20150212: Horror Review--Godzilla

Godzilla

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American/Japanese live action feature length film, 2014, PG-13, 123 minutes, science fiction, action, thriller.  The spoken word is in English, with some sub-titled Japanese.
2. IMDB: 6.6/10.0 from 239,012 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 74% on the meter (average 6.6/10); 67% liked it from 171,052 audience ratings.
4. I saw this film off DVR from Cinemax.
5. Directed by: Gareth Edwards.
6. Starring: Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody, Ken Watanabe as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, Juliette Binoche as Sandra Brody, Sally Hawkins as Dr. Vivienne Graham, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ford Brody, Carson Bolde as Sam Brody, David Strathairn as Admiral William Stenz, Elizabeth Olsen as Elle Brody.
7. Demographic targets: Godzilla fans, action fans, international market.
8. Estimated production budget, 160 million USD.  Estimated gross revenue as of 01jan2015: States, 200.7 million USD (38%); overseas, 328.0 million USD (62%).


2. Setup and Plot
1. In the opening sequence, Joe Brody, his wife Sandra and son Ford are in Japan. Joe and Sandra work at a project that aims to contain some unexplained phenomena involving huge amounts of energy and a partially buried large object.  The object turns out to be living, breaks much of the containment apparatus, and causes widespread tragedy.  A heavier blanket of secrecy is applied.


2. Jump forward to the present.  Ford is grown up, is in the US armed services, and has a wife Elle and son Sam in San Francisco.  Ford gets a call from Joe, then goes to Japan to get him out of jail.  While Ford helps out Joe, the object (a 'muto') revives, breaks free this time, and flies away, leaving even more destruction and death than in years before.


3. A second, larger muto awakens in Nevada.  The two mutos are tracked by the US Navy, which is now actively involved.  The mutos' activity awakens Godzilla from his long slumber in the Pacific.


4. Ford and Dr. Serizawa are drawn into the military's quest to contain the mutos.  Elle and Sam are at risk as the three giants converge on San Francisco.


3. Observations
1. True to tradition in Godzilla movies, human activity is depicted as futile.  Most human efforts against giant monsters have no noticeable effect.  The rest of our efforts catalyse the monsters to rain down more destruction on human cities and military personnel.


2. In a few of the many Godzilla films I have seen, a child is rescued, or a trapped helpless person is released.  But for each such action, thousands of human lives are lost, and tens of billions of dollars of real estate value are zeroed out.  The contrast accentuates the helplessness of the human race against forces it cannot control and never will control.


3. In a slight departure from what I'm used to in the Godzilla universe, a human being does something that will make the survival of the human race more likely. Watch the film; you can't miss it.


4. Godzilla causes a huge amount of property damage and loss of life, though not nearly as much as the mutos cause. The case could be made that Godzilla in this film, as in many others, is indifferent to the fate of the human race. He does in the mutos in order to get back to his snooze beneath the Pacific.


5. One line summary: Godzilla saves humanity from the mutos in an 8 minute appearance.


6. Six of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Some of the SFX were cheesy, but most were fabulous.


2. Sound: 7/10 Few complaints.  I could hear the dialog.  The music was not too irritating.


3. Acting: 6/10 Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn, and Sally Hawkins were fine in their limited roles.  Aaron Taylor-Johnson's performance was both boring (beginning) and believably heroic (toward the end), so I ended up liking him.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 The director stayed true to the franchise, but with updated SFX and a few other adjustments.  The holes in the plot, though, seemed endless.

20150212: Action-Adventure Review--Divergent

Divergent

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, released in 2014, 139 minutes runtime; action, adventure, scifi.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 223,546 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 85 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter; 71% liked it from 132,716 audience ratings.
4. I saw this on HBO.
5. Directed by: Neal Burger.
6. Starring: Shailene Woodley as Tris, Theo James as Four, Ashley Judd as Natalie, Jai Courtney as Eric, Ray Stevenson as Marcus, Zoe Kravitz as Christina, Miles Teller as Peter, Tony Goldwyn as Andrew, Ansel Elgort as Caleb, Maggie Q as Tori, Mikhal Phifer as Max, Kate Winslett as Jeanine.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film is set in the remains of Chicago in a post-apocalyptic dystopian city state. Society is segmented into five factions (dauntless, abnegation, erudite, candor, amity) plus the Factionless.  Those in the factions are privileged, while the Factionless are impoverished.  The abnegation faction controls government.  The film, in short, involves the attempted mutiny of dauntless and erudite to replace abnegation as the rulers.


2. Young people in this society are faced with a choice in their late teens: to choose a faction.  Each teen is given a test to help determine the faction, but the teen's choice is the determining factor, not the test.


3. Tris (well, Beatrice), daughter of Natalie and Eric, sister of Caleb, gets an inconclusive test.  Tori, who administered the test, advises her to just leave and say the test was flawed.  Tris does this.  On the day of choosing, she chooses dauntless over her family's faction, abnegation.


4. The story follows Tris' acclimatisation into dauntless and her involvement with the unspoken motives of dauntless and erudite against abnegation.  The other central theme is her flawed test.  What really happened there?


5. This is the first installment of a trilogy, and some of the first moves of dauntless plus erudite against abnegation are detailed.




3. Conclusions
1. This is another exercise set in a dystopia that is simply not possible...so who cares?


2. There was nothing to balance that: nothing and no one to bring identification, or empathy, or involvement.


3. This film is in the YA female demographic.


4. One line summary:  Teen's coming of age in a factionalized future dystopia.


5. Three of ten


6. Recommendation: fine if you are in the demographic.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Reasonable skill was shown.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could make out the words that the actors spoke.  The background music was between insipid and irritating.


3. Acting: 3/10 I liked the performances of Ashley Judd, Kate Winslett, and Theo James. The rest of the cast was well worth forgetting.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Boring, not involving, not believable.

20130919: SciFi Review--Eve of Destruction

Eve of Destruction

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action television mini-series, 2013, rated R,
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 168 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 0% on the meter (impressive) from 6 users; 18% liked it from 1,530 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Robert Lieberman.
5. Starring: Steven Weber as Karl Dameron, Christina Cox as Rachel Bannister, Treat Williams as Max Salinger, Aleks Paunovic as Ruslan, Jessica McLeod as Ruby Dameron (Karl's daughter), Colin Lawrence as David Jackson, Leah Gibson as Chloe Banks.


2. Episode 1, 87 minutes
1. From Netflix: "Scientists drill a hole in the universe to harvest a limitless pool of 'dark energy', but the experiment goes horribly wrong and wipes an entire city off the map. Now, the effort to save the world, becomes the ultimate threat that could destroy it."
2. What could possibly go wrong here?  Who sanctioned such an effort?
3. Modelling assertion: Dark energy is 75% of the universe.  The intention is to tap this.
4. Billionaire Max Salinger has a big plans--feed the world with engineered plants; supply the world's energy needs with dark energy.  His Proteus Group has eco-activist opposition, P53.  They start with the plants, then move on to the dark energy effort.


5. Sub-plot: Karl and his daughter Ruby's ongoing dysfunctional relationship; his not resolving the death of his wife ten years previous.
6. Sub-plot: propagandizing by the activist group P53.  Ruby gets sucked into this.
7. Sub-plot: Ruslan was in Russia (living in Lhitiska) as a lineman.  He witnesses his town being destroyed by lightning.  He moves to America, around Denver, and gets another job as a lineman.  His second marriage is not going well.
8. Sub-plot: Max is sleeping with Chloe, and Max's man on scene orders her to keep mum, even from Karl and Rachel.  So the tech leads are kept in the dark about hardware problems.


9. The first full-on tests have problems.  There's a breach in the accelerator's coolant system, and Ruslan witnesses phenomena much as he did at Lhitiska.


10. There was a fatality from this, and the coverup started.  Max entreats Chloe to stay silent about the accident. David tries to comfort and silence the relatives of the dead man.  Ruslan finds Karl and tells him about Lhitiska.  Karl tries to confirm or deny Ruslan's story with an old friend, Ilya.  So much lying, so little time. 


11. Ruby joins with P53, and provides access to the Proteus project.  Sabotage ensues.  She provides passwords.  She provides a security pass to get onto the Proteus campus.  She betrays everyone, in other words, and the huge damage that follows is her fault.


12. After the security breach, another proving test is started, and the effects are immediate.  The neighborhood Ruslan's American family lives ignites. The full test is yet to come.


3. Episode 2, 87 minutes
1. Karl and Rachel argue about going forward.  P53 plans further depredations.  Max wants to go forward no matter what.  Ruslan's friends deal with their house burning down, the wife's mom dying, and their son needing an operation.
2. Max uses Chloe and David to cut Rachel out of the loop, and do the experiment anyway.


3. Disaster results: everything that could go wrong does go wrong.  The dark energy source is found, and keeps coming to us, even when power is shutoff.
4. Will the surviving personnel have any chance of closing the hole in the universe?


4. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Standard fare in high-level failure in decision-making about large science efforts; the story is stretched out too far.
2. Shorter summary: Failure in decision-making in large science effort.
3. Three stars of five.


5. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 7/10 Some of the worst incidental music ever in the introductory credits.  The spoken word is well done.


3. Special Effects: 7/10 The visuals are good, but the incidental sound is goofy.


4. Acting: 5/10 Steven Weber, Christina Cox, Treat Williams, and Aleks Paunovic are good enough, given what the screenplay had them say.  Jessica McLeod, Colin Lawrence, Leah Gibson, and the P53 actors I could have done without.


5. Screenplay: 6/10 Beginning, middle, end.  Not so bad there. The P53 crew were not believable, which made the motivational parts hard to accept.  Also, the amount of material here could have been compressed into two hours.

20130914: SFF Review--Robocroc

Robocroc

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, science fiction, horror. Spoken language is English.
2. IMDB: 3.1/10.0 from 573 viewer ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 12% liked it from 27 viewer ratings.
4. Directed by: Arthur Sinclair.
5. Starring: Corin Nemec as zoo keeper Tim Duffy, Dee Wallace, Lisa McAllister as biologist Jane Spencer, Steven Hartley as General Montgomery.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The payload of a failed space launch falls to earth in a large zoo.  The payload contained nanobots, which are absorbed by a crocodile, and proceed to do a re-design on the croc into a completely mechanical form.
2. Anesthesia works initially, but fails later as the transformation goes to completion.
3. The cliche of a government official with rank insisting that the killing machine be preserved while it continues to kill humans is getting awfully old.  All four Alien films used it.  Too many films have some variation of the line 'we have to study it, it's unique.' This ends up with the same result: the menace is preserved by choice, which is absurd.
4. The first 65 minutes (televison time) were consumed getting to the end of this stage.
5. The usual next stage is where the official is overruled, and the remaining forces attempt to save people from the menace.  Unless the official was killed, they reassert themselves, and that happens in this film.  The robocroc menace is rebooted.
6. Why is the croc, now all metal, hungry for organics?  This makes no sense at all.  It clearly not longer has a digestive tract, for instance.  This was one more 'jump the shark' moment.
7. The heroes finally succeed using an EMP device in spite of government interference from Dee Wallace's character.
8. But of course, there is a final twist.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Government field test of nanobots results in a rampaging mechanical crocodile.
2. Final Rating: 4/10


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Fine.


2. Sound: 10/10 Sharp.


3. Acting: 6/10 Dee Wallace and Corin Nemec were competent, as was the actor who played the general.  The rest of the cast was weak.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Nanobots are used as some mighty strong mojo magic.  I don't believe that for a second.  There were too many minutes of teen-aged girls screaming out of desperation.  The inexcusable logic failures were just too much.  The dialog was not the best.


5. Special Effects: 5/10 The croc taking the helicopter was the highlight, but some of the earlier croc close ups were dark and low on detail.  Also, light matching was not very good in several scenes.

20130914: Review--Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators

Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2013,
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 399 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no page for this movie.
4. Directed by: Griff Furst
5. Starring: Jordan Hinson as Avery Doucette, Victor Webster as Tristan, Christopher Berry as Bud, Amy Brassette as Candy.
6. Filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Well, somewhere near it, perhaps.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Cajun accents?  They come, they go, they are never very good.
2. Avery comes back to the swamp, to her family, after four years in college.  She's a vegan now, which gives an extra layer of problems dealing with a hunting, carnivorous culture.
3. Pluses: the gators have red necks and spiked tails.
4. Minuses: bad banjo playing, bad accents, Avery's sudden, complete switch to 'kill them all' after she sees a giant gator kill someone she's known for years; more bad banjo playing; badly motivated clan feud, Doucette versus Robichaud; more blue tongues than were strictly needed.
5. So, bad moonshine dumped in the swamp water seems to be changing the gators.  People who eat the gator meat or get deep wound from live gators change into gators.
6. After an early success against the gators, the two clans degenerate in to drunken stupidity again.  The human-to-gator changes start.
7. Avery's father had a gold tooth; his gator form has a gold fang.  Avery catches that, just before he pulls her out of the quicksand.  The non-biological gold tooth changing shape makes about as much sense as the humans turning into gators, or the moonshine doing the first conversion.
8. One minute Avery is dead set against killing gators since they are probably her family. The next minute, she's killing three of them by blowing up a gas tank.
9. In the end, about all the remaining Doucettes are gators, while the Robichauds are out to kill them.  Avery tries to protect her father-turned-gator, but that is not to be.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Cajuns fight gators mutated by bad moonshine in SyFy original.
2. Final Rating: 4/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Sharp.


2. Sound: 10/10 Fine.


3. Acting: 2/10 Mostly bad.  Lines delivered badly, accents out of kilter.  Candy was a hoot.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 There's a story to tell, and it moves from beginning to middle to end.  The gaffes mentioned above are hard to forget, however.

20130912: SFF Review--Atlantic Rim

Name: Atlantic Rim
IMDb: link to Atlantic Rim page

Genres: Action, SciFi     Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Graham Greene as Admiral Hadley, Anthony 'Treach' Criss as Lieutenant Jim Rushing, David Chokachi as Red, Jackie Moore as Tracey, Nicole Alexandra Shipley as Stone, Steven Marlow as Sheldon Geiss.

Directed by:  Jared Cohn.   Written by:  Richard Lima.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film opens to a spill on an oil rig.  A giant monster is identified as the culprit.

Three untested giant robots are sent to find it.  Drunken incompetence results in a lot of collateral damage before an early success over one of the monsters. The 'hero' gets both lionized and jailed.  Nice.

Delineation of conflicts:
There are all sorts of violation of chain of command.  Nonfeasance was all over the place.  After the first incident, another monster emerges.  The robot pilot who was so dedicated to assisting the cleanup earlier is shown playing checkers with his fellow pilot.  The second monster is bombed by one of our stealth aircraft; no one seems to notice that the monster slithers away alive and unharmed.

Reason versus all sorts of nonsense: reason usually loses.  Florida does not really resemble Manhattan Island that much, despite what the film says the location is.  The giant melee weapons used by the gundam (er, giant robots) supposedly were effective against the giant monsters, while much more powerful ordinance used earlier failed.

Resolution:
The video stops.

One line summary: Terrible screenplay and acting defeat moderately good sound and camera work.

Statistics 

Cinematography: 8/10 The lighting, focus, framing, depth of field and the like were better than what I've come to expect from The Asylum.

Sound: 8/10 OK.  The Asylum seems to have upgraded their sound equipment as well.

Acting: 0/10 Uniformly bad.  This was undoubtedly the worst performance by Grahame Green that I've ever seen.  There's a big disconnect between what the actors say and what's supposed to be going on, such as, 'maybe we hit a wreck' -- when the speaker is on a stationary oil rig.

Screenplay: 0/10 Mardi gras in Florida.  Interesting, unexpected.  'The pressure is increasing exponentially.'  Exponentially is not what it used to be; the issue vanishes two seconds later with no explanation.  Which character(s) am I supposed to care about?  Unknown.  Which plot thread is supposed to be engaging?  None of them are.  Generally incompetent dialog.  Needless romantic triangle that was barely explored.  The gratuitous jiggling and drinking was OK, but not really needed.

Special Effects: 6/10 Varies between competent (dinosaurs) and amateurish (fake explosions, loss of the aircraft carrier Wasp).

Final Rating: 1/10

20130830: SciFi Review--Chrysalis

Name: Chrysalis (2007)
IMDb: link to IMDb

Genres: Thriller, Action.   Country of origin: France

Cast: Marthe Keller as Professor Brugen, Melanie Thierry as Manon Brugen (the Professor's daughter), Patrick Bauchau as Charles Becker, Marie Guillard as Marie Becker (Charles' niece, and David's new partner), Albert Dupontel as David Hoffman, Alain Figlarz as {Dmitri/Danis} Nicolov (killed Hoffman's partner), Smadi Wolfman as Hoffman's first partner Sarah.

Directed by: Julien LeClercq.      Written by: Julien LeClercq and Franck Philippon.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The Professor's daughter Manon is hurt badly in a car crash.  The Professor tries with high tech help to reconstruct her daughter's life.

Europol Detective David Hoffman's partner Sarah is killed by a criminal after a fire fight.

The delineation of conflicts:
Both storylines are introduced full hilt early on.  The rest of the movie bounces back and forth between the two until they merge.

Hoffman seeks revenge after recovering from the battle, and is ordered to partner up with Charles Becker's (head of French counter-intelligence) niece Marie.

Hoffman is an incredibly incompetent detective; he has a gun and he barely apprehends his unarmed nemesis.  Then he's cut out of the case by his captain.  Manon's reconstruction looks spectacular in terms of physical reconstruction, but her mind is clearly damaged.  Looks like two failures coming up.

Nicolov, the criminal Hoffman was chasing, turns out to be Manon's mother's controller.  So Hoffman gets his brain fried.  Marie, her uncle, and her captain try to put it all together.

Resolution: The misperceptions of the protagonists are cleared up somewhat.

One line summary: Sadly misused scifi brain research.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 The focus is too soft; there is not enough light for the cameras used; contrast is often too low.  Plus, there is the jumpy camera work.  The colour palettes are consistently meager.  Is this supposed to be a tribute to earlier French films?  If so, who cares?  The film looked like hell.  Perhaps 35% of the frames in the film had every single object in the field of view out of focus.  Jumpy camera work and insufficient light for the cameras are just as bad as Blair Witch.

Sound: 4/10 The dubbing is horrible, and there were no subtitles available on Hulu+.  The sentences in the English dub script seemed to be written by children in their mid-teens.  The adults sounded ridiculous speaking such lines.  Credibility went out the window.  The incidental music was either florid and forgettable, or loud and overbearing.

Acting: 4/10 Marie Guillard was poor.  Albert Dupontel was fairly good, but the lines he had were not the best for the protagonist of the film.  The sad dubbing even made me regret listening to Patrick Bauchau's character.  I generally count on Bauchau for gravitas and a reliable performance, but not here.

Screenplay: 2/10 Defeated by fundamentals, which were so bad that I did not care what the story was.  Further the story was screwed up by the dubbing.  Some of the crucial motivational passages were botched.

Final Score: Four of ten.

20130821: SFF Review--Alien Armageddon

Name: Alien Armageddon (2011)
IMDb: page for Alien Armageddon

Genres: SciFi.    Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Katherine Lee McEwan as Jodie Elliot, Don Scribner as Cowboy, Rochelle Vallese as Franci, Ben Cain as Markus.

Written and directed by: Neil Johnson.  As well as directing film, Johnson is a metal rocker and a director of music videos.  Street scenes filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, USA; studio work done in London, UK.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The aliens invade, and take over or destroy most places on the Earth.

Jodie looks for her daughter in Los Angeles, which is mostly controlled by the aliens. There's talk of taking the war to the aliens.

The delineation of conflicts:
The overarching conflict would be the aliens versus the remnants of humanity.

In the first minutes of the film, all the military of all the nations of the world, with millions of trained fighters, with trillions in gear, including nuclear weapons and sophisticated communications, failed at defeating these aliens.

After the initial onslaught, we have a few women banding together to fight the aliens.  Opposing them are the aliens.  Also opposing them are the facts that they are uneducated, highly ignorant, have no military equipment, and no military experience.  Indeed the protagonist fails in this approach.

The invaders (described as nephilim) can only eat their own flesh, so they infect humans with DNA-altering virus, which renders the flesh edible.  Nice.  Then there are other transformations that allow the upper class invaders to inhabit human bodies and rule.  So, things look impossible for the human race.

However, the nephilim have their own traitors who have conducted biological experiments on imprisoned humans. The traitors hope to use the results to undermine their opponents.

Resolution: The renegade nephilim hope to defeat their opponents across the entire planet.  Will they succeed?

One line summary: An absurd fight of alien vs alien.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 Terrible in the prison interviews with Cowboy.  Incredibly bad film editing.  Jumpy hand-held cameras. I've seen some beautiful content streamed as HD on Netflix, and this is not it.  It always looks fuzzy or distorted or loaded with third rate special effects.  In the second half of the film, the camera works smooths down a bit.

Sound: 6/10 Usually good enough.  There was plenty of flatulence, barfing, and flesh being rendered; those came through clearly in the sound track.

Acting: 1/10 Never good.  Hiring some actors might have been of value.  Jodie from Los Angeles and the Cowboy from Wyoming speak in UK/Cockney.  Oi.

Screenplay: 1/10 Stupid sentences, lack of motivation, invisible plot.  Tiresome irrelevant PC pandering: human beings are worthless past being food for some parasitic invader; only females, whether human or invader, can cause change, even if that change comes about by being eaten.

Special Effects: 1/10 This might have looked good in 1957; then again, perhaps not.  Cheesiest mushroom clouds ever.  Shows a person looking at a nuclear explosion and then squinting (nonsense; he'd be blind).  The aliens are supposedly the nephilim from the Old Testament.  Aliens are clearly humans in rubber suits, and not gigantic humanoid beings with angelic powers.  In this version, the overlords are slugs, and the biggest special effect is that of slugs wiggling through blood.

Final Rating: 1/10; four blackholes for cinematography, acting, screenplay, SFX.

20130807: Updated Review--Alien Hunter.

Alien Hunter

1. Released 2003, American live action theatrical film, 92 minutes, rated R for language and some violence.
2. IMDB: rated 4.9/10.0 from 2,734 viewers.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet' from critical reviewers; 22% from audience 1,233 audience ratings.
4. Starring James Spader, Keir Dullea, Roy Dotrice, and Carl Lewis.
5. Spader's character is a womanizer and brilliant code breaker whose career mostly crashed after the shutdown of SETI.
6. An artifact found under the Antarctic ice near an American research site is recovered after emitting a signal tracked by the US government.  The signal resembled remarkably a signal sent from near Roswell in 1947.  Spader wrangles passage to the site.
7. The usual perfect storm of instances of Murphy's Law culminates in the alien getting lose, research staff dying from alien disease vectors and from shooting each other.  The Russians bomb the site at the behest of Washington, obliterating evidence.
8. Similar to The Abyss, the aliens break into the proceedings with their superior technology.  Quite differently than The Abyss, no humans notice this, except the four who were saved.
9. Slow moving, neither compelling nor funny.  The ending was a bit novel, but not much.
10. This was probably my least favorite James Spader film.
11. One star of five.  20130927: one blackhole for screenplay.

One line summary: Presence of good actors does not salvage bad SciFi script.


Cinematography: 4/10 Very often dark, with cameras insufficient to the challenge.  Lots of grainy video.  The film never looks great, and seldom looks good.  I've gotten spoiled by HD, I guess.

Sound:  7/10 Never bad, but never crystal clear either.

Acting: 5/10 The actors I named above were OK, but the others were between dull and incompetent.

Screenplay:  2/10 The Russians use nuclear weapons on Antarctica at Washington's request?  I doubt this.  The movie was often plodding, short on motivational framework, long on bad decisions, and heavy on bad luck.