* ½ (by Brian Orndorf)

STARRING: Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella, James Marsden

2009, 115 Minutes, Directed by: Richard Kelly

Well, it was fun while it lasted. The wonderfully wacky world of writer/director Richard Kelly drives off a cliff with The Box, the filmmaker’s self-proclaimed shot at a broadly commercial film . . .

Interestingly enough, there’s nothing at all commercial about the enigmatic picture, which meticulously traces over the same lines of surrealism, spirituality, and otherworldly interference that marked Kelly’s previous features, the cult smash Donnie Darko and the underrated brain-smasher, Southland Tales.

I would never doubt Kelly’s conviction and personal belief that he’s challenging himself, but The Box doesn’t lie. It’s the same old set of eye-crossing ambiguities, only this time there’s something of a budget and a smudged pass at cinematic normalcy.

In Virginia circa 1976, Arthur (James Marsden) and Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) are under pressure to keep up with their bills, with Arthur failing to secure a desired astronaut position at NASA. Into their life comes Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a disfigured man who arrives with a box and careful instructions. Inside the box is a red button and, if pressed, a stranger will die, with one million dollars left to the couple as a reward. Leave the button be and Steward takes the box away, never to be heard from again. Weighing their options, Arthur attempts to investigate Steward, only to find the spooky dealmaker’s associates watching him from everywhere. Norma also digs for answers, finding Steward’s origins might not be as plainly malicious as previously thought.

"Operatic nose bleeds and liquid doorways to the afterlife . . ."

I respect Kelly as an intelligent fellow who could probably solve a Rubik’s Cube in four moves. His intellect and insatiable itch for the unknown made Darko and Southland into distinctive treasures, but his imagination shows a considerable reduction of tread while navigating the winding road of The Box. Adapting the Richard Matheson short story Button, Button for the big screen (after a previous stop on an episode of The Twilight Zone), Kelly allows the source material a chance to only eat up a fraction of the screenplay. This is a crying shame, as Matheson’s contributions are the only convincing suspense acrobatics of the picture.

A sci-fi morality tale, The Box presents an assertive “would you?” dilemma into the minds of the audience. Knowing someone would perish, be it baby or bum, would you take the fat cash and slap the red button? Or would the guilt, the sheer unknown elements of the situation, be enough to ruin your life, leaving refusal the only choice?

Box sincerely addresses these questions, and Kelly understands how to squeeze the Lewis pickle for the optimum amount of dread. Shot with an impressive HD-powered ‘70’s glaze and captured with convincing special effects, Kelly opens The Box with stupendous promise. It’s a clean machine of suspense and ethical debate, assertively displaying hesitant heroes, a ghoulish villain, and a devious offer perfectly arranged to feed post-screening debates for years to come.

And then Kelly begins sprinkling nonsense over the whole magnificent effort . . .

Once Arthur and Norma make their choice, there’s nowhere for The Box to go. Kelly, understanding the limitations of the short story adaptation challenge, pulls a bootlegger’s turn with his script, moving away from tentative reality to pure sci-fi. We’re talking operatic nose bleeds, liquid doorways to the afterlife (a Kelly staple), and a grandiose threat from unspecified origins. Kelly looks to the skies to embellish Box past the raw materials.

While there’s a fascinating pull in the early going, hope is drained the longer Kelly stretches the mystery. At nearly two hours, the feature runs completely out of steam by the conclusion, making horrific dilemmas of life and death feel like amateurish stalling. Box bites off way more than it can possibly chew, and the flavor is overwhelmingly stale.

It’s difficult to label The Box as simply incomprehensible. The worst offense of the film is the manner in which it pushes the viewer away, unable to clarify itself to a degree where it feels more like a puzzle and less like a diary reading. The feature willingly runs off the rails, and normally that sort of fearless sense of adventure is welcome. Heck, it’s benefited Kelly on two previous occasions, but The Box is no party. Perhaps its secrets are not effortlessly interpreted, but they’re easily telegraphed.

Somebody get Richard Kelly a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy stat, or else we might have yet another talented filmmaker unable to wiggle free from his own pretension.
 

* ½ (by Brian Orndorf)

STARRING: Milla Jovovich, Corey Johnson, Alisha Seaton, Daphne Alexander

2009, 98 Minutes, Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi

The Fourth Kind is being sold to the public on the wings of a gimmick . . .

This is not a first for Hollywood, joining the likes of White Noise and The Haunting in Connecticut, which used marketing angles based upon the suggestion of truth to sell an exhaustively fictional multiplex event. However, Fourth Kind is far more aggressive, flat-out daring the audience to believe this alien abduction tale. It’s the kind of chutzpah that all but promises a scintillating, skin-crawling motion picture, but The Fourth Kind is actually quite stunningly ineffective for all the hot air it generates.

Please bear with me here, as the concept is a little convoluted. Fourth Kind posits the idea that director Olatunde Osunsami is assembling footage to investigate the strange case of Psychiatrist Abigail Tyler, who, while living in Nome, Alaska, was witness to alien visitations through her patients. Using video footage that documented the alien possessions and assorted otherworldly happenings, Osunsami fills in the gaps of the proof through a dramatic recreation shot with actress Milla Jovovich as Abigail. Blending the real and the Hollywood, The Fourth Kind seeks to develop a thorough portrait of mysterious Nome incidents, presenting evidence of a horrific alien event that places the burden of belief on you, the viewer.

As passionate a hoax as it may be, Fourth Kind is still a hoax. Even if the whole story turned out to be horrifying fact, I still wouldn’t believe it. Thanks to Osunsami’s limited assets as a filmmaker, Fourth Kind is a dreary, uneventful ride that fails to conjure a convincing argument for authenticity.

" . . . comes across as an amateurish prank created by someone itching to be clever!"

The mix of video and film is clever enough to lend Fourth Kind an arresting identity. The film is eager to play mind games with the audience, selling Abigail’s torment through interview footage of the shattered woman as she recounts her ordeal to Osunsami. Trouble is, reality just can’t be manufactured, and it’s difficult to believe anything the film is pushing due to the irritating artificiality of the performances. Had the film stayed in glossy recreation mode, it might’ve encouraged a deeper sense of fear and mystery.

Furiously juggling videotape documentation with film overwhelms Osunsami’s skill level, as the director attempts to tighten the vise through painfully clichéd filmmaking moves, the most torturous one being a ridiculous usage of jittery handheld camerawork to suggest intensity. There’s also a bizarre attempt to keep the film’s employment of split screen lively by moving the divider back and forth, manufacturing energy where the film has none.

As for this collection of hard evidence, it’s also a bit of a cheat. The video sequences are appropriately hollow and atmospheric, yet the electromagnetic energy of the alien presence just happens to fuzz out the money shots. Osunsami relies on transcription of Sumerian language outbursts and volume shocks to help cook the tension, and it results in a few stunning moments of visitation, but nothing that’s able to sustain an entire feature film or win over mounting doubt. The rest of the picture is ineffective suspense brought on by vicious overacting (Will Patton as the skeptical sheriff is particularly grating) and a tepid story that doesn’t develop beyond VHS parlor tricks.

For The Fourth Kind to work as intended, it simply must convince the audience that the camcorder footage is authentic. I never felt comfortable believing Abigail, and most of the picture comes across as an amateurish prank created by someone itching to be clever, without the aptitude to accurately sell a complex hoax to the viewing audience. Attempting shock value and extraterrestrial disturbance to generate a cult smash, The Fourth Kind will likely tire audiences before it ever has a chance to swindle them.

Stargate 15th Anniversary Edition [Blu-ray] (1994)

Actors: Kurt Russell, James Spader, Alexis Cruz, Viveca Lindfors, Mili Avital
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin
Producers: Dean Devlin, Joel B. Michaels, Mario Kassar, Oliver Eberle, Peter Winther
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Release Date: October 27, 2009
Run Time: 130 minutes 

Movie: * * * ½ (by Brian Orndorf)
Disc: * * * ½ 

Today, when one thinks of director Roland Emmerich, images of flaming cities, hysterical acting, ubiquitous marketing, and paper-thin plots spring immediately to mind. Back in 1994, Emmerich was only in the process of building his name, creating movies such as Moon 44 and Universal Soldier - minor league genre scrappers that showed more technical prowess and entertainment value than anyone was expecting. Then came Stargate, a film financed outside of the Hollywood system and saddled with ill-fitting blockbuster aspirations for a feature with very little pre-release buzz or sellable premise. Ending up a sleeper hit of the autumn season, Stargate overcame the odds because, well, it’s a delightful, exciting, distinct adventure film crafted by Emmerich with what would be his very last of welcome tentative touches.

Daniel Jackson (James Spader), a gauche Egyptologist, has been summoned to a secret military base for reasons not immediately made clear. Casually deciphering hieroglyphic codes top minds have been unable to crack, Jackson is allowed access to the Stargate, a massive circular structure able to access vast reaches of the galaxy via wormholes, if dialed correctly. Teamed up with gruff Colonel Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell) and a small band of grunts, Jackson passes through the Stargate, arriving on a strange planet ruled by the merciless god, Ra (Jaye Davidson). Endearing himself to the local slaves, Jackson seeks to comprehend this intriguing new land, finding a native (Mili Avital) willing to assist his efforts. However, O’Neil has his orders, ready to blow the planet to pieces once the Stargate is reopened to prevent Ra’s wrath from reaching Earth.

Stewed in the juices of classic 1980s sci-fi thrill rides and, to a certain homemade extent, Lawrence of Arabia, Stargate is such a completely oddball film at first glance. Here, James Spader is hired to be one of the heroes, gender-bending Jaye Davidson is the epitome of evil, and the spastic blend of lasers and pyramids takes some time to adjust to. I prefer to see the material as a unique thumbprint for Emmerich and his partner-in-crime, producer/writer Dean Devlin. Made just before the massively successful Independence Day started to bend their antennae, Stargate runs on a full tank of gallant enthusiasm, showcasing two hungry Hollywood dreamers allowed to make an epic with a semi-epic budget. Emmerich and Devlin weren’t going to blow this rare opportunity. The flop sweat courses through the film’s veins.

Stargate, with its contrast between classic Egyptian iconography and Star Wars high adventure, is quite an ingenious bit of hokum. Cleverly written as a thick-skulled summer movie, the film is fully aware of itself, looking to gift the viewer a rollicking experience of explosions, extreme alien encounters, and sun-caked melodrama, using the polar opposite cinematic postures of Spader (stealing the film with his nerdy idiosyncrasy) and Russell to wonderful effect. It’s a story of heroes and villains, with Emmerich using the alien landscape superbly, not only through stunning cinematography, but also to develop an enticing haze of mystery around Ra, who deploys vibrating energy bursts to torture his enemies, controlling the land through illiteracy and an army of boomstick-wielding warriors. The Crayola-outlined characters help the filmmakers attain cart-wheeling Saturday-matinee standards, where Stargate is most comfortable and effective.

However, as colorfully illustrated a world as it is, Emmerich and Devlin don’t milk the possibilities with an expected forcefulness. Once secure in alien territory, it’s not all gun fights and scripted sass. The filmmakers pull back some to incorporate the community of slaves, giving Jackson a love interest and O’Neil a payoff to his domestic misery. Scenes of bonding and community acceptance slow the film down some, keeping matters from the blazing fun of the desert or inside Ra’s perilous pyramids. The subplots have a purpose, just not a tempo.

THE DISC: This BD also includes the Extended Cut of the film, which runs nine minutes longer than the Theatrical Cut. Introducing Ra and the remnants of his power early on in the picture (along with little scraps of additional material scattered throughout the film), the Extended Cut just doesn’t hold the same sense of mystery. However, it’s nice to have both versions for easy comparison.

The VC-1 encoded image (2.40:1 aspect ratio) on the Stargate BD is actually quite impressive. This is the best the film has ever looked on a home entertainment format, recreating the theatrical experience through the preservation of the film’s luxurious cinematography - a task previous image transfers found quite troubling. The film’s sheen of smoke and sun is maintained without much in the way of EE issues, permitting penetrating colors and superb black levels, contributing to a darker, fuller image. Detail is consistent, great with interior matters of life and death. Skin tones look proper as well. Stargate was a never a clear, pop worthy picture to begin with, and this BD preserves the special saturated look of the film. It’s a bold and welcome step up from earlier visual opportunities.

The 7.1 DTS-HD sound mix is pretty extraordinary here, with a deep bass boom prevalent from the opening credits, continuing on throughout the feature presentation. Dialogue is easy to discern against the intense sci-fi backdrop, but the rest of the mix is wonderfully active, with surround activity top notch during outdoor and battle sequences. David Arnold’s brilliant score (seriously, one of the best of the 1990s) is handed extraordinary life here, crisply and confidently joining the rest of the elements when need be, or overpowering the experience when called upon. Rich, deep, rumbly, and soaring, the mix elevates the viewing experience, blasting through with dynamic range and power. A French 2.0 track is also available.

English SDH, English, and Spanish subtitles are offered.

A feature-length audio commentary with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin is ported over from previous Stargate releases and provides a splendid mix of hard facts and amusing mischief. Two charming guys who clearly love their film, the pair submits an informational chat over the Extended Cut only, providing insight for the new additions while basking in the legacy of their first major moneymaker. It’s well worth the time for those who haven’t already enjoyed it.

Stargate: History Made (22:30) collects three featurettes under one roof. Spotlighting new interviews with select cast (sadly, no Spader or Russell) and crew, the mini-documentary explores the creation of the film, from concept to shooting, singling out the efforts of the special effects crew and the Egyptology experts. The event ends with a discussion of franchise fandom, which exploded with the arrival of the television spin-off.

Is There a Stargate? (12:11) attempts to merge historical facts with sci-fi speculation. A bit of a reach, but an interesting discussion regardless. Passionate interviews with experts help to sell the argument.

The Making of Stargate (23:33) is a straightforward BTS featurette, again tracing the film’s path to the big screen. Produced for earlier Stargate DVDs, the information here is repeated throughout the BD experience.

Gag Reel (3:15) isn’t so much flubs and giggles, but an elaborately produced single-take summation of life on the hectic set of the film. It’s odd, and not really gag reel worthy, but still appealing.

Master of the Stargate is an interactive trivia game, offered during the film. Up to four players can give this challenge a shot, though the time between questions is maddening.

Picture-in-Picture Stargate Ultimate Knowledge is a trivia track that runs during the movie, providing everything that needs to be known about the film.

A terrific theatrical trailer is included.

WORTH IT? Matters pick up considerably for the grand finale, where Jackson and O’Neil hope to outwit Ra and keep Earth safe from a possible second visit. It’s a wild capper on a dynamite sci-fi odyssey. Back in 1994, Stargate was a huge question mark, leaving it a rare opportunity to impress without suffocating expectation. The film has matured wonderfully, sustaining as a curious genre exercise in blockbuster yearn marked by surprising buoyancy, madly entertaining performances, and a fertile cinematic imagination behind the camera not yet corrupted by massive box office success.

Star Trek (1-Disc Edition) [DVD] [2009]

Actors: Chris Pine, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder, Zachary Quinto
Director: J.J. Abrams
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: French (Dolby Digital 5.1 ES Matrix), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1 ES Matrix)
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Paramount
DVD Release Date: November 17, 2009
Run Time: 127 minutes

Special Features

    * Commentary by director J.J. Abrams, writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Bryan Burk.
    * A New Vision: J.J. Abrams’ vision was not only to create a Star Trek that was a bigger, more action-packed spectacle, but also to make the spectacle feel real. Every aspect of production, from unique locations to the use of classic Hollywood camera tricks was guided by this overall objective.
    * Gag Reel: Bloopers featuring the entire principal cast.

Movie: * * *
Disc: * * * 

Ironically this “new” Trek feels a lot more like “old” Trek on DVD than it did in the cinemas . . .

Maybe it is because by now one has gotten over the shock of what director J.J. Abrams and his team were trying to accomplish. But we think it is because of the DVD image transfer, which is too sharp, too clean – almost antiseptic, as if it has been digitally scrubbed clean.

Is this 2009 Star Trek reboot let down by an image transfer that is paradoxically too perfect?

You decide. After all the director went to great lengths to make the movie look real and naturalistic, not just through the use of sets that looked “used”, but also camera imperfections such as jerky camera movements, excessive flares and specks (or “chintz”) on the lens. All of this is somehow negated by an image that is sterilely perfect with hardly any grain. (A television show such as Battlestar Galactica attains its grittiness by occasionally using film stock that is deliberately grainy.)

Suddenly a lot of the sets such as the bridge of new Enterprise and other spaceship interiors feel as sterile as they did in the old Star Trek movies again. (Yeah, we know it’s weird to complain about image quality being too good, I know.)

This aside, this vanilla one-disc edition of Star Trek isn’t bad at all as far as this sort of thing goes. There is a short “making of” featurette titled A New Vision, which is part obligatory wankfest with a lot of talking heads going “J.J. Abrams is soooo GREAT!!” It is however also a fascinating look at how some old-fashioned film-making tricks were used. These tricks include an Enterprise lift that goes nowhere, a five-year-old in a costume used to make a cave set look bigger than it actually is and (our favourite) how the camera is shaken to create that jittery effect during action sequences such as the skydiving jump.

Director J.J. Abrams and his writers also cavalierly admit in the featurette how they wanted to make Star Trek more like Star Wars. They even joke (we hope!) about how much one of them still don’t like Star Trek. (In the audio commentary one realises how much Abrams and his generation are truly the children of Spielberg and Lucas as they explain how movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars and so on “inspired” certain scenes in this new Trek.)

Check the featurette before listening to the audio commentary by director J.J. Abrams, writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Bryan Burk.

It is a chatty, informal commentary mercifully without those dreaded stretches of silences that plague some director’s commentaries when the director has run out of things to say. It also avoids the audio commentary trap of the director describing the onscreen action also because he or she has nothing left to say. It is jokey, but not too jokey either and you’ll spot new things in the movie such as the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fact that Scotty (Simon Pegg) keeps a tribble as a pet and a flagpole that should be casting a shadow but isn’t.

Useless trivia fact we learned: actor Zachary Quinto (young Spock) can’t make the Vulcan “Live Long and Prosper” salute with his right hand and they had to glue his fingers together for one scene.

Unfortunately there are no deleted scenes included on this edition of Star Trek (one supposes one must check out the two-disc edition or Blu-Ray for them) even though they are referred to throughout the commentary. All of which is a pity because some of the scenes sound fascinating. A whole back story was for instance removed in which the villain Nero (Eric Bana) and his Romulan crew were taken prisoner by some Klingons from whom they had to escape. So see, they didn’t just spend 25 years playing card games whilst waiting for older Spock to appear from that black hole!

The gag reels are actually fun to watch and it seems as if the actors and crew had a fun time on the set.

WORTH IT? If the economic recession has put a crimp in your style, then this one-disc edition won’t make you feel as if you wasted your money and you don’t really need to splurge on the more expensive editions out there. (Those deleted scenes are sorely missed though.) If you’re a more hardcore movie buff type who checks out every single featurette on a disc, then don’t bother with this version.

RECOMMENDATION: It’s Star Trek for people who don’t really like Star Trek. Ironically though rewatching it on the small screen somehow diminishes the movie’s blockbuster credentials and breakneck pacing. Now one can focus on just slickly produced it is, but also how well the actors performed with the rather limited time at their disposal. Suddenly this Trek feels a little bit more like, well, Star Trek . . .

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/art_avatar.html

I know a little window on one's PC screen isn't that impressive, but I saw that 20-minute preview they had at a 3D cinema and must admit it had me hooked.

But I have to wonder: the film cost $200 million - is it going to make its money back and what will it mean for future science fiction epics if it doesn't?

Untitled Alien Prequel (2011)

Starring: TBA
Director: Ridley Scott
U.S. Opening Date: 2011

THEY SAY

Back in 2004 director Scott told Empire magazine that “we have an idea for a fifth one, all about the Jockey. He wasn’t an Alien; he was another race. They use Alien eggs to overrun planets, then kill the Aliens with an antidote and take the worlds for themselves. Bacteriological warfare.”

(The giant so-called “Space Jockey” was briefly glimpsed during the early scenes of the first Alien movie where the spaceship crew investigates a distress signal and comes across an alien derelict spaceship. See the pic here.)

Since then the project was pretty quiet until 31 July 2009 when it was announced that Ridley Scott, who had proposed video artist Carl Erik Rinsch (who also happens to be his daughter’s boyfriend!) as director to revive the Alien franchise for Fox, is apparently going to direct the long-rumoured Alien prequel himself.

Screenwriter Jon Spaihts is writing the script for this prequel to the original 1979 movie, which coincidentally is also celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Scott Free, Ridley and Tony Scott’s company, will produce the film.

WE SAY

Since the announcement of the Alien prequel earlier this year things have been quiet and Ridley Scott’s name has been attached to a non-genre TV series – the point being that Scott has been going through science fiction and other projects (The Forever War, Brave New World) like Quagmire in Family Guy goes through Kleenex tissues!

So will an Alien prequel get made? Probably. After all, it’s still one of 20th Century Fox’s more marketable franchises.

To be honest we would rather have seen Scott direct a movie version of The Forever War, a bona fide science fiction classic novel by Joe Haldeman, but then again maybe again Alien vs. Predator: Requiem just left a bad taste in our mouth . . .

If another Alien movie does get made, then we can only agree with Sigourney Weaver who said that “I wasn’t too thrilled with the whole Alien vs. Predator thing – they soiled the nest. So I hope they do a good job again. The fact that Ridley is directing is great.”

* * (by Brian Orndorf)

VOICES OF: Nicolas Cage, Charlize Theron, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell, Matt Lucas

2009, 94 Minutes, Directed by: David Bowers

Adapted from the celebrated, long-standing manga series, Astro Boy aims to make a big dent on the big screen with this CG-animated spectacular.

Boasting glossy visuals, red-hot action, and a sparkling cast of voices, the film is ready to please, but the end product is perhaps a step too bizarre and cartoony to leave a lasting, awe-inspiring impression. It’s a great character and an impetuous movie, but with all the attention placed on keeping the animation energetic and the actors satisfied, someone forgot to straighten out the erratic tone of the picture.

In Metro City, a metropolis hovering high above a polluted Earth, Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage) is preparing to experiment with a pure energy source intended to enhance the city’s overflowing robot population.

When wicked President Stone (Donald Sutherland) assumes control of the energy, an accident occurs, killing Tenma’s son (Freddie Highmore). Racked with grief, Tenma decides to use the special power to fuel a robot replica of his beloved child, but the boy’s artificiality only deepens the doctor’s depression. Cast down to Earth, the boy, rechristened Astro by a gang of pre-teen salvagers and their makeshift guardian, Hamegg (Nathan Lane), grows to love treatment as a human, but when Stone rises up again to claim power, Astro must embrace his robotic roots to save humanity.

"The death of a child, mockery of illiteracy and Communist robots!"

Astro Boy comes from Imagi Animation Studios, who last gave the world the wonderful TMNT CG update. If there are any absolutes about this film, it’s the striking animation. Granted, Imagi doesn’t have the budget or the manpower to compete with Pixar and DreamWorks just yet, but their minimal-coin work on Astro Boy is nicely futuristic and clean, with expressive body language and outstanding kinetic energy for the action sequences. The picture is fun to watch, and director David Bowers (Flushed Away) builds a few exhilarating sequences to show off the CG work, the highlights being the flying excursions where our hero learns of his rocket-feet gifts.

While Bowers can assemble superhero wonderment, managing the numerous moods of Astro Boy proves to be an impossible task. Here’s a film that opens with the death of a child, yet insists it’s this wide-eyed, banana-peel cartoon, ushering in a series of wacky characters and slapstick to offset the potential emotional starkness of the material. The additions are poorly selected, ranging from a group of communist robots intent on leading a synthetic uprising to the squad of “surface” kids Astro befriends, who live in a semi-Dickensian wonderland under Hamegg, with one of the group admitting illiteracy. Of course, in the grand tradition of good taste, this leaves Bowers with no choice but to make fun of their inability to write.

Astro Boy settles into a routine of the awesome and the awful quickly, though it’s disappointing to see the bad decisions win out in the end. The President Stone character is a prime example of the lousy screenwriting. A Bush-era, war-crazy baddie who’s on a fear-mongering crusade to secure re-election, Bowers turns the menace away from horror to comedy, trying to lighten up the picture by urging Sutherland to ham it up (always a rotten idea), making obvious and spastic jokes when a nice coating of subtlety might’ve brought the film interesting dimensions. By nudging the picture into primary colors, Astro Boy loses a shot at an intriguing personality. A little sustained darkness never hurt anyone.

A colorful voice cast (including Bill Nighy, Charlize Theron, Kristen Bell, David Alan Grier, and Eugene Levy) offers something to savor while the film struggles to find its footing, but this update of a classic animated character lands with a thud. A promise of a sequel at the end of the film (where our now shirtless boy-hero tears off into the sky) remains an unlikely prospect, but if there must be further Astro adventures, let’s hope the filmmakers stick to heroic feats of strength and aerial ballet over awful stabs at comedy.

Life on Mars: The Complete Series

Actors: Jason O'Mara, Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, Gretchen Mol, Jonathan Murphy
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English
Region: 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number of discs: 4
Studio: ABC Studios
DVD Release Date: September 29, 2009

Bonus features:

    * To Mars and Back – Viewers journey to “Mars” with Sam Tyler the cast and producers to see where the “Mars” concept originated and if viewers can figure out where it’s headed.
    * Sunrise to Sunset with Jason O’Mara – An exhilarating and exhausting day experiencing
    * Jason O’Mara’s Life on Mars.
    * Flashback: Lee Majors Goes to Mars — Lee Majors steps back in the past on the Life on mars set with cast and crew.
    * Spaced Out: Bloopers from the Set
    * Deleted Scenes 

Movie: * * ½ (by Rob Vaux)
Disc: * * * 

Gimmick-based shows are all the rage these days, with the success of Lost launching a plethora of high-concept imitations. The problem is that without more thought invested into traditional components (such as character and story), the big hook tends to fall apart. The American remake of Life on Mars avoids that trap, but just barely and thanks largely to a singularly inspired piece of casting. The rest of it relies too heavily on the "hey neat-o" factor to escape also-ran status.

Fans of the British original on which this series is based understand the set-up, and the new version wastes no time diving in. In pursuit of a serial killer in 2008, NYPD Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973, sporting period-appropriate clothing and a tailor-made job at his old precinct. But times have changed (or rather, changed back) and present-day norms no longer apply in the sun-dappled days of Watergate and Vietnam. Sam must adjust to a world where police brutality is SOP, a woman's place is still in the kitchen, and paperwork means using actual paper. The precinct also has a female cop (Gretchen Mol) - fighting for a spot in the boys' club and giving Sam a reason to champion women's lib - while the remaining detectives treat him with a combination of bafflement and condescension. In between hunting down 1973's most wanted, he searches desperately for the answers to what happened to him, hoping they'll lead him back to his old life.

The science fiction elements ostensibly add a new twist to the old cop show clichés, with vanishing robots and mysterious messages on the TV set reminding Sam that he doesn't belong here. At their best, they lend an admirable sense of whimsy to the proceedings, coloring life-on-the-street verité with tongue-in-cheek humor. O'Mara makes for an appealing presence, though his character is defined more by his era than any legitimate personality of his own. The cases he pursues have a certain cleverness to them, while his overarching dilemma remains just intriguing enough to remind us that it exists.

Too often, however, Life on Mars takes the easy way out, reducing its hero to periodic rants about how much better things are in the future and making glib comparisons between various bits of fashion, technology and overall zeitgeist. He lectures cheerfully corrupt detectives about suspects' rights, marvels at the existence of vinyl records, and takes advice from his hippy next-door neighbor (Tanya Fischer) about finding his way home. The results hold life, but never quite come together, their observations just a tad too forced for comfort. The show runners provide a big curve ball by introducing Sam to his younger self (Caleb Wallace) - along with his corrupt father (Dean Winters) and enabling mother (Jennifer Ferrin) - but even that fails to generate any appreciable enthusiasm. So too does the season / series finale provide an answer to his dilemma more angering than enlightening: a "what were they thinking" head slapper which renders the entire series utterly irrelevant.

The saving grace comes in the presence of Harvey Keitel as Tyler's gruff lieutenant. He can play such roles in his sleep, and the twinkle-eyed fun he brings to the proceedings strikes an ideal balance of tough-guy machismo and knowing self-mockery. If it weren't for him, Life on Mars would be utterly disposable. He elevates it from mundane trickery to something worth watching, if only casually. Which isn't to say the show is bad, only that enough better shows exist to drop it off your must-see list. The British version is superior by all accounts, which may add further strike marks against this incarnation. Certainly, Life on Mars makes a decent break from the routine, but it can't capitalize on its unique properties well enough to stand above the pack.

THE DISC: 17 episodes are on 4 discs - constituting the show's only season - along with several short documentaries and deleted scenes. It's standard boiler-plate material with a minimum of extras thrown in to keep serious fans happy.

WORTH IT? Too many better options exist to make it a must-own, though fans of the original may enjoy it just to compare how American sensibilities differ from those of the British. The self-contained nature of the show has something to recommend it as well, especially for those tired of watching good television go bad by not pulling the plug at the right time.

RECOMMENDATION: A passable stand-by, but if you didn't catch it the first time around, you're not missing anything earth-shattering.

* ½ (by Brian Orndorf)

STARRING: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Antje Traue, Cung Le, Norman Reedus, Cam Gigandet

2009, 108 Minutes, Directed by: Christian Alvart

Pandorum is primarily claustrophobia and glow sticks . . .

Created with slippery, slicing European instincts, this sci-fi/horror voyage into the dark recesses of the mind is perhaps best appreciated with the sound off. A gorgeous production design however can’t save the picture from trying too hard to dazzle with very little inspiration. While Pandorum is easy to stare at, it can be a seriously punishing sit.

Forcefully awoken out of hyper-sleep, astronauts Bower (Ben Foster) and Payton (Dennis Quaid) are left with little memory and power to help acclimate them to life onboard a massive spaceship heading to an unknown destination. Sent to restart the power source, Bower crawls into the bowels of the ship with only minimal light to guide him. Instead of help, Bower stumbles upon a group of warrior-types who are trying to elude a mob of killer mutant creatures multiplying throughout the ship. As for Payton, he has to deal with a paranoid crew member (Cam Gigandet) who might be lost in the throes of Pandorum, a special form of madness that turns his initial confusion into a major threat.

Directed by Christian Alvart (Antibodies), Pandorum is more easily described as a riff on the 1997 chiller, Event Horizon. Both films share a curiosity with deep space madness and the isolation of interstellar travel, observing characters hurdling toward the unknown, facing horrors both real and imagined. While Horizon was a more literal descent into Hell, Pandorum itches to play deadly mind games and flop around in mutant spit.

"Derivative from the get-go, Pandorum loses steam with every step . . ."

Alvart shows a promising eye for forbidding spaces, shoving the audience into impossibly tight confines and encouraging his actors to freak their way out. If there’s anything to admire about Pandorum, it has to be Alvart’s obsession with depicting discomfort and panic, getting the characters into narrow situations that immediately lack sufficient air flow. However, that’s the last of my appreciation, as Pandorum is all too eager to engage in hysteria to cover the holes in the script.

Wearing his Ridley Scott mantle, Alvart aims for a coolly stylish look to Pandorum, with hard cinematography, steamy hallways, and strange light sources joining together to add a layer of menace to the tale. Ostensibly a monster movie, Pandorum is better off as an obvious haunted house experience, with liberal usage of shock jumps and gore to keep viewers on their toes, but it never terrifies. There are a few futuristic touches that keep things interesting, but the majority of the film is actor Ben Foster dodging ghouls, running around the cavernous ship on the hunt for power. At least with the mutants, Pandorum is numbingly predictable. Once it goes inside the mind, it just gets embarrassing.

While everyone looks the part, the casting flatlines quickly. Watching Foster’s bug-eyed, clenched-jawed performance is almost comforting in its inevitability - the actor always gravitates toward roles that require painfully obvious, showy behaviors. Quaid does his grunt routine with limited effort. It’s Gigandet who smashes the film to bits, offering an agonizingly vacant performance for perhaps the most crucial character of the feature. His limited abilities are stretched beyond comfort, with Alvart displaying more effort timing out his strobe lights than keeping Gigandet panicked within reason. I never thought I’d see the day when it wasn’t Ben Foster ruining a movie.

Pandorum enjoys a healthy portion of sci-fi twists and turns as the production reaches for a fitting finale. I didn’t buy the closer, but at least Alvart is finally trying to challenge the audience beyond spooky, sweaty beasts jumping into the camera. A derivative production from the get-go, Pandorum loses steam with every forward step, leaving the conclusion more welcome for its finality than its resolution.

* * (by Brian Orndorf)

STARRING: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe, James Francis Ginty, Michael Cudlitz with James Cromwell, Ving Rhames

2009, 104 Minutes, Directed by: Jonathan Mostow

Director Jonathan Mostow has never offended me as a filmgoer. His pictures have been routinely well constructed and visually interesting (Terminator 3, U-571, Breakdown), even in the face of underwhelming plots and misguided performances.

Surrogates is undoubtedly a misfire for the filmmaker, but it’s an interesting failure, peppered with a few memorable sequences and an appropriate, timely message highlighting the acceleration of social disconnect. While ambitious, the rhythm is off on this limping picture, with the fingerprints of severe studio interference smudging up the movie from the start.

In the future, society will employ the use of Surrogates, robotic avatars that are sent out into the word to conduct daily business. They are the ideal version of the user, with smooth looks and near indestructibility. When an important Surrogate is killed with a special military weapon, F.B.I. Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) is sent in to investigate. Finding the trail of clues leading to a community of human beings who choose to live life with their own flesh and blood, overseen by the influential Prophet (Ving Rhames), Agent Greer enters their forbidden city, only to watch his Surrogate destroyed. Now without his buffer to the outside world, Agent Greer is forced to interact with a menacing Surrogate population, including his estranged wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike).

Adapted from the 2006 graphic novel, The Surrogates, the feature film realization preserves a distinctly illustrated quality to the material, keeping a tone of page-turning mystery and flashy sci-fi discovery. It’s a handsome picture, photographed sharply and brimming with curious fantasy touches sold well by the numerous special effects, with the centerpiece being the network of Surrogates. Chillingly dead-eyed machines with vivid features and silky skin, the Surrogates generate the tension and mystery of the piece, and Mostow juggles the balance between robotic advancement and emotional distance soundly, laying on the technological detachment theme thick, but effectively. When all is lost in the film (and it unravels eventually), the design and execution of the Surrogate figures remain visually stimulating to the end.

"Bruce Willis looks a little bored at times . . ."

The secret weapon capable of slaughtering Surrogates is the major question mark of the film, but the mystery surrounding the gun and its various owners is never messaged hard enough to reach critical mass. Instead the feature jumps from turn to turn, suggesting that Surrogates was trimmed heavily on its way to the multiplex. While filled with colorful characters with plenty on their minds, the story has been pared down to the bare essentials of action and whodunit.

There’s not much room to breathe here, highlighted uncomfortably in the relationship between Greer and Maggie. A married couple unable to cope with the tragic loss of their young son, the pair has taken to Surrogacy to numb the pain. It’s a plotline that appears integral to the overall story, but all that’s left in Surrogates are melodramatic fragments that are poorly finessed into the film, again suggesting cold studio hands restructured the plot without Mostow’s cooperation, leaving turbulent waves of emotion behind, absent the necessary, gentle context.

Bruce Willis looks a little bored here at times and is miscast as the baffled hero. Thankfully he’s surrounded by a fine supporting cast (including Radha Mitchell and Buzz from Home Alone himself, Devin Ratray, here as a slob F.B.I. tech wizard) who seem to be enjoying the Surrogate fantasy and future-world trimmings. Surrogates is short (85 minutes) and fails to land a killing blow that pays off the simplified mystery with any distinct urgency. It’s a flawed film, but far from unbearable. Nothing a DVD director’s cut couldn’t fix.