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Archive for Science fiction film

Gravity – Puts the Thrill Back in Thriller

Oct16

gravity-movie-posterTitle: Gravity

Cast: George Clooney (Actor), Sandra Bullock (Actor), Alfonso Cuarón (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction Thriller

Watched:  October 14, 2013

Summary: Best movie of the year (so far)

_

I know there is a lot of great buzz about Gravity, but I have to chime in and agree. This is just a wonderful film. It’s not deepest hour and a half of cinema to ever hit the silver screen, but as a Science Fiction film, spectacle, thriller, and all around emotional experience — it’s first rate.

Let me also say that I’ve been an Alfonso Cuarón fan for some time. I loved his version of Great Expectations. Y Tu Mamá También is extremely touching. And Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a bit of a deviation for him) is the most personal and thoughtful of that octolagy. Cuarón knows how to combine intimacy with visual panache and Gravity is not only directed by him, but co-written, and produced by him as well.

The premise here is simple. Something goes wrong in space. Sandra Bullock tries to survive. The nothingness between worlds is both beautiful and scary. This is the most hostile environment mankind has ventured to. Maybe being pressurized on a really deep dive is about as bad, but at least there, up is up and down is down.

gravity-debris

Not a great time for a little space walk

This is a gorgeous film. Everyone says so, and they’re right. The 3D is subtle and intense. The panning and spinning shots are dizzying on purpose. I didn’t even see it in Imax (just on a normal big Real 3D setup). In Imax it must be really intense. The visuals are generally seamless. The shots have a nice artistry to them, as one expects from Cuarón.

It’s also, for all its big scope, a very intimate and personal film. Bullock carries it, and carry it she must as she’s in every scene and there is only one other actor (George Clooney) — and he’s gone after the 25% mark. This is her film, and that same plucky charisma she displayed in Demolition Man, Speed, and whenever she picked a decent script over the 20 years since is there in  force. I’m not sure I totally believe her as a loner doctor, but she had me at “hello.” You feel for her, for her character, and for the awesome magnificence of the circumstances in which she finds herself. There is just enough backstory  to sell the emotional depth. When she manages to get inside the International Space Station (after nearly being punctured, battered, and suffocated), she curls into a little zero G ball. It works.

video-undefined-1BA51708000005DC-288_636x358

An emotional and intimate moment

The music is also very good, adding to the grandeur and scope . Just as effective is the consistent and utter lack of any sound that wouldn’t be conveyed through vacuum. The shuttle and space station are destroyed silently. Hatches bang open without a sound. Jets release gas soundlessly. Like that moment in Saving Private Ryan where the artillery blast knocks out Tom Hank’s ears, the effect is even more dramatic that the usual cacophony.

Gravity‘s pacing is relentless. As each hopeful goal is neared, some new catastrophe intervenes, keeping possible salvation just out of reach. This is accomplished with a deft mix of understandable mistakes and by the sheer array of force deployed against our heroine. But for all that, this is a movie without any villains. The one secondary character borders on saintly. It’s a classic “man against nature” thriller, and the scope of nature’s ability to kill here is truly frightening. When you depend a thin layer of archaic and marginal 1960s tech for every ounce of survival, things like 300 degree temperature swings and small bits of metal traveling 20,000 miles an hour are formidable foes.

Let’s sidestep for a second and talk about the Science Fiction. Gravity doesn’t assume any future tech. It’s set right now, or perhaps even 2011 as we haven’t launched a space shuttle since then. The events are improbable, and even a few are probably unsurvivable, but the film doesn’t go out of its way to be unrealistic or gratuitous. If I had to choose things to disbelieve, I can: Some of that huge debris storm would likely have hit Sandra (fatally). The sheer amount of physical punishment (being whacked around) would be pretty tough to take. Sandra manages to do a lot of things that are probably very difficult, very quickly. The 3 hours shown would be unimaginably exhausting. Her ISS Soyuz capsule was traveling pretty fast as she passed the Chinese station, and there is no friction in space, so I’m not sure the thrust in a single half-used fire hydrant would be sufficient to match velocity with the station. Or that she had the talent to fly with it. The early reentry of said station would probably be catastrophic as well. But this is all unimportant. Movies require suspension of disbelief, and this film doesn’t demand such unreasonably.

Gravity does everything a film should do. It provides character and drama. Shock and spectacle. Thrills and tears. Enough said.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Related posts:

  1. Prometheus Rebound
  2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  3. Drive
  4. Stake Land – Vampire Zombie Scramble
  5. Oblivion Obfuscated
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Alfonso Cuarón, George Clooney, Gravity, International Space Station, Movie, Sandra Bullock, Science Fiction, Science fiction film

Oblivion Obfuscated

May24

OBN_Adv1ShtTitle: Oblivion

Cast: Tom Cruise (Actor), Morgan Freeman (Actor), Joseph Kosinski (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction

Watched:  May 16, 2013

Summary: Tried really hard and mostly worked

_

I try to see most, if not all, Science Fiction and fantasy films. The buzz around Oblivion slanted it as cerebral, more character and less action oriented. All good by me. I crave Science Fiction films that can live up to good science fiction prose. I demand Blade Runner and Aliens. Last year, I had to be satisfied with Prometheus, which tried, and failed.

Oblivion is pretty good. It tries and mostly succeeds  Although not without a serious set of logical flaws, but I enjoyed it far more than I expected. It’s not as good as Minority Report (to make a Cruisian point), but it isn’t far off.

I’m not going to summarize and I’m going to spoil. This is criticism and analysis, not a buying guide. Let’s breakdown a few things:

Visually, this is a lovely film. The combination of haunting Icelandic landscape and a judicious take on post-apocalyptic is haunting and atmospheric. We have vast empty spaces. Slurries of silt and muck have swamped cities. Nothing is left. Then the few bits of new tech like the drones and fusion reactors stand out with awesome clarity and scale.

It’s also worth noting that while this is an expensive CGI heavy film (Box Office Mojo says $120 million) the graphics are slickly and deftly integrated. It feels like a film shot on location and entirely in front of the green screen. The reality? Who knows, probably a lot of green screen, but it feels spacious and open.

The audio scape is first rate. This director likes sound, and it works. Tron Legacy (his previous and only other big screen directorial effort) was one of the best sounding films of the last decade with its brilliant Daft Punk soundtrack (an amazing album as well as score) and Oblivion has a fantastic electronica score as well. The bassy (Inception horn-esque) sound of the drone siren was also awesome.

Tom is fine. I’m not one of his haters. This is a solid role in the Cruise model and he carries it. There aren’t a lot of characters in this movie, but his partner Victoria is well cast. My favorite Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, plays a minor character. He’s good too, but underutilized. I didn’t love Morgan Freeman in his role, even though he’s a fantastic actor. It just felt overdone and a bit too Morgan Freeman. The second woman, the brunette, is forgettable.

The plot is ambitious. We have an entire new world and a fairly tricky psychological  setup. It worked. Pretty well too.

The directorial style is excellent. Moody, bold, and almost always clear.

Now we come to the science fiction. Spoilers abound as I try to make sense of the why of Oblivion!

How do we get from 2013 and a canceled shuttle program to 2017 and a slick Titan moon expedition with suspended animation cells capable of lasting for 60 years? Why didn’t the writers just set the “first encounter” in 2050 or something?

When the Odyssey is being sucked into the TET by tractor beam (can we say Falcon and Deathstar?) why is it that the crew module, when ejected back toward earth by Cruise, can escape said tractor beam?

Why is the TET so often “offline” and out of communication? I know it’s supposed to be blocked by the earth but any tech capable of AI drones, clones, and Cruise’s flying ship could throw up a couple of comm satellites to bounce the signal around.

Why does Cruise land his flying ship and go for a bike ride? Seems kinda dangerous and pointless, unless the point is showing him biking past the  rotting hulks of ruined warships (which was kinda cool).

Why, does a super advanced alien mega-mind with it’s own giant spaceship resort to entirely indirect methods in conquering the earth? Although, again I must admit that the shattered moon looked kinda cool. But would a half exploded moon just hang up there?

Why would it employ an army of human clones? And only two models? Why not drones to begin with?

If you did “grow” a whole army of clones, why would each have a part copy of the original memories? Clones are just genetic twins. Memory is not on the duplication slate. Why have some separate “brain sync” machine/process if you didn’t want the memories anyway?

If it could build those drones, why so few?

Why resort to the whole “drone maintenance guy” thing? It doesn’t really make much sense.

Even if — and this is a tremendously big if — the 2017 Odyssey crew cryo-sleep module was still in orbit, how did the Scavs know how to send it a little jury rigged signal to cause it to return to earth?

How did each Vicky never notice how much time each Jack (Cruise) spent off grid building his man cave?

Why didn’t the Scavs locate their drone in a separate spot away form all the women and children and bring Harper there?

Why do Scavs dress like Sand People in Star Wars? Oh yes, cloaking tech.

Does vinyl really last 70 years? And if so, how come Harper, presumably born in the 70s, is such a classic rock fan? And how did he power his man cave?

Did Harper 52 just dump Vicky 52 in his 3 year search for “the girl”?

If you are a super smart alien “mega-mind” why do you let a guy carrying a nuclear bomb into your brain chamber? And if your sensors can detect an extra body on the way in, why can’t they sniff out a little Plutonium? It is only a RADIOACTIVE HEAVY ELEMENT!

For more Film reviews, click here.

tom-cruise-oblivion-landscape

Related posts:

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  4. Book and Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Joseph Kosinski, Minority Report, Morgan Freeman, Oblivion, Science Fiction, Science fiction film, Tom Cruise, Tron
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