Aliens vs Predator - Requiem

It could have been my eyes, tv, or the dvd transfer- but I could hardly see anything in this movie except when seeing the predator vision. It's very dark, and there are many shots of glistening predators or aliens, and most of the action is very abbreviated. It's so abbreviated it seems like movie is completely bored with itself- the only sustained action sequence comes at the end with the Predator vs. Alien-Predator fight, everything else shows a few people or aliens getting killed and then cuts away to different characters. You would expect a few self-indulgent moments that really celebrate the coolness of the aliens or predators, but everything is cut short to keep the movie moving forward.

But forward to what? The humans aren't that interesting, there isn't much of story, just short moment at the end that continues the overall mythology. There is just lots pointless killing, very little real action.

Nuking the city by the military at the end is too much like Resident Evil. The military could take on the aliens in great enough numbers, the scene with the small National Guard unit is disappointing- they have machine guns and take out some aliens, but again we just get a lame cut-away to screams heard over the radio. I would have made a bigger scene of this, where the military takes heavy losses but gains the upper hand, but then the aliens do something unexpectedly clever to take them all out.

The female military character is sort of a Ripley analog, and the scene where she drives the Striker vehicle I was expecting to be a reference to Aliens but again the movie cuts to something else rather than show her crashing through the streets.

The only interesting thing in the movie happens at the very end- the delivery of the predator weapon to Ms. Yutani, of Weyland-Yutani. I think we are being led to believe that the development of instellar space travel and colonization is the result of technologies derived from that weapon, and some institutional memory of the alien contact remains until the events of the very first Alien movie. A third movie set in the future (where the whole series belongs) could restore both franchises, but this movie only made 40 million, whereas AVP made twice as much- it could be a while, or the next one will be lower budget, even straight to video.

Cloverfield

Before seeing this movie, I had a couple of guesses about what it was about: Blair Witch meets Godzilla (easy guess obviously, though they never clearly showed that there was a large creature in the previews), and that the monster was the head of the Statue of Liberty come to life (with the help of aliens and nanotechnology, or demons from hell).

In the featurettes there are numerous clips of the director asking the actors not to share anything with the world in order to keep the movie a secret, but there isn't really much to keep secret except for the monster designs. There is no explanation or big twists at the end to give away. But as for the monster design, the smaller creatures look sort of like the creatures from Tremors 2 (and Tremors is mentioned by a character when the party moves to the rooftop) or the bugs from Starship Troopers, or any number of video games- the larger creature I suppose is sort of original but still looks like a derivative creation that any art institute of whatever graduate would create.

The director makes a jab at the US made Godzilla movie from a few years ago by stating that he wanted to do an 'American Godzilla', but then the smaller creatures directly correlate to the velociraptor babies from that movie- the movie can't think of enough to do with itself with the big creature so throw something smaller in that is more easily killed. The invincibility of the big creature in Cloverfield makes it much less interesting- it could have survived the heavy bombing but should have been visibly damaged, or it could have survived more on wits by avoiding direct hits.

Pathfinder

Solid action for the first half and then the movie runs out of steam.

The name is problematic- a 'pathfinder' is someone who keeps watch for enemy ships?

The Vikings had very little motivation beyond wanting to kill people. Some kind of ulterior motive and characterization would helped greatly- why would they cross a mountain pass just to find some more villages? The obvious thing would be to make more of a personal connection to the protagonist, instead we get 'I knew your father' and nothing more. Other than that a desire for gold or natural resource, or to clear the way to establish a colony- even the killing could have been qualified by a spoken desire to return home with greater glory.

The other major problem for the movie is that the setting is very limited. There are the Native Americans, who look and dress one way, the Vikings, who are very distinct, and then either ice or snow forest and mountains. All of these elements are exhausted after 40 minutes, and then there is a slow and badly paced sequence where the protagonists are prisoners of the Vikings that lasts until the end of the movie.

During that last half, if there had been greater plot it could have been redeemed by having more interaction between the protagonists and the villains, something more than 'where is the village?' followed by 'this way' four or five times. They had to change the dynamic in the movie somehow, the guerilla traps sequences wouldn't have kept up for much longer.

Otherwise, the only direction to go would have required a greater budget for a large native vs. Viking battle scene- the first clue that this is not going to happen is when the one native and his raiding party are dispensed with quickly after falling into a trap meant for the other side. There are a lot of lower budget movies that start big with lots of people and a short way in kill most of them to allow for a more cheap movie that only has a few people on screen at any point. (I suspect the new Rambo is similar, or never even bothers with having a large group of people to begin with- none of the previews show more than three people in a shot).

Too many movies are about unifying against an enemy, I'm glad there wasn't a plot thread where previously bickering tribes had to be united- but the end battle necessary there would have been better than what was filmed.

The 'snowmobile chase' scene is pretty good, I would have had the protagonist sitting on the shield shooting arrows back at the sleds.

The movie seems similar to Conan with a shirtless muscled hero, but Conan at least had the setting where some new and interesting exotic locale was only a horseride away. Other comparable movies might be 300 or King Arthur, both which pitted smaller groups against large enemies. King Arthur even shared a scene where a bunch of the enemies are wiped out by cracking ice.

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles first and third episodes

I missed the second episode, I can probably watch it on Fox's site or bittorrent it or something.

This show is decent, I'll keep watching as long as it is on. You can't compare it to T2 of course, but hardly anything can be compared to T2.

I think Sarah Connor can be compared to Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor. The dissimilarities are both understandable but also disappointing. Sarah Connor wasn't supposed to be that sympathetic, I think she was somewhat crazy, and very damaged by both the events of the first Terminator movie and her stay in the mental hospital. Here, as the main character, she has to be attractive and be sympathetic, she's a concerned mother doing what's right.

The time travel machine in a bank bit wasn't that believable- the terminator's themselves are proof you can send back machines encased in flesh (or in the T-1000s case, something that looks like flesh- or did the 'liquid metal' actually become some pseudo-flesh?). An technician plus a lump of flesh with time travel machine inside would be more believable than reinventing the time machine in the late 20th century. I always assumed that time travel was something Skynet developed, and people didn't even understand it. But that was just the T1 timeline, now it's altered several times.

When Summer Glau has the bad terminator unconscious, why doesn't she smash it's head in, rip its eyes out, or something- she just uses it as a chance to gain a 90 second lead.

I don't understand why John and the Terminator have to go to school while they are on the run.

The third episode suggests that all AI developments lead to an evil Skynet, which reinvents the T-800 endlessly no matter how it came about. I think that is a little much, at the very most Skynet is always the result of the military giving control over to an AI. And it puts the characters in the position of having to destroy all technological advances in computer science, rather than just stop specific people and developments at certain points in time.

There should be more links to current developments in autonomous military vehicles- UAVs and driverless cars, that would be more interesting than chess computers in closets. The military will have to be encountered somehow.

The most obvious way to make this show really interesting is to introduce the future war- have parts of the story taking place in the post-apocalyptic future. Unfortunately instead of a wide variety of characters that would allow the show to have many different points of view there is just the three viewpoint characters- Sarah and son, and helpful Terminator. The name of the show itself doesn't help. Also, never in any movie have we actually encountered Skynet itself (though the comic books do go there).

I can only guess if we don't get future war or Skynet personified it is because the next movie will deal with them directly (maybe not
Skynet), and there are certain boundaries set on the show.

Guess- the female terminator is modeled after a future love interest of John Connor (perhaps Kate Brewster)- perhaps even a love interest killed by the terminators, and knowing this Skynet creates a series of Terminators to resemble her.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Many times better than the awful Resident Evil: Apocalypse in every respect, and maybe better than the first RE in a few areas but slightly inferior overall.

The movie and actors look really good, the action is great, none of the really shitty blurry slow-motion from RE:A.

I'd find Umbrella to be more believable if the men at the meetings were older. Iain Glen is the oldest of all of them and brings a lot, but his superiors should have had some grey hair and wrinkles also.

There are a few weak special effects:
The truck explosion is poorly composited with the compound.
The stretch armstrong tentacles of the Tyrant look bad- though the Tyrant itself is very good.
There are some weak shots of the crows

It's not clear why the planet has turned to desert- the simultaneous failure and destruction of all human industry maybe? They can have that and use that if they want. It's also strange that everything is desert, but then the protagonists journey to Las Vegas which is already desert now- I would think they would go somewhere where it would be more visually shocking to see something once lush and fertile converted to sand dunes.

I didn't like the minor characters that get a lot of development so their deaths are more meaningful- Oded Fehr's character deserves it but do we really need Mike Epps and Ashanti, and some random young girl and a computer nerd? The ending of the movie suggests a sequel that consists of Milla Jovovich and her army of naked clones (there might be some red dresses around somewhere), which would be awesome and probably all anyone really wants to see. The minor characters are especially stupid because even though they've apparently survived for a while against the zombies they still wander around in abandoned buildings by themselves so that they can get bitten.

The Road Warrior references are nice, but a good high speed car chase is missing. Couldn't Umbrella have some vehicles and zombie dropping helicopters and attack the convoy while on the road?

Some of the best scenes are all references to the first movie, which is interesting- you can make an okay movie, and crappy sequel, and then make a big deal about returning to the original and it seems brilliant.

Is there any way to get Milla Jovovich and Angelina Jolie together in a movie- Tomb Raider vs. Resident Evil? Or Tomb Raider: The Sixth Element? I would sign a petition to that effect, contribute some tens of dollars to the funding of that movie.



I think I'd like to own all the movies, maybe on Blu-ray or HD-DVD when I get a player and HDTV...