Tags: Apocalypse Ouch
F |
*½ |
-4|
Director Scott Charles Stewart seems to be making a career out of erasing Jesus from history, and celebrating supernatural heroes who rebel against God for the greater good … in apocalyptic action/horror movies starring Paul Bettany.
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C |
** |
-1|
Teens & Up
Then there’s the scene in which President Glover, as an ecumenical prayer on behalf of the world, starts to recite Psalm 23 — but the transmission cuts out before he can even finish the first line. What, Ejiofor gets to cite Cusack’s crappy fiction again and again, but the president can’t get off one lousy Bible verse at the end of the world? Here is a melancholy thought: How many people in the audience won’t even know how “The Lord is my shep…” ends, or where it’s from?
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C |
** |
-2|
Teens & Up
I don’t want to be too hard on
9. It’s the first film of a director who shows some promise, and a bravely idiosyncratic vision free from commercial pandering. It will probably fade quickly at the box office while soulless marketing machines like
G. I. Joe and
Transformers slog on and on. But Acker does himself no favors with rote anti-dogmatism and vapid characterizations.
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C+ |
**½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
I don’t object in principle to Keanu–Klaatu’s message. It’s just not a very interesting or enlightening thing for an ambassador from the universe to say. It’s sort of a letdown, not unlike like having the pope show up at your house only to check the batteries in your smoke detectors. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just hope he has more on his mind.
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B- |
*** |
-1|
Adults
For an hour or so it threatens to be one of the best movies of the year, but in the end, despite sci‑fi razzle-dazzle and some undeniably powerful images,
Sunshine ultimately settles for puzzling rather than mysterious.
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C+ |
**½ |
-1|
Adults
Individual set pieces are riveting, and one seldom doubts that if alien tripods were actually wreaking havoc on the Earth, this is indeed very much what it would be like. Afterwards, though, one is left with little more than ashes.
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C |
**½ |
-2|
Adults
Beyond that, unlike
Reloaded, which featured an
impressive but hardly groundbreaking freeway chase scene as its
biggest set piece,
Revolutions has startling new sights to
offer, notably a spectacular siege scene that recalls the first
act of
The Empire Strikes
Back with its Walker attack on the Hoth Rebel base. In
fact,
The Matrix Revolutions arguably had the potential to
be the
Empire Strikes Back to The Matrix’s
Star
Wars, had the Wachowskis not squandered that opportunity six
months ago with
Reloaded.
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C- |
**½ |
-3|
Adults*
Morpheus’s expository speech to Neo in the first film about
the history of the power behind the Matrix — particularly the bit
about the solar issue and the moment when he holds up the battery — is both the least persuasive and the least interesting thing
about the film. It’s a perfunctory plot-level explanation that
one accepts for the sake of the action and the hero’s journey,
not something one particularly cares about for its own sake.
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D |
* |
+0|
Teens & Up
The Time Machine is so sloppy that it makes
Kate and Leopold look like
Back to the Future. It’s also pitiful entertainment, succeeding neither as spectacle, as action-adventure, or as love story.
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C- |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Based on a computer game,
Final Fantasy is always
interesting to look at, and is sometimes visually spectacular,
but it hasn’t transcended its gaming origins. The sci-fi
scavanger-hunt premise hasn’t been fleshed out into a coherent or
satisfying story. The heroes, though eye-poppingly rendered,
remain emotionally as one-dimensional as any computer-game
avatar. Even basic rules and motivations never become clear.
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F |
0 |
+0|
Teens & Up*
Here is the closest thing to a positive statement I can make about
Battlefield Earth: Although it is an adaptation of a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the sect of Scientology - and although it stars John Travolta, one of Hollywood’s most high-profile Scientologists and a long-time champion of this project - Battlefield Earth is not a cryptic tract or allegory of Scientology.
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D |
* |
+1-1|
Teens & Up*
“Talk about the wrong stuff” is one officer’s disparaging comment as Willis’ team struts about NASA ostensibly preparing for their mission, hamming it up like class clowns in high school, ridiculing the process, flaunting their lack of couth like a badge of honor — all but letting their butt cracks stick out. Yes, in this film the honors science students are obliged to sit back and watch as the shop class saves the world.
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