By Sam Christopher

Rating: 1 Star out of 5 Stars

I loved this film’s predecessor, Resident Evil: Extinction. I’ve never seen the animated film they did after Extinction but I would watch it. When this film came out I had hopes for it, hopes that fell as every new trailer or commercial or interview I saw about it looked and sounded worse and worse. More, it had the stigma of being the fourth film in this series. Remember how the mundanes (mainly) always said that that Star Trek film franchise was all about the even-numbered ones, and that the odd-numbered films sucked? This franchise, for me, is the exact opposite of that. I thought the first one was pretty good; I could never understand the outpouring of hate for it by critics. Sure, there were things about it I thought were lame, mostly things about the all-powerful Umbrella Corporation (I’ve still never figured out what they hope to gain with the T-Virus), but overall I liked it. The second film, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, was so bad I erased it from my memory. I swear, I watched it a couple times (once because a friend had never seen any of them and wanted to go see Extinction with me) but I can’t really remember anything about it now… other than the gunfight. I almost didn’t go see Extinction but a couple friends wanted to get together so we did and I was very glad of it. I still think it’s the best of the three, now four.

RE: Afterlife starts off with whiz-bang action, and intersperses some connecting scenes introing old and new characters (“Hi, I’m Alice, and you are…?”) and setting up the “story” of this film with more whiz-bang action. There’s lots of slo-mo and ducking bullets… that…sssslowwwwly… ggggggoooooo bbbbbbbyyyyyyy. And then there’s lots of near-Lovecraftian monsters and death and corpses staggering and clawing and feeding. Oh, and there’s the guy who apparently runs all of Umbrella with an iron fist (get it? an umbrella held in an iron fist? Well, I never promised it was funny!) also infected with the T-Virus, also housing what looks to be a very Lovecraftian parasite. His deal is that if he ingests Alice he’ll gain complete control of the virus. At least that’s what he thinks. Okay, okay, moment of truth: The only thing interesting in this entire film to me is the mind-control thingie Claire Redfield is wearing when we first see her and which Jill Valentine (who looked familiar to me but I had to read was in Apocalypse) is sporting at the end. I’m really afraid the story will be lame but, hey, it’ll be the fifth (they’ve already announced another one, RE: Retribution).

Generally I would tell you a lot about this film. It does fall into the category where I don’t want you to waste time or money on it and I usually give a solid synopsis of those so you can feel like you know the story without seeing it… and I did. Believe me, the above is pretty much all that happens in this entire flick. It is a mish-mash of monsters from sf and horror with no hint of a storyline through most of it. There are a few cool scenes here and there but it’s really not worth your time. Put it this way, early in the movie Alice is wrestling with Wesker (the “Dark Overlord” of UC) in a helicopter. He injects her with something and she thanks him for making her human… and it’s never mentioned again, nor does she really act any differently. Wesker needs to eat Alice in order to quell the T-Virus within him… but has no compunctions at all about blowing her up. It’s just a disjointed mess, for the casual fan anyway. True fans of the RE video game might get all this and love it because they already know the story. For me? I’m just asking that the next one make sense. If they have to cut down on the slow motion and such that would be fine.

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By Sam Christopher

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

This is a DC Animation release, set to coincide with the release of the Green Lantern live-action film (see earlier review). It gives us an animated version of the recent comic title Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, with stories of various individual “ring slingers” set against the backdrop of the cosmic threat of Krona crossing over from the Anti-Matter Universe to conquer Oa and destroy both the GLC and the Guardians of the Universe. The movie is mostly Hal Jordan and Sinestro (still a GL here) telling new recruit Arisia stories that will both ease her mind as to the GLC’s collective ability to respond to any threat and give her a sense of personal belonging to the group by telling her some intimate details of her fellow GLs.

Here we see the story of Kilowog’s initiation into the Corps, with his recruiting class being trained by Sgt. Deegan, a drill instructor who was apparently every bit the hard-ass Kilowog is reputed to be nowadays. Deegan forced his recruits to confront the worst that could be thrown at them, until a Khund attack on a defenseless population obliges him to lead them into real combat. Deegan shows his young charges how to be a Green Lantern in a story I liked much better here than in the comic. Likewise, Hal attempts to show Arisia how to be a Green Lantern by relating to her the story of the first true GL, an historian whom everyone believed to be the weakest of the first four to wear the power ring. But he showed everyone the true potential of the great power the Guardians had created and became what everyone following him aspired to. We also see the homecoming of Laira, a princess who must battle her own family to end senseless war, and view the humorous story of a would-be tyrant who sets out to defeat Mogo, who he has been told is the greatest Green Lantern of all. Finally, we see the story of Abin Sur’s battle with Atrocitus (before the advent of the Red Ring of Rage) and Sur’s dismissal of Atrocitus’ prophecy of Sinestro turning to the “dark side” and becoming the GLC’s most implacable enemy. The final section of the film is the current battle with Krona. As in the GL live-action film, Krona has been altered for this story. Here he is basically a stand-in for the Anti-Monitor, coming from the Anti-Matter Universe and even using the Shadow Demons A-M used in Crisis on Infinite Earths, which the guardians mention here rather obliquely.

As always, there are things one could say one would rather have seen, mainly story choices for the flashbacks that I, as the “one” viewer we’re talking about here, would rather have seen. It’s even said on the packaging that Blackest Night is referenced here—and I would LOOOOOOOVE to see that as a DVD release (actually a trilogy, but DC’s obviously not that ambitious; look at the butchery of the Death of Superman story)—but it is a fleeting reference of an unknown event, not something that has happened. But all that aside, this is a mostly excellent release, on a par with the Green Lantern: First Flight DVD. Also, there’s a Special Feature look at the upcoming Batman: Year One DVD that whets my appetite for that tale, as well. We can only hope it somehow recaptures the impact of that original Frank Miller story. Another DC Animation story that would probably be very good (and that no one seems to think about anymore) is John Byrne’s Man of Steel, which was the reinvention of the Superman character and family after the original Crisis. Just something to think about while watching Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

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By Sam Christopher

Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars

The three most annoying things in cinema for me are characters doing completely implausible things (such as a young Magneto not killing the man who had just murdered his mother), so-called “true stories” “based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal” (thank you, Mr. Wood and spokesman Criswell) that aren’t true at all, and being warned of “shocking footage” that is only outrageous in its mundanity (which I don’t think is really a word but I bet everyone reading it knows what I mean by it). The Fourth Kind has all of these things, along with a highly melodramatic performance by Milla Jovovich and a script filled with holes one could drive a Presidential caravan through. And yet…

First, the bad stuff. The sheriff, played by Will Patton, is so amazingly dense that I’m surprised we can see him at all; I thought no light could escape a black hole. First, he blames the psychiatrist played by Jovovich for a murder/suicide committed by a man she had that afternoon had under hypnosis. That I could live with, to a point. But later… he blames her for her daughter’s disappearance, when he had a deputy posted outside the house, a deputy who corroborates Jovovich’s account. This, of course, comes after he blames her for another man’s back being broken while she had him under hypnosis—blames her despite the fact that there is a film of the incident (although admittedly some of the footage was washed out by electromagnetic interference) plus the THREE DIRECT WITNESSES who corroborate her account. Someone else I talked with about the film called him “Barney Fife” which I thought was unfair—at least Barney could admit when he was wrong sometimes. Just another example of a Hollywood “empiricist” who can’t seem to believe anything he sees or is told that doesn’t fit in the “box” of his preconceived notions. Jovovich’s performance, while not bad really, is theatrical rather than realistic; she looks too much like an actress playing a part rather than a real person much of the time. That may be a function of the narrative device of having her introduced as herself playing the part of a woman in a dramatization. The intercutting with film excerpts of the “real” Dr. Abigail Tyler doesn’t really help here, although Charlotte Milchard is much more convincing in this role. And since they have an actress playing the “real” Dr. Tyler the viewer cannot take seriously the admonitions that he is viewing a true story at all. Then there is the “shocking footage” that is anything but. Again, the overdramatic falsities hurt the film in this regard as some of what happened might have been far more interesting if it had been presented against a better backdrop.

But there is an undeniable power in the true central idea of the film, that we have been visited and guided by “others”—aliens, for want of a better term. These aliens, according to the story, have visited Earth for millennia—ET speaks Sumerian—and have returned for… something. There’s a lot of Erich von Daniken theory in this storyline, with a healthy helping of Zecharia Sitchin tossed in, too. That this concept is ingrained in our society for whatever reason is obvious. The books and television shows and movies and radio shows and lectures and discussions dealing with the theory and questions and provocative notions it imposes are evidence of that. This film utilizes the stereotypical “alien abduction” stories for an unknown purpose. In fact, one of the few things the picture gets right is NOT telling us everything we want to know. It makes us think about what it’s saying at the end and that makes it almost worth sitting through. Almost. This notion alone, coupled with the complete disappearance of Tyler’s daughter into the clutches of an alien who calls himself “God”, is worth a short story. A full movie, though, really needs more. And that’s really the problem here: this feels like a 30 minute television show stretched into a 90 minute feature.

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With Paranormal Activity 2 hitting the theaters tomorrow, we thought it would be a good time to revisit Carl Lawrence’s review of the first movie.

By Carl Lawrence

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Paranormal Activity, made on a shoe-string budget of just $11,000, and having brought in nearly $108 million at the Box Office, was the surprise hit of last year, and perhaps for good reason, as it’s not without its creepy charm. Most of what happens in the film takes place in the home of an unmarried couple, and in total we see no more than four actors throughout the entire movie. If it were a typical Hollywood studio production, good luck keeping the attention of viewers with that kind of a restricted setting and such a small cast. Fortunately, however, it wasn’t the product of that kind of filmmaking at all, and therefore took a huge risk that remarkably paid off with what it stood to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, however, as it wasn’t incredibly groundbreaking cinema either, although it was marginally innovative in terms of its approach, and was significantly better than another experimental student film of the same genre that it was patterned after and took its cue from: The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity is sort of the inverse of what we see happen in Blair Witch: instead of the creepiness being evoked in the unfamiliar terrain of an unpopulated wooded area, Paranormal Activity does it in what is supposed to be all the comforts of home.

I expected the special effects in this film to be limited at best, but was surprised to see that it did contain some technical wizardry in various sequences where called for, although the filmmaker wisely resorted to them only sparingly.

The movie starts off a bit slow, and in terms of the lighting, camera work, and sound quality, it’s rather obvious that you’re looking at a very low budget film. These shortcomings become less prominent and noticeable as the film progresses however. Of course, the pretext is that Micah, Katie’s live-in boyfriend who works as a day trader, has bought a new camera when the film opens to record them in their bedroom as they sleep in hopes of catching signs of whatever it is that’s going bump in the night inside their home. The technical shortfalls therefore fit given that it’s supposed to be a home movie. Nevertheless, they’re still hard to take in initially, especially on the big screen. If this were a commercial picture produced by a large studio on a reasonable budget, the impression of a homemade amateur movie, if that were the intent, would be present and conveyed, but the intended rough technical edges would still come across with a professional touch and polish. Not here however. The dialogue also seems to be mostly ad lib early on.

As the story progresses, the couple invite a psychic to meet with them at the home to discuss their situation in hopes of finding a solution to the problem. Katie tells him of her recurring experiences going back to her childhood involving a presence of some kind that she has difficulty describing, along with her not ever knowing what it wants. Micah, on the other hand, never had such experiences at any point in his life, and the home, which he owns, had previously been free of such problems as well. The psychic therefore understandably concludes that the entity in question is something that has attached itself to Katie from when she was very young, for whatever reason, that it’s not all that uncommon, and that it’s possible to remedy the situation, although it’s often difficult. He senses an energy of some kind in the home, but informs the two of them that it’s not really his area of expertise and recommends a colleague for them to call. Micah later implores Katie not to do so because he doesn’t like the spooky nature of what they’re dealing with, and he doesn’t believe yet another creepy hocus-pocus charlatan coming into the home can help to actually solve the problem.

Micah is inconsistent in that he obviously feels something strange is going on, hence his desire to record and document it, yet he views people who offer possible solutions as voodoo doctors not to be taken seriously. In his own cocky arrogance he questions the psychic about the possibility of bringing a Ouija board into the house in hopes of being able to communicate with the entity so as to find out what it wants, provide it, thereby hopefully satisfying it and giving it the incentive to leave them alone once and for all. This is something the psychic is adamantly opposed to, stressing to Micah in no uncertain terms that it’s a very bad idea that would only serve as an invitation to whatever the presence is to become more frequently present and prominent in their lives. Micah halfheartedly agrees to abide by the instruction, but wanting to know what the entity wants, and wanting to communicate with it is something that nags at him until he decides to actually try it despite the repeated protests by Katie, who continues to insist that he not do it.

As the camera continues to record their nights sleeping, little by little, the abstract presence gradually ratchets up its home intrusions. Noises heard in other parts of the house, initially downstairs, begin working their way right up and into their bedroom, and even worse, Katie begins to act in a peculiar manner, initially getting out of bed and standing in the middle of the room for several hours, while seemingly still sleeping as the camera records her odd behavior. When confronted about it the next day after Micah reviews the recording, she remembers nothing. As if this isn’t bad or strange enough, Micah subsequently wakes up on a later night to find that Katie is not in bed with him. He gets up to try and find her, calling out her name as he searches through the house, finally looking outside and going out to the backyard. As he frantically looks around, he finally sees her sitting on a swing in the darkness of the yard. He walks over to her and asks her what she’s doing, remarking that it’s freezing outside as she sits there in shorts and a t-shirt. She refuses to go back in the house, so Micah reluctantly decides to go inside for some blankets, saying he’ll stay outside with her if that’s what she really wants, only to find her going back into the house behind him as if in a trance, and then crawling into bed. The next day, Katie doesn’t recall any of this either. Micah doesn’t know what to make of it, and rather than seeking professional help for a possible sleep disorder (or so it appears here at this relatively early stage), the two remain relatively unconcerned and are more consumed with the strange happenings inside the house.

As the haunting grows more aggressive and fierce, Micah and Katie have increasing difficulty coping and trying to maintain their normal routines. It becomes clear that there is in fact something supernatural going on, with the camera recording evidence of it, and the entity, after another overnight attack, eventually leads them to the open hatch of the attic that had been closed. The director wisely resorts to a subdued approach in the handling of this creepy scene, scaring the viewer more by what doesn’t happen as opposed to what one would expect if this were a typical Hollywood formula picture intent on scaring viewers. From here the situation only worsens as Micah and Katie inexplicably remain in a house most people would have fled from in fear and terror, yet they continue to stay. One has to question why they would remain, let alone manage to continue sleeping at night under such stress, and yet sleep they do when possible, despite knowing the nights will not be free of unwanted interruptions from their increasingly unwelcome malevolent intruder. Micah also seems denser than his girlfriend given where things go and how the situation continues to develop, with his own safety in particular becoming an issue.

Director Oren Peli deserves credit for the gradual steady pacing of the film and resisting the urge to overdo it even though some viewers will find it too laid back and subdued for their more amped up tastes. Nevertheless, he knows how to scare the bejesus out of the rest of the audience that is intrigued by the creepy psychology of the idea at work with his use of a largely unseen force wreaking total havoc in the lives of two ordinary people.

If you look at this film taking into account how it was made and under what conditions, you may well enjoy it. Others will blow it off as just a home movie that was a waste of the money they spent to rent it. As a former film student myself however, I respect and admire the effort that went into the making of it, and I’m glad I took the time to go out and see it when I did. It’s also better to see a movie like this before it can become a victim of its own hype, and I suspect more people were even less impressed by it once it was released for home video, unless they watched it alone in the dark, having put it on around midnight. However, it’s worth a look, and the sequel is probably an entirely different animal altogether. It was produced on a significantly higher budget of $2,750,000, which is still small potatoes by Hollywood standards, but it virtually assures a nice profit. Whether the producers of this follow-up can make lightning strike twice remains to be seen however. We shall see.

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DVD review of a band with appeal to many Science Fiction and Fantasy fans

By Sam Christopher

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)

“I said I’ve played this song so many times before that the melody keeps repeating, Growing new ideas, flowing chords and notes, like a mountain river bleeding”
-from “Here Again”, Rush

Rush is my favorite band. I think the first thing I ever heard from them was either “Working Man”, from their self-titled debut album, or “Fly by Night”, the title track from their second record. These songs were already past-tense, though, by the time I heard the song that made me buy an album. The song was “The Trees”, from Hemispheres, which, oddly, made me buy Caress of Steel. Then I got Fly by Night and became more madly passionate about this music because of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”. I was still a little while away from buying what would become my favorite Rush album—my favorite album period, in fact—with Hemispheres. The point here is that it was their fantasy lyrics and long musical pieces that I loved the most. And the musicianship: everyone talks about Neal Peart’s drumming but Geddy Lee’s bass and all-around musical aptitude to play nearly any instrument it seems while standing in one place and singing is a great asset as well. And Alex Lifeson’s quiet, mostly unheralded guitar-work is an underrated masterwork that is rarely mentioned.

“Time and Motion, Flesh and blood and fire, Lives connect in webs of gold and razorwire”
-from “Time and Motion”, Test for Echo

This DVD presents the story of the band from their earliest beginnings until today. Lee and Lifeson take a limo ride through their old neighborhood (“We used to catch the school bus there”, “We used to get beat up by bullies over there”) and talk about how they first met in junior high and were drawn together by their mutual nerdness and all-around losership. It sounds so familiar I wonder how I never became a musician. Then they talk about how they and drummer John Rutsay got together a little while later, playing high schools (one of which apparently had Gene Roddenberry as a principal, if you watch the second disc) and churches before moving onto the inevitable bars and cutting their first record. Here we’re taken to a radio station in Cleveland where the station manager says they played the longest cut of the album, “Working Man”, and thought it perfect for the blue-collar men who usually listened in. The phones lit up, many of the people asking when this new Led Zeppelin album was coming out. After this, worries over Rutsay’s health led to his leaving with Neal Peart chosen as his replacement. Peart changed the focus of the music completely with his fantasy battle hymns and Ayn Rand-inspired lyrics, including the magnificent future tale, 2112. Scattered throughout are snippets of interviews with other musicians such as Billy Corgan (who played Nosferatu for The Smashing Pumpkins) and fans.

“So many things I think about when I look far away, Things I know, things I wonder, things I’d like to say”
-from “Mystic Rhythms”, Power Windows

Stories I found of interest: Peart’s cross-country motorcycle trek, losing himself in the backroads of the American continent after the tragic deaths of his daughter and wife. Peart appears to be an intensely private man who seems ill at ease on camera, evn though he can also be funny; anytime he was on was interesting and this part was very touching. And, with that, his bandmates admission that they really had no idea how to help or comfort him. Alex says he spent about a year not even listening to music, while Geddy says he just didn’t know what to do for his friend. They just waited, not to see if the band could continue, just to make sure their friend was all right. On a lighter note, there’s also Lee’s baseball collection. He says there was a time where he would get up around noon every day and the main thing on tv was the Cubs and he really got into baseball, and collecting signed balls and other memorabilia just became interesting. He also says he wanted to be a pitcher for awhile before realizing, as most of will eventually, that that particular summer has faded. Alex Lifeson’s gregariousness on film here and the counterpiece he seems to be to his oldest friend Geddy Lee. There’s some home video footage of the time Lifeson told his parents he wanted to quit school to play music. But the most surprising thing to me—aside from how closely my sensibilities on celebrity match Peart’s—was that my favorite album, Hemispheres, was their most difficult album to make and was such a bear to get through they decided to not make any more concept albums (which I’m guessing is why “fear” has been spread over so many albums through the years).

“There is a lake between the Sun and Moon not too many know about, in the silence between whisper and shout, the space between wonder and doubt”
-from “Between Sun and Moon”, Counterparts

This DVD is a treasure-trove of information and history about a band that Geddy Lee describes—very aptly, I think—“the world’s most popular cult band”. They have stood the test of time and shown those critics who reviled them in their early years that they have a depth and breadth of talent and musical courage that far exceeds virtually any of those critics’ choices over the course of Rush’s career. It is a crime they’re not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but a testament to their true worth that that fact most likely means very little to any of the three. Over three and a half decades and counting…

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By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Virtuality is a television series pilot written and produced by Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) that aired last Summer on FOX though never received a pickup for series.  It follows the crew of a deep space mission headed to the Epsilon Eridani star system on a journey that will take ten years. Their day to day activities on the ship are recorded and transmitted back to Earth where viewers watch them on television, reality series-style. In addition, each crew member has a virtual reality module that they can use as an escape from the rigors of deep space travel. However, a glitch in the programming has lead to several bad experiences in the virtual world, and they consider switching off the system for the duration of the mission. This glitch seems to extend beyond that, though, and ultimately leads to the death of one of the crew members which points toward a potentially subversive plot unfolding on the ship. So essentially, Virtuality gives us hard science fiction meets reality television meets the Star Trek holodecks meets murder mystery meets a conspiracy story arc.

If that description makes this two hour movie sound like an odd mish-mash of ideas and genres, then you are following right along with me. Ronald D. Moore did a good job of turning the iconic Battlestar Galactica franchise upside down and he apparently wanted to keep heads spinning with this venture as well. I have to admit that half way through Virtuality I felt like his eclectic, genre-splicing movie was a bit more than I could stomach, though I stuck it out and by the end he had finally won me over.

It is filmed very much like a realty series, with the jerky, hand-held camera flitting about trying to catch the quibbles among each of the crew members along with separate “confessional” pieces directed at the camera. And really, the characters seem like some of the standard Reality TV types that  producers cobble together to generate the required amount of friction that draws viewers to the shows (and for that matter, parts of the interior of the ship resemble those super-sleek apartments where MTV’s The Real World often boards its participants). This aspect of the series can be a bit disconcerting to non-Reality TV fans, but at the same time you have to admit that there is a hint of authenticity to the way that the people interact with one another.

Adding the virtual reality system to the mix of course draws immediate comparisons to the holodecks of the Star Trek franchise (right down to its tendency toward malfunction). However, Virtuality takes a very different approach with this gimmick. Each person wears a virtual reality visor that lets them see and experience this cyber-world, though it is not physically “real” like Trek’s holodecks. And to what extent this virtual reality engages all five senses is not made completely clear in the pilot. The participants seem to fully experience the situations in their mind, including sexual encounters, but we don’t know just how real it feels to them. Still, having such a system on a long, daunting voyage makes a lot of sense.

Which leads to the next part of this movie that I really appreciate. Moore takes a very realistic, scientifically accurate approach toward space travel (including no sound in space!). So often, space travel in television and movies follows whichever physical laws that the writers feel like acknowledging at any given point in time (or simply no laws at all). Virtuality on the other hand tries to portray life and travel in space as accurately as possible. So even if you dislike all of the other aspects of this movie, you have to at least appreciate this rare attempt to give viewers a more accurate portrayal of what it would be like to travel in deep space (last Summer’s failed Science Fiction series Defying Gravity also did a good job with this).

As far as the cast, they all seem to fit quite well in each of their respective roles. Nikolaj Coster Waldau (of 2008’s New Amsterdam), stands out as the captain of the ship and the one person who can keep this collection of oddballs from ending up at each other’s throats. The rest of the cast include an assortment of actors that you’ve seen in guest slots or supporting roles in various television shows and movies and will have you saying “where did I see that person before”? Among the standouts we have Clea Duvall from Carnivale and James D’Arcy from Master and Commander.

Ultimately, this movie seems somewhat unapproachable at first and a bit difficult to digest. But if you think about it, that could easily describe Battlestar Galactica at times. As I mentioned, at first I didn’t like it, then I did, then after re-watching it on DVD I liked it even more.

Virtuality was intended to proceed into a series, but unfortunately FOX chose to pass on it.  To some extent I might understand their thinking because of the density of the movie, but I really would have loved to have seen a follow-up movie or two.  Now that it has made it to DVD, those who missed it on its original airing (which was quite a lot as it barely managed to attract 2 million viewers) have a chance to finally catch it.  Those looking for intelligent, engaging, hard Science Fiction should definitely find something to like in this movie.  And any fan of the genre should at least give it a look to enjoy its unique, radical departure from the more standard, mundane fare delivered by the broadcast networks.

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Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

Would you believe me if I told you there is an excellent Science Fiction, nay Speculative Fiction, movie out there with absolutely no special effects and which involves nothing more than people sitting around and talking? Well I’m telling you it’s true, and The Man from Earth is that movie.

The script for this film came from the late Jerome Bixby who dictated its final pages from his deathbed to his son Emerson Bixby. Some may recognize Jerome Bixby as a Science Fiction writer who penned many short stories in the genre and who also wrote several Star Trek: TOS episodes (“Requiem for Methuselah”, “Day of the Dove”, “By Any Other Name”, “Mirror, Mirror”), had one of his short stories adapted into the infamous “It’s a Good Life” Twilight Zone episode, and who co-wrote the story for The Fantastic Voyage. Thus, this movie has some pedigree from a veteran of the genre who knew how to write Science Fiction in the days when writers could not always rely on special effects to carry the story.

The premise for The Man from Earth is simple: a university professor, John Oldman, is departing from his job and he gathers several of his most trusted colleagues to tell them that he has lived since the days of Cro-Magnon man, 14,000 years past. Some are intrigued by his claim while others find it ludicrous, and the movie documents their conversations—and knock-down, drag-out arguments—over one night’s time. That’s it. No monsters, aliens, space travel, time machines, explosions, or any of the other standards that you would expect from a Science Fiction movie. Just talking and the back-and-forth exchange of ideas, theories, and speculations.

Sound like a snooze fest? That’s exactly what it’s not. The movie grabs you almost right away with its intriguing premise which you may be skeptical about at first, but you want to find out more. And that’s exactly the way the other characters in the movie feel, and they help propel the action forward as they mirror the viewer’s inner conflicts over John Oldman’s claims that he has lived over fourteen millennia. The top-notch cast aids in keeping the movie lively as well. There are several faces among the actors that should be familiar to Science Fiction and Fantasy fans including William Katt (Ralph Hinkley from The Greatest American Hero), John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox from Star Trek: Enterprise), Tony Todd (a slew of supporting and guest appearances in movies and television, particularly in the Star Trek revivals), and Richard Riehle (also a frequent guest star, especially across several of the Star Trek shows, as well as Tom Smykowski from Office Space). The other characters at first go along with John’s “what-if” scenario because they believe they are indulging him as he works out the concept of a potential novel. As the night progresses, some start to become more invested in his assertion while others get impatient with his line of reasoning. Then, the movie throw’s us a curve (major spoilers to follow).

After some questioning, John reveals that he was an important person from history, and his revelation and its implications turn this into a completely different movie. The Man from Earth starts out as a “what-if” discourse on the implications of a person who had lived through all of human history. The revelation, however, makes us rethink the past and perhaps even our very core beliefs. This curve ball is a bit jarring and may turn some viewers off from the movie. I have to admit that I had some difficulty digesting it at first. But the more I thought about it, this turn of events really raised the movie to the next level and caused it to resonate with me for several days and ponder its implications. And you can’t ask much more than that from a movie in the Science Fiction genre, or any genre for that matter.

This movie succeeds with the ideas it puts forth which cause the viewer to think long and hard about their perception of history. And it does this by way of an excellent script and a superb cast, and without a special effects crew in site. Sure, there are plenty of blockbusters that will be assaulting the theaters this Summer season, and we will all go and enjoy the escapist entertainment they provide, exploding on the screens with the latest special effects technology. But if you want an excellent Science Fiction movie that lives and dies by its story, script, and actors then be sure to plop The Man from Earth into your DVD player after you return from the theater.

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A follow-up that fans of the first film probably could have done without, but which isn’t all bad

By Carl Lawrence

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Few sequels live up to, let alone surpass, the bar established by the original work they stem from, and sadly The Descent: Part 2 is no exception when it comes to bucking that trend. Only rarely are we fortunate enough to get a picture like The Dark Knight that really knocks our socks off, and I say that as someone who was never really a big Batman fan to begin with prior to the release of that obviously superior sequel to its less popular predecessor Batman Begins. Of course it’s not even fair to compare The Descent: Part 2 to The Dark Knight unless one is doing so strictly in the sense of both films being sequels to a prior original work. I’m usually skeptical about sequels as are most people for the obvious reason that most of the time they just don’t measure up to what spawned them. Directors don’t take the time; writers seem to have an attitude that they can’t top the original, and usually Hollywood only entertains the notion of producing one for the sake of making another quick buck, and with combined attitudes of that nature, it’s no wonder that we’re often left feeling disappointed. (Note however that this film was actually shot and produced in Britain by Celador Films, a foreign company.) And even when more money is pumped into a sequel in hopes of making it better, such as in the case of 28 Weeks Later, often it still doesn’t seem to work out.

That said, The Descent: Part 2 isn’t entirely awful, and the writers do make a notable attempt at giving the film an ending that feels mostly consistent with how the initial film ended, which I suppose is to their credit. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s when the first picture in a series ends off leaving us satisfied, only to have a cheap knock-off sequel come along and negate the outcome of that prior movie. (Think American Psycho 2 and Hostel 2 and you’ll know precisely what I’m talking about.)

The Descent: Part 2 picks up right where The Descent left off, which also isn’t at all unusual for a sequel. In fact, it’s pretty routine. In the first film, the way things left off in the Unrated Cut (the only version I’ve seen to date), I was left with the impression that Sarah was never getting out of the previously unexplored cavernous tunnels that claimed the lives of her friends—that she was stuck there permanently. I thought that was the meaning behind the imagery of her dead daughter handing her a birthday cake at the end. This was her new life—period, perhaps also as a consequence of betraying her friend Juno in hopes of saving herself. As the second movie opens, however, we see that she has made it out of there after all, with what looked like a dream ending in the first film actually being the reality of her situation instead. She’s left with no memory of what happened as a result of the horrific trauma she experienced in the caves, which is plausible given the circumstances. Prior to this break in the case, the authorities have found nothing while still in the midst of a two-day search. When the Sheriff gets word of Sarah’s recovery while at one of the locations being checked, he heads straight to the hospital along with his deputy. Juno’s father is a Senator, adding to the pressing nature of finding the women and solving the mystery of what happened to them. Interestingly enough, however, even after two days of nonstop searching, including helicopter flyovers, the authorities never manage to find the cars that were left at the entry to the cave system seen in the first film. Instead they’re drawn to a long abandoned mining facility, believing this to be the next logical place for them to look.

It defies reason that this small team comprised of the Sheriff, his deputy, a few professional cave dwellers, and finally Sarah, who is fetched from the hospital the very same day after being given a sedative by her doctor, would not want more manpower before descending into the mining shaft with no real backup. It’s also difficult to believe that Sarah would allow herself to be taken down there again without any protest despite the sedative she was given earlier and her memory still being blocked. One would think that even on a subconscious level she would still be aware of the danger involved, and once down there, naturally, her memory begins to return. The writing leading up to this point really isn’t that great, as it all smacks of a cheesy, hackneyed setup just to get the characters, and Sarah especially, down into the underground cavernous maze again for more carnage and mayhem to ensue. What follows is what one would expect: a bloody, disgusting mess. I think the first film did a much better job of leading the audience there however, as it was more carefully scripted, paced, and directed, with a seemingly more generous budget to boot to make it all worthwhile in the end. The overall production values just seem to be lacking here in contrast unfortunately, although if there’s one thing this film does have going for it at least, it’s a climax that manages to put viewers in touch with the tense and frenzied creepiness of the original, even if only for a short while. It also makes it look as though there was actually a way out of the caverns all along however, which seemed like a virtual impossibility in the first movie. I question that decision because it leaves the creatures with a way out of their habitat and into our world, and seemingly negates that aspect of the claustrophobic mystique that really served the original film so well. But it’s worth renting –in spite of its drawbacks, there’s still some fun to be had in the watching of it nonetheless. So grab some popcorn and enjoy it on the basis of what it does stand to offer.

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J.J. Abrams ventures into the final frontier with a new cast

By Carl Lawrence

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I have a number of problems with the plot of this film, not the least of which is its seemingly, on the surface at least, erasing of all prior original series-related canon, which is in fact its greatest sin, and its overall implications don’t even stop there because it renders virtually all subsequent modern Trek mythology established in later shows null and void as well. That amounts to hundreds of episodes and ten movies rendered completely moot by virtue of their being undone. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would ever say this, but this is worse than if they were to have resurrected Kirk from the dead post-Generations the way a contingent of the fan base had been pining for over a period of many years because the implications here in contrast are much more far-reaching. J.J. Abrams and his two writers, along with Leonard Nimoy, have stated in interviews that what takes place in this movie occurs in an alternate universe. However, the clear evidence attesting to that is lacking in the film itself. My review will therefore proceed taking that into account for what it is: an absence of hard and credible evidence.

In terms of action, the film opens well. Nero, the Romulan Captain of a ship called the Narada, emerges from the future and into the past, initially without his even realizing it. In a rage over having just witnessed the destruction of his planet in his own era, he attacks the first ship he sees: a Federation Starship (the USS Kelvin) that also carries Kirk’s father and his pregnant mother. The Captain of the Kelvin is instructed to beam aboard Nero’s ship during the assault and Kirk’s father is placed in command. As a result of the peril at hand, Winona Kirk goes into labor as the ship is being evacuated and Kirk’s father sacrifices himself and the ship in order for the crew to escape safely. High intensity action and I couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance of the escape shuttles to the shuttles seen in the original series –a nod and homage of a sort that I really liked and appreciated.

Jump-shot to Kirk as a boy racing a 20th century Corvette recklessly over the side of a cliff just after being warned by his stepfather not to damage the prized vehicle. The young lad barely makes it out of the classic sports car in time and pulls himself up from the side of the cliff as the automobile crashes to the bottom of the canyon. I can understand some boyish impetuousness, but this is just plain crazy. Kirk’s mother is never seen again. His stepfather is never shown and never heard from again, and this standalone scene can almost be edited out of the film entirely, but it does help set the stage for the older Kirk we’re about to meet, who—to put it mildly—still has issues.

He hits on the first girl he sees in the next scene, which happens to be Uhura, and in his bold inebriated stupor then proceeds to pick a fight with four Starfleet cadets, asserting that they’re short on muscle to put him in his place. Chris Pine is good in the role, and this is an angrier Kirk than we’ve come to know up until now, with the underlying reason for his defiant rage a result of the absence of the father he never got to know and who wasn’t there to raise him. (This becomes clearer later in the movie when he meets the elder Spock and specifically asks him if he ever knew his father in the other timeline that Spock came from.)

Overall the stage is set and the film doesn’t waste any more time on Kirk’s misspent youth. Pike sits down and has a father-son type talk with him following the bar fight and manages to convince him to join Starfleet. Initially I had some reservations about Bruce Greenwood in the role of Pike, but he does a fine job. What happens with his character ultimately, as with all the main characters, is another matter entirely, however.

As we met up with Kirk as a young lad, so too is the case for Spock as well, who has a bad encounter on his home planet, Vulcan, with full-blooded Vulcan boys intent on tormenting him into showing human anger and emotion resulting from his mixed heritage. This is certainly consistent with what we already know about the character’s background and childhood, but what follows later in his early adulthood is not. These two principal characters—Kirk and Spock—meet in Starfleet Academy following Kirk’s having cheated on the Kobayashi Maru Test, which, as it turns out here, had been designed, or at the very least maintained by Spock. The original series and big screen features in no way indicates anything like this, and the writers rely here on vagueness and a lack of implication in those prior films to reach this contrivance. And while Kirk’s life up to this point has taken some very different turns than what he had experienced in the original unaltered timeline, Spock’s existence appears to have gone unaffected up to this point for the most part, seemingly consistent in both.

Here is where things begin to get hairy again, however, because unbeknownst to all, and what Kirk will shortly figure out is that Nero has lurked about quietly for the last quarter of a century and decides that it is now time to re-emerge finally. Another contrivance, and instead of taking a more logical course by having Nero’s ship disappear into the black hole that hurled him into the past immediately following the destruction of the Kelvin, only to have him reappear again twenty-five years later, with it being only mere moments to him and his crew, writers Robeto Orci and Alex Kurtzman choose to have them skulking around in the shadows for that period of time waiting for Spock to appear. One wonders why Nero’s crew would remain steadfast and loyal throughout all that time, and even though they’re Romulans, who like their Vulcan cousins have a considerably longer lifespan than human beings, it is nevertheless somewhat remarkable that Nero and his crew show no signs of age nonetheless compared to how they look when they’re first encountered at the beginning of the movie.

Zachary Quinto does a fairly adequate job as Spock, but his portrayal is very different from Nimoy’s in the original series or the movies that followed. While we shouldn’t have expected nor hoped for simple impersonations by any of these actors in their respective roles, it’s more noticeable in Quinto’s case that the performance varies from his original counterpart because Nimoy is in the movie, which also serves as an unintentional reminder. Some of what Quinto does in the role is also very out of character, such as stranding acting First Officer Kirk on the inhospitable far side of planet Delta Vega (nice nod to “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” though seemingly inaccurate nonetheless), and damn near getting him killed as a result. And while the planet harkens back to the second pilot episode of the original series, where it was Spock’s recommendation to strand Gary Mitchell (who is nowhere to be found here interestingly enough) once he began developing superior god-like powers, and thereby endangering the ship, young Kirk is hardly the same kind of threat here in contrast, although events leading up to this perpetrated by Nero could be deemed enough for Spock to behave in a seemingly irrational manner. Nevertheless, it still amounts to a lot for Kirk to forgive once he makes his way back to the Enterprise.

It’s on Delta Vega that Kirk meets the elder Spock as he runs for his life from a giant predator into a cave. (I guess we’re supposed to chalk this “chance meeting” that defies astronomical odds up to “fate.”) From there the two meet up with Scotty, who, in addition to being awkwardly brilliant, is intended for comic relief more than ever before in the annals of Trekdom, which incidentally, no longer matters a darn anyway as previously pointed out. Upon their return to the Enterprise, young Kirk follows through on elder Spock’s instruction to expose Spock the younger as being emotionally compromised after the destruction of the Vulcan home world by Nero, and in doing so the writers blow an excellent opportunity to show the shrewd and cunning side of Kirk and his ability to outsmart Spock the younger at a critical moment by having Kirk remove Spock from command after his outburst instead of Spock removing himself. I guess they felt they were being true to the Spock character here by having him realize the extent to which he is emotionally compromised right away rather than it taking a little longer for him to realize it, but it would have provided a great distinction between the two characters had it been handled the way I just suggested instead, while also helping to illustrate why, of the two, it is Kirk who actually belongs in the command chair.

At least with The Wrath of Khan there was the strong sense of a continuing saga, with an old familiar foe coming to exact vengeance. Here, however, the villain appears out of nowhere, and with undo prejudice proceeds to wipe out all of established canon in the blink of an eye, basically telling longtime fans of the franchise of all stripes to just forget about all they’ve watched for the last forty-plus years because none of it matters any longer. (Should that be viewed as an appreciation of the fan base, or as a slap in their collective group of faces?)

The film’s climax, while exhilarating to many, was in many respects nothing we haven’t already seen before, which is why it fell somewhat flat for me, although points for showing the Enterprise firing scores of high intensity bursts, very atypical of what longtime fans are accustomed to seeing, are in fact well deserved. However, the movie ends on a note not consistent with the characters we have come to know, especially in the case of the elder Spock, who never would have stood for the destruction of his home world. The Spock we know would have convinced young Kirk to help him undo the damage that had been done by Nero by their going back in time to change a course of events that was never intended in the first place as evidenced by the original timeline (and deep down this is something Kirk also knows to be true from a much more personal standpoint). That’s just basic “Star Trek 101” – we’ve seen it many times before in similar situations, and the rest of the new Enterprise crew here would have agreed to help restore things to their natural order simply because it was the right thing to do. Kirk’s father need not have died in vain as a result, nor the six billion inhabitants on Vulcan, not to mention their future generations that had been deprived of ever being born as a result of Nero’s actions, none of which was ever meant to be. Genocide on a scale so massive that it is almost inconceivable is instead allowed to stand.

Star Trek has always been about hope –hope for mankind, hope for our future, but with that ending, hope is in very short supply and hard to come by …to say the least.
…And if it all really does take place in an alternate universe as Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman have been saying for the better part of a year at this point, they really should make that irrefutably and abundantly clear in the sequel so that there is no longer any doubt.

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