I’m honestly not sure why I’ve taken so long to sit down and watch “Watchmen” subsequent its lackluster theatrical release. I enjoyed the comic books for what they were as well as their fantastic literary class epilogues, I loved the characters (including Nite Owl and Rorschach), I enjoy Alan Moore as the eccentric mad genius that he is, and yet… I still never quite saw “Watchmen,” even with the “Director’s Cut” sitting on my pile. The Alan Moore groundbreaking graphic novel has been deemed completely unfilmable for decades after its release. But that didn’t stop Warner bros. from trying their damndest by bringing aboard acclaimed visualist director Zack Snyder to unfold the world of Rorschach and Night shade for the fan boys in full color and motion.
Tag Archives: Science Fiction
Inception (2010)
Dreamscapes and the sub-conscious can be an often marvelous subject matter for the discerning creative mind primarily because it’s a realm that is vast and wondrous but incredibly mysterious. After so many decades and centuries of research and exploration’s in to our brains, many scholars and professionals still have no real clue as to where dreams come from, why they exist, where we go when we dream, and whether or not they’re supposed to actually reveal anything. Christopher Nolan has created a Lynchian fantasy set in the mind that is devastating in its originality and innovation taking the dream world and turning it in to one giant landscape upon which to draw a story that is simultaneously a heist film and an existential drama about a man confronting his demons that he has locked away in his dreams for as long as he can remember.
Aiming at Nikita
So far this is the third variation of the Luc Besson spy thriller masterpiece “La Femme Nikita,” and the more variations we see of it, the more the actual point of the premise is loss. We had “Point of No Return” a remake with Bridget Fonda I think I’d rather forget if only for being a piss poor adaptation of Besson’s film and for becoming a relatively obscure nineties fixture that put some nails in to Fonda’s career coffin. Then there was the basic cable spy thriller starring Peta Wilson that I really never bothered to watch mainly because it felt like a version of “Mission: Impossible,” and now there’s “Nikita.”
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
For the past four films, director Paul WS Anderson has taken what was once a very entertaining horror franchise and turned it in to a series of movies fetishizing his wife and doing nothing more than further his muse-like view on her. We nearly saw her naked in the first movie, she was a bad ass in the second, a goddess in the third movie, and in the fourth we’re given an army of Milla’s, presumably a concept Anderson got his jollies off of. That said “Afterlife” is a movie that continues to drag on this wasted concept and posit the question: Why is Umbrella continuing their research if about ninety-nine percent of the world consumed by hellfire and the walking dead? What do they further have to gain beyond being evil for the sake of being evil?
Firebreather (2010)
Sure, at the end of the day this computer animated movie about a fire breathing teenager is really solely geared to preteens of the male persuasion. With a male character who looks like an anime character who is geeky and has superpowers, this is a movie that will really grab a hold of the young crowds. And sure, like all cable movies, this is a potential series, but I am a complete sucker for superhero movies. And in the same vein I am a sucker for underdog tales. I vaguely remember seeing an ad for the original comic book online a few years ago, so it was surprising to see a movie pop up that was based on a comic series I’ve yet to read or even fully be aware of. Researching the series, it’s story where the villain is taken on by Firebreather and Image characters like Invincible, Shadowhawk, and many more respective properties.
Batman Beyond: The Complete Series (Limited Edition) (DVD)
Back when Bruce Timm’s critically acclaimed award winning groundbreaking “Batman: The Animated Series” finally bowed out after branching off the “Superman” animated series, Warner approached Timm and his creative team with a mission. They wanted Batman back but this time younger, and geared to a much less mature audience. And Bruce Timm obliged and by god, he gave them a youth oriented Batman show, but he did it his way and on his terms. And what Warner likely intended to be a fun hilarious goofy series, ended up being just as moody, adult, grim, and bleak as the original Batman series. “Batman Beyond” is one of the beloved relics of the late nineties entering in to the millennium that managed to completely re-think the Batman universe, but also stay true to the themes and adult nature of the original series.
Skyline (2010)
I’m still trying to wrap my head around why the Strause brothers included a very superfluous prologue of Balfour’s character being sucked in by the bright lights of the alien ships and then suddenly zooming back to him and his girlfriend in a plane with the card reading “15 Hours Earlier…” Why is that opening scene important to know? What relevance did that have to anything? Did they feel the movie was so mind-numblingly stupid they’d have to lure us in from second one? “Skyline” (a movie Roland Emmerich would groan at) is the “Dragon Wars” of 2010, a movie with a great concept that fails on every conceivable level of entertainment, competence, and creativity imaginable. This is a movie–much like “Dragon Wars”–that should rightfully have been relegated to cable television but somehow warranted a theatrical release all for a PG-13 B grade science fiction movie about aliens consuming Earth and Eric Balfour… well you’ll see.