Trilogy Week #43 - Living With Aliens

So now that we know that their are aliens among us, how do we live with them. You can imagine that it might be something out of Star Trek, but in reality, it will probably be like these three movies. It will not be pretty for the new arriving aliens.

Title: Alien Nation

Year: 1988

Director: Graham Baker

Cast: James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp

Rated: R

Running Time: 1hr. 30mins.

My Review: I remember seeing this when I was little, and the TV show that followed it. I would refer to it as the cheetah heads. The film being enjoyable to watch, has a very simplistic cliche cop story line, but with an interesting alien twist. Mandy Patinkin and James Caan play well off one another. And it's fun to find out about the different alien idioms, like that the aliens get drunk off of sour milk, and salt water can kill them. If you can get past the heavy handed message of the way Americans treat different minorities, it's still worth the watch. 7 out of 10 glasses of sour milk.

Title: District 9

Year: 2009

Director: Neil Blomkamp

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope

Rated: R

Running Time: 1hr. 52mins.

My Review: This film starts the exact same way the Alien Nation starts, but then takes a very different turn, in away that I would never have saw coming. So this was very interesting to watch. And very hopeful to see Neil Blomkamp's future work. Great story, great effects, and Sharlto Copley is awesome. If anyone who doesn't know, this was supposed to be the Halo movie, but during pre-production, the film was scrapped, so this was made instead, talk about making lemonade out of lemons. 9 out of 10 cans of cat food.

Title: Avatar

Year: 2009

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 2hr. 42mins.

My Review: This film took James Cameron about 7 years to make, basically inventing a new way of film making, with a new form of 3D motion capture. So to know that and then watch the film, It was very disappointed. A great rule of thumb that I've heard is, "the special effects should be used as a tool to help the story." Which is something that I guess James Cameron has never heard. This film feels like a giant test reel for his new fancy cameras. This story has been told before in better films, the acting is very bland, giant plot holes. And something that is going to piss a lot of people off, this has a giant lack of imagination. Every "alien" animal can be identified as a earth animal. And that the Na'vi make war cries like Native Americans, and let's not forget unobtainium... They might as well have called it hardtoreachium. The night time scenes look like the back room of Spencer's Gifts with all the black light hippie posters. One thing that I am a big believer in is, I prefer imagination over talent. Which is what this movie looks like. A great work of talent, not to take away for the contributors for their hard work. But a disappointing lack of imagination. This is nothing more that glorified eye candy, covering up a mediocre story. 5 out of 10 unobtainium rocks.