Prometheus 3-D

First Hit:  Interesting concept, startling visuals, and a fairly good story but in the end not quite a great film.

I wanted to really love this film. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a good space oriented science fiction.

Given the previews and cast, I had hopes for this Ridley Scott offering. Hope emerged at the beginning with the archeological finds but soon it started a long slow fall. It was easy to link David (the android played by Michael Fassbender) to be a cross between "Data", "Spock", and "HAL" the computer.

Elizabeth Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (played by Logan Marshall-Green) discover a link of cave picture drawings that were dated thousands of years apart and painted by different civilizations. The drawings made them believe that humans were created by some other race that lived somewhere in space.

This leap of faith, sort of speak, wasn’t developed enough to have me come to the same conclusion, but I went with it. The long ride to the solar system where they believe the “Engineers” reside was on a great looking rocket.

All the crew including the scientists were put to sleep for over 2 years until they arrived at their location. The only one awake on the ship was David. The leader of the expedition was Meredith Vickers (played by Charlize Theron.

As expected, there is conflict on this ship because of differing agendas, and the question was; will they pull together when they meet their makers or the alien creatures? The highlights were the attention to detail in the alien planet, the cave, the space ships, Elizabeth’s surgery, and the visuals used to provide information to the crew.

The downsides include the long waits between interesting scenes, the lack of continuity and development of the story, and a redo of alien monsters that climb into people’s mouths to cause havoc (I would have wanted something new).

Rapace is very good uses her intelligence, even temperament and her athletic body to portray an interesting character. Fassbender is strong as an android even when he was just a talking head (see the film and you'll see what I mean). Theron is very strong as the conservative tough mission commander. Marshall-Green was mediocre as the other scientist. Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof wrote a script needing additional clarification and development. Scott directed some sequences with eloquence while others seem to lag and drag.

Overall: This film is nice in 3-D but overall it just didn’t carry the day and was mostly forgotten the following day.

The OSCARS and Other Notes

It is that time of season again and although this year wasn't an especially great year for films, a couple of interesting and outstanding "out of the box films" caught my eye: "The Artist", The Tree of Life" and "Melancholia".

On the other side of the coin, I'm grateful that the Harry Potter series has ended as they became painful to watch. And the Sherlock Holmes film was also very bad.

Some performances I would have like to have been honored but weren't would include: Michael Fassbender in "Shame", Kirsten Dunst in "Melancholia", Charlize Theron in "Young Adult", Carey Mulligan  in "Shame" (cannot give enough credit for her singing "New York, New York" as though she was standing on the edge of a cliff ready to fall at any moment), Christoph Waltz in "Carnage", and Albert Brooks in "Drive". 

Given the selected honorees by the academy, here are my picks for some of the categories:

• Best Picture: "The Artist"

• Actor in a Leading Role: Jean Dujardin in "The Artist"

• Actor in a Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer in "The Beginners"

• Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Williams in "My Week with Marilyn"

• Actress in a Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer in "The Help"

• Cinematography: "The Tree of Life" Emmanuel Lubezki

• Directing: Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist"

• Film Editing: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall

• Adapted Screenplay: "The Descendants" Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

• Original Screenplay: "Margin Call" J.C. Chandor

To all of you: Thank you for coming to my site and reading my reviews. The number of views has grown tremendously over this past year. There are now over 550 reviewed films and it is fun for me to post and read your comments.

May this new year bring on better films with new ideas tested and old ones enhanced. I know I'll be there in the 5th or 6th row center ready to suspend belief into someone else's story.

May you

Be Well...

Michael

Underworld: Awakening (3D)

First Hit:  This dark film had very few interesting or believable moments.

The other action woman based film I saw this weekend was this one.

Kate Beckinsale plays Selene a hybrid vampire and lichen. She is not fully trusted in the vampire group who hide underground. The lichens are also underground because the humans declared war on both sets of non-humans.

Yes, this is a lot to suspend belief on, and if the filmmakers, writers and directors did a better job of setting it up it might have worked better. They didn’t and therefore I sat there watching a darkly shot film with unbelievable action performed by someone who didn’t own the movements as her own. In other words, she wasn't authentic.

Yes, Beckinsale is good looking, her eyes are sharp and wonderfully contrast against the background, but I didn’t buy the premise that she was her character.

Eve (played by India Eisley) is Selene’s daughter. She’s unaware that she had this daughter. Yes, hard to believe but the setup is that while Selene and her former lover Michael (a lichen) were housed in chambers Dr. Jacob Lane (played by Stephen Rea) crossed them and created Eve. She was developed to provide new antibodies for lichens so that they don’t succumb to silver.

In essence this film is about a mother protecting her daughter.

Beckinsale, although very attractive, just didn’t emote the strength to be the heroine of this film. Rea was fine as the lichen Dr. Lane. Eisley was probably the best of the lot in her role as sometimes innocent and other times big time powerful monster. Len Wiseman and John Hlavin wrote a very week script while the dark direction was unfortunately led by both Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein.

Overall:  Pretty much a waste of 88 minutes and of course it is open-ended for a follow-up film.

TrollHunter

First Hit: At first it seemed like the film might keep a suspenseful believable air about it, but as it went on it became a more unbelievable. 

If I were to select a film that this film emulated in some way, it would be Blair Witch Project.

Here, we have a reporter Thomas (played by Glenn Erland Tosterud), his sound woman Johanna (played by Johanna Morck) and his cameraman Kalle (played by Tomas Alf Larsen) attempting do a story on some mysterious farm animal deaths.

However, they find themselves following a quiet strange man named Trolljegeren (played by Otto Jespersen) who lives in a beat-up trailer, which he pulls with a beat-up Range Rover. While following him one night in the darkness of the forest, they see flashing lights over a hill. Then out of the darkness, Trolljegeren dashes by them insisting that they turn and run.

They gather behind his Range Rover, he peels back the tarp covering the equipment on the roof of the car, and exposes lights mounted on the top. As the three headed troll approaches he turns on the high intensity lights and the troll turns to stone. Then grabbing a big sledge hammer he hits the trolls frozen rock like leg and the troll crumbles to the ground.

Now the young reporters are hooked by this newsworthy event. But, Trolljegeren is a member of a secretive part of the government and the existence of trolls cannot be shared with the public. The last adventure they have together is when the attempt to find and corral a super troll in the far north.

 Jespersen is better in the first part of the film when he is more illusive. Tosterud is OK as the lead reporter. Morck is good as the female crewmember with the right amount of bravado and fear expressions. Larsen is off camera most of the time, but displays a fair amount of fear. Andre Ovredal wrote and directed this film and made this unbelievable story almost work.

 Overall: This film started better than it ended but it was fun to watch and I was very curious as to how trolls would be expressed on film.

The Wolfman

First Hit: A waste of time and brought nothing new to this story.

Wolfman films have been done before, many times. The question one brings when seeing a remake film is; what difference did this film bring to the listing of previous remakes?

The answer here is; nothing. We’ve seen great transformations of humans to animals (in this case a wolf). We all know a silver bullet can kill the Wolfman. There is always a woman trying to save the Wolfman. Were the stunts (Wolfman running across the rooftops in London) convincing?

No, the graphics of the Wolfman running on all four legs was unconvincing. Were the ripping out of human innards amazingly done? No, and neither were the ripping off the heads of others. Was there any intellectual probing into the psyche of Benicio Del Toro and his character Lawrence Talbot prior to getting bitten and becoming a Wolfman?

No, nor was there much background on his brother or his brother’s fiancé Gwen Conliffe (played by Emily Blunt).

None of the performances were good, interesting or bold. The original story is good; this version by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self was pointless, they brought nothing new. Joe Johnson directed this with a very dark eye (dark as in the whole film was a grayer shade of black).

Overall: Do not bother with this film in any form. Try another version, maybe the 1941 version.