District 9

First Hit: Extraordinary film which had lasting effects about how one thinks about the human race and our actions towards ourselves and others.

It’s wonderful when a film defies and goes far beyond its trailers. For about two months I watched the trailers. Each time I wondered if I’d bother to go see it.

Something inside me kept knowing at me saying, “it might be more than you think”. In fact there is one scene in a trailer that stuck with me, it was one about the aliens not having the ability to go back home. This scene pulled me in because if aliens were able to land on earth and their space ship is hovering, and they can’t leave it, then the story might be interesting.

The beginning of the film gives enough information by using a reporter and news bulletin format so that when we’re dropped into the story we are not in disbelief about situation. The space ship is stuck a few miles above the city, and after an extended period of time of exploration and contact attempts, earthlings broke into the ship and found numerous aliens in desperate need of nourishment. To assist the aliens and keep them separate from humans, the government set up a walled refugee camp for them on the edge of Johannesburg.

Although the Prawns (as the aliens were called because they look like shrimp) started thriving, by having more children, they are trapped in this camp and are being taken advantage of by both the human race (who is experimenting on their bodies) and a small group of Nigerians who are running a strong-arm black market operation.

In retaliation, the Prawns wreck their own camp and riot from time to time. Sound familiar? It should, because this is what humans to do other humans as well. We take special groups of people and “for their protection”, create camps, special housing, and planned developments as a way to control their lives.

The main character Wikus (played by Sharlto Copley) has been promoted to lead the project to relocate the Prawns to a new location outside the city limits. The Prawns have been in their current location for 20 years and the city folk would rather have them leave, but as a second best thing they want them moved farther away from Johannesburg.

The plan goes awry when they attempt to oust a Prawn who’s created a way to start their spaceship, gather the remaining Prawns and go home. 

Copley was excellent as the lead character moving from a man with a slight attitude based on the position he was given towards a man with compassion towards the Prawns as he began to see how the actions of the government and corporation in charge of security were affecting the Prawns. As the film moves forward he teams up with a Prawn and together a bond is created. Neill Blomkamp directed and also co-wrote this interesting and powerful film. Although there are a lot of violent moments, the theme carries this film to a beautiful end.

Overall: This film was entertaining, thoughtful and violent. And, although the violence was pointed, the theme of compassion and humanity were the shining lights as the film winds to a beautiful end.

Star Trek

First Hit: A wonderfully satisfying film which fires on all cylinders and gives depth to the original television characters.

I’ll start by saying I was never a real trekkie or a Star Trek fan. I did like it enough to watch it from time to time. I did enjoy Star Trek Next Generation a lot more as the special effects and story lines were a bit more advanced. However, how did this story begin?

The previous Star Trek films tried to take off from the original TV series. This film, however, puts context to all of it. In the opening sequences, there was a lot of noise, visual effects, and destruction and I was caught a little off balance, but this was a set up from the past to give context to the time slice in which most of the film takes place.

Kirk (Played by Chris Pine) was born out of this destruction and it shapes his young childhood. The story then shifts to the story of Spock (Played by Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy) and his struggles as a half human and half Vulcan.

This film is about how the original crew, their skills and peculiarities come together to make up the “crew of the starship Enterprise” which could fulfill the mission of boldly going where no man has gone before. The enemy used to bring the past, the film’s present, and the future is Nero (Played by Eric Bana) who is a renegade Romulan who uses red matter to induce black holes to shift space and time for his benefit.

I won’t go any further into the plot but it is enough to say that the way Dr. “Bones” McCoy (Played by Karl Urban), Uhura (Played by Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Played by Simon Pegg), Sulu (Played by John Cho), and Chekov (Played by Anton Yelchin) are introduced and brought together was nothing less than wonderfully fantastic.

Each distinctly gets to demonstrate why they were the best person to be an integral piece to the Starship Enterprise.

The main writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman nailed the dialogue and scenes. Director J. J. Abrams eloquently put them together in a story that brings out each of the characters. Pine, Quinto, Urban, Saldana, Pegg, Cho, and Yelchin are perfect to their roles and as the dialog flowed from their mouths I laughed and cried with them. They made Star Trek come alive. Bana is great as the enemy and, although not as dynamic as a previous film’s Khan, he sets the right tone, mood, and power to let the Star Trek team come alive. Then there is Nemoy, I don’t know how they did it, but he fits within this film really well, and when the ending comes, his voice stating the mission of the Starship Enterprise will make me see the next installment.

Overall: This film was great fun. This film put context to the entire Star Trek TV series. This was one of the most satisfying prequels I’ve ever seen. It was a “sit back, let go and enjoy it” kind of film.

Knowing

First Hit: There are some very well done special effects scenes but other than that the story is very uneven and not very well told.

I must have been on a jag this weekend with science fiction adventures and kids being either extraterrestrials or invited to space.

In this film Nicolas Cage plays John Koestler, a professor at MIT, who has become disenchanted after losing his wife in a Arizona hotel fire. His son Caleb (played by Chandler Canterbury) has a hearing problem, wears a special aid that un-jumbles the words, and he misses his mom. Caleb’s school unearths a time capsule that was buried 50 years earlier.

Each of the children gets one of the envelopes, which were created by a former student. Caleb gets one by Lucinda Embry. While the other students get a picture Lucinda wrote two pages full of numbers. While in a drunken state John deciphers the numbers to determine that the numbers indicated when, where and how many people die in a major catastrophe during the last 50 years.

The young girl who wrote it predicted these events. However there are three events yet to happen so John decides to stop them. As he realized it is fruitless he also realized the last one predicts the end of the world.

However the saving grace is that his son and the granddaughter of Lucinda Embry are chosen to leave earth and start life somewhere else.

I don’t ever think I’m not watching Nicolas Cage. It isn't like he embodies a character. It is Cage reading another set of lines and in this film there is nothing strong or compelling about his character. I was impressed with many of the special effects. The plan crash and the devastation of the world was well done and impressive. Alex Proyas directs this film and there is very little exploration of the depth of the characters, it is all pretty shallow.

Overall: The radiation from a solar flare killing all on earth is a realistic phenomenon however this film does nothing to explore it.

Race to Witch Mountain

First Hit: A very poorly constructed film with little to give it any credence in reality.

I certainly don’t mind science fiction adventures; and count many of them on my favorite film list.

This film won’t make it to my top 100 science fiction adventure films and I'm not sure I’ll ever see that many. I didn’t see the predecessors to this film, “Escape to Witch Mountain” and “Return From Witch Mountain”, but due to their popularity I thought this one might be worth seeing.

The film is basically about two extraterrestrial kids who want to get back to their spaceship which is being kept by the US Government in the bowels of Witch Mountain. Once they get to the ship they want to go back home. The kids have learned to not trust humans and therefore part of the story is in the interaction with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Carla Gugino which help these young terrestrials see the good side of humans.

Johnson as a down on his luck cab driver never really seems down on his luck. There is only one scene to set up him being down on his luck and that's when he is in his residential hotel room. Gugino plays a scientist who has been kicked out of 3 universities because of her strange beliefs. The kids played by AnnaSophia Robb as Sara and Alexander Ludwig as Seth didn’t give any indication they were extraterrestrial other than the occasional tricks of levitation and molecular decomposition.

Overall: This movie felt a lot longer than it was and had very little to create any interest of any sort. The young man sitting next, who was about 12, kept fidgeting, and seemed uninterested in what was on the screen, I felt the same way, except I don’t fidget.

Push

First Hit: This film made very little sense and was confusing from the beginning.

Dakota Fanning is a wonderful upcoming actress and unfortunately she wasn’t able to make this movie very interesting.

What did take me slightly aback was seeing her in a short somewhat revealing skirt the entire film. This reminded me that she is starting to make a transition out of being a child actress. At the start of the film the audience must learn about people who have special powers.

There are “bleeders” people who scream so loud that they break blood vessels in others (why not themselves as well?), “movers” are people who can move and control things without touching them, “wipers” are people who can erase memories, and “shadows” who can hide people from being seen by “sniffers” and “watchers”.

This is where the confusion starts. In a few short minutes I have to remember the powers difference characters so that when they get introduced in the film I know what their special power is. Fanning plays Cassie Holmes, a watcher (people who predict the future) who is wandering around Hong Kong looking for a drug that was stolen from the US federal government that can help her mother.

Nowhere does this get explained well. She teams up with Nick Grant, a “mover” (played by Chris Evans) whose girlfriend, Kira (played by Camilla Belle) was someone the government experimented on with this drug and she lived. She also stole on syringe of this magical drug and now the government wants it back.

Sound confusing, well it gets worse so I won’t try to tell any more.

How all these young people ended up in living in Hong Kong was not explained and I kept wondering where they got their money to eat, sleep, and live. I’m not sure the director had much of a script to work with but the film seemed to move along quickly, then pause for a bit, and then move along again. So the effect was haphazard.

Overall: This was an aimless science fiction film which never seemed plausible. I’m sure the producers made it for teenagers and people in their early 20s. However, making sense of it would nearly be impossible for anyone of any age group.