A trailer for the Prince of Persia movie adaptation has been released.  My initial impressions are quite positive.  So far, it looks like they have nailed the setting and feel of the game, as well as having a decent storyline set out.  However, trailers can be quite misleading. It will be interesting to see how Disney does with this, but so far things look great!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgEt-4L3fKQ

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WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

So this movie took me by surprise when I watched it with my mother on Friday.  Everyone has been telling me how good of a movie it was, but I was still a bit skeptical.  That is, until I actually saw it.

Now the premise of the movie begins with an alien ship over Johannesburg in South Africa.  For some reason or another, the ship cannot seem to move and the aliens onboard were somehow saved and given a place to live in area below.  A place that would quickly become rundown and heavily guarded since the surrounding people despise the aliens for being different.  This place is, of course, District 9.

The movie opens up like a documentary on Wikus van de Merwe, who has become part of a terrible incident involving the Prawns (the derogatory word for the aliens).  Wikus is an MNU field agent who was recently put in charge of an operation involving getting the Prawns to sign an eviction notice and force them to leave their current state of residence into another place away from the people of Johannesburg.  By some twisted turn of events, Wikus is exposed to some kind of alien chemical and begins to turn into an alien.  Wikus is taken into custody by his own company and begins to get experimented on since his new metamorphism enables him to use operate the aliens’ weaponry.  Wikus, who is undoubtedly subject to be killed and experimented on more, escapes from MNU to District 9.  There he learns of Christopher Johnson, an alien that claims can help Wikus turn back to normal if he can get the fuel that Wikus originally confiscated.

To sum up, the rest of the movie entails how Wikus and Christopher break into MNU, steal the fuel back, and send Christopher back to his home planet where he can get reinforcements to help save the rest of his alien brethren.  As this goes on, you can see Wikus turning more and more into an alien himself.

The plot of the movie isn’t the most original, I think it’s actually based on something, but the presentation is excellent.  The way the movie opens as a documentary and slowly transitions into more of an action-style movie is done seamlessly.  And the story is given so well and so quickly that there isn’t even time to question the obvious plot holes.  The alien fuel is the same thing that turns Wikus into an alien on exposure?  That just doesn’t make sense to me, but who cares!  There wasn’t even time to think about trivial things like that during the course of the action.  The social environment that District 9 takes place in is done very well too.  To be honest, if the events of District 9 were to actually take place, I think that the government and the people could react in a very similar manner.  I’m not trying to sound cruel, but people would not allow themselves to integrate with aliens at all.  It’s just the way humanity is right now – we can’t even get along with each other well, let alone with other forms of intelligent life that might be out there.

I also feel that the movie was done very well aesthetically.  There wasn’t a need for heavy computer graphics on anything, other than the spaceship, the aliens, and the alien weapons; so the resources they did allocate to these elements were pretty good.  I especially liked the weapons (the robot thing was awesome).  While everything was done in a futuristic/extraterrestrial style, I don’t think anything was done over the top either.  A lot of you may disagree with me as air blasters and lightning guns may be way out there, but oh well.

Overall, District 9 was definitely a sci-fi action movie, but was also something that hinted at something greater.  The documentary-like presentation, the interactions of the aliens and human society, and Wikus’s story all amount to something a bit more atypical than what I think people are used to seeing from a sci-fi movie.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised though, if you haven’t seen it already, because I know I was.  Again, it may not be for everyone, but I think this one is for most.

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I just saw Orphan last night. I went in expecting nothing. I saw the trailer, read a description, and neither of my friends said it was good or bad. I had no predispositions about the film. I bought my large Cherry Coke and stepped into the theater. As expected of a late Tuesday night showing, there was no one in the entire theater 5 minutes before showing. We grabbed some back-center seats and watched the last few stragglers come in and sit down. The lights dimmed. The movie started.

The opening credits showed some sort of demonic imagery painted in black light. If they wanted to make a film about a creepy child, this probably wasn’t the way to start. You’re supposed to start with something calming and happy… it adds to the mindfuck.

Speaking of which, the opening scene was a mindfuck. The scene starts off with the mother rolling in a wheelchair, pregnant, happily going to get her baby delivered. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the trailer, the movie description, and the basic premise of the film seem to dictate this will be a dead baby. The scene was forced and unnecessarily gory and weird.

The whole film progresses with forced suspense. At every turn is a camera trick or random loud sound effect. Maybe this is “good film-making” and I’m not aware of it, but this suspense seems random and unnecessary. At this point there had been no character development, little plot, and a relatively danger-free mood. Most of the other “formulaic scares” were not suspenseful.

Each of the characters Esther, the Orphan, seems to target are people who have already bullied her or, within the realms of a child’s logic, would seem like an enemy anyway. A bitchy grade school girl, the brother who resents Esther as an adopted child and rejects her as a member of their family, and even the nun who has done nothing wrong to Esther, yet was put into situations where Esther might feel wronged. The scenes where Esther gives them grief (killing them, brutally wounding them, or otherwise) is not suspenseful or scary, but rather, satisfying to some regard.

The end of the film was fairly uninteresting. The ‘twist’ was predictable. And weird. And not in a good way. Most of the strange or downright creepy things this child does is turned around in a single “eureka”-moment revelation from an arbitrary character. The entire audience let out a collective “ugh.” The twist seemed like an out so the filmmakers could get off the hook for a lot of freaky stuff. (For instance, Escher, a child, tries to seduce her ‘father.’ This is fairly controversial, except the twist, [spoiler]that Escher is actually an adult with a growth disorder[/spoiler] is both lame and removes/explains a large amount of the film’s awkward scenes.) The twist killed the mood of the entire film, rather than improving it. In the few minutes that followed, the film degenerated into a final-boss-fight-in-the-dark that’s not really that interesting (a done-to-death standard for horror movies, I suppose).

The plot was overall a little stiff and boring, with empty scares and pointless suspense. However, the film was still fun and probably freaky enough to warrant a watch, although I wouldn’t spend money on a theater ticket. There are some great lines, and the dialogue is okay. The acting is great, especially the child actors’. Orphan is, all in all, entertaining and a fine rental.

Quote:

Esther: If I find out that you’re lying, I’ll cut your hairless little prick off before you even figure out what it’s for.

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