The Spirit (2008)

Nothing prepared me for how bad this adaption of Will Eisner’s comic is, even though it is directed by Frank Miller. It attempts to be cornball and humorous, and fails. But I did like the graffiti that appeared in my neighbourhood before the film’s release.

Star Trek (2009)

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

In the not too distant future, organ transplants are common place and anyone can have a transplant for a price but, if you should forfeit on payment, the Repo Man comes to reclaim what is no longer yours. This results in the borrower’s bloody death as the organs are ripped out of their body.

Paul Sorvino is the man in charge of GeneCo, the company that controls body transplants. He has three children, the surgery obsessed Ogre (from Skinny Puppy), the very angry Bill Moseley (from a number of good horror movies including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), and the spoiled rich girl and aspiring singer Paris Hilton (from a variety of amateur sex tapes), and they all want his fortune. On Sorvino’s payroll is Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), a doctor who is overprotective of his daughter Alexa Vega (Spy Kids). There are some other interesting characters including the eye transplanted Sarah Brightman (from many of Anthony Lloyd Webber’s productions) and graverobber and drug dealer Terrance Zdunich (who also happens to be one the movie’s writers).

Musicals are usually fairly dodgy and unchallenging, but Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog has shown they have potential and cult appeal. Repo favours the darker side of life and music, with compositions that range from wailing goth opera to thrashy rock (with Joan Jett making an appearance on guitar during one of the songs). I should probably know more of the musicians listed than I do, but I did see David J (from Goth pioneers Bauhaus) and Melora Creager (Rasputina) in the credits. The sets looks nice, some of the lyrics are clever (while some are ridiculously simplistic), and it has enough style and substance to hold it together. Grab some absinthe and turn up the stereo.

Quarantine (2008)

A group of TV stars are in trapped in an apartment block where the virus from 28 Days Later has appeared. Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) is a reporter and is inside with her cameraman so we can see what is going on. The acting is solid, but the movie treads tired ground with its mix of terror and gore. You may have the feeling you have seen it all before, and done better, especially if you have seen the Spanish film REC that this movie is based on.

True Blood Season 1 (2008)

The world of True Blood is a world where vampires have gone public, in a storyline that mimics the equal rights issues of blacks (or any group seeking equal rights). The series is set in a small town in Louisiana, which allows redneck racism to be displayed. Vampires portray themselves as law abiding people who don’t kill humans because they can sustain themselves off a blood substitute. Some humans are sceptical, some are accepting, some even allow themselves be bitten, while others are “fang bangers” who allows themselves to be used in other ways.

The story centres on Sookie (Anna Paquin), a mind reading waitress at a bar who falls for Bill (Stephen Moyer), a vampire that moves in to the area. The interspecies affair is frowned upon and that is the focus of the series, in amongst murder, kidnapping, drug addiction (the drug being vampire blood), vampire lore, and a shape shifter. True Blood is a primetime soap opera, just with more killing and sex than most (even more than Melrose Place). It’s a raunchier, more aggressive version of Dark Shadows or Twilight. There are some good ideas in True Blood, but sometimes they are overshadowed by family melodrama. It’s good, but maybe not as good as the lower key British show with a vampire and a werewolf, Being Human.

Alien Raiders (2008)

A quiet night at the supermarket is disrupted when a masked, armed gang burst in and start shooting people. Thieves? Terrorists? No, they are scientists looking for aliens in human guise. Outside the police are doing what they can in this very odd hostage situation. It’s like a new John Carpenter movie (combining Assault On Precinct 13 and The Thing but without John Carpenter, his music, or Kirk Russell) and that is reason enough to watch it.

The Tripper (2006)

A David Arquette writes, produces, directs and stars in a film that probably seemed funnier and smarter in the planning stages than it does now it is finished. It is surely not meant to be frightening even it is a slasher film.

A bunch of very unlikeable young people head to a concert in rural California where the sex and drugs and rock’n’roll is interrupted by a killer who is modelled on Ronald Reagan. The Tripper tries for some political joke making, but doesn’t try hard enough, with a cast including David Arquette, Courteney Cox Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Thomas Jane, Jaime King, Jason Mewes, Wes Craven, and Paul Reubens. The only good thing about this movie is the use of Reagan Youth on the soundtrack.

“No hippies or republicans were harmed in this film.”

Being Human Season 1 (2009)

This British series sounds like a supernatural version of Man About The House, with a vampire and a werewolf sharing a house with a ghost, but it’s a little more serious than that (and the werewolf is not as hairy as Richard O'Sullivan). Mitchell (Aidan Turner as the vampire) and George (Russell Tovey as the werewolf) are trying to live a normal life, which is hard when you either crave blood on a daily basis or turn in to a hairy, howling killer once a month. Renting a house seems the right path to normality, less so when the ghost (Lenora Crichlow as Annie) of a previous occupant is already there.

Mitchell is resisting joining the vampire organisation that sees itself as superior to humans. George just wants a girlfriend, but that is complicated when his time of month is worse than theirs. Annie doesn’t know why she can’t move on to the afterlife, but she is happy to have company at last.

It’s a typically interesting, British character driven show, low on budget but high on moral dilemmas and unexpected plot developments. The series is only 6 episodes, plus a pilot that has a different vampire and ghost.

Battlestar Galactica

Transporter 3 (2008)

Jason Statham’s third outing as Frank Martin has him driving his cargo in a premise so flimsy the only thing weaker than it is the movie’s love interest. Or maybe the direction. The fight choreography of Corey Yuen and the physical skills of Statham are wasted by director Olivier Megaton who has no idea how to film a fight scene. Statham has charisma galore, but even he has trouble shining in this poorly plotted, sloppily constructed action film. Luc Besson (one of the writers and the creator of the original) needs to rethink this franchise.

Push (2009)

Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) is a mover on the run from the Division, an evil government organisation that likes to experiment on the gifted and turn them in to super-soldiers. His life of reclusion and gambling in Hong Kong is interrupted when watcher Dakota Fanning (War Of The Worlds) comes knocking. Division and the Triad are soon on their tail with pusher Camilla Belle (10,000 BC) a potential ally.

Push follows on from The 4400, Heroes, Jumper, etc as a “realistic” portrayal of people with powers being chased by the government. A genre not to be confused with the more traditional superhero movies like X-Men and Hulk. In Push, people can see the future, move objects, manipulate the mind, scream destructively, etc. These people have cool names for their powers like “movers”, “watchers”, “pushers” and “sniffs”. It looks like the filmmakers’ wanted to give Push the feel of Bladerunner but, without the solid narrative, it’s just another film that doesn’t deliver on its potential.

Plague Town (2008)

A squabbling American family head to rural Ireland to bond. They ignore the advice of locals to leave and, when night falls, find themselves the target of children who make The Children Of The Damned seem like extras on Sesame Street. The dynamics of the family are annoying and unnecessary, but thankfully that is only the start of the movie and the story improves. Watch it when it is cold and dark and you might find it a little creepy and a little terrifying, but a little ridiculous as well.

Incredible Shrinking Man

Born in New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, Richard Matheson made his professional writing debut in 1950 when his short story "Born of Man and Woman" appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction". He broke into films in 1956, adapting his novel "The Shrinking Man" for the big-screen.
Since then he has written some of the greatest genre fiction of our time, with successful turns on tv ( the Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Night Stalker, Star Trek and Ghost Story ), as well as the cinema ( Stir of Echoes, Twilight Zone the movie, The Devil Rides Out and House of Usher ). His novel "I am Legend" has been filmed for the big screen 3 times ( four if you count "I am Omega" ), with a rumoured prequel now also on the way.
The plot to "Shrinking Man" is simple: after being exposed to a mysterious, possibly radioactive mist, Scott Carey finds he is slowly but inexorably diminishing in size. His pride, job, marriage and, finally, his very life are threatened as his relation to the world about him changes daily. The huge sets and props ( reminiscent of 70's tv classic Land of the Giants, but appearing about 20 years before it ), certainly provide excitement, but it is the strange for it's time script, a piece of almost philosophical whimsy, that supplies the real power to this film.

Modern man is forced to evaluate his complacency, and instead drift back to another time, surviving only by his wits and shear force of will. Once forced back to almost primitive levels of survival, and dwarfed by almost everything around him, Scott Carey has to develop a new understanding of the world, and in doing so finally discovers peace and meaning in the realization that everything in the cosmos, however small or insignificant, has its own place and worth. In his narration Scott says that he no longer hates the spider who has been threatening him during his imprisonment in the cellar. He understands that it has as much right to survive as he has. In Transcendental terms, he is saying that existence is neither good nor evil, it simply "is." The question that must be asked though, is that do people in California really have tarantulas in their cellars? A wonderful film. Certainly one of the best of it's time, and a strange message to come from 1950's America. Finally, in a move that I'm sure will impress no one, it appears that Shrinking Man is now also being remade. Unfortunately for us all, it's as a vehicle for Eddie Murphy, with a tentative 2010 release... sigh.

The Devil’s Tomb (2009)

A good cast (including Cuba Gooding Jr, Taryn Manning, and Stephanie Jacbosen) enter an underground bunker thinking they are looking for Weapons Of Mass Destruction and Ron Perlman. What they find, besides a more crazed than usual Henry Rollins, is an ancient and religious secret (and Ray Winstone) that could be the death of them. Director Jason Connery (son of Sean) adds together Prophecy and Outpost, but he does not create something better than either of those films. He creates something much worse.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

Christian Bale is John Connor, possible saviour of the human race in the war against the machines, but he needs to save the boy (Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese) that will be his father if he wants that to happen. In the background is the impending all out assault on the machines by the resistance.

Despite Christian Bale’s number 1 billing on the poster, this film is more about Sam Worthington who plays a death row inmate executed in 2003 who finds himself alive and well in 2018. Marcus Wright (Worthington) does more to protect Kyle Reese than John Connor does, and he gets to flirt with the spunky pilot Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood). Bale does fight with a CGI Arnold Schwarzenegger, argue with Michael Ironside, and speak in his gravely Batman voice as compensation.

Terminator was great piece of story telling, T2 sacrificed story and character for action (as James Cameron likes to do), Terminator 3 Rise Of The Machines was off track on all levels, and T4 doesn’t have a lot of story, but it packs a lot of bang in to its running time. Director McG has mixed together the basic Terminator premise with Mad Max 2’s highway action, Apocalypse Now’s helicopters and noise, the revamped Battlestar Galactica’s war between human and robot, and Transformers’ robots to create a loud, noisy, war film that doesn’t go anywhere but has fun (in a grim, post-apocalyptic way) doing it.

Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 (2008)

The Connor clan stop running and set up house for Season 2. This allows a human love interest (Leven Rambin as Riley Dawson) for John Connor (Thomas Dekker) as the relationship between John and his protector robot from the future (Summer Glau) becomes more complicated. Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) is as gloomy as ever dealing with her family’s fugitive status and the threat of cancer, but she still kicks butt. Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) has his own agenda and is often off on his own, secretly plotting with Jesse Flores (Stephanie Jacobsen as an Australian from the future, and the third hot brunette in the series). The terminator from the future (Garret Dillahunt) finds himself as part of an experiment in Catherine Weaver’s (Shirley Manson from Garbage) lab, which leads to some of the more interesting and amusing moments in the series. James Ellison (Richard T Jones) leaves the FBI but does not give up his hunt for the truth. Sarah’s ex, Charley Dixon (Dean Winters), returns to momentarily play an important role in the series.

Season 2 is more about character and motivation than Season 1 where the emphas was on action, and it throws in more conspiracies and twists. This makes the series slow going in the middle of the 22 episodes, but the final two episodes are exceptionally dramatic and climatic (with a great cliff-hanger ending). A pity we won’t see a series 3 to see where it leads.

Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 (2007)

Fitting somewhere in to the Terminator timeline (which is ever changing thanks to time travel and alternate realities), Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) is on the run with her son, John Connor (Thomas Dekker). John is destined to be the leader of the human race in the upcoming war against the robots (aka metal), if Sarah can keep him alive. Sarah is aided by John’s uncle from the future, Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), a robot from the future, Cameron (Summer Glau from Firefly), and Sarah’s paramedic ex-boyfriend, Charley Dixon (Dean Winters). On their trail is another robot from the future (Garret Dillahunt as Cromartie), an FBI agent (Richard T Jones as James Ellison), and law enforcement agencies as they shoot and blow up wherever they are.

It’s a brave idea to take a big budget film and turn it in to a tv series with a much smaller budget. It means you have to rely less on effects and more on story and character. It’s lucky then that Terminator is a concept that has plenty of options for exploration amongst the action, and that the cast has appeal (with the possible exception of Green). Season 1 is short (9 episodes) and heavily caught up in the terminator mythos, with time travel, and terminators featuring prominently. And that is all good.

I Know Who Killed Me

Mister J has a problem when it comes to text messaging. It has been said that his texting habit is like that of a teenage girl. Today tho, he uses texting (like the young people do on Twitter) to review a movie...

- Lindsay Lohan playing against type and appearing as skanky white trash...hmmm... what a stretch.
- Stigmatic twins? Twins who not only feel each others pain, but also manifest the same injuries??
- Twins separated at birth, after one was bought from her crack-head mom to conceal the death of a rich guy's daughter.
- And who told Hollywood that people want to see cute girls being tortured and having limbs removed?? What's that about?
- The bad guy lives in a creepy serial killer house. Why don't the cops just check out those places first?? In fact what happened to the cops in this film? And when the dust settles the killer is... wait, who was that guy again... oh right, him... I think... wait a second, that makes no sense at all!!
- The real villain tho, is obviously whoever green lighted this piece of crap.
- Somewhere, my stigmatic twin has been wondering why he's felt like he has been having his time wasted for the last two hours... leaving him both confused, and really pissed!!

On a personal note, the only thing I could think of that would be worse than Lindsay Lohan in a movie, is two Lindsay Lohans. - fabulous sebastian

X-Men Origins Wolverine (2009)

Hugh Jackman plays James/Jimmy/Logan/Wolverine (the most popular member of the X-Men) in a film that explores his long, troubled back story. Logan is a mutant with a healing factor that makes him nearly immortal and nearly indestructible. He also likes to fight. This makes him a target for the government who decide to use him and experiment on him. Logan’s brother (Liv Shrieber, aka Vincent/Sabretooth) is not very nice to him either. The story is dark and action packed, much like Wolverine, with Hugh’s charisma and hunk factor helping to hold it together (while the questionable CGI and the inclusion of too many pointless mutants tries to undermine the drama). Of course it diverges from comic book mutant history, but all movies are annoyingly consistent in their inability to remain faithful to the source.

As much as the movie explains about our angry, hairy, Canadian mutant, I am left wondering…How can Wolverine bend his wrists when he retracts his claws? How many people keep the clothes of their departed sons and husbands so they can give them to strangers? And why are these relatives always the same size as the unexpected visitors?