Review: APOLLO 18

No, the moon may not be made of cheese, but let me assure you that the latest film about it is.

To the eternal delight of conspiracy theorists, Apollo 18 is sold to us as a found-footage project recovered from a secret mission to the moon, which would have been easier to swallow if it wasn’t so comically serious in its presentation. As it is, I found myself chuckling 10 seconds in and I was not alone.

Alien Prequel Morphs into Prometheus

            Ridley Scott’s most recent film Robin Hood started out as a revisionist version of the story entitled ‘Nottingham’, in which the beloved thief was the villain and the sheriff was the hero. Through development it took an 180^o turn and became a rather straightforward version of the story we all know about. Once again his most recent project has morphed. What began as a two-part prequel project to the Alien quadrilogy is now an original science fiction project entitled Prometheus.

Review: DISTRICT 9

Using human-to-alien relations, as a metaphor for human-to-human relations is nothing new. H.G. Wells first introduced the concept when he wrote War of the Worlds; in this book aliens do onto Earth as Europeans did unto Africa. For its time the book was revolutionary and it truly did change they way people views Europe’s role in history. More than 100 years later things have changed; no one is going to see District 9 and think much differently about apartheid in South Africa, most people wont even see the most obviously blatant parallels. For most District 9 will simply be another Sci-Fi action flick. Unfortunately this undermined District 9’s potential to the point the film does not know whether it is a serious metaphor about alien refugees in South Africa or if it is another Sci-Fi action flick done in a pseudo-documentary style.

Review: MEET DAVE

Meet Dave is a decent film at best. Ed Helms plays a villain that is not too captivating, and the jokes on his name being #2 were used up back when austin powers still was a 'new thing'. Elizabeth banks is beautiful as always as the mom of the kid who Dave spends his time around, but her character is hardly developed. Same goes for everyone else. Pretty much, the only two developed characters in the entire film are #3 (Gabrielle Union) and The Captain (Eddie Murphy). They have nice character arcs in a film that teaches you that, when everyone treats you like trash under their shoe, you will develop and learn to be human.... when you are in fact from outer-space.

The story relies far too much on sympathy for cute children, and for a Sci-fi comedy... the director, Brian Robbins, did not quite nail the film, ironically he did quite nicely for one of his recent films "The Shaggy Dog", which is always good for a laugh.

What makes the movie good is Eddie Murphy. He is easily one of this generations best character actors. He can contort his body and muscles in a way that one could never imagine. His comic timing is brilliant and almost every line or action he makes delivers a solid laugh. Shame the rest of the movie couldn't preform as well as he did.

"...and now I must disappear into the night!"



Ps. Eddies next movie is also about people who are really small. Keep an eye out for "The Incredible Shrinking Man"... coming to a theater eventually!