--Wanted This movie would be worthwhile just for the Danny Elfman song that serves as its theme, The Little Things. That bass line over the drum beat as the lead guitar joins in with its harsh chords: gets me every time. Add to that the sexiness that is Angelina Jolie and a quick viewing time filled with humor and comic-book kickassery and you have a near perfect action movie experience. At various times the movie reminded me of The Matrix and Fight Club, with the alienated protagonist yearning for something more from his existance.
Bottom line, if you can forgive the same sorts of logical fallacies you did for those two movies, you are likely to love Wanted. If all you can think is that bullets don't really travel like that, then you've missed the point completely.
--The Invasion As I recall this was pretty much universally panned. As a video rental, I found The Invasion to be a perfectly acceptable popcorn flick. Daniel Craig looks uncharacteristically human here (as opposed to the demigod that is his 007), and Nicole Kidman is compelling as the frantic but smart mom. She is appealing in this movie unlike pretty much everything else I have seen her in, avoiding the cold, superstar demeanor that mars most of her other performances. And I am happy to see a performance by a kid actor that is realistic instead of cheeky or spunky.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a classic that is unlikely to be beaten. It's been awhile, but I watched it a few years ago and the suspense builds to one of the classic endings of all genre movies. Beyond that, the original movie was full of the subtexts of its time. The Donald Sutherland version had some creepy moments, especially toward the end, and there was another version a few years b ack featuring Forest Whitaker that I thought well-made. I guess what makes these remakes --decent films all, in my estimation-- not as good as the original is the lack of subtextual relevance.
The Invasion has a snippet of this initially introduced by the Russian diplomat's speach about human nature, but it remained unexplored for the most part and relatively safe in terms of its extrapolation. The conclusions and actions the protagonist reaches make sense and we agree with, but none are surprising. A mistake in kind with the recent I Am Legend remake with Will Smith is the end return to relative normalcy. The Invasion is well-made, if safe genre fare.
--Apocalypto I've had this movie for a year now, a gift from a family member, but only recently watched it. Unfair, I know, but after the Gibson's self-righteous fawning over the Christ movie and subsequent antisemitic comments I've had no interest in his work.
Due to a satellite company claiming that they can't mount their dish at our new place, we finally got down to the dregs and put the movie on. This movie is violent. Harsh. Not for the kids.
The other thing I am reminded of is the lack of historical accuracy critics accused of the film. I'll take their word for it, but my thought is that if you go to a hollywood film for a history lesson you get what you pay for.
Apocalypto is an impressive film. An impressive genre film.
In the beginning I was struck by how hard life was for the tribe, how vicious the men were with each other, and how easily it seemed they were to be violent with another tribe passing through their jungle. This is cleverly contrasted with the atrocities that follow as they are killed or taken into captivity and then led to the Mayan (Aztec?) city for sacrifice. The harshness of this world reminded me in a satisfying way of Jeff Long's Hadals, and the gist of their existence had the grit and blood and heartache of reality.
One fault, contained perhaps in my interpretation more so than in the film itself, was the constant question I had in my mind if the film makers intended to imply that this world was so brutal due to the lack of Christianity. So that at the end comes the light that ends their world.
The film is superior fantasy, especially in comparison to the silly, lumbering farce of 10,000 BC. Compare those two, in these terms, and Apocalypto emerges as an impressive work of cinema.
--Jeff Long's Descent and Deeper I just finished Deeper today and read Descent earlier in the year. I don't intend to offer a comprehensive review so much as a recommendation. Long's writing is compelling and unadorned without stripping itself of nuance. Descent is the better of the two book, when we first discover this underworld and the characters, human and otherwise, that it captures, entices, ensnares, or transforms. Deeper was a satisfying 
ending, if the journey itself felt like a bit of a retread. It was good to see how bad the humans could be, especially in the second book. I think in Descent there came a moment when the brutality of the Hadals ceased to seem alien, whereas in Deeper we seen humans rendered alien by their willful rejection of civilization and its mores. I liked the end allowed Ike, as well as Ali's and I would read a third installment though if there ever is one it should be the last: addressing the question of Ishmael and the voices that he can send up or down and otherwise use to influence the world.
--Elizabeth Moon's Trading in Danger and Marque and Reprisal What I find interesting is how much I felt unmoved by the first book, and yet compelled enough to read it to completion. Before this sounds like faint praise, just understand that I have tried to read several first books in the Military SF sub-genre only to put them down due to bad writing or plot silliness, or due to cardboard characters and stiff dialog. Trading in Danger does strike me as written from a world view much less liberal than my own (and this comment has nothing to do with body count or willingness to kill), but rather in what seemed like a pretty standard feeling of superiority of the military (or militarily trained) and the rich toward everyone else.
That said, I liked how the book began with the protagonist getting kicked out of military
academy. Nice and unexpected. I liked the strong female character.I dislike books where the people we follow are the privileged few, and here we are with the daughter of an interstellar shipping magnate. But I realize how hard it is to put a ship under the control of a spunky farm boy from Ta--- well, you know, there's tripe to be found on both sides of that one. So, despite these plot point that usually turn me off, despite the conservative feel of Moon's narrative, it was well-written and compelling enough that I picked up the second book.
And Marque and Reprisal rocks.
I wonder if Moon just had to get all the stuff out in the first book so she could hit the ground running with this one. There is also a feel of a crew coming together that the reader will grow to know and, if not love entirely, at least become attached to their interactions and trajectory. So, for me, the appeal of this book has as much to do with the appeal of Blakes 7, Farscape, and Firefly, than with other examples of the military SF genre that failed to grab my attention.
The first book is good, but not astounding. You'll want to read it, though, to get all of Marque and Reprisals' rewards. I will be reading the other Vatta's War book.
--The Mummy 3 The third Mummy movie is the best. It starts out with Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in ancient China. A bunch of stuff happens that (see above about looking for history lessons from movies) has little basis in reality or the historical past. Fast forward to postWWII and our protagonist, his wife, and son. A new actress plays the wife, initially disappointing but ultimately she does a good job. This is not a movie that warrants too close a dissection, but I think it's worth saying that not only is this the best Mummy movie but it was much fun than the latest Indy flick. Amazing considering I would place the previous two Mummy movies on par with 10,000 BC
--The Matrix I know: like I need to say anything about this movie. I watched it over the weekend with my brother-in-law (who is otherwise not really a genre fan), a grand worshiper of the merits of The Matrix, and our friend, Frank, who had never watched it before. Such a good movie but it is so easy to forget the laughable underpinnings of the story (humans as batteries). Suspend that disbelief and you have the best Kafka movie ever made (if only Mr. Anderson had been nameless and the movie ended before he reached the 'real world'). The first Matrix movie represents one of the most true expressions of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey this side of a certain Padawan, as well as a mainstream work of post-singularity storytelling... Not to mean that it was told post-singularity but that it is about post-singularity times (one hopes, I guess.)
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I'm reading City of Ember with my seven year old: it is great and we can't wait to check out the movie. I am about to start Jack McDevitt's Cauldron (I really love his stuff, though I am less fond of the Alex Benedict books... not because of the different milieu, but because of the first person POV... a pickiness on my part). Next will be Caleb Carr's The Alienist.
