Serenity

Serenity (2005): Get your divas armed because what we have here is a space opera. Serenity is based on a cancelled science fiction TV series called Firefly! Is the movie industry really that desperate? I mean, all we seem to be getting these days are remakes of successful TV series and along comes this one based on a ‘loser’. Writer/Director Joss Whedon (writer of a number of successful TV series including the Buffy clan) continued to try and keep the series going via a big screen movie after the series cancellation and his persistence paid off. And the movie is one pretty good adventure too. I had not seen (or even heard) of Firefly but after viewing this space opera, will rent the DVDs of the series.

The movie has a number of logic holes but anytime you create a brand new universe, you are bound to miss a few details. It also has one of the most gentlemanly though deadly and vicious villains to rocket down the galaxy in a long while. Populated with actresses named Jewel, and Summer, much to my surprise, the entire cast does an excellent job, even old ‘Barney Miller’ alum Ron Glass. Throw in a bloodthirsty race of oddball humanoid non-vegetarian cannibals, a well meaning but forceful all controlling galactic government with a big secret and a group of space happy freebooters running marginally legal cartage services and you get a pretty interesting set of conflict resolution problems. Add a hypno-kungfuified, psycho-prescient, mind reading teenager and you can have a complex mystery with lots of explosions and shootings. Heck, the hero even shoots an innocent bystander and we didn’t take umbrage! (Well, the bullet absorber was about to experience a bit of a painful future as the main course for the cannibals so we gave the hero a pass on that one.)
If you can suspend your level of disbelief for a while, you can have an enjoyable two hours. Serenity is highly recommended for SiFi and action movie fans and may even interest you normal people out there. Come on, you know who you are. The movie is rated PG-13 for: violent landings, violent flying, violent ingénue, violent sarcasm, polluting cannibal hovercraft not meeting Federal CART standards, excessive parts falling off spaceships, and especially for the involuntary hari kari induced by the nasty villain.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005): This is a movie you will either love or hate. It is full of desiccant wit and wacky characters and rambles all over the galaxy. It seems that man is only the third most intelligent creature on the earth and that our lovely neighborhood is about to be destroyed to make room for a hyperspace bypass. The second-most intelligent creatures, dolphins, leave before it’s too late but man seems to be a bit dim about understanding their warnings, thinking they are doing back flips just to entertain us. I dare not divulge the identification of the most intelligent creatures on the planet or it will spoil the fun.

Based on the books, radio programs, and TV shows of the past, the movie tries to cram in a lot of detail in two hours so you can easily get lost if you aren’t familiar with the prior art. If you can keep your wit about you, it can be an enjoyable time and I had fun with it. If you liked Monty Python, The Fifth Element, or Galaxy Quest, you will probably enjoy this one. The movie is rated PG for: destruction of the earth, destruction of Arthur Dent’s house, lumbering aliens, dumb leaders, emotional gunnery, and for the excessive paperwork required by one of the ruling species.

Alien Hunter

Alien Hunter (2003) I only rented this movie because it stars James Spader and I knew an actor of his quality would never get mixed up in a crappy low budget Sci-Fi movie……on the other hand with all the computer generated effects in movies these days, perhaps the need for good actors is declining in Hollywood. It sure looks like old James up and took off for Buglaria or Yugo-sumfin over there in Balkinland somewhere. You can tell because 95% of the movie’s credits are for people with last names ending in OV.
In any event, this movie steals liberally from “The Thing from Another World”, ‘Alien”, “ET”, “Gilligan’s Island”, “The Andromeda Strain”, and other decent Sci-Fi flicks of the past. However, stirring this porridge into a coherent movie was apparently beyond the director and screenwriter’s ability.
The plot goes something like this: Somewhat discredited ex SETI scientist/professor (program to search for signs of Extraterrestrial life) with a history of having symptoms of the Clinton Intern Syndrome is sent to an isolated scientific base in Antarctica after signals are picked up from an object found buried in the ice flow. They somehow tie it all back to an incident in Roswell, NM years before and find a ‘pod’ that may contain an alien life form. The station is experimenting with cloned crops and has an ‘under the ice’ farm growing corn, wheat, and other veggie stuff. One of the crew is a former student that was doing unauthorized sheet research with Spader back in her good old undergraduate days. She is now sheet researching with one of the other macho corn growing scientists and irrational jealousy quickly erupts, along with the pod, aliens, viruses, nuclear attacks, and other minor distractions.
Now I admit, if you are trapped in an isolated scientific station in Antarctica with a rival for your girlfriend recently arrived, an alien running loose, a mysterious lethal virus spreading rapidly, a Russian sub about to launch nuclear missiles on your location, and being told you can’t leave…..well I might lose a few marbles myself, but some of the characters go straight from reserved scientists to loony tune paranoids, or run for your lives at all costs cowards in a nanosecond. Some of the characters are just not believable and that is the main problem with this movie. It could have been very good with better character development but misses the mark. The movie is recommended only for Sci-Fi fans and is rated R for: Violence, dissolving humans, excessive wilting corn, gooey glop from the pod, unwise wise men, high cast mortality, and for the outfits the female scientists wear while fertilizing the corn.

Nautilus

Nautilus (1998) Well, you have your submarine movies, your end of the world movies, your time travel movies, and your kung-fu movies. With Nautilus, you get ‘em all in one low budget package. You don’t have to search the video racks for each genre, Nautilus has it all, a real time saver. It seems that while drilling into the earth’s core to tap a new source of energy, a series of violent earthquakes and explosions are set off, destroying the ecology and in a hundred years or so in the future, mankind is battling extinction. Now if things are that bad I don’t know how they came up with this super duper time traveling submarine but let’s not look into the plot assumptions too closely.

The Nautilus is sent back to stop the final drilling from tapping the core. Here is another little problem, since they only have a little time to stop the project, why didn’t they go back a little farther in time and give themselves a little more time to stop it so they would have a little more time to get there in time. Is this making sense? This is usually a problem with time travel movies.

Mix in an evil profit hungry industrialist (now there’s a new concept in movies), a far too single-minded and violent group of tree huggers, a kung-fu learned security chief hired by the industrialist to protect the oil rig they are located on, a navy team trying to neutralize the Nautilus, and you have several groups of people working at cross purposes. And that is the best part of the movie; at times you are not exactly sure who you should be rooting for to win!

The US Navy takes its lumps and everything works out in the end for most (but not all) of the cast. This is not a good movie but there are many far worse at the video store and how many of your friends can say they’ve seen the best time traveling submarine – kung-fu – end of the world movie ever made. The movie is rated R for: lots of killing, destructive and murderous ecologists, dumb scientists, excessive plastique bombs, not enough time, loss of a US submarine and a couple of fighter jets, cheesy sets and for the usual paradoxes that crop up in all time travel movies.

Silent Warnings

Silent Warnings (2003) It’s a good thing Mel Gibson hit the mother lode with his ‘The Passion of the Christ’ flick otherwise he might be seething mad about this rip-off of his ‘Signs’ movie. Yep it’s basically the same plot set in possibly the same corn field if ‘Signs’ was filmed in Buglaria, Yugo-somthin-or-other, or one of them other ex-commie countries. The big difference is this one has no budget, no big name actors (well if you don’t count Billy Zane and one of the minor Baldwin brothers) and no fancy crop circles. These are just round so you know the director had squat for special effects. He just couldn’t match old Mel on fancy crop circles by professional tractor drivers. Apparently, Buglarian farmers only drive in circles.
Once you get past comparing this to Signs and just accept the movie for what it is, you may get a few thrills and chills. Very little actually happens until the end, but it didn’t seem that way while watching the flick and the characters are a bit more sympathetic than in most movies of this type. There are the usual ‘gotchas’ to make you jump and in general they are done in an above average style.
The movie has the same illogical plot as Signs such as why on Earth (or Mars for that matter) would aliens broadcast where they are going to land when they come to invade us by making hay in the fields if you will.
The young cast is serviceable and screams very well. There are the required naughty bits and sufficient slaughter to keep most fans amused. The ending is a bit forced and doesn’t really come to an end, but seems to work. The movie is rated R for: brief ingénudity, multiple human deaths, multiple alien deaths, excessive shotgun pelletry, plot illogic, creepy indoor scarecrows, and for the lack of fancy crop circles in a movie about crop circles.

Happy Accidents

Happy Accidents (2001) Here is another engaging small independent movie that never made much of a splash at the multiplexes. Looking at the jacket, your only clue that this is a ‘genre’ movie is the tag line “Sometimes the future is better than it used to be.” Our story concerns a pretty girl (Marisa Tomei) who has no luck in finding a decent guy to date. The term ‘all men are pigs’, tends to fall towards certainty whenever she goes on a date. She eventually meets Vincent D’Onofrio who appears to be a nice guy and she starts dating and falling for him. Now this guy is a little off center and has problems with lots of normal everyday stuff so we are always looking for the kicker in his story. Eventually he breaks down and tells her he’s from the future but her shrink tells her he’s a genuine loony tune. Ya just can’t tell fer sure; from his behavior and to boot he says he wants to protect her from dying in an accident very soon. Now we have the problem of not only is he a bit loose on cannons but could he be dangerously delusional to boot? What to do, what to do, and that coincidentally is the plot of this little piece. This is another good small movie and would get a higher rating but loses points for lack of any car chases, shootings and knifings. Oh well, if you can stand interesting characters and a modest science fictioney plot, this may be for you. The movie is rated R for: I’m not really sure why, it seemed PG to me.

Evil Remains

Evil Remains (2004) This probably should have been called ‘The Texas Chainsaw Nightmare on Friday the 13th Street’. It steals liberally from all those better done movies. Or it could have been called ‘Little Talent Remains’ which would have been a more accurate description of the goings on behind the camera. ‘Battling Illogic in the Bayou’ is another more appropriate title that comes to mind or it could also have had a more literal title of ‘Man Wearing a Dog’s Head Kills Everyone’ but I suspect the moguls responsible for this classic wouldn’t buy that one. We are once again visiting that charming mythical land of the dead teenager movie. Believe me, almost everyone gets it in this one and the explanation for all the offings is a bit fuzzy. There is the traditional mumbo jumbo about slave abuse, civil war atrocities, and stuff like that causing some sort of curse to fall on an old New Orleans plantation. In addition, twenty years ago, the lame brain son living there killed his parents and ‘apparently’ died in the fire but his body was never found. If this sounds familiar, you are correct. This plot device must have been used in approximately 172.4 movies so far. (Some were so bad you couldn’t count them as a whole movie.) Throw in some cockamamie curse where people go nutzoid when living in the house and you have an excuse to kill everyone without the need for any logic in the process. Is it the kid that survived the fire wearing a dog’s head (Whom he strangled prior to offing his folks.) or are the somewhat unstable teens succumbing to the curse and killing each other. Frankly, I didn’t give a patooty, it just didn’t make much sense. To be fair, the young cast emotes well and actually shows some acting skills but the lack of rationality in the script kills their performances. However, there are sufficient ghastly murders to keep you low lifes out there happy. The movie is rated R for: excessive bear traps, really big bear traps, rabbit traps, girl traps, multiple sharp shears, bleeding walls, multiple bumps going in the night, excessive bumps going in the day, irrational teens, irrational homicidal maniacs, irrational plotlines, and for the really unimaginative ending.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) It’s hard to believe this father of modern horror movies is now over 30 years old. I obtained a copy of the recent DVD release with remastered sound and picture and found that I did not remember a lot of the movie’s details. (That’s probably a good thing for continued mental heath.) Surprisingly, I found that only one person is actually chain sawed (in a wheel chair to boot) and the preferred instrument of terminal inducement is the short handled sledge hammer. Who knew? Prior to this movie, most horror films had about 60-80 minutes of slow build up and then 20-30 minutes of terror. Director Tobe Hooper reversed it with 30 minutes of build up and 60 minutes of unrelenting terror. This is also one of the best ‘dead teenager’ movies ever made and kind of wrote the specifications for that genre.

The movie made Tobe Hooper’s career but Tobe never made another flick quite of this impact. According to the commentary channel, when the lead ingénue’s finger is supposed to be cut so the semi-dead loony grandfather can suck on the blood, the prop tubing with fake blood didn’t work so the actor playing the lead loony (Leatherface) took the protective tape off the knife and just cut her finger on the next take. That’s low budget filmmaking at its finest? But in fact, there is surprisingly little blood spatter shown in the movie, but there is a lot of screaming and running, and chainsaw swinging. If you have never seen this classic and have a bent to be bent, give it a try. The movie is rated R for: Multiple dismemberments, girl on a hook, girl in a freezer, chicken in a cage, two jumps through glass windows, multiple screaming, multiple running, multiple mesquite forests, multiple loonies, multiple sledges to the forehead with great effect, adjustable wrench to the forehead, multiple inbred former slaughterhouse employees, questionable sausage quality, and for the poor survivor who must be asking herself if it was worth it all.