Apologies if there's another thread like this - I've had a look for a general film review thread, and can't find one.
Anyway. I've just been to see Moon - and would highly recommend it.
A low-budget British science fiction film, about Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell, who is amazing in this) - a man two weeks away from the end of a lonely three-year contract as the solo staff member on a base on the moon. Who, of course, begins to discover that all is not quite as he was led to believe....
It's a slow-moving, thoughtful film, no action to speak of - but a wonderfully atmospheric, well-crafted film.
For anyone like me who enjoys science fiction, but has been pining for a bit of actual intelligence in his films (why does this seem to be such a tall order these days?) - I'd rate this as a must-see.
Good Idea for a thread Straycat
I watched the Butterfly Effect, 2004 film staring Ashley Kutcher, which I found to be a surprisingly thought provoking film even though the storyline is really implausible in the way he was able to take himself back to certain pivotal points in his life and by changing his actions could influence the outcome on others. It did make me think about certain decisions I have made in my life if I had taken a different path how this would have affected not only my future but the future of others.
Anyway if you’re bored one night and fancy a DVD I can recommend giving this one a watch
Not at the cinema.. missed it when it was out but I have just watched Watchmen (and thereby answering the age old question "who watches the watchmen?")
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I knew they couldn't do all the sub plots and side stories any real justice. I couldn't see them bringing in a giant tentacled telepathic space alien so I thought their change to the story in that aspect was acceptable. But some of the stuff they left in I thought they'd leave out and quite like the way they would segue between past and present in the flashback sequences.
I was also impressed with the choice of soundtrack too.. doubly impressed by their choice of parts of two Philip Glass numbers* in the Dr Manhattan / Mars scenes. Am a huge fan of Phil Glass and it was a well chosen medley for that section of the film.. IMHO..
All in all a very enjoyable movie.. probably a tad on the confusing side for someone who's not read the book though.
* from the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack
I was thinking of posting about Moon on this thread - and you beat me to it! I saw this 2 weeks ago at Cineworld Glasgow, glad to hear you enjoyed it as well
This was my copy-pasted review to my mates back in Australia, telling them to go see it!
I saw it for the 2nd time a few days later, it was just as fantastic to watch it as my 1st viewing, perhaps even moreso because Sam Rockwell's portrayal of what he does when confronted with the truth, is just so well done, you just gotta admire it.Moon is one of the best sci-fi/mystery/thriller films I'd seen in a long time; the last time I remember watching a film in this sort of genre would be Danny Boyle's Sunshine. In his own words, Moon is Duncan Jones' homage to the sci-fi classics of yesteryear such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien (minus aliens). Not a bad lot of movies to pay homage to hey?
The amazing thing is, this is basically a one-actor movie :- Sam Rockwell's character Sam Bell. He turned in a great performance, it kept me riveted all throughout the entire film. Oh and Kevin Spacey's character evokes HAL but also in a cute way with the smiley faces
This is a film that will appeal not just to sci-fi geeks but anyone who appreciates watching movies that have a knack of providing plenty of thought-provoking moments regarding the human condition.
Official Trailer
I watched Coco Before Chanel a couple of nights ago.
This is a film based on the early life of Coco Chanel, played by Audrey Tautou - she gives a very good performance. As for the other two main actors (Benoît Poelvoorde and Alessandro Nivola), I'd never seen them before - but they play their characters (Étienne Balsan and Arthur Capel) with wit and charm. Nivola especially pulls off the playboy heartthrob character very well - one of my cinemagoer friends was sitting next to me and she said afterwards that 'he's quite a dreamboat' .
I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in knowing more about the person behind the name of Chanel, but don't expect a massive biopic - its really only about her early life and nothing else about the rest of her life that she was famous for.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I found it to be actually entertaining, kinda like a sci-fi version of a pre-Casino Royale James Bond movie.
Pros: Lots of explosions and stuff being blown up, Ray Park (as Snake Eyes), Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow ninja duels, Rachel Nichols and Sienna Miller are quite easy on the eye. Cameos and references to The Mummy. Christopher Eccleston's Scottish accent is hilarious.
Cons: Hokey plotline, too much flashbacks, ridiculous use of Celtic (Gaelic?) as a scene forwarding device. Some overblown CGI effects that clearly diminish any semblance of realism. And Eccleston's Scottish accent would probably offend any and all Scottish viewers.
Overall, I'd give it 3/5 - as long as you can treat it as a popcorn movie, and can sorta check your brain in at the door, then this movie's alright for a bit of entertainment.
Inglourious Basterds
Mr Tarantino has set out to defy our expectations again.
He seems to like doing things backwards.
He's made a war film .... that's mostly talk.
Named for the Dirty-Dozen-esque group, the 'Basterds' .... who aren't in it much.
Boil down the plot to its barest essence, and it's about Jews killing Nazis.
It has about as much respect for historical accuracy as a version of Titanic where they send a small team ahead of the ship who save the day by blowing up the iceberg before impact.
It mercilessly parodies the English and Americans.... while treating the French & German characters with a lot more respect (well ... except for Hitler, who is somewhat charicatured)
In summary, while it certainly has a lot of faults (the episodic nature made it feel somewhat bitty at times, for example, and the plot has a fair few holes in it), if you liked Pulp Fiction, you'll probably like this. It's fun, silly, shocking, tense, occasionally hilarious, and utterly unpredictable. The actors are uniformly superb, especially Mélanie Laurent & Christoph Waltz who pretty much run away with the film.
My main gripe... it's broken down into five chapters (each presented with its own title)
Clearly a great deal happens between some of the chapters. I really want to know what that was - clearly Tarantino knows, and has thought it out - and I do wonder whether he filmed a great deal that didn't make it in... anyway - I want to see it.
Highly recommended. Just don't let anyone spoil the ending before you see it.
i have seen that levelled as a real criticism, but its a fictional film, he can do what he likes. I can understand peoples problem with historical innacuracies in films based around real events e.g. Braveheart, Perl Harbour, etc... But whats wrong with alternative history films ?
Not levelled at you of course Mr.Cat
Absolutely. I think the problem is that WWII is still sacred ground for many, whereas there's not a lot of people left to complain who fought in the Crusades, or lived in ancient Rome. Etc etc etc. As a piece of entertainment, Tarantino's little *ahem* deviations from history work superbly.
On a related note though - I wonder how many of the younger generations will now grow up believing that [spoilers deleted]?
Atonement
As I have been on holiday I actually had time to watch a film
A story of love between an aristocratic girl played by Kiera Knightley (perfect for this quintessential aristocratic English role) and the son of the family servant played by James McAvoy. The story is narrated by the 13 year old sister who misinterprets their relationship and accuses JMs character of the rape of her cousin, which has disastrous results. The film also jumps forwards and back in time, which works for this story.
I won’t give any more of the plot away as I thoroughly recommend watching it, as it was well acted and very touching story
Sunshine is exactly the sort of 'science fiction' film that I loathe - the sort of story that no self-respecting science fiction writer would touch because of the complete non-feasibility of the basic story. Core is a similar situation. I saw 2012 and that was wibbling cobblers 'n all... 'special' neutrinos being emitted by the sun. It also has a horrible coincidence quotient - veering around a count of 20 or so.
Sam Rockwell, though, I have a different problem with. His performance as the child killer in The green mile was so powerful and memorable that I see the character every time I watch him. It's unsettling.
As a criterion, that .... simply would rule out most science fiction that I've ever watched or read. I have no problems with our current scientific theories and knowledge being distorted or ignored, so long as the story, situations and characters are treated with intelligence. Or, failing that, if they manage to make it entertaining. For the most part, (and for the former reasons), I loved Sunshine.
This is where it pays to be very bad with faces. I simply cannot associate the Green Mile's Wild Bill with the main character of Moon. To me, they seem like two completely different people - which is another testament to Sam Rockwell's acting skills.Sam Rockwell, though, I have a different problem with. His performance as the child killer in The green mile was so powerful and memorable that I see the character every time I watch him. It's unsettling.
There are different types of science-fiction ethos.
Larry Niven, for example, has no problem writing stories that use current understanding of physics (Protector, e.g., except he uses Bussard Ramjets which became discredited) and stories which hypothesise wildly (the Ringworld series, for example, wit FTS, stasis fields, and jump discs).
But when you have a space ship heading straight toward a star, you absolutely have to provide at least a vaguely plausible explanation for how the heat is being dumped. The amount of energy absorbed by the 'shield' with increase exponentially with the decreasing distance to the star. Vacuum is an almost perfect insulator, so the only way to shed the heat would be radiation - but you can't radiate the heat toward the sun, because the temperature in that direction would be too high; so you'd have to somehow take it through the spacecraft, or around its perimeter, and have some sort of apparatus for beaming it backward. A decent s-f writer would have incorporated it into the drive mechanism, thereby making the craft very lightweight (wouldn't have to carry its own fuel) and killing two birds with one stone.
It's no good, by the way, making the surface of the shield highly reflective - it couldn't reflect either heat or light back to the sun in meaningful quantities.
And that's without even mentioning the pressure of the solar wind...
It's lazy writing. A lot of these issues (in this and other half-baked scripts) could be overcome by a few lines of dialogue.
Larry Niven does use current physics yes, when it suits him. He also gets things wrong (the first edition of Ringworld has the earth rotating in the wrong direction, for example. For another, there's one of the Beowulf Shaeffer shorts where he got the maths wrong, and the main protagonist could not have survived the way he did). He even, to give a directly comparable example, has ships diving directly into a star (admittedly a red giant, but still pretty hot) with no explanation of how the heat is dumped other than "We can take this for a while until our shields overload." Which is hardly a satisfying technical explanation. There's always a degree of suspension of disbelief required with even the most scientifically grounded of SF. That said, by typical SF standards, the first two thirds of Sunshine felt very grounded and convincing. The final act.... is the part that I still can't make up my mind about. Although it still looked amazing.
No? Bear in mind that the technology depicted in Sunshine is a long long way ahead of what we can do today. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that their reflective materials and systems were (almost) good enough to cope with the demands placed on them. I found it a lot easier to believe than the idea of channelling that heat through, or around the ship.
Oh - and:
I think you are confusing radiated heat with conducted heat.
Larry Niven does use current physics yes, when it suits him. He also gets things wrong (the first edition of Ringworld has the earth rotating in the wrong direction, for example. For another, there's one of the Beowulf Shaeffer shorts where he got the maths wrong, and the main protagonist could not have survived the way he did). He even, to give a directly comparable example, has ships diving directly into a star (admittedly a red giant, but still pretty hot) with no explanation of how the heat is dumped other than "We can take this for a while until our shields overload." Which is hardly a satisfying technical explanation. There's always a degree of suspension of disbelief required with even the most scientifically grounded of SF. That said, by typical SF standards, the first two thirds of Sunshine felt very grounded and convincing. The final act.... is the part that I still can't make up my mind about (I'm surprised you didn't decided to tear that section to shreds - it's much harder to defend). Although it still looked amazing.
It's always a tricky thing with a film like this - how much do you explain before things start getting boring? Sunshine generally took the "show, don't tell" route - want to see how the heat protection systems really work? Show what happens when they go wrong. I felt that they dealt with this stuff intelligently, with a minimum of techno-babble - and it was nice that the audience actually had to think for themselves a little. Start throwing in an explanation for every single scientific issue that they come across, and you have a recipe for an incredibly long, boring film.
I agree that the film's far from perfect, but as SF films go, it surprised me by being far more intelligent and well-thought through than most. Sure, the science isn't perfect, but quite honestly - if you're going to start picking apart a film on the kind of issues you have, I don't think I've ever seen a single SF film which would stand up to close scrutiny.
I understand your point of view, but reading the Wiki page about the film (I haven't seen it), it doesn't sound particularly intelligent - to be honest it does remind me a lot of "The Core".
The one credit I'll give to the writers of The Core: the mystery material that basically performs magic to make the trip possible is called Unobtainium.
Back on Thread...
I saw Men That Stare at Goats or whatever it's called... I really enjoyed it. It's boy humour but it works... and it's scary to see that it is actually based on a true story!!
Haven't see The Core.... but I'll have a look at the Sunshine Wiki.
I do wonder about this - if we take for example) a truly daft piece of SF (Transformers springs to mind) - there's absolutely no point in trying to pick holes in the science. Where would you start? There's no science to pick holes in. (The same could be said of the plot.) Take a film which actually takes any degree of care over the science (or plot) - and it becomes fair game.
Is that quite a common device? I notice that James Cameron's used exactly the same name for his magical at-the-root-of-all-the-conflict material in Avatar.
I think it's pretty unusual. The norm is to give your "magic" material a scientific sounding name and pretend it's scientifically plausible.
When you explicitly call it unobtainium, you're tacitly abandoning that pretence, at least to the informed section of the audience.
See also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium
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