Saturday, April 23, 2016
Friday, April 22, 2016
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Film-maker Werner Herzog travels to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, looking to capture the continent's beauty and investigate the characters living there.
Typical for Werner Herzog, this exploration of a forbiddngly uninhabitable and strange continent is idiosyncratic and intense and offers insights no other director would achieve.
Maltin***1/2: "This right-brain travelogue feeds the mind, the eye, and the mind's eye. Wryly, sometimes impatiently, narrated by the director, who dedicates the film to Roger Ebert."
First Lines: Frederick Douglass - The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Virus (1999)
When the crew of an American tugboat boards an abandoned Russian
research vessel, the alien life form aboard regards them as a virus
which must be destroyed.
Trashy (and gory) sci-fi monster movie with a good cast which is actually quite entertaining.
On renewed viewing: I must admit this movie movie i s a little guilty pleasure of mine.
Halliwell (no star): "Frenetic, simple-minded science fiction that follows an obvious course with few surprises along the way."
Maltin BOMB: "Drearily routine,with borrowed ideas and stereotyped characters, though Curtis and Pacula try."
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
A story of human colonists on Mars who must be rescued after becoming possessed by vengeful Martian ghosts.
This is like Assault on Precinct 13 set into a sci-fi context, but compared to that masterpiece this has a very messy script, mediocre performances and a silly, superfluous and irritating flashback-in-a-flashback dramaturgy.
On second view: still not good, but has some entertainment value.
Halliwell (no star): "Quaint, old-fashioned sf adventure, with a feeble premise for some unexciting action."
Maltin*1/2: "Routine, predictable, and dull: unimaginatively, the Martian-possessed people adopt a punk/grunge look."
Doomsday (2008)
A team of people work to prevent a disaster threatening the future of the human race.
Silly mixture of Escape From New York and Mad Max with a touch of sword and sorcery tossed in for good measure actually manages to thrill and to entertain.
Maltin**: "Shamelessly derivative, ultraviolent postapocalyptic thriller..."
