scifi.nu

Iron Man rocks! Best movie based in the Marvel universe so far, perhaps even the best movie based on any comic! Robert Downey Jr does a really good job portraying Tony Stark, far better than I dared hope. His playboy antics in the beginning of the movie is a lot of fun to watch and it’s a very nice introduction to the character. He also makes Stark’s change of character after spending a few months in a dark cave frantically working on the first version of the Iron Man suit seem quite plausible.

The only problem I had was that it really didn’t seem like he stayed there for as long as we were told, I feel that this part could have been improved by adding a short scene or two that better illustrated the length of the stay. A bit annoying, although also amusing, was the repeated stupid jokes about his “helpers”, ie the industrial robots on wheels. The fire extinguiser gag was quite funny but I would have liked to see the other ones cut. When I think about it the ice problem was a bit silly as well, at least the way it was used in the movie.

The visual effects were if not perfect at least very close, I never had the “nice computer rendering but it sure looks fake” feeling that I get when watching the Spider Man movies. I’m really looking forward to both a sequel and hopefully a nice extended special edition on DVD. Oh, I almost forgot, make sure that you stay during the end credits – there’s a very nice bonus scene afterwards!

Iron Man currently has a 8.4 rating on IMDb, and I’ve seen quite a few positive reviews and blog posts. Wil Wheaton thinks it’s awesome and there’s a really nice review at io9. Other blog reviews or opions can be found at SF Signal and The Movie Blog, and here’s some info on the sequel.

My rating is 4.5 stars out of 5. It’s not often I watch the same movie twice while it’s still in theaters, but I’m actually considering going to see it again!

Jumper was pretty decent. I have been looking forward to it ever since I saw the trailer the first time and I guess the movie is about as good as the trailer. The concept of a small amount of people having the power to teleport is of course very cool, too bad that they all seem to be pretty egocentric people. I really liked the poke at this from a TV newscast in the movie; you see people being caught up in a disaster and needing to be rescued with a comment like “who will rescue them?” from the reporter.

I would like to have seen more of the background of the war between the Jumpers and the Paladins. The story definitely needs that pretty badly, and also some more insight on why David behaves as he does. I did like the movie though, it was highly entertaining and had nice special effects. The ending did suck, didn’t like it much, but it clearly points toward the rumoured sequel.

My rating is 3.5 stars out of 5.

I’ve finally watched Cloverfield after dodging spoilers on the web for seemingly forever! After looking forward to it ever since the first enigmatic teaser and I really enjoyed it! I understand that it probably doesn’t have a huge mass-market appeal but JJ Abrams rocks, the basic idea of showing only uncut footage from a video camera found in a disaster area is really cool. A lot of people in the audience tonight really didn’t like the ending, but I love that it stayed true to that core idea and didn’t switch to a voicever/military briefing/collage of newspaper articles and news stories/or whatever you might think of as an explanatory ending.

The 1st person perspective showing us bits and pieces of the whole puzzle instead of relying on the normal formula of cutting back and forth from the scene of the disaster to shots from the Pentagon, the White House, local authorities etc. Things like seeing the authorities’ reaction when they realized that one of the main characters had been bitten but then not showing us more than a glimpse of the consequences is brilliant. Of course I still would like to know more; where did the thing/things come from, what happened to it, what happened to New York etc. I don’t think I would like to see a sequel but something like a novel that expanded on this would be great. To stay with the basic idea of storytelling it could consist of several 1st person accounts from different parts of the government, the military, news journalists and other people caught up in the event.

I won’t speculate on what the monster was, what exactly happened etc, check the entry on IMDb instead and every possible theory is already there.

My rating is 4.5 of 5 stars!

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (FF2) was a bit of a disappointment. I think I’ll have to rewatch the first movie before i decide which one is best, but FF2 might be the better one. I guess my expectations were set a little bit too high.

There are a few obvious problems with FF2 that most of you are probably familiar with already; Galactus is a cloud. the Silver Surfer can’t access his cosmic powers without his board etc. Those are annoying but I guess I can live with them. But why was the movie so short? I don’t think that most movies nowadays are too short, rather the opposite. but FF2 felt more like an episode of high quality television than it felt like the major motion picture it’s supposed to be. There was plenty of situations and possibilities to show character development that could have added a lot to the movie and made us care a bit more about the Fantastic Four. Let’s hope there are at least a few minutes of cut scenes waiting for the DVD, but I would have liked an added 15-20 minutes. The basic story of the movie is of course the Fantastic Fours’s first encounter with the world devouring Galactus. The final outcome of their first(?) battle is of course not very hard to predict…

It’s great that we can just jump into the story right away this time around, even though I think the story of the FF’s origin and first discovery of their powers was the best part of the first movie.

Jessica Alba looks kind of strange with the blonde wig and blue eyes BTW.

I give FF2 3 stars out of 5. Let’s hope that FF3 is a lot better!

I’m torn. I had a great time a few hours ago when I watched Transformers on the opening night, so you might ask why I feel torn? The thing is, on the one hand the trailers were great, the action sequences were great and the FX were impressive, but on the other hand why was there so many jokes? Lots of them really made me laugh, especially some of the in-jokes for those of us already familiar with the Autobots and the Decepticons. I know that the other jokes are there for the kids but I did hope that it would be a little bit more mature, for a while there it really felt lika a kids movie (which it probably is BTW).

Here’s my suggestions for an enhanced cut of the movie; add more shots from Cybertron that exposes more of the backstory, less time playing hide and seek in a backyard and definitely get rid of the jokes with various creatures peeing on each other.

But hey, on a whole I really did have a great time! Did you enjoy the Transformer comics when you were a kid? Did you enjoy playing with any of the toys? If the answer is yes to any of those two questions you should definitely go and visit your local movie theatre, this is a movie that you should experience on a big screen!

My rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars, and I’m looking forward to the (probably) inevitable sequels!

I watched Next a few days ago. It was far from perfect but I must confess that i really enjoyed it! Lots of people seem to be disappointed by the ending but if you look at the story as a whole you realize that we might only have seen a small part of the total story, which I find fascinating. Unfortunately it’s hard to get into any details without spoilers.

The story of Next does have a few strange things; who are the terrorists? What were they motivated by? It would also be nice to have some kind of explanation or theory on how Cris (Nicolas Cage) was limited to seeing only two minutes into the future with the exception of events that involved Liz (Jessica Biel).

Somehow a federal agent discovers that Cris has some kind of future-telling ability and tries to recruit him to help her find a nuclear bomb that has gone missing and is thought to be in the hands of a terrorist group. Cris is not very fond of the idea, and if he uses his ability he is very hard to catch, as demonstrated in a cool sequence in the beginning of the movie.

My major problem with the movie is as stated above the strange terrorist plot, I don’t mind that the terrorists aren’t the stereotypical “Hollywood muslims” but it would sure be nice to know who they really are. There are also some strangeness around the two-minute limitation on the ability to see the future that doesn’t quite make sense, for instance that Liz is told to wait 5 minutes before doing something to avoid Cris from seeing it. After 3 minutes of waiting it will of course be 2 minutes until she does it…

If you are a science fiction fan that likes a bit of action I’m sure that you will enjoy Next! My rating is 4 stars out of 5.

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland did a great job with 28 Days Later and after reading a lot about it and having watched the trailer I was really looking forward to Sunshine. I recently caught a viewing of it at the local multiplex and although it wasn’t a masterpiece I did like it quite a lot! You might want to stop reading here if you want to avoid (minor) spoilers.

The movie is set 50 years into the future and follows the crew of the ship “Icarus II” on their mission to save our planet from disaster, caused by the sun dying. The reason for the ship being named Icarus II is that this is the second and final attempt to re-ignite the sun, which certainly adds quite a lot of pressure… There’s a nice mix of international crew members, each with pretty distinct roles and the characters are well developed considering the amount of screen time alotted to each of them. It’s nice seeing Cillian Murphy not being a villain, and he does a great job as the hero of the movie. The pacing is excellent, it starts out gentle and slow with an introduction to the characters and the ship and then starts to pick up speed gradually, ending in a state of panic.

There are some obvious sources of inspiration or references to works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and although it has been a while since my last viewing of Event Horizon, 28 Days Later to some extent feels like a better version of it.

I do have a few issues with the movie, some parts seem realistic, but other things such as the space ships having artificial gravity and of course the basic premise of a large nuclear fission bomb being able to re-ignite the dying sun are a bit annoyingly unrealistic. The movie also has some horror movie elements (which is why it reminds me of Event Horizon) which works for me, but I believe I would have liked the movie even more without them. Parts of the events are pretty stupid, the ship A.I. needs to be asked detailed questions to give the crew information that should in fact have caused it to raise an alarm, it also permits the crew making stupid mistakes in one instance but then later overrides them competely to protect the ship and the mission. But I am able to ignore these faults and instead enjoy the ship design, the supberb CGI shots of the sun and the really good acting.

My rating is 4 out of 5 stars – buy the DVD when it comes out if you don’t get a chance to view it on the big screen! And for my fellow Swedes: watch out for the shots of winter-time Stockholm posing as a frozen Sydney!