Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and language Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy Theatrical Release:May 21, 2009 Wide Box Office: $65,316,217 Synopsis: In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against...
In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, Jane Alexander, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jadagrace Director: McG Screenwriter: Michael Ferris, John Brancato Producer: Moritz Borman, Derek Anderson, Victor Kubicek, Jeffrey Silver Composer: Danny Elfman Studio: Warner Bros.
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of stylized violence and action, some sexual content and brief nudity. Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins Genre: Action/Adventure Theatrical Release:Dec 25, 2008 Wide Box Office: $19,781,879 Review : Out in the blogosphere you frequently run across invocations of Godwin’s Law, which can be paraphrased as stating that sooner or later every argument will come around to a Hitler analogy. A similar axiom, applied to Hollywood, would stipulate that every movie star must eventually dress up in a German war uniform. This is not the review of “Valkyrie,” by the way, a film that upholds this rule with respect to the special case of Tom Cruise. I’m just trying to figure out why, somewhere in the middle of “The Spirit,” Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson arrive on screen decked out in swastikas and jackboots. Nothing in the logic of the film explains it, but then, to use the phrase “the logic of the film” when talking about “The Spirit” may be to take the “oxy” out of “oxymoronic.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller’s sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all. The most plausible answer lies in its pedigree. Eisner, who died in 2005, is worshiped by aficionados of what he called “sequential art” for his graphic brio, literary flair and naughty wit. For his part Mr. Miller occupies a special spot in the modern geek pantheon as the author of high-gloss comics and graphic novels like “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” “Sin City” and “300.”
Though he was involved in the film adaptations of “300” and “Sin City,” “The Spirit” marks Mr. Miller’s first solo effort as a director, and his bold visual style is not well served by his clumsiness as a cinematic storyteller. The movie seems to be trying to combine a knowing, winking sense of pop-culture history with an embrace of the more soulful aspects of that history, but the result is a talky, pretentious stew of film noir poses and crime-fighter clichés.
Mr. Jackson and Ms. Johansson at least seem to enjoy themselves, which is their prerogative since they are the villains. Gabriel Macht, who plays the fedora-wearing, skirt-chasing, undead hero (a former policeman brought mysteriously back to life as a vigilante), works hard to give off an air of hard-boiled insouciance. Unfortunately whatever natural charisma he may possess is disguised by his hat, his mask and the murky shadows of the mise-en-scène.
What is most striking about “The Spirit” is how little pleasure it affords, in spite of its efforts to be sly, sexy, heartfelt and clever all at once. Or perhaps the movie flounders because its multiple ambitions are fundamentally at odds, like the various femmes, fatale and otherwise, who do battle for the hero’s heart.
The 108 overstuffed, interminable minutes of “The Spirit” yield exactly two memorable moments: when one of Mr. Jackson’s genetically engineered minions (all played by Louis Lombardi) appears as a tiny, hopping foot with a head grafted on to it, supplying an odd, creepy morsel of Surrealism; and when Eva Mendes, playing a character called Sand Saref, sits on a copy machine and presses the button. She produces what may be the only true-to-life image in the movie, as well as the most interesting.
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Jaime King Director: Frank Miller Screenwriter: Frank Miller Producer: Deborah Del Prete, Gigi Pritzker, Michael Uslan Composer: David Newman Studio: Lions Gate Films
Rated: PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence. Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy Theatrical Release:Dec 12, 2008 Wide Box Office: $79,136,963 Reviews : Long after we are gone, science fiction movies about our impending extinction will instruct whoever comes next that we were a strange, neurotic species indeed. We could not — cannot — get enough of fantasies of destruction, meant at once to inflame and soothe our fear of vanishing altogether, whether through war, ecological catastrophe, disease or alien invasion. We know we have it coming, and a movie like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” either in its 1951 version or in the “reimagining” that opens Friday, invites us to feel fleetingly bad about that even as we are encouraged to laugh it off. The laughter — at the earnest reckoning occasioned by a weary-looking extraterrestrial and his giant robot; at the panic and distress their visit provokes — serves as a necessary balm. Like other overwhelming emotions, the fear of apocalypse becomes more palatable when it is turned into camp. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The old “Day,” made early in the atomic age, has long inspired this kind of laughter. It has also, in part because of its expressive, shadowy black-and-white cinematography, retained a measure of haunting, unsettling weirdness.
Any hope that the new “Day,” directed by Scott Derrickson from a script by David Scarpa, might also someday rise above its pulpy, corny, somber silliness rests mainly on the shoulders of Keanu Reeves. Those shoulders are perfect for filling out a dark, narrow suit, just as Mr. Reeves’s deadpan basso and permanently perplexed features make him an ideal Klaatu, as the space visitor is called. Klaatu’s job is to assist, calmly and methodically, in the extermination of the human race, a task he tries, with evident fatigue, to explain to his hysterical, violent would-be victims.
Only one will listen: Dr. Helen Benson, played with a bit too much ennui by Jennifer Connelly. Helen, an expert in astrobiology, is part of a team of scientists taken into government custody by force when a giant orb seems about to crash into the Earth. Instead it lands in Central Park, disgorging that giant metal Cyclops robot (a near replica of the one from the earlier movie) and poor Klaatu.
The secretary of defense (Kathy Bates, with Hillary Clinton’s demeanor and Sarah Palin’s hair) responds with military force, which only speeds the process of humanity’s annihilation and demonstrates that our executioners may have a point. We’re such a brutal, dumb, incorrigible life form that the only way the planet can survive is if we’re no longer on it. (In 1951 the case against us was mainly pacifist. Now the anti-militarism has a more urgent and explicit ecological dimension.) A metastasizing swarm of metal bugs — the best special effects in a movie that often looks cheap and bedraggled — is dispatched to eat us and everything we’ve made, or at least everything on the New Jersey Turnpike.
But wait, Helen pleads. We can change! To provide evidence of this transformative potential she takes Klaatu to see her mentor, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), a scientist who listens to Bach and was awarded a Nobel Prize for “altruistic biology.” Apparently this is the Swedish Academy’s euphemism for pimping: the good doctor’s advice to Helen about how to approach Klaatu is to “persuade him not with your reason, but with yourself.”
Still, any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And “The Day the Earth Stood Still” could be worse. Its scenario and many of its scenes feel ripped off rather than freshly imagined — why do aliens always seem to end up in New Jersey? — and the relationship between Helen and her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), does not quite add the necessary element of heart-tugging sentiment.
After “Wall-E” and “I Am Legend” and the dozens of apocalypse flicks since the last “Day the Earth Stood Still” we can surely do better. Even Klaatu looks bored and distracted, much as he did back when we knew him as Neo.
Synopsis: A remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL follows astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) as she is unceremoniously plucked from her everyday life... A remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL follows astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) as she is unceremoniously plucked from her everyday life with her stepson (Jaden Smith), and whisked away to consult the government on a top-secret matter. That matter happens to be the arrival of a massive glowing sphere in Central Park, accompanied by a towering robot-like protector dubbed Gort and an alien ambassador named Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), who takes up human form to communicate with the people of Earth. When Klaatu finds himself faced with hawkish, uncompromising officials, he goes on the run with Benson and her son as the fate of the world gradually becomes clear. Directed by Scott Derrickson (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE), this reimagining of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is fairly reverent to the original film, while adding a number of 21st-century elements, most notably a darker tone embodied by a more threatening Gort and the chilly, contemplative Klaatu, who is portrayed with pitch-perfect remove by Reeves. While the film--and the fate of humanity--rests on Reeves's shoulders, the cast is impressively filled out by Connelly and Smith, along with Kathy Bates, John Cleese, and familiar TV actors Jon Hamm (MAD MEN) and Kyle Chandler (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS). Derrickson also tempers excellent special effects with a bleak color palette and plenty of existential turmoil, making this EARTH a thoughtful and fascinatingly moody blockbuster. [Less]
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler, Kathy Bates Director: Scott Derrickson Screenwriter: David Scarpa Producer: Erwin Stoff, Paul Boardman, Gregory Goodman Composer: Tyler Bates Studio: 20th Century Fox
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and language
