scifi.nu

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!