The History of Future Folk

I have very much the same reaction to banjos.

(2012) Sci-Fi Comedy Musical Thingie (Variance) Nils D’Aulaire, Jay Klaitz, Julie Ann Emery, April L. Hernandez, Dee Snider, Onata Aprile, Teena Byrd, Ivan Cardona, Mario D’Leon, Steve Greenstein, Callie Harlan, Dylan Powers, Eddie Privitzer, Billy Lee, Liz Logan. Directed by J. Anderson Mitchell and Jeremy Kipp Walker   

Let’s say you were the biggest badass on the planet Hondo and you were sent to prepare for an invasion of planet Earth by releasing a flesh-eating virus into the atmosphere, paving the way for the Hondonians to take over. What if you heard music for the first time ever on this puny little pipsqueak of a rock? What if the arrangements of tones were so pleasing to your ear that you suddenly realized that this world just might be a world worth saving?

Bill (D’Aulaire) – better known as General Trius on Planet Hondo – is in just such a position, coincidentally enough. He was about to release the virus when he found himself in….a big box store. Awed by the abundance of goods, he hesitated. And then he heard it – music. Well, Muzak to be precise but it was unlike anything he’d ever heard before.

And so the great General decided to spare this world and took up the banjo. He learned how to play and did some gigs around Brooklyn as General Trius, and it was at one of these that he met Holly (Emery), whom he would marry and eventually have a child, sweet Wren (Aprile) with.

But the leaders of Hondo would not be so easily put off. They sent Kevin (Klaitz), an assassin, to get the mission back on the rails. Kevin is the kind of assassin I’d want after me if someone felt the need to punch my ticket. He is good-hearted and not at all good at his profession. However, he discovers he’s a pretty fair guitar player and singer. Thus the duo of Future Folk are born.

You’d think the high muckety mucks on Hondo would have gotten the picture but NOOOOOO. They send yet another assassin after Bill and Kevin with the express directive to wipe out all life on Earth and this guy is a bit more serious about his work. In the meantime Kevin has fallen for the pretty cop Carmen (Hernandez) and the duo have gotten a regular gig at a club owned by Larry (Snider). Can they save the day and get a record deal on the side?

Of all the movies at the Florida Film Festival I saw this year, this one has the most offbeat and genuine charm. Yeah, there’s definitely a hipster element to it but the filmmakers chose not to stress the usual indie clichés that come with the hipster thing. Instead, they take elements of ’50s b-movie science fiction invasion films, 60s hootenanny films and 70s exploitation flicks. The result is kinda kooky, a little retro, sorta out there but completely fun.

Snider, the frontman for Twisted Sister and occasional Celebrity Apprentice contestant is the most well-known face here but the acting is fairly solid if unspectacular. The music is another matter; the songs are pretty damn catchy and the harmonies spot on with some deft banjo and guitar work. There’s a bluegrass-folk element with kind of B movie Sci-Fi lyrics (and yes there is a soundtrack – you can order it right now through Amazon or iTunes – go to the website by clicking on the photo above for details).

Now I love quirky as much as the next man but be warned that some who have low tolerance for that sort of thing might find the music and movie hard to take. However, the movie is so cheerful in it’s obvious love for all the genres it mashes up that I couldn’t help but feel affectionate towards it. Definitely this takes me back to a certain genre of movies that made rainy weekend afternoons tolerable.

This isn’t a movie that’s out to reinvent the wheel. While it plainly wears it’s heart on its sleeve (and a red plastic bucket on its head), the filmmakers do resist the urge to give their baby a heaping helping of kitsch and instead just let you bask in the goofiness. While a lot of film critics need a film to have some great meaning or message in order to get a favorable review, this movie seems bent only on having its audience feel good by the time the end credits roll and at that mission, this movie succeeds. Five hearty Hondos and an Excelsior to this movie!

REASONS TO GO: Long on charm. Great tunes. And of course, Hondo!

REASONS TO STAY: Some might find the offbeat humor overbearing. An occasional over-emphasis on Hondo!

FAMILY VALUES:  There is some mild violence and a few mildly bad words here and there. Hondo!

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Future Folk are an actual band based in Brooklyn who make very similar comments in between songs as they do here; the movie was made in essence to give the band a backstory. Hondo!

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/22/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews. Metacritic: no score listed; the jury’s still out on this one which isn’t opening on its limited theatrical run until May 31. Hondo!

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Alien Trespass and Hondo!

FINAL RATING: 8/10

NEXT: Star Trek Into Darkness

Oblivion

 

Morgan Freeman doesn’t want Tom Cruise jumping on the couch.

(2013) Science Fiction (Universal) Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo, Zoe Bell, Abigail Lowe, Isabelle Lowe, David Madison, Fileena Bahris, Lindsay Clift, Joanne Bahris, Booch O’Connell, Julie Hardin, Jaylen Moore, Jeremy Sande, Jay Oliver. Directed by Joseph Kosinski   

One wonders why professional critics, who seem to be fairly intelligent and knowledgeable about movies, suddenly seem compelled to spend entire reviews of a movie bashing Tom Cruise and lamenting about his age, his off-screen drama, his acting ability or all of the above.

This movie isn’t about Tom Cruise, it merely stars him. He plays Jack Harper, a glorified repair technician. It’s 2077 and the Earth is essentially a dead planet. Aliens, called Scavs, had invaded the planet some decades earlier and while we won the war we lost the planet. The Scavs blew up the moon, causing massive tidal waves and earthquakes which essentially wiped out a huge chunk of the human race. We in turn launched our nuclear arsenal, destroying the majority of the Scav invading force but rendering most of the planet uninhabitable.

Now the surviving humans live on Titan, with a few still remaining on Earth repairing drones that monitor the planet for the remaining Scavs. Huge intake tanks are pulling up seawater necessary for fusion reactors that mean our survival on Titan. Some live on the Tet (short for Tetrahedron, which is its shape) but others. like Jack, live in cantilevered homes above the clouds; they travel on bubble ships which resemble dragonflies or old-style Bell Helicopters.

Jack and his navigator (who remains in their home and monitors him on a computer console from there) Victoria (Riseborough) have only two weeks left in their tour of duty. Victoria can’t wait to head to Titan but Jack…Jack has misgivings. Jack has doubts. Jack has strange memories of the observation deck at the Empire State Building that he can’t explain, particularly since the Empire State was, like all of New York, wiped out well before Jack was born.

Jack also shouldn’t have memories – his memory, like Victoria’s, was wiped five years ago before his mission started so that important information couldn’t get into the hands of the Scavs. He’s fine with that – duty and honor are big with Jack – but he has nagging questions that he can’t really answer and Sally (Leo) his mission control supervisor in the Tet, isn’t prone to answering them. Jack has found an isolated little valley where there is still water and grass and trees, and a cabin he built there with what trinkets and artifacts he can scavenge which he will miss on Titan most of all. But nothing can prepare Jack for the immense lie he has come to believe and what the truth of what is really out there is. Now Jack is fighting for his planet, along with a mysterious woman (Kurylenko) with connections to his past and a wise leader (Freeman) of a group of survivors who have already figured out the truth – and must convince Jack of that truth or else humanity will fade into the mists of time.

Kosinski’s follow-up to TRON: Legacy is another sci-fi epic. Universal hedged its bets a bit, placing this in an April slot that would shield it from competition with the big summer sci-fi epics which I think was a smart move. There’s plenty of eye candy here from the bubble ships which are hella cool, to the landscapes of ruined Earth which is a clever mixture of desolate Icelandic landscapes and familiar cityscapes from the big Apple.

Cruise does what he needs to do here, and that’s mainly act puzzled. Harper is one of those sorts who was born and bred to be heroic; like the original Mercury 7 or the guys in The Right Stuff his instincts are to do the right thing. That’s right in the wheelhouse of Tom Cruise; few guys can be as charismatic and heroic as he can as he’s proven in films like Jerry Maguire, The Firm and Legend. He has to carry this movie pretty much as he is in virtually every scene so as goes Tom Cruise so goes Oblivion.

He has a pretty decent support cast. Riseborough is a beautiful and talented actress who doesn’t get enough credit from mainstream Hollywood just yet. Freeman and Leo are both proven stars, both Oscar-winning performers who can be counted on to deliver sterling work.

There are a couple of major plot twists here but frankly, you are going to see both of them coming a mile away. The movie really needed a slam-bang ending  but doesn’t get one; it’s more of a fizzle and that’s one of Hollywood’s most grievous sins of late – the inability to write a good ending to a movie.

The gee-whiz factor is up there and with Cruise onscreen most of the time, they get the benefit of having one of Hollywood’s most charismatic stars keeping the audience’s attention riveted where the filmmakers want it. This is a solid movie that will keep your eye candy craving satisfied at least until the summer begins.

REASONS TO GO: Cruise is, whatever else he might be, a compelling star. Pretty cool gadgets and visual effects.

REASONS TO STAY: The twists aren’t particularly hard to figure out. Sputters towards the end.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is some violence, a bit of nudity and sexuality and some harsh language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The painting used in the film is “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/4/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 56% positive reviews. Metacritic: 54/100; about as mixed a reception as you can get.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: The Company We Keep

The Host (2013)

Diane Kruger and her cool ride.

(2013) Science Fiction (Open Road) Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Diane Kruger, William Hurt, Frances Fisher, Chandler Canterbury, Boyd Holbrook, Lee Hardee, Scott Lawrence, Mustafa Harris, Shawn Carter Peterson, Raeden Greer, Bokeem Woodbine, Rachel Roberts, Marcus Lyle Brown, Jhil McEntyre. Directed by Andrew Niccol   

No more war. No starvation. The contributing factors to climate change eradicated and the ecology restored back to balance. No lying, no violence and the world living in happiness and harmony. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Of course. You see, there’s a catch to living in a perfect world; an alien parasite, calling themselves Souls, have invaded the planet, taking over the bodies of humans and eradicating their memories and personalities. Although our bodies remain alive, that which makes us individuals is gone. In essence, this alien invasion is overwriting us and as a result, we’re slowly going extinct. You can always tell the infected bodies however by a strange glowing ring of light in the iris of the eye.

There are some stragglers however and infected humans, called Seekers, chase them down and bring them to the city to have their parasite inserted (through an incision in the back of the neck). The Souls look sort of like sparkly Sea Anemones with thin languorous tentacles with fiber optic cables; very pretty to the eye but not something you’d want inside you.

One of those stragglers, Melanie Stryder (Ronan) particularly doesn’t want those things inside her. She and her boyfriend Jared (Irons) and her little brother Jamie (Canterbury) are discovered by Seekers; she leads them away from her men but cornered, chooses to throw herself out of a window to the asphalt below rather than be taken.

Sadly, they take her anyway, heal her wounds and stick the Sea Anemone…er, Soul…into her neck. The Soul that inhabits her is named Wanderer and the Seeker (Kruger) who captured her wants to know about any other humans that Melanie might have known about. At first Wanderer is very co-operative but to the Soul’s surprise Melanie is still in there, putting up a fight and generally acting out. In fact from time to time Melanie can still exact enough control to make Wanderer’s body do what Melanie wants but those moments are few and far between.

But they are coming more often and Melanie’s memories are enacting a strange kind of sway over Wanderer. Melanie convinces Wanderer to escape the facility they’re being held in and eventually Melanie leads the Wanderer to the New Mexico desert where dehydrated and exhausted, she’s found by her grizzled Uncle Jeb (Hurt) who takes her to where he’s established a refuge for a group of uninfected humans; the inside of an extinct volcano and I really must admit, I like what he’s done with the place, planting a wheat field inside the caldera using banks of mirrors to reflect the sunlight into the cone. There are also thermal streams in the cave which not only provide drinking water but bathing opportunities. If only they had a monorail and sharks with frickin’ lasers on their fins.

Wanderer/Melanie’s presence isn’t greeted with joy; in fact, only Uncle Jeb thinks that Melanie is still in there. Jared, who along with Jamie has found his way to the volcano, is all for killing her right away as his friend Kyle (Holbrook) is inclined to do. Jamie is eventually convinced as is Ian (Abel) who eventually falls in love with Wanderer (who is re-christened Wanda) and soon Melanie’s entreaties that she is still there are believed although it makes things a bit awkward since double dating between Wanda and Ian and Melanie and Jared is problematic.

Still, the Seeker is furious at having lost her Soul so she goes after it with a vengeance and when an ambush goes terribly wrong, the Seeker kind of loses it and violates the codes of non-violence. Can the remaining humans continue to survive with a technologically advanced foe wanting to re-populate their bodies with Sea Anemones….I mean Souls?

It all sounds kind of preposterous really but actually the concept is intriguing. The Souls are actually pretty much benign and other than taking over our bodies are pretty nice sorts and it’s true that we’ve pretty much screwed up our planet and society left to our own devices. However this aspect isn’t really explored much; the direction is to pander to the young female audience that author Stephenie Meyer, who penned the novel this is based on (and is best known for being the creator of the Twilight saga), has cultivated.

The love triangle is a theme in her works to date (although her bibliography is admittedly pretty small). It is appealing to a young girl to have two hunky guys moon-eyed in love with her and Meyer and Niccol play up that aspect. Melanie is a plucky heroine who as played by Ronan is a bit stronger than Bella Swan and less reliant on those around her. However there isn’t much action here – a lot of dialogue takes place in Melanie’s head (or Wanderer’s head if you prefer) and that isn’t terribly cinematic no matter how you play it.

In fact there’s a hellacious amount of dialogue here, far too much to support this kind of movie and thus it gets a little bit boring to be honest. Even if they’d chosen to go cerebral and explore the whole “is freedom worth losing control for” which dovetails nicely into our post-911 paranoia, you’d expect there to be a lot less exposition in something like that.

The visuals are nice and the cave set is nifty. I also like the chrome-plated vehicles the Seekers use. The acting is solid if not exemplary, with the reliable Hurt making Jeb a salt of the earth sort that audiences tend to click with. Ronan is a terrific actress but comes off a bit petulant in places and there is soooo much kissing that it begins to get a bit old – and I like kissing.

This is one of those I wish movies. I wish it hadn’t been quite as long. I wish it had a bit more passion from the cast, although given that the Souls are written as emotionless creatures there’s at least an explanation for that. I wish it had given credit to its audience as having as much intellect as hormonal drive. I wish American culture would stop pandering to the lowest common denominator and start aiming higher. I wish I could have given it a higher rating but frankly, it just didn’t earn it. It’s not a bad movie although I’m sure some will think it so simply because they’re not part of the target audience – it’s just not as good a movie as it could have been.

REASONS TO GO: Some nice visuals. Consistently well-acted by its predominantly young cast.

REASONS TO STAY: Prefers to play to teen girl hormones than explore the potential genuinely interesting issues it raises. Oddly low-key.

FAMILY VALUES:  There are a few scenes of teen sexuality and some violence but nothing that you wouldn’t see on network television.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Before Diane Kruger accepted the role of the Seeker, Haley Atwell, Claire Danes and Eva Green all turned it down.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/31/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 12% positive reviews. Metacritic: 36/100; the critics ripped it a new one.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Twilight

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: On the Road

Red Planet

Val Kilmer gets a little face time with a killing machine.

(2000) Science Fiction (Warner Brothers) Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker, Terence Stamp, Jessica Morton, Caroline Bossi, Bob Neill (voice), Neil Ross (voice). Directed by Antony Hoffman

It’s 2025 and do you know where your atmosphere is? Yup…hopelessly poisoned, the soil sterilized by toxins, and our planet has less than a century of sustainable life left in it. That’s just a bad day for everybody.

All eyes turn to the Mars terraforming project; everything seems to be going well, but something odd’s been happening up there; the algae that had been sent to the planet to create a breathable atmosphere seems to be failing, and the oxygen levels on Mars are dropping fast. It looks like we’ll have to take care of this in person or else learn to hold our collective breath.

Mission commander Bowman (Moss) (Nyuck nyuck nyuck on the name, guys, open the pod bay door Hal?) leads a crew to examine the Mars problem. A habitation has already been sent to Mars and should be up and running. The mission is going smoothly, although one of the scientists (Stamp, who is wasted in a too-small role) is showing signs of wigging out, philosophically speaking. The “space janitor” — or systems engineer, (Kilmer) lacks respect from the crew, but has the eye of his commander (and apparently a bunch of other body parts).

Once in Mars orbit, things go wrong as they normally do in space movies. A severe solar flare cripples the mother ship and forces an early launch of the Lander, which promptly crashes (don’t you hate when that happens?) far away from the habitation. Commander Bowman, who had to stay behind in order to get the Lander away, is managing to repair the mother ship for the return to earth, but the mission looks junked, especially when the survivors from the Lander reach the habitation to find it completely destroyed, and only 15 minutes of oxygen left in their tanks. They wait around to die, only to discover something strange — there IS a breathable atmosphere on Mars after all. There is also a pissed-off robot who has gone military on their butts. What’s an astronaut to do?

Well, make chest-beating speeches about duty and sacrifice, for one thing. Kilmer and Stamp are terrific; Moss could have been the big action heroine that Linda Hamilton chose not to be; as it is she’s had a pretty solid career thanks to performances like these. Sizemore and Bratt are solid in support, and the effects are pretty nifty. The script, however, is pretty lame. It’s one Deus ex Machina after another, one amazing miraculous coincidence piled atop another until you’re screaming for mercy, but sadly, in Hollywood, nobody can hear you scream.

Red Planet  is fair enough eye candy, but could have used a plot that didn’t have quite so many holes in it  – the destruction of the habitation is never fully explained; when you figure out what caused it, you wonder how a station that was designed to withstand an F5 tornado could have succumbed to what destroyed it, for example. Kilmer is as laid-back as action heroes go; Sizemore makes a pretty good second banana, but it’s Moss who captured my attention here, as she will yours  and she would have without the somewhat obligatory, unnecessary nude scene.

This came out the same year as Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars which was slightly better than this although I think Mission stands up better over time, despite the Kubrickian noodling of its ending.  I’m as big a fan of sci-fi adventure movies as you’ll find but even I couldn’t find a lot of positive things here. This was one mission I could have done without.

WHY RENT THIS: Decent special effects. Carrie-Anne Moss rocks.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Poorly written. Too much chest-beating. Kilmer too laid-back for the role.

FAMILY MATTERS: There’s a fair share of violence and foul language and a brief nude scene.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Many of the Mars scenes were filmed in Wadi Rum, Jordan – a desolate narrow valley.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $33.5M on an $80M production budget; the movie flopped big time at the box office.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mission to Mars

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: The Host (2013)

The Core (2003)

Hillary Swank suddenly realizes there will be no Oscar nominations for this one.

(2003) Sci-Fi Adventure (Paramount) Aaron Eckhart, Hillary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo, DJ Qualls, Bruce Greenwood, Richard Jenkins, Tcheky Karyo, Alfre Woodard, Glenn Morshower, Christopher Shyer, Ray Galletti, Eileen Pedde, Rekha Sharma, Anthony Harrison, Nicole Leroux. Directed by Jon Amiel

As far as Hollywood is concerned, the world is in constant need of saving. If it’s not alien invasions, it’s natural disasters or incoming asteroids. Sometimes it’s even the wrath of God. But how do you save the planet from itself?

Weird things are happening all over the world. People drop dead suddenly with no explanation until it’s discovered that all of them wore pacemakers that caused arrhythmia due to electromagnetic interference. The space shuttle’s navigational equipment malfunctions, forcing a crash landing by heroic co-pilot Rebecca Childs (Swank); the culprit – an electromagnetic glitch. Birds start to slam into buildings and into the ground, their sense of direction confused by – you guessed it – electromagnetic interference.

One scientist has figured it out. Dr. Josh Keyes (Eckhart) has come to the horrifying conclusion that the molten core of the planet has stopped rotating, causing the planet’s electromagnetic shield to start to fail. He warns Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Tucci), the Presidential science advisor who at first pooh-poohs his conclusions but then comes to the horrifying realization that he’s right. As he warns the President’s cabinet, in three months human civilization will have returned to the stone age. In a year, all life on the planet will have fried.

There’s nothing to be done but to jump start the planet, but how do you get to the Earth’s core when the deepest hole ever dug is only seven miles? And once there, how can anything withstand the extreme temperatures? No fears there – an eccentric scientist, Dr. Ed “Braz” Brazzleton (Lindo) has developed a craft whose hull is made of the rare (so rare it’s non-existent) metal Unobtanium and uses sophisticated lasers to tunnel through rock like…well, a mole.

Also on the team is Serge (Karyo), a French weapons specialist whose nuclear device will be used to get the core moving, and commanding the mission is Robert Iverson (Greenwood) with Maj. Childs along as co-pilot. Of course, information control will be a key since if word got out there’d be panic the likes of which the world has never seen so expert hacker “Rat” Finch (Qualls) monitors the Internet. In mission control is General Thomas Purcell (Jenkins) on the military side and presidential advisor Stickley (Woodard) for the science.

But there will be many obstacles both known and unforeseen before they reach the Core and once they get there, a secret that explains why the rotation stopped will be revealed. With the life of every living thing on Earth hanging in the balance, this small team literally carries the weight of the world on their shoulders.

This is a surprisingly (although it shouldn’t be considering the cast) well-acted movie for the disaster genre. The premise is kind of intriguing. the science behind it not so much. In fact, most scientists point to this movie as having the most egregious scientific gaffes of any movie ever made. The laws of physics are constantly violated both in plot and execution.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s no entertainment value here. As with any good disaster movie there’s plenty of spectacle as iconic monuments the world over go bye-bye, including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Roman Coliseum. And, as I said, the cast is more stellar than most with Eckhart and Swank turning in solid lead performances, with Tucci, Lindo, Qualls and Karyo getting in some quality support for them, Tucci in particular getting props for his cross between Carl Sagan and Tim Gunn.

So kids don’t see this and expect to be a physics whiz. Real physics whizzes are going to watch this (if they haven’t already) and either tear their hair out and curse Hollywood roundly, or laugh and laugh and laugh until their pocket protectors explode. Disaster film junkies though will probably find this a cut above more recent Roland Emmerich end-of-the-world fare however.

WHY RENT THIS: An entertaining and thrilling popcorn flick surprisingly well-acted. Decent effects.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the situations they encounter are a tad ludicrous and the science behind the film is really, really faulty.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is a bit of swearing and some scenes that are gruesome by implication although nothing horrible is shown.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: During the scene where Dr. Keyes uses a peach as an example to show the Earth, none of the fruit that the producers brought to the set were suitable so an apple was brought in, painted to resemble a peach and a peach stone inserted in the middle.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $73.5M on a $60M production budget; the movie lost money during its theatrical run although turned a profit once home video and cable sales are factored in.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Journey to the Center of the Earth

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Snitch

Pitch Black

Even the landscape is giving Vin Diesel the finger.

(2000) Science Fiction (Universal) Radha Mitchell, Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Claudia Black, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Rhiana Griffith, John Moore, Simon Burke, Les Chantery, Sam Sari, Firass Dirani, Ric Anderson, Vic Wilson, Angela Moore. Directed by David Twohy

Most of us are scared of the dark in one way or another. We are scared by what we can’t see. We are scared by what we don’t know. And those strange noises that could be claws and fangs….those can be terrifying without a doubt. We are frightened by the things that lurk just beyond the shadowline.

With good reason, it turns out. Especially on this planet. A transport carrying Muslim settlers bound for New Mecca and Riddick (Diesel), a prisoner with surgically enhanced eyesight bound, is holed by space debris, killing the captain and sending the ship crashing to the surface of a barren world with three suns.

The situation seems pretty bleak; the surviving senior officer is Fry, the docking pilot (Radha Mitchell) and she’s a bit shall we say prone to panic. What’s worse is that there is no water to be found, and Riddick has managed to escape. That doesn’t please Johns (Hauser), the marshal escorting Riddick to prison (and a guy with a few secrets of his own rattling around in his brain).

It looks like they may have lucked out in finding an abandoned mining operation with a working well and what seems to be a serviceable transport vehicle that only needs power cells in order to get off the ground. That’s when they find out that they aren’t alone on the planet. There are things lurking in the darkness, things with teeth and insatiable hunger. And those miners didn’t just leave. Unless of course you’re talking about leaving this life.

But the crash survivors be OK as long as they stay in the light. Light hurts these creatures, after all. But don’t you just hate it when you land on a planet with nocturnal carnivores just before a total eclipse? So do these guys.

There is a great deal of suspense of the gut-wrenching variety. There is also more than a little gore, so the squeamish need not view this one. Still, this movie is less about viscera than it is about keeping you on the edge of your seat, and sending some genuine shivers up and down your spine. The various creatures, which are rarely seen well due to the darkness, are really amazing CGI creations. Not only do they LOOK lethal, they look plausible as well.

Diesel is excellent in this movie. As the amoral Riddick, he can be intimidating, creepy even – but he retains a rather dry sense of humor. He is a mess of contradictions, with the devils of his worse nature winning out over the angels of his better nature, but he is not entirely unredeemable or evil. He is a man of shades of gray; mainly dark gray, I grant you, but not entirely without light. He turns Riddick into a human being instead of a cartoon, which movies of this nature tend to do. The character was so fascinating that a second movie, less successful, was later made – and a third is due out this September. While Mitchell and Hauser do passable jobs, they are simply blown out of the water by the character and performance of Riddick. Fans of Farscape will get a big kick out of seeing Claudia Black in a small role here prior to appearing in that groundbreaking sci-fi series. David has a role that adds a bit of gravitas and is the moral crux of the film, which believe it or not it possesses.

Fans who liked Aliens will probably revel in this one. Fear and redemption are the underlying themes here, and horror is the vehicle for facing those themes. Shakespeare it isn’t, but Pitch Black manages to look at human nature at the same time as giving us a hell of a ride. Check it out – but be warned, it IS nightmare-inducing even if you’re not terribly sensitive.

WHY RENT THIS: Diesel creates an iconic anti-hero in Riddick. Great monsters and a fabulous premise well-executed.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Exceedingly nightmare-inducing. Some of the initial crash effects are pretty weak, even by the standards of the time. Some of the support performances don’t measure up.

FAMILY MATTERS: There is quite a bit of violence and gore, some nightmarish creatures and a goodly amount of language. There’s also some drug use which isn’t for the squeamish.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Riddick was initially written as a female character and was to have been killed off in the end until Universal decided that the character would prove popular enough to warrant a sequel.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: The initial DVD release includes footage from rave parties used to promote Pitch Black. The Director’s Edition has an introduction to the Video Game prequel Escape From Butcher’s Bay and the animated Dark Fury which connects Pitch Black to The Chronicles of Riddick. There’s also a visual encyclopedia of the universe of Riddick as well as a “Johns Chase Log” in which actor Cole Hauser narrates his version of events that led to the capture of Riddick. The Blu-Ray also has a featurette in which the sequel’s connections to the original are explored.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $53.2M on a $23M production budget; the movie didn’t make a huge profit via it’s USA Films theatrical release but has been a big seller on the home video market.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Aliens

FINAL RATING: 9.5/10

NEXT: The Silver Linings Playbook

Tekken

In the future, there won’t be enough fabric left for shirts.

(2010) Martial Arts (Anchor Bay) Jon Foo, Kelly Overton, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Ian Anthony Dale, Cung Lee, Darren Dewitt Henson, Luke Goss, Mircea Monroe, Tamlyn Tomita, Candice Hillebrand, Marian Zapico, Gary Daniels, John Pyper-Ferguson, Roger Huerta, Lateef Crowder, Monica Mal. Directed by Dwight H. Little

When Arcade Games ruled the earth back in the 80s, there was (and continues to be) a subgenre known as the fighting game. Some of these, including Double Dragon and Mortal Kombat lived to become film adaptations and it took almost 20 years but now so does Tekken. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

Jin (Foo) is a young fatherless man living in 2039. World War III has decimated the population of the planet and rendered a good portion of it uninhabited. Corporations rules the world now and have divided the planet amongst themselves (which gives corporations more credit for co–operation than they probably deserve). North America is ruled by the Tekken Corporation, which in turn is ruled by Heihachi Mishima (Tagawa).

When Jin’s mother and martial arts mentor Jun (Tomita) is killed during a crackdown by Tekken’s security forces, known as the Jackhammers, Jin – who as a contraband runner was closer to the insurgents than Jun ever was – discovers in the wreckage of his home a badge identifying his mother as a fighter in the Iron Fist tournament which promises riches and fame for life for the winner. Intrigued, Jin decides to enter.

He finds the Tournament to be a mess of intrigue. Heihachi’s son Kazuya (Dale) who is also his right hand man, is plotting to take over the company from his son and is using the highly popular tournament to do it. Jin finds an ally in Christie Monteiro (Overton) and a mentor in Steve Fox (Goss), a former tournament champion who sponsors new fighters.

He’ll be going up against fighters like Miguel Rojo (Huerta) and Bryan Fury (Daniels) as well as other mainstays of the game. The rules of the game however are changing and growing more deadly. With the stakes higher than they’ve ever been can Jin defeat the powerful forces aligned against him and emerge a fighting champion?

This is a very basic outline of the plot which goes into a lot more detail which really is unfortunate. The game itself as I remember it – I don’t think I’ve played a version of it since the 90s – was very simple and straightforward. Quite frankly I’m not sure that fans of the game are looking for a plot that’s anywhere as near as complicated as this.

What they’re looking for are the fights and those are done pretty well. The filmmakers even incorporated some of the moves from the game which was much appreciated by this ex-player. The style is definitely very similar to the look of the game, although obviously adjusted for the big screen.

There is a pretty goodly amount of CGI but quite a bit of it is surprisingly subpar. At times the footage looks like a 15-20 year old computer game. Considering the size of the budget, it’s incomprehensible why the effects looked so cheesy. If I were the filmmakers, I’d have been suing somebody.

The acting is passable which is about what you’d expect in a videogame adaptation but even for that notoriously underachieving subgenre of movies, this is pretty awful. Why is it that when Hollywood takes a videogame and makes a movie out of it they feel it necessary to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator, or give it little or no support in terms of getting good scripts, good effects and so on. No wonder the makers of such obviously cinematic games as Halo and World of Warcraft have given the thumbs down to letting Hollywood have their hands on the properties they’ve worked so hard and spent so much time and money to develop properly. It shows little or no respect for the videogame audience which is kind of bizarre considering that gamers go to a lot of movies themselves.

WHY RENT THIS: Some nifty fight sequences. Cast gives a game effort.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Really subpar CGI. A mess of a plot.

FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of violence and brutality with a side order of sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Most of the Iron Fist Tournament fights were staged at the Hirsch Memorial Coliseum at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There’s an interesting Canadian television documentary on  stuntmen which was largely shot on the set of this film.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $967,369 on a $30M production budget; this was a box office catastrophe.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mortal Kombat

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: Lovely, Still

Mission to Mars

A little romantic skydancing never hurts a relationship.

(2000) Science Fiction (Touchstone) Gary Sinese, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O’Connell, Peter Outerbridge Kavan Smith, Jill Teed, Elise Neal, Kim Delaney, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Robert Bailey Jr., Patricia Harras, Lynda Boyd, Jody Thompson, Lucia Walters Pamela Diaz. Directed by Brian De Palma

The human nature is to explore, to find out what lies beyond where we have already been; to ask questions and then find answers. We explore without; the world around us, and someday, the worlds beyond our own. We also explore within; who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Hey, it keeps us busy.

Mission to Mars looks at that aspect of ourselves. Set in 2020, it posits the first manned mission to the Red Planet. Tragedy dogs the mission even before it leaves; its commander, Jim McConnell (Sinese), withdraws following the death of his wife and co-commander of the mission.

At first, the mission seems fairly routine; to discover the feasibility of colonization. However, the new mission commander, Luke Graham (Cheadle) discovers an anomaly, one which quickly turns deadly. When it becomes clear to mission control that something has gone wrong at Mars Base, a rescue mission is mounted, led by Woody Blake (Robbins), his wife Terri (Nielsen) and mission specialist Phil Ohlmyer (O’Connell). Blake insists that McConnell accompany the team, as he is the one who wrote the mission plan for the original expedition, including a possible rescue situation, and knows more about Mars than any other astronaut. It takes some convincing of the still-grieving McConnell but he eventually realizes that he could save lives so he assents.

The rescue mission also meets with unexpected tragedy after a micrometeorite shower holes the ship. The rescue party has to use all their resourcefulness in order to make it to the planet. There, they find the object of their mission … and a puzzle for them to solve. It explains why the first mission had to die … and a whole lot more. Think of this as a junior 2001: A Space Odyssey with better special effects and a director who is more of a storyteller. That, perhaps, is the biggest problem with M2M; rather than leave the mystery pretty much unsolved, letting the audience come to its own conclusions as Stanley Kubrick did with his film, director Brian de Palma makes sure that everything is explained in nice, neat little packages. That takes away from the grandeur of the mystery, and leaves us feeling like Peggy Lee; is that all there is?

Visually, there are some stunning moments, particularly late in the movie during the Martian Head scene, and during a cataclysmic accident. Sinese and Robbins are solid actors who never disappoint; Sinese is particularly excellent, playing an astronaut for the first time since Apollo 13 and comporting himself as a complex man, switching between mourning his wife and achieving the dream they both shared. Cheadle is an actor whose stock in Hollywood was on the rise when this was made; for me it cemented his standing as an actor whose every role was worth seeking out, a place he occupies to this day.

It makes for an odd switch; I’m usually more forgiving of the excesses of sci-fi flicks than Da Queen, but she liked this movie better than I did. That it got a one-hanky recommendation from Da Queen is telling enough; that she found it thought-provoking should be recommendation enough for anyone. For my part, I give it a mild recommendation; certainly, it’s worth seeing for the scope of its vision as well as the performances of its solid cast. I also give the writers props for avoiding cliché characterization and action for its own sake.

Still, I’ve seen 2001, I’ve enjoyed 2001 (although I didn’t love 2001), but this ain’t 2001.

WHY RENT THIS: Some spectacular effects sequences. Solid performances from Sinese, Cheadle and Robbins.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Explains too much – a little more mystery would have gone a long way. Could have used more depth in characterization.

FAMILY MATTERS: There is a bit of violence, some bad language and a few disturbing images.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: There is a “hidden Mickey,” seen here when the Mars Explorer lines up with Mars, the rotating circular hub of the spacecraft and antenna dish form the iconic image of Mickey Mouse. Of course, Touchstone is a division of Disney, and “hidden Mickeys” are notoriously placed throughout all of the Disney theme parks as easter eggs for their guests.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: There is an animatics to finished scene comparison that is fairly interesting. The making of featurette also shows the input of NASA into the finished film making it a little more interesting than most.

BOX OFICE PERFORMANCE: $111.0M on a $100M production budget; the movie’s ambitious budget outpaced it’s decent box office and so it was unprofitable during its theatrical release.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: 2001: A Space Odyssey (in case I didn’t make it clear in the review)

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

NEXT: Skyfall

I Am Legend

Will Smith is tired of taking career advice from zombies.

(2007) Science Fiction (Warner Brothers) Will Smith, Alice Braga, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith, Charlie Tahan, Darrell Foster, April Grace, Dash Mihok, Joanna Numata, Samuel Glen, James McCauley, Marin Ireland, Pedro Mojica, Caitlin McHugh. Directed by Francis Lawrence

 

How does the world end? With a mighty cataclysmic event, a catastrophe natural or man-made such as an asteroid, a nuclear holocaust? Or will it be with the sounds of illness, a disease that wipes us out and leaves the planet to reclaim its cities until every trace we ever existed is gone?

Robert Neville (Smith) lives in Manhattan. He’s a scientist – or was. You see, Manhattan isn’t exactly the center of the world anymore. It’s deserted, inhabited by beasts escaped from the Central Park Zoo, Neville and his German Shepherd Sam.

The population of the world has been wiped out. They were trying to cure cancer and instead unleashed a virus that turned most of the population into mindless, hairless albinos with fangs and an insatiable hunger for human flesh. His home is like a fortress with a portable generator, steel doors on the windows and bright lamps that keep the zombies away (like vampires, they are allergic to sunlight that burns them into ashes when exposed).

He also has a lab in his basement complete with captured zombies to experiment on, trying to create an anti-virus that might cure the virus that came from the cure to…oh it makes my head spin. However one wonders if he’s the last man on earth and he’s already immune what he needs a cure for.

Into his life comes Anna (Braga) and young Ethan (Tahan), two survivors drawn to him by his regular radio broadcasts. At first he is happy to see any human beings at all but soon his situation is complicated, particularly since he’s getting close to a cure – but so too are the zombies getting close to finding a way into his fortress.

This is based on the classic Richard Matheson novel of the same name which has also spawned two other movie versions – The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price in the 50s and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston in the 70s. In both cases the plague victims turned into vampire-like creatures which is what the book had originally (in the book Neville armed himself with garlic cloves and Holy Water and did battle with crosses and stakes), but I think the fast-moving hairless zombies are a bit of an improvement.

Some critics have given the movie lumps for the zombies which are a mixture of CGI and make-up effects. In all honesty I have to disagree; the monsters are scary enough to give me the shudders even though I’ve seen the movie several times.

If you ever doubted that Will Smith is one of the most charismatic movie stars of our generation, look no further than here. Even in a dark, serious role he is still immensely likable and commands your attention. The flashback scenes with his wife (Richardson) and daughter (Willow Smith, his real life daughter) are extremely affecting. This is really his show; it’s just him and the dog for a large amount of the film and so a bankable star is absolutely crucial to making this movie work. That it does is all about The Fresh Prince.

It’s not just him of course; the special effects are pretty cool and the scenes in which Manhattan is evacuated is about as spectacular as it gets. Those scenes work so much better on the big theater screen but hopefully you can see it on something a bit larger than your iPhone.

There are some pretty serious lapses in logic here. For example, they clearly show the bridges and entrances to Manhattan being blown up but yet Anna and Ethan somehow make their way there. A single line of dialogue – “one of the tunnels was still open” could have resolved it, or “We found a boat that was still floating” but just having them appear is an insult to the intelligence of the audience.

I wasn’t overly fond of the ending which was somewhat more hopeful than the book was but making a great ending for a movie seems to be a lost art these days. Truly I dislike happy endings for their own sake; some movies really demand something bleaker and this one is one of those. On the extended cuts of the film, there is an alternate ending that is I think better than the one they used but it still could have used some work.

The movie is pretty solid and doesn’t really pull off the novel as well as it could have. Those who don’t find Will Smith their cup of tea should be advised that you are going to get an excess of him onscreen, although not in his wisecracking Fresh Prince persona which he’s used in a lot of movies over the years. For those who are his fans, this is a must-see. For those who like sci-fi spectaculars, this is also something that should be on your radar. For those who loved the Matheson book…well, it’s closer than the other two movies but still not nearly as effective. Everyone else, check it out if you think it might appeal to you but it’s probably not worth going out of your way to find.

WHY RENT THIS: Much more intense than the previous versions of the film. Stark and well-made, the sight of New York being reclaimed by nature is pretty sweet. Smith is as always an engaging hero.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The ending is unsatisfying, there are some incredible gaps in logic and the first part of the movie drags.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is violence and the action can be intense; the plague victims are pretty scary.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In various parts of the film, billboards and DVD packages for proposed Warner Brothers/DC Comics films can be seen, most of which never got made (at least to date).

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: The 2-Disc DVD Special Edition includes an extended version of the film (along with the theatrical release version), four animated comics and DVD-ROM material including a 21-minute long featurette on real-life deadly diseases. There is a 3-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition which takes the DVD-ROM material and makes it accessible. There are also deleted scenes and an audio commentary available on the 3-Disc edition that isn’t on the 2-Disc version. For those who just want the original movie, you can probably find the single disc release out there dirt cheap.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $585.4M on a $150M production budget; this was a definite hit.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: On the Beach

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Flight

Cloud Atlas

Tom Hanks and Halle Berry get a glimpse of the box office numbers.

(2012) Science Fiction (Warner Brothers) Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Keith David, Xun Zhou, David Gyasi, Brody Nicholas Lee, Raevan Lee Hanan, Alistair Petrie. Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

 

Some movies are easily described, tackle relatively simplistic storylines and are therefore reviewed rather easily. Some have epic ambitions, attempt to tackle much more complex stories and modes of storytelling and give critics fits trying to describe them.

Cloud Atlas is such a film. Based on a much-admired novel by David Mitchell, the movie was taken on by the Wachowskis (auteurs of the Matrix trilogy) who first got their attentions captured by it when Natalie Portman gave a copy to them on the set of V for Vendetta. They decided to turn it into a movie shortly thereafter and brought in close friend Tykwer (best known for Run, Lola, Run) to help them with the writing and directing.

And it is a magnificent canvas. Six stories run concurrently across six different eras with actors playing multiple roles (and often multiple genders). In 1849, a young lawyer named Adam Ewing (Sturgess) returning home from the Pacific Islands to his home in New England after negotiating a slaving contract helps a stowaway slave (Gyasi). In 1936, a young man who dreams of composing (Whishaw) becomes an assistant to a fading composer with the delightful name of Vyvyan Ayrs (Broadbent) and writes a series of love letters to his lover (D’Arcy) at Cambridge while composing a piece of music that will go largely unheard but will have a major effect on other people as time goes by.

In 1973 Luisa Rey (Berry), an investigative reporter in the mold of her father (Gyasi again) is put onto the trail of a defective nuclear power plant by a physicist – the same man who the young composer was writing in 1936 – and goes after Lloyd Hooks (Grant), who runs the plant with what might not be altruistic motives. She will be helped by a physicist (Hanks) and a security chief (David) while stalked by a deadly killer named Bill Smoke (Weaving).

Meanwhile, in 2012 a dishonest publisher (Broadbent) finds himself with a hit book on his hands after it’s criminal author (Hanks again) throws a smarmy critic (Petrie) off a roof but is forced to seek help when the author demands more of a cut. He reluctantly turns to his brother (Grant) who fools him into committing himself in a retirement home that is something out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest complete with its own version of Nurse Ratched (in this case, Weaving) and with a few fellow elderly inmates concocts a plan of escape.

In 2144 in the city of Neo Seoul, an artificial human being named Sonmi-241 (Bae) finds her life as a restaurant waitress turned upside down when a revolutionary (Sturgess) shows her an entirely new world as he teaches her philosophy and history and she soon realizes that the corrupt world she lives in needs someone to speak up for the downtrodden – and that someone might as well be her, despite grave risks by a nearly all-seeing establishment.

Far in the future after civilization has fallen, a goat herder named Zachry (Hanks) living on a Pacific island in a village of peaceful farmers and shepherds is visited by Meronym (Berry), a member of a technologically advanced society called the Prescients. She wants to be guided to a distant place but nobody will take her because in order to get there they must go through the territory of a vicious tribe of cannibals called the Kona who are led by a particularly ruthless, nasty chief (Grant). Zachry agrees to do this in exchange for Meronym saving his daughter Catkin (Hanan) from death by a nasty infection.

These six stories are told concurrently with the film jumping from era to era, sometimes after only a matter of seconds. Initially it is going to sound a lot more confusing than it is; once you get settled into it, it’s actually not that hard following the stories. And while there is a bit of the stunt casting element (all of the main actors appear in one form or another in nearly every one of the six stories, some in more than one role) you get used to seeing the same faces in different roles thanks to some pretty nifty make-up jobs.

The overall theme here is that someone is being repressed and must face a decision as to whether to accept the repression and imprisonment or to act to end it, whether for themselves or for others. People have the capacity to leap beyond their own needs and give selflessly for the sake of others; not all people act on that capacity but some clearly do. People also have the capacity to force others into lives of servitude and reap the benefits of these actions; not all people act on that capacity but some clearly do as well.

The descriptions of the stories are actually fairly general and don’t really capture the whole magnitude of each vignette. Each story has an epic quality to it and while some are more personal than others (the Tykwer-directed stories in particular) there is certainly a sense that each story has ripple effects that magnify through time. While the stories don’t necessarily intersect directly, they often parallel one another with identical themes told in different ways. The stories aren’t necessarily meant to follow one another so much as complement one another.

It’s an ambitious work and without a stellar cast to carry it off it probably wouldn’t have worked as much. Not all of the roles work every time for the actors and often they are asked to move well out of their comfort zones but I suspect that they loved being pushed into places they hadn’t been or at least rarely go. Berry is intriguing in her 1973 and far future incarnations; Hanks does well in the far future and in 1849. Broadbent is fun in 2012 and more of a rotter in 1936; Whishaw does some fine work as the doomed composer in 1936 and Sturgess as the dying lawyer in 1849 and the somewhat guarded revolutionary in 2144.

Weaving also fares well as the 1973 hit man and as kind of a devil in the far future. Bae, whose work I wasn’t that familiar with to begin with, is magnificent in the 2144 sequence. She reminds me very much of Rinko Kikuchi in Babel. Not just from a physical standpoint but simply in the manner in which she acts.

Definitely this isn’t going to be for everyone. General audiences tend to want their science fiction to be action-oriented rather than thought-provoking (even Blade Runner wasn’t the hit Alien was); sure there’s a pretty sizable cult audience for thinking sci-fi but they don’t seem to be enough to really push movies such as this one into profitability which is a shame because work this ambitious and innovative should be rewarded.

I’m sure a lot of people were put off by the scope of the film, and by the reviews that placed it as cerebral. Not everyone goes to the movies to be intellectually stimulated and that’s okay. I like a visceral knuckle-dragging action movie as much as the next guy. I just like to have the part of me above the neck stimulated as much as my testosterone and this movie does both amply. Simply put, one of the movies that I will continue to debate and discuss with other film buffs for a very long time to come and clearly one of the year’s best.

REASONS TO GO: Thought-provoking and compelling. Awesome visual and make-up effects.

REASONS TO STAY: Some people are simply not going to know what to make of this. Cerebral sci-fi historically not a big box office winner.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a bit of violence, some sexuality, some graphic nudity, a bit of bad language and some drug use (some of it involuntary).

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Wachowskis and Tykwer each directed three time period stories apiece, sharing no crew other than the actors themselves. The Wachowskis filmed the 1849, 2044 and far future sequences, Tykwer the 1936, 1973 and 2012 sequences.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/18/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 64% positive reviews. Metacritic: 55/100. The reviews are pretty mixed but leaning towards the good.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Time Machine (2002)

DRAG LOVERS: Most of the main cast plays members of both genders at various times in the film.

FINAL RATING: 9.5/10

NEXT: What’s Your Number