Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarentino gives us his take on World War 2. This includes Brad Pitt leading the Basterds (a group of soldiers who lurk around France scarring, killing, and scalping Nazis), Christoph Waltz as the Jew Hunter (a German with a talent for finding Jews), and Mélanie Laurent as a Jew on the run (and hiding in plain sight). The characters come together as plots to kill Hitler unfold.

Inglourious Basterds has a good plot, good characters, and a good ending, but it suffers from Tarentino’s usual problem, his dialogue. The script is full of conversations that are long and not as clever as Tarentino thinks. Basterds is a very long two and half hours, rather than the punchy one and a half hours it should be.

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Crank High Voltage (aka Crank 2) (2009)

If you thought Jason Statham (Transporter 3, Death Race, The Bank Job) died at the end of Crank when he was dropped from that helicopter, you were wrong. He is back, but someone has stolen his heart and Statham has to find it before his artificial heart stops working.

The velocity and insanity of Crank is pumped up even higher in the sequel as Statham careens around the city leaving destruction in his path. Not only is he looking for his missing organ, he also has to find innovative and ridiculous ways to kickstart his artificial heart.

This film cannot be taken seriously, and that is the attitude you need in watching it. What is there not to love about a movie that has...

The wild and wonderful Bai Ling (Gene Generation, Southland Tales) as a prostitute

Amy Smart (Crank, Starship Troopers) as a stripper

David Carradine (Death Race 2000, Hell Ride, Homo Erectus, Kung Fu Killer) as a Chinese crime boss

Ron Jeremy (The Pink Lagoon: A Sex Romp in Paradise) and Jenna Haze (Fast Times at Deep Crack High 4) as protesting porn stars

...and Corey Haim (The Lost Boys) looking like a bigger loser than ever?!

Battlestar Galactica The Plan (2009)

The four seasons of Battlestar Galactica focused heavily on the humans and how they coped with the war against the Cylons, especially in the early episodes. The Plan takes us back to look at the events before and shortly after the Cylon attack, mostly from the perspective of Cylon One (Dean Stockwell), with a reasonable focus on Six (Trisha Helfer), and some insight into the Cylon models onboard the Galactica.

The Plan is the second post-BG production (following Caprica) and combines new footage with scenes we have seen before to give them more context, and some twists. It fills in some gaps in the story, but also raises some questions of Cylon motives. There were characters we thought didn’t know they were Cylons, but maybe they did, and maybe they were scheming from the start.

Edward James Olmos (star and director) said, "When Battlestar fans see The Plan, they’re all going to have to go back and watch the entire series again." That’s an ambitious statement. The Plan certainly does raise questions and create a new perspective on what happened in the series but, at other times, it seems like a forced effort to create surprise and confusion to milk the story. If you are a fan, you might enjoy the new insight into the characters but, unlike the series, it is not compelling viewing. This picture of two Cyclons is…

Zombieland (2009)

The Americans do 28 Days Later as a road trip and, as you would expect, it’s not as good as the original (or even other zombie movies).

A virus has decimated America turning people into rampaging Zombies. Jesse Eisenberg (Cursed) has survived, thanks to a few basic rules of his own invention, and he is making his way across the country looking for his parents. Along the way he hooks up with Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers), Emma Stone (The House Bunny, The Rocker), and Abigail Breslin (Signs).

Zombieland starts promisingly with Eisenberg’s amusing narration, the manic zombie killing of Harrelson, and the con artistry of the two girls. When the four survivors reach Hollywood, the film slows down to the point of redundancy and not even the video game style slaughter at the end can bring the film back from the realms of boredom. An awkward cameo by Bill Murray does little to raise the interest level.

The Unborn (2009)

Odette Yustman (Cloverfield, Transformers) is having visions of an evil looking child and the message “Jumby wants to be born now”. Our tortured heroine goes looking for answers and her grandmother tells her of a Jewish legend and of the nefarious Nazis and their experiments on twins. Odette then seeks the help of Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight, The Fifth Element) who is a rabbi with a horn for exorcism.

Jewish folklore and Nazi experimentation deserve better than this unimaginative, unexciting, illogical expedition in to the supernatural. The only positive is the hotness of Odette, and the filmmakers must realise this because they keep showing her in her underwear in an attempt to distract us from the banality of the film. It’s not enough.

Moon (2009)

Sam (Sam Rockwell from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, Galaxy Quest) plays an astronaut nearing the end of his three year mission on the moon. Sam’s only company while there is the computer GERTY (Kevin Spacey from Superman Returns, K-PAX), a less malevolent, not so omnipresent version of HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Sam’s assignment is tedious and he has no live contact with Earth, only recorded messages. While on a repair mission outside the base, Sam crashes his moon vehicle and it looks like the end of him, but then he wakes up back in the base. Sam soon realises that is situation is not what he thought.

If you have read, or watched a lot of science fiction, the movie will hold no surprises, but it is a well made, well paced, piece of cinema. Rockwell virtually does a one man show with a character reminiscent of Bruce Dern’s in Silent Running. There were a few plot holes in the story, but that doesn’t prevent Moon being a more believable piece of science fiction than most other recent efforts.

War Wolves (2009)

A group of American soldiers arrive home from the Middle East infected with the werewolf virus and are hunted down by John Saxon and Tim Thomerson.

Werewolf soldiers, she-wolves, Saxon, and Thomerson should be a winning combination. I love that the Syfy channel makes these movies, but I wish they would put a little more effort in to the story. This is a terrible film that seems to have no idea where it is going or how to get there, and the werewolves look like extras from Cats. Your time is much better spent watching Dead And Deader or Dog Soldiers.