Nyx_Selene Reviews

Dead in the Water (2018 TV Movie)

Old time hysteria on the CGI seas

[3/10 · 29 January 2019]

An icebreaker with an all female crew tracks down ships doing illegal fishing, when they come across a man floating in the water. After rescuing him, they realize he's infested with a parasite not seen before. At the same time, the ship's engine has failed, and the two mechanics onboard only have hours to fix it before a major storm hits. But here the real problems of the ship are revealed: The crew members. It has zero medical staff, apart from a medical school flunky who breaks down under any kind of pressure. One of the mechanics breaks down into hysterics at the news of a storm coming and starts waving a rifle at her mates.

There's an abundance of sobbing, screaming and breakdowns, and a near complete lack of planning, discipline and rational thought. Apart from maybe three or four of the crew, these people are very far from the kind who belongs on a ship. On a three months long journey on the open seas, Joe and Jane "I crack under pressure! Better you all die than me! Wah, I want my mommy!" aren't just nuisances - they're a danger to everyone.

I see a lot of reviews saying that they really should have had some men on board. Not even half an hour into the movie, I was thinking the same thing, and as a woman, that upsets me. The movie has a bit TOO much of the old "poor fragile women need men to handle things" stereotype, with added bonus of "women aren't team players". Don't get me wrong - there are a fair share of male, equally ill-fitted characters in other movies, but they're usually better organised, and they don't scream, sob or break down so much. And there's usually not so many of them in the this type of movie.

The story otherwise is un-original and uninspired, I feel. The out-of-the-blue "parasite must be from the Mariana Trench" was just unnecessary. It's a tired cliché at this point. We know close to nil about the larger part of the oceans. We have no idea what sort of creatures we've yet to encounter anywhere, so this "anything unknown must be from the Trench" thing is rather cheap.

I, Frankenstein (2014)

Utter crap

[1/10 · 31 August 2014]

I was half expecting to see Uwe Boll's name show up in the credits, but apparently he's not the only one who can make movies this bad. I hardly know where to begin...

The movie's supposed to be about Frankenstein's monster trying to relate to present time, while being caught up in some war between demons and gargoyles. As if this wasn't bad enough, the main bad guy is some demon prince looking to animate corpses so that his fallen demons can possess the bodies, AND he's launching his operation in the exact same town his enemies' stronghold is located in; A town that is either empty or inhabited by people who don't care about anything, since flying gargoyles and raining fireballs isn't enough to make someone even look out a window, let alone get a camera and start posting on YouTube.

The re-animation process as applied to humans is almost completely unknown, but some crafty "scientist" only needs to read Victor von Frankenstein's hitherto missing journal once to be able to make things work.

Isn't it a stroke of good luck that old Victor, born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, wrote his entire, personal diary in English? And the thousands of corpses gathered together by the demons, hanging from some rusty kind of hell's steel mill - isn't it helpful how they all have a display showing the re-animation progress in percent, even though the process itself is on a "first try, we've no idea if this is going to work" basis? Mere seconds after having told the "scientist" (if you watch the movie, you'll understand why I choose to use the quotation marks) that the only thing a re-animated corpse is good for, is having it possessed by a demon, the bad guy kills her friend, says: "Now you'll have to re-animate him, if you want him back" - and she does it. She tries to re-animate thousands of demon meat-suits, only to bring back one guy, so he can become a demon meat-suit.

The sheer dumbness of the script ends up being slightly entertaining towards the ending, but that's all the entertainment there is to get. The characters are shallow, there'd be no time to connect with them even if they weren't, and the actors seem less interested in this movie than I am. The action is not only boring, it's repetitive copy-paste. The demon make-up is so unoriginal, that the masks might as well have been bought at the local costume shop and... that's it. That's what you're getting.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

A sensual take? I think not.

[3/10 · 3 January 2014]

Story: Blond girl is betrothed to blacksmith, but in love with woodcutter. They all live in a village plagued by a man-killing wolf. A priest comes to lend help, and informs them that their wolf is in fact a werewolf, which means that the killer is one of the villagers. The question becomes, of course: Who?

The scenery in this movie was beautiful most of the time. There were some blatantly fake-looking scenes here and there, but all in all, the movie depicted a forest I wouldn't mind having in my back yard. It had a breath of eerie fantasy about it, which was perfect for the story.

The story itself could have been better, but still held a few surprises, all the way to the near end.

The presentation of the characters, on the other hand, left much to be desired. The priest/wolf-plague expert was... strange, and under-developed, and to have him show up in shining armor in some scenes felt ridiculous. Little red riding hood herself did a decent job, but her two suitors were too obvious in every way to my taste. The woodcutter suitor was not only the only person in the entire village dressed in black - his hair was also so over the top waxed and stylized that it became a distraction. It felt like every step had been taken to scream "notice him!" at us, save writing it on his forehead. He also had a red piece of cloth hanging by his belt, and red riding hood had... well, a red riding hood, so they simply had to be a match made in heaven. Blacksmith suitor whatshisname was on the other hand not only the skinniest blacksmith, but also one of the most bland characters, I have so far seen. I even had trouble remembering his face between scenes, so while woodcutter was all but painted in neon, his rival blended into the background so perfectly I hardly noticed him. This might have been done deliberately, but it took most of the drama out of the love triangle.

The overall acting was sadly not that good - or perhaps it's the directing that wasn't good. It's hard to say, but a lot of the lines were read completely without emotion or any kind of consideration for what the characters had been through, should feel or what was going on around them. A few scenes in the movie actually felt emotionally disjointed; like they were the continuation of something we hadn't been shown.

The wolf, when it finally showed up, looked okay, but when it started talking, I started laughing.

Prometheus (I) (2012)

It's bad, plain and simple

[2/10 · 5 February 2013]

Meet the crew that must have been assembled by the lowest bidder, with a captain who's a crap pilot in need of "all the help (he) can get" to take them across some thousand billion kilometers of space to find what some woman chooses to believe is the creator of the human race. By the time they get to the designated planet, they find some remarkable structure at first glance, and when they get to it, they remove their helmets, since the carbon dioxide level looks okay. Never mind all kinds of airborne stuff there could be.

They find a stone panel full of goo, play a bit with the goo, and then go on to randomly press buttons until something happens. After a while, they encounter an alien corpse, by which time the biologist is too bored to do anything, and the geologist, although standing in a rocky tunnel on a foreign planet, concludes that there's nothing there for him to do since he likes rocks. They are now standing on dirt and gravel with worms crawling in it, but they do not take any samples of these. Instead, they take a severed alien head back to the ship and start poking it until it explodes, on the thesis that electricity can trick a presumed nervous system, in a life-form they know squat about, that's been dead for 2,000 years, into thinking it's alive again - whatever that would do for a severed head.

Back in the tunnels the biologist, who couldn't be bothered with a well preserved corpse, discovers an alien cobra-like creature that simply pops up out of black ooze. He gets incredibly happy about this and attempts to play with it. It's okay, he's a biologist who knows about these things. Oh wait, it's an alien and it breaks his arm and melts the face of the geologist. It's a bit different from your average little snake then. Who could have guessed? The soulless robot on board has now started experimenting on his own, by mixing some alien goo into a crew-mate's drink. Said crew-mate soon starts noticing worms in his eyes. If it was me, I would have run screaming to the nearest doctor, but this guy doesn't say a word until he collapses while looking for the snake victims. Although he looks like a zombie and is clearly infested with something strange, the doctor in charge of the "fail-safe" quarantine procedures insists on bringing him back on board the ship since "he's sick". No sh*t, Sherlock - he's changing color! A more cautious crew-member has to torch the guy, since no-one else seems to care about safety. Not until then the doctor starts thinking along the lines of "hey, maybe someone else has been infected too".

The doctor (and by now I'm thinking that "doctor" must be her first name, 'cause it sure as hell can't be a title) has actually been impregnated with an alien squid thingy by her infected now-dead boyfriend, but will not hear of being frozen until some actual surgeons can remove it from her body. (Who takes on a quadrillion mile journey without any kind of medical personnel, by the way?) Instead she finds some sort of automated surgery machine, presses some state-your-problem-buttons and voilà! The machine cuts her open, lifts out the squid and staples the skin (never mind all other tissue) on her stomach back together, and she's ready to go again. In fact, she's ready to run a marathon and jump hurdles. The thought of telling anyone she's had an alien squid-baby doesn't cross her mind, and no-one is interested in knowing why in the hell she's covered in blood and has a fresh surgical cut across her abdomen. Instead, they're going to go say hello to the one surviving member of the alien creator race left on the planet, so that the old fart who funded the expedition can hopefully cheat death.

For no apparent reason, the crap pilot/captain is convinced that the creator race came to the planet to create a biological weapon, and a closer (probably first too) look at the scans of the tunnel shows the outlines of an alien space ship. After this… actually, f**k it. It just keeps on being stupid, and everything in the ending just happens to make sure this movie can be connected to Alien in some way.

All in all, it's so bad that I'm wondering if Ridley Scott actually made this himself, or if he just gave the project to some interns.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Average horror flick, but no Silent Hill

[4/10 · 2 February 2013]

I can somewhat understand the 1 star votes, because while this movie is a bit entertaining as a mediocre horror flick, from a Silent Hill standpoint it's closer to terrible. It has its scares and slasher moments, but it lacks that eerie, impending-doom feel of the games. Where the games let us piece the story together from clues and events throughout the game-play, this movie blurts it out in character monologues - not only too soon, but also clumsily. Silent Hill, to me, is supposed to be mysterious and indefinable, but the movie is all for over-explaining things.

I'm a big fan of the games, but even taking that out of this, "Silent Hill: Revelation" feels too short and too rushed. It has decent actors, but nothing has really been done for the characters, save making their looks as close to their game counterparts' as possible. The clothes and hairs are spot on, but sadly also the only things I can use for character descriptions.

Beauty and the Beast (2012–2016)

The beauty and the what now?

[6/10 · 29 October 2012]

I was very patient and watched three episodes of this. I think I gave it a fair chance, but it just got worse and worse, and the pilot wasn't exactly intriguing.

Story: Girl and mom are attacked in a parking lot. Mom is killed, but girl escapes, gets chased, and ends up being saved by mysterious stranger. Nine years later (I think) the girl is an NYPD cop, still obsessed with mom's murder. She happens upon mysterious stranger again, and he turns out to be a fully licensed doctor, a soldier and, according to all records, dead. In truth, he's in hiding. He was part of a military experiment gone wrong, and the only survivor of the ensuing clean-up. The experiment was meant to create the perfect soldier, but whenever the subjects had a rush of adrenalin, they became "monsters".

This was my first problem with the show: The "beast" isn't a beast at all, nor is he a monster. He is in fact a boy-band cute, surfer dazed nice-guy. When he becomes an adrenalin-monster, this just means his voice gets a bit deeper, some veins in his face a bit more distinguishable, and he just might punch some guy who really deserves it. The police girl finds at least six cases in which she can prove that he helped or tried to help the victims, so for the life of me, I can't find any reason to see this guy as a beast. Neither can the police girl, as she rushes over at the end of episode 1, to make a teary-eyed proclamation of what a monster he absolutely is not.

Episode 1 ends with an overly cheesy voice-over by beauty, telling us that they'll have to "save each other". It was at this point I realized exactly what demographic this show is intended for, and how far I am from being a part of it.

The three episodes I've seen all involve some sort of cases for beauty and her cop partner to solve, but it's all too clear that these cases – even to the writers – are just unimportant and tedious time-fillers until the next time beauty can run to beast to nag him about solving her mom's murder, so that he can tell her to let it go and then follow her around, wait for her to get into trouble and then save her. It's hinted that the military experiment and mom's murder are somehow related, but even the hints are sloppy and poorly executed, in a "yeah, yeah, yeah, let's just get it over with" kind of way.

All in all, the show feels forced and uninspired. Maybe it's made by people who couldn't care less, or maybe it's just written by someone who doesn't understand pacing at all. I don't know, but I do know that the end result reminds me of a school play of the awkward, embarrassing kind. The "beauty and the beast" concept usually centers around seeing past someone's looks to find his inner qualities, but I doubt that they'll manage to squeeze something even remotely as deep as that into this. I can't imagine how they'd incorporate such an idea either, since the writers are so far expecting us to accept the beastliness of beast on the basis of "cause we say he is!".

So… "How brave is your love?" Good question. How much bravery does it really take to get a crush on a boy-band cute doctor and all around nice guy, who goes around helping people in need? Tough one...

Dark Shadows (2012)

Finally a love story worse than Twilight

[2/10 · 18 September 2012]

I never thought I'd write that, and it pains me to write this about a Tim Burton movie, but it was just bloody awful. The intro fast-forwards over events in the 18th century that transform the rich and successful fish business owner Barnabus Collins into a vampire, and shows us how he was sealed in a coffin and buried by an angry mob. When he wakes up about 200 years later, we are introduced to the 1970's Collins family: A charming bunch of quirky people, from the weird daughter to the alcoholic psychiatrist.

It was set up for comedy to come, but there the fun sadly ended, and was replaced by endless, brain-numbing dialogs and colorful montages, followed by a deus ex machina ending.

Most jokes are forced and the pacing erratic, but the biggest flaw of this movie is that it's absolutely impossible to find any kind of cohesive plot in it. Is it about restoring the family business? No, wait, maybe it's about the struggle between Barnabus and the witch that turned him into a vampire. Might be about Barnabus trying to become human again with the help of some unexplained procedure done by the alcoholic. No, apparently it's about the love story between two people we don't even hear talking to each other until 1,25 hours into the movie, but who 20 minutes later can't live without each other.

Honestly, it's so nondescript that I can't even write a coherent review about it. It's not funny (apart from some scenes you see in the trailer), it's not dramatic, not scary, not romantic, and the characters sure aren't going to captivate anyone. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but the end result is a boring mess; more of a patch-work of desultory scenes than a movie.

The Thing (I) (2011)

A monster movie like many others

[5/10 · 24 April 2012]

"The Thing" (2011) is for all intents and purposes the prequel to the 1982 version with the same name: It tells the story of how Norwegian scientists on an Antarctic base find an alien craft, as well as the alien, buried in the ice. They recruit a paleontologist, his assistant and his grad-student to help with the recovery of the alien, which they bring back in its frozen state to the base. There, somehow, it wakes up, and I think it's safe to say that it didn't come in peace.

I am a huge fan of Carpenter's version from 1982, but I won't compare this movie to that one, other than saying that the two are very similar in style regarding the visuals, which I consider to be a good thing. The 2011 ending also connects to the 1982 beginning in a good way.

Other than this, the 2011 is by no means terrible, but it is little more than your average monster movie. It's hard to call it scary, but easy to call it yucky, because it doesn't rely on tension or people - it relies on CGI. This seems to be very common today, so I wasn't surprised, but still a bit disappointed that the creators didn't try harder. They attempted to mirror elements from the 1982 version, but this felt forced to me, like they had a checklist they were just working through. I do love that they gave the movie some authenticity by hiring Norwegian actors, and having a lot of the lines read in Norwegian, but then again, was very disappointed by the lack of character in the characters. We never really get to know any of the them; not who they are or what they do. They are merely names shouted in heated situations; as the plot elements, no more than points to be checked off the list.

The alien gets almost more screen time than the actors, and measures were taken to make it as hard on the stomach as possible, but the art of boring is the art of saying everything, and this movie says too much. It makes me wonder why a shape-shifting organism would so openly make such a ruckus, given that perfect imitation and stealth must be the greatest tactical advantages one could have. It also sacrifices mystery and horror for cheap jumping-out-from-around-the-corner-scares.

All in all, I wish it had aimed higher; at horror movie instead of monster flick, because the potential was there.

The Last Airbender (2010)

Shouldn't have been made at all

[2/10 · 19 April 2012]

I've never seen the cartoon, so my review is based solely on the movie – which I thankfully saw with a Rifftrax commentary. I don't think I would have seen the whole thing otherwise. Spoilers ahead, by the way.

This movie's world is divided up into four nations: Fire, Earth, Air and Water. From what the movie shows me, I can conclude that the Fire Nation are all Indian warriors and douchebags, the Earth Nation are peaceful Asians, in touch with nature, the Air Nomads were Asian monks in touch with nature and the Water Nation are a peaceful Caucasian/Eskimo mix found in icy territories.

The story is that the Avatar – who's role in the world is to communicate with the spirit world; to what end I'm not sure about – went missing 100 years ago. During this time the Fire Nation has started a war against all other nations, but I'm not clear on why. They knew that the Avatar would be born into the Air Nomads, so they slaughtered all the Air Nomads (10+ years AFTER the Avatar was born). I can't really figure out how, since the airbending Avatar sort of kicks the asses of all firebenders, and it baffles me why they'd do it, since no-one later tries to kill the Avatar himself. "There's no point. You'd just be reborn again," is their explanation. So why were they killing the Air Nomads to begin with? Was it to prevent him from learning airbending? No, I think not. He was already trained, and it's also apparently fully possible to learn bending from scrolls, that seem to be kept here and there.

The Avatar, Aang, is found frozen in ice by an asthmatic, naive girl called Katara, and her dorky brother Sokka (these were the first impressions I got of the two), and they bring him to their village in the southern Water Nation. No sooner do they do this, than the outcast prince Zuko from the Fire Nation comes ashore and threatens to torch the village if Aang doesn't come along to his ship (some metal monstrosity spewing out thick black smoke, ensuring the Fire Nation's position as hate-worthy enemy of nature). Aang escapes with the help of Katara, Sokka and a flying creature, and goes back to his Air Temple, only to find everyone he once knew and loved dead. No time to waste, though; onwards, to start freeing villages in the Earth Nation! Aang is once again captured by the Fire Nation, but this time by the king's constantly confused-looking commander Zhao. This must all along have been known to Zuko, because mere hours later, he shows up in disguise and frees Aang. Zhao of course suspects that the masked warrior was indeed the prince, and goes on to whine to the king about the prince's incompetence, despite the fact that said prince just thwarted the commander's entire company.

And speaking of icy territories, our three main characters now move on to the northern Water Kingdom, ruled by a white-haired young princess. Sokka and the princess become friends (and more) right away, or so we're told by Katara's narration, and that's that for relationship development. The Fire Nation soon shows up – Zhao to start a war, Zuko to sort of fly under the radar and kidnap Aang himself, with the help of his uncle Iroh – a former general in the king's army. Zhao's invasion of the city starts with a soldiers-on-battlement scene lifted straight from the battle at Helm's Deep, and continues with a lizard riding scene cut almost directly from Star Wars III. This didn't ruin anything for me, however, because the movie wasn't that good to begin with.

Some stuff happens later: Zhao kills the Moon Spirit (which is a koi). Even though Iroh could have stopped him, he doesn't, save trying to talk him out of it. The princess sacrifices her own life to bring the koi back, making it possible for her people to win against the Fire Nation. But in the end, Aang is the one who sends the Fire Nation running, and by this point Zhao has died in battle (sort of) and Zuko and Iroh have fled the scene.

The movie as a whole comes across as amateurish, rushed and packed with plot-holes and disturbingly close up close-ups. The special effects are okay, I guess, but the movie is still full of impossibly slow elemental attacks, that no-one nevertheless manages to avoid, and it's never hinted as to why everyone needs to do an entire martial arts exhibit to "bend". The acting is all around unimpressive and most of the dialog is cringe-worthy.

Edit: Have now seen the cartoon, and will from here on never think about this abomination of a movie again. Recommend Shyamalan be whipped from here to Aberdeen for this crime against cinematic history.

I Am Number Four (2011)

Worse than I expected

[3/10 · 22 March 2012]

and nothing I haven't seen before. I'm sure a lot of tweens will be content drooling over Alex Pettyfer, but I'm growing weary with this plot line.

Alex Pettyfer here plays John – a young human-looking alien (seriously, why can't we be invaded by aliens who don't look human for a change?) with very inhuman powers. He is one of a number of aliens meant to grow up to be protectors. They each have a number, and can only be killed in sequence, and they each have a warrior protector themselves – probably because their powers don't manifest 'til they're well into their teens.

The aliens trying to kill them off look like… well, take a Romulan from the new Star Trek movie, give it gills and a complete set of small, pointy teeth, and there you have them. They travel along with some pets, that look like the mini-versions of the giant Cloverfield monsters. I kid you not – there's nothing overly creative about alien/monster design here.

The movie mainly shows John going to school, and falling in love with a blond girl. Only towards the ending do we get a bit of action, when the villains finally catch up with our good guy, but not even then did I feel tension or excitement. Not only because it really takes most of the excitement out of a movie when the major villain sounds retarded (to no surprise, since they're so stupid it's embarrassing), but also because I've seen this so many times now. The story is always about a teenager, who always acts like an idiot, who's always prepared to let the world go to hell rather than stay away from the teen crush. I know that our understanding of consequences isn't fully developed until we're about 20 years old, but the choice between saving the world and answering a text message should be a no-brainer for most people. Not for these dopes, though. Not until they've gotten their protector killed anyway – which they always do.

The effects weren't bad, but that's the only good thing I can say about this very boring, unoriginal movie.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

The best part was the THX logo

[1/10 · 10 October 2011]

"The Final Sacrifice" has been called the movie that is 100% deus ex machina. Well, here's the TRILOGY that is 100% deus ex machina. Words cannot describe how terribly bad this movie is, but an easy summary, is that every single thing in the movie, is the exact opposite of what would make sense. It is also another perfect example of what happens when movie-related merchandise becomes the goal of movie-making, instead of a bi-product.

First of all, Anakin is all grown up, Amidala is a senator, Palpatine is chancellor, we're told that Anakin is Obi-Wan's apprentice and C-3PO and R2-D2 are around, so the first movie didn't need to be made at all. This is practically an all together new story, and everything worth mentioning from episode one could be squeezed into the first five minutes of it.

Second of all… well, everything. Amidala knows that someone's trying to kill her, but does nothing to hide. She constantly resides near the biggest windows she can find. A shape-shifter assassin shows up, but tries to kill Amidala using bugs. The Jedi meant to protect Amidala both chase after the assassin, but instead of just shifting shape and going back to finish the job, she tries to kill the Jedi instead.

To protect her, they send Amidala back home, with Anakin, who's obviously in love with her, but is forbidden to love anyone. (Does anyone know why that is? When Yoda said that the Force was "strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned" to Luke, I got the impression that the ability to use the Force was somewhat hereditary. But since the Jedi can't have families, according to the new trilogy, this ability is completely random. It doesn't at all explain why it would be strong in an entire family, or why Anakin's or Luke's children would automatically get it.) She takes him to the most romantic place imaginable and walks around in practically no clothes at all, while telling him how impossible his love is. Now, I may have used my looks to get some free drinks, but hell, I've never been THAT cruel. But she falls for him anyway, because he… talks about sand. And kills an entire village. And whines about Obi-Wan pretty much non-stop. And he acts like a 10-year-old. And he constantly stares at her creepily as hell. Know what, Mr. Lucas? This is the kind of guy women usually get restraining orders against. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes to a town that looks almost exactly like Cloud City. Were they built by the same contractor?

They end up on some bug-planet, where they fight bugs, useless robots and Count Dooku. This is probably meant to be a big, spectacular Colosseum-like arena scene, but it's so cluttered you can't even see what goes on in it. There are so many light-sabers in it, though, that had it been darker, I'd have guessed rave party.

The idiotic things relieve each other in this movie, and so do the game-hype sequences. There are high-speed chases that are ironically at least 20 minutes too long, then some crap in a factory that reminds me of 80's platform games, and there are light-sabers EVERYwhere, all the time. I'm willing to bet they use them as reading lamps too. I won't count, but the light-saber shots probably make up more than half of the movie. Apparently, people can hardly even get dressed without using a light-saber. In the original trilogy, this was the coolest weapon ever. In this movie, it's so over-used it's about as exciting as a flash-light.

The fact that this is what's spat out of the computer when George Lucas can bring to the screen everything he can imagine, makes me start wondering exactly how awful a film-maker he really is. After all, it's now more than clear that everything amazing about the original trilogy must have been thanks to other people. In fact, the only other name that comes to mind when watching crap of this magnitude is Uwe Boll. I could have said Ed Wood, but I won't, because while Ed Wood was god awful at nearly everything cinematic, at least he had heart and cared about his stories.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

Probably Uwe Boll's best

[2/10 · 3 October 2011]

...which is why I give this a whole 2/10, because don't get me wrong; this might be surprisingly good, given who the director is, but it's crap by all other standards. It's not "holy crap, I'm gonna slit my wrists" bad, which is usually the case with Boll's movies, but more of a "yawn, I need more coffee" kind of bad. It was truly too boring for me to concentrate on, but I got that the story is about an evil magician who's trying to take over a kingdom. He takes a farmer's wife along with some other would-be slaves, and kills her son, so another part of the story is the farmer trying to get his wife back. Oh, and he becomes a hero, of course.

There's soldiers, magic, some sort of monsters, dryads and other things here, so hey... a lot of fantasy elements. However, the action scenes are outdrawn and repetitive, editing is terrible and the pacing is equally bad. Practically everything in the movie meant to come as a surprise comes at the wrong time, and all the characters are horribly shallow and uninteresting. When it comes to the soundtrack, I can't remember it, so I guess it was neither good nor bad. Some other commentator called the special effects "top notch". I'd say they're average.

I don't really feel like wasting more time on it than this, so I'll sum it up with as few words as possible: Uninspiring. A fair 1,2 out of 10, but I'm feeling kind today, so 2.

The Dead Undead (2010)

Here's a vampire flick that is best forgotten

[2/10 · 10 July 2011]

I don't know what this movie is trying to be, but what it isn't, is good.

The story is that in a town of cow's-blood-drinking vampires, mad cow decease has started spreading, resulting in a gang of zombie vampires. The not-zombie vampires chase after them, to kill them. A couple of teenagers end up in the middle of it, of course.

These teenagers will start out screaming over a mouse running over the floor, but will later show remarkable complacency about blood spraying from gunshot wounds. When the owner of the motel they're staying at starts acting weird, one of the boys in the group even grabs a shotgun from his trunk at goes on to shoot complete strangers in the head, without so much as making a face.

When the vampires show up, they turn out to be average, middle-aged guys who've filed down their fangs to blend in. One of them even writes an advice column in a magazine - can you believe it? Their weapons of choice are fully automatics with too little ammo, but the gun shooting scenes nevertheless drag out for so long that they end up being sleep inducing. Nothing special happens during these "action" scenes, except that a bunch of middle-aged guys shoot their guns a lot.

In the end, vampire Jack and some blond girl are the only survivors. A new group of not so sissy vampires show up and save them, and one of them - some old friend of Jack's - says that he's found out how to revive fallen vampires. Everyone is happy about this - even the blond girl, despite the fact that all of her friends died painful, horrible deaths.

Eragon (2006)

Maybe it's cool if you're a kid...?

[2/10 · 17 March 2011]

Note: Spoilers ahead.

"Eragon" is about the young idiot Eragon, who lives in Hobbiton.

…Okay, maybe not, but his home looks a bit too much like it for it to be coincidental. In fact, the entire movie looks like the sets came from a LotR yard sale. Some of the opening scenes as well, sadly. I've never heard an evil king open with a line like "I suffer without my stone", though, so that's new. He does so because it was stolen from him, by people who've "been carrying it for as long as we can remember". I don't get it.

Anyway, Eragon is a 17-year-old farm boy who finds this blue stone/egg, and it hatches into a blue, telepathic dragon that grows up in about 2 days. Because of this, the evil king wants him dead, 'cause the king went through a lot a trouble killing off all dragons except his own, so he's not really happy that there's a new one. By this point, Eragon's uncle gets killed by something resembling chirping shrubs, and his cousin has run off to avoid being drafted, so the poor guy is left with the dragon as his only friend and family.

However, a local bum turns out to be a former dragon rider, so he takes Eragon under his protection, and they go on a quest to find the freedom fighters "the Varden", to mobilize against the evil king. Now that a naive brat has a dragon, victory against the king's army is more or less guaranteed, you see. During the trip the older, wiser rider tries to teach the younger, dumber one some valuable lessons, but since Eragon is an idiot, he gets his teacher killed. How? Well, he dreams about this 13 years older stranger-girl who's being held prisoner at an enemy stronghold. Of course, he needs to go save her. Don't know why, and I don't know why he thinks he's the perfect person to do it. He nearly gets them all killed.

They eventually find the Varden, who turns out to be Africans, Scots and who knows what, since they're dressed in gold chain-mail and silk burkas and live in Minas Tirith… – sorry, the mountains. These people make absolutely no sense to me. What are they supposed to be? They're hiding among mountains after having fled from the king's army, and unless their leader is immortal, they can't have been there more than 10-15 years. Still, the upper sections of the "hideout" are delicately cut directly out of the rocks, but the lower ones consist of mud, and wooden poles tied together with rope. People are dressed in the most colorful and intricately patterned get-ups possible – preferably in expensive materials too. Except for the Scots, who're paranoid enough to wear armor 24-7, it seems. Who the hell are these people? Why do they think their clothes are more important than their defenses? They run into battle in long green-pink-yellow skirts and so much bling they make more noise than the invading army. Is all this explained in the book? I haven't read it.

Moving on, they're all attacked by some tattooed guys, and the king's army. Why I can't fathom. There's at least 24 hours between the enemy forces finding the Varden, and the actual attack. Why doesn't the king just fly in with his dragon and torch the lot as soon as he finds out the location? Then there'd be him, his dragon, his army and his sorcerer against a 17-year-old and a newly hatched dragon. I'd prefer those odds, if I were him.

But no, he leaves the dragon safely at home, and sends the army instead. An army that apparently consists largely or partly by the forced and unwilling, since the king drafts people from every village. They're lead by the sorcerer, Durza – who is, by the way, the only interesting thing in this entire movie. An army of oppressed, drafted people, set up to fight against freedom fighters… I wouldn't trust that to go well, but maybe Durza has some Jedi mind trick to keep them from deserting.

Moving on again, Eragon's dragon picks this exact moment to grow up enough to breath fire, and they save the day. They also kill the sorcerer, sadly, making sure that we'll have that much less to keep us awake in a possible sequel. Not that I expect that anybody will be making one anytime soon.

The movie mostly just feels stupid. The acting is really bad in most places, to the extent that I've seen better among 14-year-olds in live role-playing games. The all around plagiarizing of Lord of the Rings doesn't help, even if the almost-Balrog in the end looks nice. And I have nothing against Rachel Weisz or her voice, but why does Eragon's dragon sound like his mother? Especially when you just KNOW that the king's huge, black, bad-ass dragon is going to sound like Darth Vader?

So yes, maybe it's cool if you're a very young kid. I'm guessing they're the targeted audience anyway.

Session 9 (2001)

I get it - I just don't like it

[3/10 · 17 January 2011]

To summarize, this movie is about six guys working to remove asbestos from a shut down mental institution. One of them finds tapes containing old interviews with a woman, who had multiple personalities, and starts listening to them. Meanwhile, the usually calm, reliable family man in the group seems to be working his way up (or down?) to a nervous breakdown.

The asylum interior is kind of spooky, and there are some truly beautifully eerie shots here. So eerie, in fact, that the movie inspired the "Silent Hill 3" creators, among others. "Silent Hill" does this good, though, while the movie had me struggling to stay awake.

The idea is okay, but the production painstakingly slow and predictable. A couple of other commentators claim that this movie is brain candy, but my brain got bored after the first 10 minutes and decided that it wasn't needed to figure this one out.

Here's where I start spoiling the movie - including it's ending - so if you don't want to know it, stop reading right here.

There are some key things that completely ruins it for me: The crew takes on a job that should take three weeks, but they promise to make it in one. This makes a good setting for a stressed environment, a good reason for family man Gordon to really snap, and it could have helped build suspense. But we never see them stressed. We hardly ever see them working. Instead they seem to take a lot of breaks, eat a lot of lunches, happy-go-lucky Hank goes sight-seeing in the basement, and lawyer-to-be Mike spends a lot of time listening to old tapes. So the general air is never pressed or tense - it's drowsy and lazy.

We're constantly following the interviews between a doctor asking what happened "that Christmas", and patient Mary (with alter egos Princess and Billy), who refuses to answer the question. Apparently Mary saw or did something bad in her childhood, and has suppressed the memory. The answer seems to lie with third alter ego Simon, but he doesn't want to show himself. It would have added a bit of mystery, had it been interesting.

During one of many lunches Mike explains a procedure to make people more docile. It involves a long nail, and the loss of an eye. "Recommended cure: Sunglasses." All of a sudden, sight-seeing Hank finds a long nail, he meets a mystery man in the basement, and when he appears again, he's very docile and wearing sunglasses. It's so easy, it had me face-palming. The only thing we're left with now, is trying to figure out if the villain here is stressed out Gordon, or his work-mate, intense Phil. Not exactly a tough one, since A) Gordon, like Mary, is very secretive about what's making him feel bad, and B) Gordon is shown spending time both in Mary's old room and by her grave. It doesn't take a genius to understand that they're supposed to have something in common.

As it, in the end, turns out that Gordon has killed not only all his work mates, but his wife and child as well (and suppressed the memory), we are also finally introduced to Simon, who is given the role of background noise. I'm guessing he's the darkness in the human soul, because he describes to the doctor how he made Mary kill her brother and their parents. When the doctor asks why he did that, he answers: "Because they let me, Doc," with a manly and very cliché smug-villain-voice, which is too bad, because it takes all potential scary out of it. Feels like an alter ego of Mary's should sound like Mary, and I might have been scared if the voice had had an air of playful childishness.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

I like it, but I can't help noticing

[6/10 · 29 October 2010]

This fourth installment in the "Terminator" series tells the tale of how John Connor meets Kyle Reese, as well as the story of accidental (?) murderer Marcus Wright, who is executed in 2003, but somehow wakes up in 2018, unknowing of why, how or of what has happened to him. In the ruins of Los Angeles, he is saved from a T-600 by Kyle Reese and the mute girl Star, and after that joins them. By accident they overhear a radio broadcast from John Connor, and decide to find him, to join the resistance.

They find a filthy gas station filled with cowards, and while there, the Terminator answer to the Iron Giant finds them. Mysteriously, no one hears it coming, leading to it being lovingly nick-named "the Sneak-o-bot" among my friends. Once it's broken through the roof, it starts making one hell of a lot of noise, though. The robots have that going for them: They only make a sound when they're on-screen.

Some action later, Kyle and Star are taken by Sneaky, and Marcus joins resistance pilot Blaire, heading back to HQ and Connor. He earns her trust by taking out a gang of rapists threatening her. However, HQ is surrounded by magnetic mines, and when they cross the minefield, a mine goes bang. *gasp* Turns out, Marcus is a Terminator, too. Only he didn't know he was.

The rest of the movie is to no surprise about Connor and Marcus working together to free Kyle from Skynet.

Now, to what I can't help noticing: It seems Marcus is only absurdly strong when he knows that he's a robot. Remember the firefighter that couldn't even budge the T-800 in "Terminator 3"? Marcus throws a T-800 around like a beach ball, but somehow manages not to maul the rapist gang to bits during their fight.

Every terminator in the movie is explicitly trying NOT to kill Connor and Kyle. Every robot Connor encounters seems fully satisfied with throwing him around a bit. It is made clear in the movie that the order is to kill both of them, so how hard could it actually be to just grab their necks and squeeze? The robots have so many chances of killing them both that it's ridiculous, but none of them do. Well, except for the last one, who runs a metal bar through one of Connor's lungs, so that Marcus can nobly offer up his own heart and die. (What, you think there's another reason? Do tell.) I thought a heart transplant required finding a perfect match regarding blood and tissue types and then post surgery going through a special diet and eating medicine to prevent the body from rejecting the new heart, but I guess Marcus is the organ donor equivalent of the one-size-fits-all garment. Otherwise, putting his heart into John Connor would be about as effective as shoving a T-800 fuel cell in there.

By now, I guess you think I pretty much loathe this film, but I actually like it. I can watch it over and over again, even if I can't put my finger on the reason why. It's predictable, and the script leaves a few things to be desired, but it's pretty well made, rather well cast, the action is okay and the scenery and special effects are good. The often ominous score is very much fitting, and composed by one of my personal favorites, Danny Elfman.

All in all, entertaining.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

ONE good movie in this saga, is that too much to ask?

[3/10 · 29 October 2010]

This is by far the best of the three Twilight-movies yet released. It's more amusing and nicer shot than it's prequels. But is it good? Nah. The Twilight movies are actually something as unusual as book adaptions so bad, they've made me dislike the books. And I used to LIKE the books.

But regarding "Eclipse": It depicts Victoria's attempt at getting revenge on the Cullens, by creating her own personal vampire army (or at least platoon), but the main focus is on Jacob and Edward, trying to out-do and outplay each other like hormonal little teenagers, all in the quest for Bella's love. Don't ask me why, 'cause I honestly can't fathom why anyone would like this girl. It's funny, but fact is, Jacob acts like a brat, and don't expect movie-Edward to be anything like novel-Edward. This is not the strong, secure 100+-year-old vampire from the books, but a mopey, uncertain tween, that has me wondering just what about him is supposed to be attracting to us. I can't help thinking that a guy who still hasn't gotten over the self-consciousness issues at 100+ years, probably won't… ever. He's supposedly telepathic and very fast, but has now managed to get his ass somewhat to completely handed to him in 3 out of 3 movies, so this guy is clearly not fit to protect anyone either. If he was all standing between me and danger, I'd arm myself to my teeth or run like hell.

Our female protagonist (also my main issue with this franchise) – though she does a better job in this movie than in the prequels - is still pretty much a hollow, emotionless shell, with less of a personality than my laptop. I can't see "Bella" anywhere, just Kristen Stewart failing to act. This is an "actress" with a range of 2-3 facial expressions; I prefer to describe them as bored and vacant, while my male friends consider her to look perpetually stupid and horny. Maybe that's why they like her...

The rest of the cast do a decent enough job, we're given some new insights to some of the Cullen family members, but the action is quite boring, and the decision to make the vampires fully mobile while whole, but made of stone when broken, is rather incomprehensible, and makes them seem like porcelain dolls; fragile and very, very breakable. The first movie states that the only way to kill them is to rip them apart and burn the pieces, but in this movie, they just break into a heap of stone shards. How they manage to burn is beyond me. Heck, how they manage to MOVE is beyond me.

As a tween sort of high school-comedy, Eclipse works. It'll even have you laughing at some points. But it doesn't really work as anything else.

The Final Sacrifice (1990 Video)

This is so funny!

[1/10 · 9 April 2010]

Oh dear, oh dear…

So, the story of Ziox... maybe: A long time ago, an advanced civilization known as "Ziox" prospered. The people started worshiping an evil idol, so the regular god/gods were angered and punished them through forces of nature, causing their main city (or ONLY city, as it were) to be swallowed by the earth. The survivors continued to live alongside humans and… and by this point I'm just guessing.

Here's the story of the movie: Seven years ago a guy was shot by a cult of supposedly, maybe Ziox-descendants. What we know for sure, is that the cult consists of ski mask guys in tank tops, that they're led by the black-clad Satoris, and that I start laughing every time I see him.

In present time, the shot guy's skinny, teenage son Troy for the first time rummages through his dad's old stuff, and manages to find a folder marked "ZIOX" in 4 inch letters. It's filled with what looks like kids' drawings, and according to dad's notes, one of them is a one-of-a-kind map leading to the sunken city.

Cut scene to anonymous hobo trying to start his truck in some dusty place. It won't start, and we never get to see hobo's face, so this scene is only in the movie to establish that the truck's crap, I guess?

In the meantime, and also for the first time in seven years, the cult manages to find out where the guy they shot lived, and comes looking for the "map". Luckily, Troy has a bike (no, not a motorcycle, a regular ten-speed bike), so he outruns both the cult and their car, and ends up in the back up the crappy truck. We now get to see hobo's face for the first time, AND... he's a flabby, mustasched drunk. As if this wasn't bad enough, he's named Zap Rowsdower. (Is there anything that says "hero" like a fat drunk called Zap Rowsdower?)

By sheer coincidence, Zap is one of the two humans in the world, or at least Canada, who know about the cult, so they talk a bit about it. The crappy truck breaks down somewhere, and what do you know – when Troy goes to get water, he finds stones that look like they're marked on the map. This is just a few minutes walk off the main road, and after a few minutes more, he (and Zap, who successfully ran after him without getting a heart-attack) finds a tunnel. Down it, there's some remnants of the Ziox civilization (?), and what I mean to say by that, is: Holy crap, those are cheap sets! Ugly, ugly papier maché. But expert Zap concludes that the tunnel "must have been dug hundreds of years ago". Guess that's the reason why everything's so untouched by time and nature down there.

Anyway, while they're into finding stuff, they find a cabin belonging to Yosemite Sam's older brother. He greets them with a shotgun, but no worries: When Zap for the first and only time calls Troy "McGreggor" instead of "Troy",by another sheer coincidence, Yosemite turns out to be the OTHER of the only two humans who know about the cult - as well as Troy's dead dad's old friend.

Now that all is well, the shotgun is put away, and Yosemite mutters out the history of Ziox, and how Troy's dad revealed the place of it and whatever. Oh yeah, by now we know that Zap was one of the cult, since he's a "half-blood" – which means Ziox people weren't human, or perhaps just not Canadian. Not sure what makes up the other half. Troy takes out the map and by drawing four lines on it (of which two are unnecessary), Yosemite marks out "the exact location of the city" - on a map that's never even been near according to scale. Oh, well...

Next time we meet Satoris, he's taken Troy to the place of the evil idol – which can probably be seen from the road, by the way. Rumour has it that a human sacrifice will bring an undead, invincible army, which Satoris wants to get in order to take over the world. Very original... Zap comes too, without doing any actual searching for the place, so I guess the map really WAS exact. He finds a grappling hook just lying around and tries fighting Satoris. He's crap at it, but it doesn't matter since Troy shoots Satoris in the back with a shotgun, that was also just lying around. Satoris bursts into flame and the idol falls down for some reason, and the sunken town magically shows up again - all clean! The ski mask guys go to the town and Troy and Zap ride into the sunset in the crappy truck, after a heartfelt embrace.

Catwoman (2004)

Wow... This is awful

[1/10 · 12 March 2010]

So timid little female worker overhears evil plot, gets killed by people, gets revived by cat and then starts playing dominatrix, wearing a small amount of leather and the most unpractical shoes imaginable. She starts moving in a way that's probably meant to resemble the lithe, graceful lurk of a cat, but to me makes her look more like a paranoid squirrel on drugs.

The acting is all around bad, the action boring and the story laughable. An evil cosmetic company? Honestly? A bad facial cream? Was that the best they could come up with for a story? I'm baffled.

This movie will most likely remain on my personal "Bottom 10"-list.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

The least bad of the worst

[3/10 · 12 March 2010]

After suffering through episode I and II, this movie sadly holds no surprises for me. I start watching, and after the nowadays apparently mandatory game hype sequence, once again I'm thrown straight into a scene I know nearly squat about. Before I've even had a chance to let my own fantasy make up for the missing bits, the screen starts filling up with all kinds of crap and before I know it, I'm suddenly in the middle of some sort of action. Don't really know why – don't really know what these people have done to get to where they are, but everything's moving fast and the not-so-special-anymore effects and comic relief count have already hit a six digit number, so there's really no time to try to figure it out either. Then there are some fights, count Dooku dies and a big space ship crashes, and after that, the story finally reconnects to one of the threads left hanging at the end of episode II. Although that just means that Anakin Skywalker meets up with wife Padmé Amidala and finds out that she's pregnant.

Senator Palpatine, a.k.a. Darth Sidious, starts really working hard to manipulate Anakin (in a way so obvious they could probably see it from space) and Anakin's just the kind of gullible idiot to fall for it – despite being a very intuitive Jedi. The rest of the Jedi order however seem to be really suspicious of their young colleague, so they decide to monitor him and look into why he's so popular with senator Palpatine. Only they don't; they do absolutely nothing. In the meantime, the biggest evil conspiracy in history is taking place right under their hundreds of Force guided, future-seeing noses. (One Sith is able to fool hundreds of Jedi, but the dark side isn't stronger, huh?)

After that, everything goes downhill, with the slaughter of Jedi, the rise of the Empire and the rapidly growing… insanity, I guess… of Anakin. Darth Sidious is exposed for what he is, and Yoda sets out to destroy him. During their fight, he falls down a couple of meters, but since the Jedi can jump very high, very fast he gets back up again and finishes what he started, since Jedi know no fear (path to the dark side, remember?). No, wait… he gives up and runs for it. And here I thought killing the Sith should be a very good reason to risk your life…

In the mean time, Obi-Wan is busy fighting Anakin during an endless, passionless, but very well choreographed encounter, that anti-climatically ends with him chopping off his pupil's legs and remaining arm.

"You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!" he cries, before leaving his old friend burning and melting on a gravelly hillside.

I might be wrong, but if you were to hand me one Sith and a whole bunch of Jedi, and then tell me to balance them up, logically I'd have to add a whole bunch of Sith, or decimate the number of Jedi to one. Balance is when the dark side and the good side are equally strong, right – or mutually powerful forces? Well, now we have two remaining Jedi, and two remaining Sith. I'd say it's nicely balanced. Was I really the only one who came to this conclusion when Qui-Gon started talking about "bringing balance to the Force"? Guess the Jedi training didn't include math or logic… If I'm wrong, then please explain in what way the Force was NOT in balance. Don't reference any kind of book, though, because if you have to write books to give sense to a movie, the movie is fundamentally lacking.

And the ending: Luke and Leia are born, Darth Vader enters the stage, Padmé dies, Yoda hides, and the ground is laid for the only three Star Wars movies actually worthy of remembrance. I might even go so far as to say: The only three Star Wars movies worthy of watching.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Insultingly bad

[2/10 · 24 December 2009]

I love the original Star Wars Trilogy (the ORIGINAL - not the abominable special editions). I know nearly every line by heart. That being said, let's move on.

In my reviews, I usually like to point out the flaws of movies, but in this case, it would take too long, so I'm going to list the good bits instead:

• Darth Maul.

• The soundtrack.

That's it. The script is depth-less, amateurish and boring, the characters uninteresting, their qualities inconsistent and their combined amount of personality less than that of my hairbrush. It is quite clear that the combination of George Lucas and an unlimited supply of special effects will turn any idea to utter crap. Every scene in this movie is crammed with details, and yet manages to convey absolutely nothing. Appearantly the movie was made for kids, yet it's mostly about a political debate concerning taxes - a subject close to heart to children world-wide...?

The only interesting action sequence is the fight between Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Darth Maul - during which I was actually hoping for Darth Maul to win, because the two Jedi... Boring! The only other tension came from the vein in my forehead constantly about to pop from irritation with Jar Jar Binks - the most irritating creature since... possibly ever - and the only thing that kept me awake during the last half of the movie, was trying to figure out why shield generators are seemingly never covered by the generated shield...

If you're wondering what the movie is about, it's mostly about Jack and his good friend sh*t. I honestly can't find a story in this mess. A nothing-special-about-him-at-all Obi-Wan, the 9-year-old dumb kid Anakin and the 14-year-old queen (child labor, anyone?) Padmé meet each other, and that's more or less all there is. The rest of the very long 2,5 hours can be divided up into various degrees of redundant.

I gave it a 2/10, simply because I have seen worse. Not much worse, but still...

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)

One of the funniest comedies I've ever seen

[5/10 · 5 November 2009]

I'm going to give you a description of the story: Two people die and are buried in a cemetery with cute little 1 by ½ foot gravestones, that sway when people pass them. One of the dead is even placed in a mausoleum (a small square play house, about 5,5 ft. in height and 6 ft. in depth). The two dead then turn into zombies and start walking around killing other people, and - and this is the "scary" part - they do this because the corpses are being controlled by aliens. This is "Plan 9", by the way: Resurrecting dead people. The aliens in question get around in a wobbly flying saucer (that's shaped like a cigar, according to an eye witness. I've never seen the similarity between a cigar and a saucer myself, but...), that leaves a shadow on the sky behind it. They are lead by the sissy of the year, who is for some reason wearing a long shirt with a picture of a medieval battle-axe on it.

The goal of these aliens is to stop humanity from destroying the universe. In the future (that is now the past), they claim, humanity will "stumble upon" the solar...something - a bomb that explodes the rays of the sun. When this happens, the whole universe will go down the drain, since our sun's rays apparently reaches the entire universe. This quite questionable science fact had me laughing the hardest.

Of course, the only three people actually being involved with the aliens aren't too keen on being wiped out for the sake of every other existence, and hence begins the battle between the races; the battle consisting of a small fist-fight between one alien and a pilot. After that the solid metal cigar-shaped saucer catches fire somehow, and humanity is saved.

As a serious movie, this is a catastrophe. There seems to be no lower limit to the low budget; the same scene can be used up to 5 times over, nearly a quarter of the movie is old military or other archive footage, for the most part the background is a black or a gray sheet, and because of this the movie can shift from night to day 4 times in a minute.

So why would I give this 5/10? Well, partly because the cast and crew of this wreck actually took their work seriously, and I'm willing to give them credit for trying. They did their best with the quite poor raw material they were given.

The biggest reason, though, is that this is one of my favorite comedies - especially with the Riff Trax commentary. There are so many silly details and flaws in this film that I could write an essay about them, but they do ensure that you won't have a dull moment watching "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

V (2009–2011)

Unexpectedly good

[6/10 · 4 November 2009]

I was worried that this, as a remake of a cult series, would be either bad or silly, but I really liked the pilot episode, and I'm looking forward to seeing the next one.

It's faster paced than the original "V", but as I found the original sometimes frustratingly slow, I wasn't bothered by this. The aliens are made to seem a lot more human - all except for their leader Anna (played by Morena Baccarin), who made my skin crawl. She has some facial expressions that would make me back up and start looking for something to use as a weapon. She really builds up a certain feeling of paranoia, and a definite feeling of not knowing what she's planning. Both fit this story well, I think.

Thankfully, there's a lot less characters in this version than the old one. I always found them hard to keep track of, and here it seems they've chosen to concentrate on a fewer number of people.

It wouldn't surprise me if I come to like this new version of "V" better than the old one. The old one was very much about people; how they reacted, felt and interacted. The new one seems to be a bit more about the action and thriller elements.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

He's done it again

[1/10 · 25 October 2009]

Yet another movie that ensures Uwe Boll's place as undisputed master of dismal directing, unsexy sex scenes, unfitting scores and the ability to make an entire production suffer from the Tourettes' syndrome of action clichés. He also has this uncanny way of hiring actors (who we know, for a fact, CAN act) and get them to NOT act. His isn't even a case of "no talent", it's more like "anti-talent".

But enough about the director and on to the movie; I haven't played the game, so I don't know if the movie had made more sense if I had. It feels like it tries to be a puzzle-mystery à la Lovecraft meets Tomb Raider, but due to the lack of continuity between scenes and some flagrantly bad scenery and props, the result becomes a series of events and things that by coincidence sometimes have something to do with each other.

There definitely seem to be parts missing, and not just between scenes, but in scenes as well. We go from half an army fighting in one scene, to five guys dead and no one else to be seen in the next. Close to the end we see Dorff firing his gun almost desperately at absolutely nothing, and then running like crazy and firing some more at absolutely nothing. It might be worth mentioning that he's firing through an opening that was until recently covered by a door; a door that was supposedly either always there, or put there by an ancient Indian tribe, but still manages to consist of mirrors and look surprisingly beginning-of-the-21th-century modern. Did the ancient Indians have a fondness for rectangular mirrors, or did later generations just add to the exterior of this gateway to evil darkness to improve the general air of the room...?

Other things more or less missing seem to be actor motivation and special effects timing. The actors look like they're mostly just in this for the promise of getting paid, and deliver their lines with all the conviction and individual thought of a phone salesman on his 10,000th call for the day. It's a bit funny to hear someone say: "We need to get out of here. Let's move! Let's move!", even though he's the only one who hasn't left the room yet. When it comes to special effects, the monsters weren't that bad, but I don't know how many guys I saw start screaming and twitching before the monsters had even had a chance to attack them from behind. Maybe they just felt the evil aura.

I know Uwe Boll has become something of a phenomenon, because you just can't believe how bad a movie can actually get, but this one isn't worth seeing. It isn't exciting, nor scary, and can't be made funny even by adding your own lines or comments to it.

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Ouch...

[1/10 · 19 October 2009]

Where to begin... Should I start with rolling my eyes over the wide range of beginners' mistakes packed into the script? Or raging over the blunt plagiarizing of the Klingon look? Maybe laughing at the fact that someone obviously thought that an alien could be made menacing by giving it John Travolta's soft tenor. Somewhere along the line, I most definitely will have to pat the air force empathetically on the shoulder. Man, must they feel like idiots! All those years and years of training pilots, when all that was needed was a bunch of ignorant quasi-Neanderthals and some hours in a flight simulator...

I don't know which was the worst move; casting lead actor Barry Pepper, who probably can't even spell "charisma", trying to pass off "Dallas: Alien style" as sci-fi action, or actually financing this project. The script is on the same level as the stuff I wrote when I was ten, and I think that someone should have noticed that. The mere thought that we're supposed to take even some part of this movie seriously is insulting.

They name the movie "Battlefield Earth" and then make it mostly about alien Terl's attempts at getting a promotion. Alien Terl from a race that is, incidentally, so stupid I'm surprised they manage to get dressed in the morning. Instead of killing a rebellious slave, the aliens decide to teach him their language. How? By pumping him full of human history and science, and then letting him read up on the missing bits. That should be harmless enough, right? It's not like knowledge ever gave anyone power. And why would even more slaves want to rebel? But then again, how were the aliens supposed to know that the group of stick-wielding, superstitious, grunting cave men knew how to fuel, prep, arm and fly Harriers? That was just pure bad luck. (Also, having fighter jets that are evidently perpetually dusted off and refueled in a hanger that is perpetually powered by... the gods, or... or something? That's clearly cheating.)

In the end, there's really only one reason to watch this, and that's if you're a person planning on writing your own sci-fi or other story, and wants advice on what not to do. This movie's full of examples.

Though it can probably be used as a means of torture too...