Superman is still an icon figure, but Man of Steel shows what happens after 80 years of random writers and artists taking their best and worst shots. Man of Steel is mix tape of Superman Greatest Hits with a little bit of everything tossed in for good measure. It wasn’t bad, but it was a little long winded on aspects of Clark Kent’s story that I have to believe anyone with a pulse is already familiar with. I really liked the look of Man of Steel, until he actually put on the cape and became Superman. Man of Steel feels most like a…
Tag: special effects
Tom Cruise’s Oblivion
Oblivion is yet another movie about a world where the bulk of the earth’s population has been wiped out and a handful of survivors with virtually no chance of beating a vastly superior enemy-uh wait, that’s a lot closer to the end. We start off with Tom Cruise and a cute British woman with over-sized pupils going about the routine business of sucking all the water off the Earth’s surface so it can be shipped off to Titan, a large moon orbiting Jupiter. There are pockets of aliens hiding here and there that sabotage the equipment and Tom has to go out and repair it. Tom is Tech number…
Cloud Atlas
In the future, past, and present four or five actors wear horrible makeup as they go about a number of random and pointless tasks which have occasional overtones of significance. Mixed in with the mundane lives are several brutal and shockingly graphic moments tossed in for shock value. The four or five stories are a bit of a challenge to follow and there is a hint or two that there should be some sort of connection that is never adequately explained. There isn’t even the basic sort of logic that the same actors are playing the same time hopping souls. …
Brave
Pixar makes good movies and Brave is a good movie. But like every successful studio they seem to be slipping into the George Lucas mindset of using more special effects and not worrying so much about the story. Brave was an amazing looking film, the hair and water were especially well done. In fact, much of the film had a hyper-real look that was at times at odds with the usual cartoony people who live in the Pixar universe. This has always been a major gripe of mine-Pixar can make water and hair more real than reality but all their…
Dear Suzanne Collins
Are you a fan of The Matrix? I love The Matrix, it’s a near perfect film with it’s classic hero’s story. I loved the characters, I loved the story, and I loved the look of the film. Then the Wachowski Brothers were seduced by all the money that a successful movie gave them and they forgot the story and characters in favor of special effects. The next two films had so little in common with The Matrix that they might as well have been set in another universe. I love The Hunger Games. It was original and amazing and gave…
Attack The Block
The story of a council block inhabited by an odd mixture of London poor, that happens to become the center of an alien invasion. From the producers of Shane of The Dead, Attack The Block is a pretty straight forward take on a monster movie. Unlike CGI fests such as Super 8 and Cloverfield, Attack The Block gives us a story on a human level-and leaves the over the top special effects in the box. Our heroes don’t start off very heroic, they are busy mugging a woman when something falls from the sky and flattens a car. They find…
Robopocalypse
Harlan Ellison hasn’t sued Daniel H. Wilson-at least not yet, but it’s hard not to think of The Terminator while reading Robopocalypse. More precisely, it bears a striking resemblance to S. M. Stirling’s trilogy sequel to Arnold’s T2. I really loved the T2 books and I’m pretty impressed with Robopocalypse, though I do pretty much hate the name. As in The Matrix, mankind is happy in the not too distance future when a mad scientist invents AI in a secret lab. This supercomputer calls itself Archos and it is pissed because the Mad Scientist keeps killing it and bringing it…
Stargate Universe Canceled by Syfy
The Syfy channel seems to be more interested in Wrestling and Paranormal BS than actual science fiction. Maybe that’s why they changed their name. The Syfy channel canceled Stargate Universe only weeks after canceling Caprica. The only shows remaining are Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, and Eureka. Tick tick tick That’s the sound of your life running out. I never liked Caprica, it was too much a show about The Matrix and too little a show about Battlestar Gallactica. But it was starting to get a little interesting, just when they axed it. I didn’t like Stargate Universe either, for similar reasons. …
Avatar Extended Edition
There was a lot I didn’t like about Avatar when I first saw it. That whole going native story take straight from A Man Called Horse and Dances With Wolves. That whole ecological story lifted from Fern Gully and Battle for Terra. Those damned robot suits stolen from Mech Warrior that look just as fake here as they did in Matrix Revolutions. And the worst name for a mineral EVER-unobtainium. But for all its countless faults, Avatar is still a damned good movie. Watching it, you forget the hokey special effects and goofy movements of the CGI giant cat people…