that only serves to undermine everything else he subsequently tries to do. There is also more than a hint of Event Horizon about the place, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a scan of the credits reveals Paul W. S. “everything I touch turns to ash” Anderson on board as producer, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why this high-concept deep space chiller is so painfully derivative.

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

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District 9

2009
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood, William Allen Young,
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Runtime: 112 Minutes
Distributor: TriStar Pictures
Rating: R

While we find it hard to believe, these words are being typed by our own fingers and of free will – thank God Peter Jackson’s Halo project crashed and burned. For if it hadn’t this towering, tumultuous science-fiction satire from South African effects-wizard-turned-director Neill Blomkamp, adapted from his own impressive short, might never have been realized. Cleverly using Jackson’s name over the title to get people’s attention, this one has slowly crept into our consciousness via a fiendishly inventive, perfectly pitched viral marketing campaign the likes of Cloverfield and The Blair Witch. Buying up ad space on billboards and bus stops with provocative posters proclaiming “No Non-Humans” they screamed high-concept while keeping you guessing as to the film’s overall nature. This worked hand-in-hand with an expertly judged teaser trailer made to resemble the kind of geo-political issue-of-the-week fodder theaters typically run as part of their pre-movie magazine package. All this combines to elicit a tantalizing lure and curious sense of anticipation, and boy does Blomkamp deliver, heralding himself as a major cinematic talent.

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

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Moon

2009
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Kaya Scodelario, Dominique McElligott
Director: Duncan Jones
Runtime: 97 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Rating: R

For this his cerebral and extremely proficient feature film debut, director Duncan Jones (son of legendary rocker David Bowie) employs both his experience in commercials and his post-graduate background in philosophy to deliver a brilliantly realized old school throwback to the likes of Alien and Silent Hunter. The kind of films that slowly drew you in with the comfortably familiar, kitchen sink nature of the acting before there was even hinting at the dark unknown that was to come.

Like Scott’s vision of the future, this is blue collar space; a dirty, humid, glorified refinery amidst the stars, with a crew of one, inside which Sam Bell (Rockwell) counts down the days to the completion of his three year contract overseeing and maintaining the automated lunar harvesters that now supply eighty percent of the world’s energy. His only company is GERTY, the station’s administrative AI (given great presence by Kevin Spacey) who takes on the shifting guise of friend, butler, company liaison, and therapist in an effort to keep Sam both safe and (mostly) sane.

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
 

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Terminator Salvation

2009
Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: McG
Runtime: 130 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: PG-13

It’s actually somewhat interesting the way this latest in the once glorious Terminator franchise very loudly and very brightly snuck up on everyone, and there are a few contributing factors. Firstly, a really good cast was cobbled together. Christian Bale is a star and Sam Worthington is a star on the rise. Secondly, to their credit they cut a really good trailer filled with the tease of possibility and some slick, pulsating action. Then as the release date began to loom large on the horizon the entire project was overshadowed by that now infamous rant that saw Bale relentlessly berate DP Shane Hurlbut in a wide variety of different accents for walking through a shot. A rant laced with such mean-spirited overkill it will likely define Bale for sometime.

Finally, in the weeks leading up to opening weekend, anyone who truly gave a shit about the franchise was busily sweating the will-they-won’t-they cancellation of the sorely underrated television series (It’s FOX – guess how that one turned out). The cumulative effect of all this, judging by fanboy ire and mass critical pacifier spitting, was a shield of noise, buzz and distractions that somehow made everyone forget that this thing was being directed by the guy who brought us Charlie’s bloody Angels. How could we have all been so blind?!

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

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Star Trek

Star Trek
2009
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana
Director: J.J. Abrams
Runtime: 126 Minutes
Distributor: Paramount
Rating: PG-13

Now these days when your franchise runs out of gas the big trend is to reboot and “go dark,” (and let’s be honest, “Trek” has been running on dilithium crystal fumes since “First Contact”). Thankfully though Abrams resisted the urge to go with the flow that gave us a brooding Batman and a boring Bond. Instead the MI:3 helmer turns the phasers to 11, brings back the wow, and sets course for the spectacular. Where did it all go so right?

Having been the subject of much fanboy voodoo, the little known Chris Pine completely vindicates himself as a reckless, tearaway Kirk, raging over the father he never knew. More established stars the like of Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, and Simon Pegg co-star in the roles of Spock, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, and Scotty for the maiden voyage of NCC-1701. Eric Bana provides the villainy as Nero, a time travelling Romulan with a grudge against history.

According to Abrams, there was many a sleepless night spent pondering just how exactly he would go about making tricorders seem cool to the Internet generation. Well consider that one hurdled. With a cast as fresh faced as this, a ship that looks like a cross between an oxygen bar and an Apple store, and a script as infallible as the prime directive, the fun factor is just overwhelming. This isn’t kitsch it’s vintage!

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

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Push

Push
2009
Starring: Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle, Djimon Hounsou, Neil Jackson, Maggie Siff, Cliff Curtis
Director: Paul McGuigan
Runtime: 111 Minutes
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: PG-13

NBC’s Heroes has a lot to answer for. It wasn’t the first story to mine the idea of ordinary people with extraordinary abilities, nor was it even the best (go rent USA Network’s The 4400 and thank us later). It was however the one that broke the idea to the mainstream and showed that the superhero angle had appeal beyond 40-year-old fat dudes living in their parent’s basement. So along with that show we’re regularly treated to the likes of Wanted, Jumper, and now Push, that talk the talk but seem to uniformly agree that building the kind of rich, solid mythology the likes of Batman and Spiderman were built on is just waaayyy too much of a bother.

Instead we get the ever-impressive Dakota Fanning (one of the few pluses on offer), who, as Watcher Cassie, delivers a lengthy set-up speech about Nazi experiments and secret agencies and the many different classifications of abilities: Pushers (mind control), Watchers (clairvoyants), Stitches (psychic healers) etc. Movers, she explains, “is just a fancy way of saying telekinetic,” which only begs the question as to why they don’t just call them telekinetics then? Because, of course, that veers too uncomfortably close to the fat, virgin guys in the basements again. It’s a speech so long that you begin to wonder if she’ll in fact just tell us how the movie ends and save us two hours – sadly no such luck.

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

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The Day The Earth Day Stood Still

2008
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, James Hong, Jon Hamm
Director: Scott Derrickson
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13

One of the most seminal films to be born out of science fiction’s golden era, Robert Wise’s cautionary tale of a benevolent alien sent to warn mankind of its impending destruction becomes the latest classic to be rolled out for a big budget digital makeover – this time at the hands of The Exorcism of Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson. Keanu Reeves steps into the role of Klaatu, the austere interstellar messenger sent by a coalition of alien worlds to determine if we’re capable of altering our destructive ways and render judgment in the form of extermination if we’re not.

But for a film about the end of the world, it’s hard to conceive a film with less ambition. Anybody expecting The Day After Tomorrow type destruction will do well to just stay home. Anybody worried they might have to sit through some thinly veiled sermon soaked in hippie ideals and kum-by-ya politics can relax because the film doesn’t even bother to do that.

Click here to read the full review at WiFly Radio.

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Children of Men

2006
Starring: Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Julianna Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Claire-Hope Ashiety, Pam Ferris
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Runtime: 109 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R

Having originally written the screenplay for Children of Men in 2001, director Alfonso Cuaron choose to put the project on hold whilst he directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Working in England on that project exposed Cuaron to what he called “British reality,” and he became fascinated with the social dynamics that make up what he saw as one of the most multicultural countries in the western world. Transposing what he had seen and learned in Britain to his pre-existing script, he finally felt the film had become fully realized and he moved confidently into production.

That confidence was seemingly well founded as Children of Men is an absolute blistering ride from start to finish that grabs you by the balls and simply does not let go. Set in a bleak and dystopian Britain in the year 2027, humankind is on the verge of social collapse and has not seen a human give birth for over eighteen years. Social paranoia and xenophobia are rampant with the military combating an ongoing guerilla terrorist campaign by hunting down immigrants and shipping them off to prison camps for “processing” and eventual deportation.

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A Scanner Darkly

2006
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr, Woodey Harrelson, Rorey Cochrane, Cliff Haby
Director: Richard Linklater
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Independent Pictures
Rating: R

Originally penned in the wake of acclaimed author and intermittent drug addict Philip K. Dick’s own, much publicised, personal battle with amphetamines, A Scanner Darkly is regarded by many fans to be his finest work, a statement that should immediately make one sit up and pay attention. A cynical and bleak portrait (literally) of co-dependency, symbiotic hypocrisy, and fractured reality, this tale of a Big Brother afflicted, psychotropic drug addicted near future blurs the line between perception and reality to the point where it simply ceases to exist.

Shot on film and then digitally animated into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of swirling patterns of light and color via a techinque called rotoscope, the story tells of a future society in which two of every ten citizens are in the employ of the state to monitor and report on the other eight. Agent Fred is one such undercover operative. With his identity hidden from everyone including his handlers by way of a scramble suit, which constantly jumbles the features and distorts the voice of the wearer, he is tasked to infiltrate a group of Substance D users and try to find a lead to its manufacture and distribution. Fred is ordered to focus his attention on Bob Arctor (Reeves), whom authorities believe can lead them to the source. But Fred has himself become addicted to Substance D, which has caused the two hemispheres of his brain to begin to function independently. They have ceased to be able to combine their knowledge, memories and skills, causing them to diverge into what is essentially two distinctly different personalities.

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Akira

1988
Starring: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozumo Sasaika, Mami Koyamo, Taro Ishida
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Runtime: 124 Minutes
Distributor: MGM
Rating: R

Though it did not reach the big screen until 1988, this apocalyptic cyberpunk epic had existed for years, running in the form of a comic that had at the time of the movie exceeded more than 2000 pages. While the feature film adaptation is of course less dense and less detailed, it will still always be known as the film that built the bridge between Japanese anime and western audiences. Akira opened the floodgates for the huge anime craze that swept the west in the early nineties and paved the way for them to become a respectable cinematic art form.

The story is one of a bleak and terrifying future. In 1989 Tokyo is destroyed by a massive explosion of psionic energy emanating from the subject of a secret military project. Mistakenly thought by the governments of the world to be a nuclear blast, the incident triggers World War Three. Thirty years later on the ashes of complete devastation sits Neo Tokyo. Now a police state, gangs of delinquent youths on high-powered motorcycles wage war with both the authorities and each other. In the shadows, a growing terrorist organization attacks official buildings in an effort to destabilize the ineffectual government. But the military has not abandoned its experiments of psychic energy and paranoid Col. Shikishima has been using children with ESP to monitor the city. When a dissident raid sees one of them kidnapped from the facility, the child comes into contact with Tetsuo, a motorcycle thug. The encounter leaves Tetsuo with an imprint of psychic energy that quickly threatens to grow beyond anything that can be controlled and once again bring complete destruction to all of Neo Tokyo.

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