TIME-TRAVELING APOCALYPSE VAMPIRES
Jun. 1st, 2010 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogI watch movies. I post opinions. Hurrah.
The Book Of Eli
Post-apocalypse fable from the Hughes Brothers with Denzel Washington as a lone drifter making his way across post-WWIII America in possession of a book being sought by Gary Oldman as the ruthless leader of a shantytown of survivors.
It’s probably tempting to compare this film to The Road (which I haven’t seen yet), and the unmistakably religious tone of the movie might put off both Christians and atheists. But apart from a few plot holes and a little extra cheese (and an apparent disregard for science), I found the story to be all right and thought-provoking – which you don’t usually get with post-apocalyptic films. The characters are somewhat underwritten, but Washington and Oldman make the most out of what they have, and no one ever said it wasn’t fun watching Oldman play a psychotic villain. Flawed, but engaging, though if yr idea of a post-apocalyse film is Mad Max, you may be disappointed.
Daybreakers
Vampire sci-fi flick that builds on the mathematical problem of the vampire concept in which people who get bitten become vampires: sooner or later, yr going to run out of humans. Pharmaceutical company Bromley Marks is working on a synthetic blood substitute to solve the blood shortage, but handsome vampire hematologist Ethan Hawke stumbles upon an actual cure for vampirism.
It’s a promising set-up, but the execution is pretty uneven, with writer/directors The Spierig Brothers trying to blend pub science (vampirism as a virus-like disease) with science-defying cheesy supernatural effects. (For example, why would a vampire virus eliminate yr reflection from a mirror, much less cause you to explode in flames when staked through the heart?) Consequently the “cure” isn’t that convincing, either. Which is too bad because overall, it’s an okay film, but with so many lost opportunities, I can’t rate it that highly, either.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
Well, look, it’s based on a video game. And you can tell – the hero has to jump across lots of rooftops and chasms to get from point A to point B and acquires a magic time-traveling dagger along the way. Watching it, I get the feeling the Disney suits who green-lighted this thought, “Sure, movies based on video games traditionally suck, but hey, we make movies based on park rides, so we can do this.”
Anyway, the cliches are pretty thick, the action impossible to follow half the time, and I almost fell asleep twice. Alfred Molina as the comic relief is good fun, but apart from that I got almost nothing out of this.
If I could turn back time,
This is dF
The Book Of Eli
Post-apocalypse fable from the Hughes Brothers with Denzel Washington as a lone drifter making his way across post-WWIII America in possession of a book being sought by Gary Oldman as the ruthless leader of a shantytown of survivors.
It’s probably tempting to compare this film to The Road (which I haven’t seen yet), and the unmistakably religious tone of the movie might put off both Christians and atheists. But apart from a few plot holes and a little extra cheese (and an apparent disregard for science), I found the story to be all right and thought-provoking – which you don’t usually get with post-apocalyptic films. The characters are somewhat underwritten, but Washington and Oldman make the most out of what they have, and no one ever said it wasn’t fun watching Oldman play a psychotic villain. Flawed, but engaging, though if yr idea of a post-apocalyse film is Mad Max, you may be disappointed.
Daybreakers
Vampire sci-fi flick that builds on the mathematical problem of the vampire concept in which people who get bitten become vampires: sooner or later, yr going to run out of humans. Pharmaceutical company Bromley Marks is working on a synthetic blood substitute to solve the blood shortage, but handsome vampire hematologist Ethan Hawke stumbles upon an actual cure for vampirism.
It’s a promising set-up, but the execution is pretty uneven, with writer/directors The Spierig Brothers trying to blend pub science (vampirism as a virus-like disease) with science-defying cheesy supernatural effects. (For example, why would a vampire virus eliminate yr reflection from a mirror, much less cause you to explode in flames when staked through the heart?) Consequently the “cure” isn’t that convincing, either. Which is too bad because overall, it’s an okay film, but with so many lost opportunities, I can’t rate it that highly, either.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
Well, look, it’s based on a video game. And you can tell – the hero has to jump across lots of rooftops and chasms to get from point A to point B and acquires a magic time-traveling dagger along the way. Watching it, I get the feeling the Disney suits who green-lighted this thought, “Sure, movies based on video games traditionally suck, but hey, we make movies based on park rides, so we can do this.”
Anyway, the cliches are pretty thick, the action impossible to follow half the time, and I almost fell asleep twice. Alfred Molina as the comic relief is good fun, but apart from that I got almost nothing out of this.
If I could turn back time,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2010-06-01 02:00 pm (UTC)I enjoyed Book of Eli for the most part, although the Christianity overtones were a bit much for my taste. But that's just me. And Daybreakers had such great promise but the problem was they spent so much time working on building up a world where vampires are the dominant species that they forgot to concentrate on the story.