Earthstorm (2006)

A massive asteroid strikes the moon causing it to start to crack open. With the moon breaking up and debris pelting the Earth time is running out, if the fissures can't be closed the Moon will break in two and thus ending life on our planet. Only a daring band of heroes can save the day:

Dr. Lana Gale (Amy Price-Francis) is the scientist who figures out the danger, but her opinion hinges on the theory that the moon's core is iron, this is the same theory her dad had and which caused him to be discredited in the scientific community. (Science Note: If the moon was actually composed largely of heavy metals like iron, as determined by our plucky heroine, scientists would have already determined this by measurements of the moon's density, which is easily measurable from Earth.)

Victor Stevens (Dirk Benedict) Science adviser to The President and the man chiefly responsible for discrediting Dr. Lana Gale's father. His main purpose in the movie is to be a dick and be constantly wrong.

John Redding (Stephen Baldwin) Blue collar worker and all run good Joe, but also work obsessed widower. He demolishes buildings for a living. The space agency immediately snap him up as "He's the top man in his field" and just the kind of guy you need to blow up celestial object.

With storms raging over the planet due to the Moon's orbital shift they have a matter of hours to launch Baldwin into space and heal the Moon. The plan is simple, explode nukes and collapse the fissure. Dr. Gale thinks the nukes won't work because if the Moon's core is iron it would just fracture and make things worse, so they need to use a MEG (no, not a giant shark but an electromagnetic explosion). Dirk Benedict disagrees and they load the shuttle with nukes and launch it at the Moon (to get to the Moon fast enough they use untried Nuclear Pulse Engines). He of course is proven wrong when Baldwin's plucky assistant shows up with a meteorite sample proving Gale's theory on the Moon's composition. Now we move away from ripping of Armageddon to ripping off Apollo 13 as the scientist at the space agency have to figure out what on board the shuttle can be used to build an electromagnetic bomb. Turns out all you need is a stove timer, a nuke and those spiffy nuclear pulse engines. The shuttle pilot flies down into the fissure (she's warned to be careful as it's dark down at the Moon's core). She maneuvers around the debris and hovers in position. Yes, without any thrusters used this shuttle can actually hover in place. Baldwin jettison's their makeshift bomb and they take off for home (of course without those Nuclear Pulse Engines they'll run out of oxygen, food and water long before making it back to Earth). So the day is saved as the pulse goes off and the fissure seals itself up and the moon corrects it's orbit.

Favorite Moments:

A meteorite heading for Earth is pursued by fighter jets and shot down by sidewinder missiles. That you'd be looking at an impact crater before you even had time to scramble the jets is overshadowed by the silliness of jets that can fly as fast as a plummeting meteorite.

This movie's space agency NSI (NASA obviously threatened to sue if they were even mentioned in this film) loses power because of the storms. They have to complete the mission before their generator runs out power. Of course space flight command rooms do not rely on municipal sources for power. And they would have multiple redundant generators if something happened to the main power. That the generator in this movie can run out of power and not be refueled is a tad odd. Not in the budget perhaps?

Dr. Lana Gale is seen reading a scientific document where Astronomy is incorrectly spelled "ASTRONOMEY.

Friday the 13th (2009)

Friday the 13th (2009): This Platinum Dunes remake/reboot of the series takes a page out of the Godzilla series by having the first film considered to have happened but that the following sequels do not exist.

The film opens with a black and white prologue stating that it is 1980, Mrs. Voorhees is chasing the "Final Girl" screaming about having revenge for the drowning of her son (strangely we get a shot of young Jason watching all this from the bushes), but of course as in the original movie the "Final Girl" cuts of Mrs. Voorhees's head with a machete. The film then jumps ahead 20 years as a group of teenagers stumble across the ruins of Camp Crystal Lake while hunting for a crop of marijuana. Two of them find the Voorhees home and the withered head of Mrs. Voorhees. When finding a locket with a pictures of the young Jason and his mother the guy comments that the girl looks like the woman (this is important). All the teens get horribly killed and we cutaway just as Jason grabs the mom lookalike. We jump ahead another six weeks and find another group of teens visiting the lake and they run into Clay Miller played by Jared Padalecki (Supernatural) and he is the brother of the Mrs. Voorhees lookalike and he has been searching for her. Will he find his sister dead or alive? Will the sex crazed and drug addled teens become new notches on Jason's machete? Will any of the audience care?

The major failing of this film is that they have turned Jason from a supernatural force of evil into an inbred hillbilly with mommy issues. Though ignoring the sequels the filmmakers toss in tons of homages to them; Jason starts off wearing a burlap sack over his head until he trades up for the hockey mask, the barn that appeared in the second movie is prominently featured in this one, and trophies of his past kills (ie wheelchair) are visible in his underground lair. Yes, Jason lives in tunnels that run under his house. Worst of all is the ending, it is beyond stupid and will hopefully revealed to be a dream sequence if they ever make a sequel to this piece of cinematic dung. If all you want is nudity and gruesome kills this film with satisfy, but if any more is required to entertain you then give this one a miss.

Interesting Note: Jensen Ackles, who costars with Jared Padalecki on Supernatural, starred in the recent remake of My Bloody Valentine. Could we maybe get a horror movie crossover?

Alien vs Predator (2004)

Has Paul W.S. Anderson saved the Alien franchise? Does this film suck on a galactic scale? The answer to both these questions is no. Instead we get an abbreviated action film that rushes to the end just when things might be getting interesting.

The biggest failing this film has is in its characters…because there are none. Paul W. S. Anderson claims to have studied the previous film religiously, but some how he forgot that the success of the good ones relied on the audience giving a crap if the people we’ve been watching die or not. In AvP we barely give a damn about the main hero and you gleefully wish for a quick death to most of the others, who could only be generously called “walking exposition”.

The film starts out ripping off Jurassic Park as some millionaire rounds up experts by promising to fund their private projects, if they’d just help him out for a few days. The millionaire is Charles Bishop Weyland, played by Lance Henrickson the films sole attempt at character continuity for the franchise, and he’s discovered a pyramid buried under the ice way down in Antarctica. Our stalwarts heroes don’t know it but there just being lured to this pyramid by a group of predators that are secretly orbiting earth. And when the expedition arrives on site the find that someone has already drilled a whole through the ice to the pyramid, and from the trajectory of the blast it probably came from space. With out a second thought to the implications of this the team crawls down the shaft to the pyramid below. During all this the predators above have awakened a frozen queen and she’s now spitting out eggs. Meanwhile our intrepid explorers find a sacrificial chamber where the victims appear to have died by something bursting out of their chests, so the audience now knows where this is going. While stumbling around they activate ancient machinery that turns the pyramid into a maze that shifts it’s layout every ten minutes. Soon face huggers are leaping and people are dying. And then the predators arrive.

Well that’s all I’ll reveal of story because…well because that’s just about all you get anyway. From that point on it’s just a bunch of running around with a maybe a moment or two of ridiculous exposition, broken up by an attack by an alien or a predator.
One of the greatest offenses for me is the needless acceleration of the alien’s life cycle. Now Ridley Scott never laid out exactly how long it took to go from face-hugger to full grown alien, but in AvP it’s in under twenty minutes. I can only guess the reason for this was to make sure the film stayed under its ninety minute running time. And will somebody please tell these action directors that we are sick of seeing people out running fireballs!

Now, for what I liked about the film. The aliens looked fantastic and moved great. The predators themselves while not quite in stature with Kevin Peter Hall of the original, they still looked pretty good. And when these two creatures went toe to toe with each other in full out battle fury, well it was damn fun to watch.

So in conclusion I would place this film just above Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, and put it on par with Predator 2, but they still have a long way to go before they approach the quality of the first two Alien films or the first Predator. I can recommend this film to people who are curious to see what an alien fighting a predator would be like, but if you like a good narrative driven by interesting characters you might want to see what’s playing in the theatre next door.

Battle For Terra (2007)

The Battle For Terra is a CGI animated film that tackles a topic one wouldn't expect from a film most would expect to be aimed at kids in fact the subject matter is pretty adult (and not due to violence or sex). Terra is a peaceful planet whose inhabitants are one with nature and revel in art and music. The Elders keep a tight rein on what types of science and thought is explored due to a history they keep secret. Then the invaders arrive. A huge ship "The Ark" arrives in orbit over Terra and sends down fighters that abduct some of the Terrans. Mala (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) sees her father abducted and in her attempts to get him back befriends Lt. James Stanton (Luke Wilson) and discovers that the invaders come from the planet Earth which generations ago was destroyed due to war. They have been seeking a world that can support life and Terra is the first one that fits the bill. Unfortunately the Terrans don't breathe oxygen so terraforming will be required which of course won't be to healthy for the natives. The Earth Council is in debate as what to do but General Hammersmith (Brian Cox) is sick of watching his people dying because of their failing ship (they have mere months left of oxygen and parts of the Ark constantly fail) and he wants to wipe out the weak Terrans and give his people a home.

The voice acting across the board is excellent including aforementioned Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson, Brian Cox and James Garner, David Cross, Justin Long, Chris Evans, Danny Glover, Mark Hamill, and Dennis Quaid.

The moral dilemmas and complexities of the characters are dealt with intelligently and poignantly. I could see this as a good movie to show younger kids in school as a way to start some thought provoking debates.

This is a movie well worth checking out.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

This remake is for those who thought the original Clash of the Titans was too faithful to the mythology. Not only does this movie depart further from the Greek myths than 1981 version it actually makes me wish they'd gone the route of Troy and had no gods at all as then this story would have made at least a little sense because in this movie version mortal man decides to declare war on the gods, and if the Greek pantheon did actually exist, the obvious question would be, "What happens on page two?

King Acrisius of Argos is worried about the prophecy that his daughter Danae's son will be the death of him so he locks her up, but Zeus turns into an image of Acrisus and sneaks in and knocks her up. The original myth has Zeus impregnate her as a "golden shower" and not a rip-off of Excalibur. Enraged he locks the wife and baby in a box and tosses her into the sea. He screams a nasty threat at Zeus and is promptly hit by a lightning bolt (about what one would expect) but he doesn't die he just gets horribly disfigured and hangs out in the swamp and becomes this movies Calibos. The box is picked up by a fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) the baby is fine but sadly Danae is dead. The Fisherman raises young Perseus and spends most of his time bitching to his about how the gods are screwing the the local fishing.

The new king of Argos declares war on the gods, and during a toppling of a statue of Zeus the fisherman's family is killed during a retaliatory strike by Hades. Perseus of course survives and when he hears that Andromeda is going to be sacrificed to the Kraken he joins up on the expedition...nope, that's what you'd think would happen, but no this Perseus has abandonment issues and really hates the gods and really wants to kill Hades and even on numerous occasions refuse help from Zeus. Killing the Kraken will apparently weaken Hades and allow Perseus a shot at killing the god of the underworld. So basically saving Andromeda is just a nice bonus. She isn't even the films love interest as there is this immortal woman who has been watching over Perseus his whole life for some never explained reason.

Questions

Why do most Greeks have cornrow type hair styles and Perseus has a Marine crew cut?

What is the deal with those giant scorpions? We see they are created from the severed hand and blood of Calibos but later these wood Jinn are riding around on them like Oliphants.

You are declaring war on the gods, seriously?

Note: The 3D was pretty terrible, and at times the image doubled and it looked Zeus or Perseus had a twin standing directly behind them.

MEGAPIRANHA (2010)

The Asylum brings it's latest creature to the SyFi channel and this could be their best entry yet. The script is moronic, the acting is bad across the board, and the CGI drifts between bad and "What is that suppose to be?" but when you combine all those elements together you get one helluva fun movie.

The United States Ambassador to Venezuela is killed when his boat is attacked by a school of really nasty piranha, at first nobody knows what caused the boats destruction so Secretary of State Bob Grady (Brady Bunch's Barry Williams) calls Special Forces Baddass Jason Fitch (Paul Logan who is basically a poor man's John Cena) to find out what happened. Fitch arrives in Venezuela and is accosted by scientist Sarah Monroe (aging popstar Tiffany) who tells him that it's giant piranha behind the deaths. And why is there giant piranha tooling around the rivers of Venezuela? Well once again scientists are trying to end world hunger by making the food larger (Has this ever turned out to be a good idea?) but what is never explained is why Dr. Monroe was genetically engineering huge and super aggressive piranhas. I guess nobody would go see a movie called "Mega Catfish" Now it's revealed that the Mega Piranha grow exponentially every hour and also have three stomachs, two hearts and can impregnate themselves. Now that's some radical science!

Jason Fitch calls Secretory of State Bob Grady, "There was no explosion, there were no terrorists, it was giant piranha!" How can you not love a movie with dialogue like that?

So stopping the Mega Piranha before they grow big enough to swallow the world becomes our heroes top priority. Unfortunately there is a side plot with a crazy Venezuela colonel who thinks the whole thing is a plot to take over his country. As silly plots go that would be up there with killing a guy by smuggling snakes on a plane. So crazy colonel tries to kill the piranha by shooting them from helicopter gunships but all he accomplishes is blowing up the natural damn that was keeping the Mega Piranha contained in a small estuary. So now they are free and reaching the size of Winnebagos. Now the Mega Piranha are heading downriver towards the ocean and as that type of fish can't survive in salt water this will form a barrier that will allow the military to kill them before they turn around and head somewhere else...I guess? A United States Destroyer bombards the river with 9mm shells from it's deck guns and kills a bunch of them, but guess what? The Mega Piranha can survive in salt water and they attack and eat the destroyer. Next they have a submarine launch a nuclear torpedo at the Mega Piranhas but the big beasts just shrug it off and eat the sub.

The Mega Piranhas are now heading for Florida! Secretory of State Bob Grady wants to launch a full nuclear attack which would hopefully take out the fishy menace but also "sadly" remove the state of Florida from the map. Now Super Soldier Jason Fitch has an idea, earlier he got into a knife fight with one of the piranhas (seriously) and when he injured it the other piranhas went into a feeding frenzy. So his plan now is to lead a Seal Team of scuba clad morons to go toe to fin with the Mega Piranhas who are now reaching the size of two story houses. They'll shoot them in the eyes or gills to make them bleed and spark off a feeding frenzy so that they will wipe each other out (I'm really not sure the makers of this film know how a feeding frenzy works).

Now what truly makes this movie awesome is the Mega Piranhas attack. We get scenes of people screaming and running down the city streets in panic and one would immediately question "Why are they running from piranhas in the middle of a city?" Well that would be because the Mega Piranhas tend to favor suicide attacks by leaping out of the water and crashing into buildings (a visual that left my sides aching from laughter). One Mega Piranha leaps out and impales itself on a lighthouse like a giant shish kabob. Brilliant!

Here is an example of our hero in action: Jason Finch bicycle kicks attacking piranha.

This movie is a must see for fans of aquatic menaces. Two big thumbs up!

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic is something I watched every Easter as I grew up, now older I usually just watch it when another special edition gets released. Now on Blu-ray it looks better than ever, sadly the content of the story has lessened a tad over the years. The first half of the movie is still fantastic with Prince Moses (Charlton Heston) and Rameses (Yul Brynner) going head to head over who will rule Egypt and win the heart of Nefretiri (Anne Baxter), then the discovery that Moses is in fact a the son of Hebrew slaves and is sent into exile. In the land of Midian he falls in love with Sephora (Yvonne De Carlo), has a son and all is good until he gets a call from God. This Moses is a man of passion, he honors the Pharoah who raised him as a son, worships Nefretiri, and his relationship with Rameses is rife with great conflict. When he discovers the truth about himself his world view is shattered and he puts himself in the mud pits to find out just what it's like to be a beast of burden. At every turn Moses is given a chance to remain in power but he cannot turn his back on his people. Heston is pretty much perfect in this role.

It's in the second part where things become less fun and decidedly more dodgy (I'm guessing much can be blamed on the source material), but this new Moses who comes to demand his people to be freed is a bit of a stick in the mud, just blaring out declaration and scriptures with barely any feeling (his wife and kid all but forgotten), then he starts unleashing God's wrath and things get a little more interesting, ten plagues descend on Egypt and the Pharaoh eventually frees the Hebrew slaves (this is after his heart is hardened so many times I became worried he'd have a stroke). During the exodus Dathan (Edward G. Robinson) spends every moment proclaiming that Moses has doomed them all and at almost every turn the Hebrews eat it up with a spoon. You'd think a guy with the backing of god capable of plagues, fiery columns, partings of large bodies of water would have earned a little bit of slack, but no, Moses disappears up a mountain for forty days and Dathan has them worshiping idols and performing human sacrifices. Talk about your fickle people. Moses of course returns and brings explosive wrath on the orgy and then everybody sheepishly follows him for next forty years while God tries to get over being ignored.

I do enjoy this movie and this presentation is simply stunning, but there are certainly enough cringe inducing moments to not make it for everyone. Though none can deny the awesome scope of the picture when you look at the crowds of thousands that aren't computer generated.

Note: You'd think one of those ten laws God passed onto Moses would have mention something along the lines of "Though shall not enslave another person."

"Where's your Messiah now, Flanders?"