Movie round-up #3

Today I bring a movie round-up of the many average flicks I've endured (plus a couple of ok ones) over the last month. I accept your thanks in advance for sifting through the junk and saving you the time wasted viewing some of the rubbish below. 

The Box

Another mediocre effort from the guy who gave us Donnie Darko. The Box puts to us the premise that a young couple is delivered a box with a big red button on it and pressing the button will grant them 1 millions dollars. Great you say, but of course there's a catch. Pressing the button gives them 1 million dollars but also kills someone they don't know. In the end, it's all a big test by aliens (of course) to see whether the human race is worth saving or if we're all greedy little fucks. Suffice to say that everyone seems to press the button. The other catch is that the unknown person who dies is the last person to have pressed the button, so you get your million but you're pretty much guaranteed to die soon anyway. There's a bit more too it and I thought that at least the end was logical, but otherwise The Box is average. Starring Cameron Diaz and some guy.

5/10





Fire in the sky

A bunch of hicks head out to chop wood and run into a spaceship. Probably more interesting if you're into fairies and UFOs, but I'm not. Based upon the ravings of a real person whose story about alien abduction has been pretty much debunked over the years. Amusing but ultimately not worth the time unless you're short a few dozen IQ. The bit on the alien ship is well done and by far the most entertaining. Starring the terminator who could turn into liquid metal.

5/10

 



The Mothman Prophecies

Apologies in advance, I watched this movie late at night so some details are fuzzy. Richard Gere stars as a guy who, years after his wife's death, starts experiencing odd things. He goes for a drive one night and somehow ends up many hundreds of kilometers away in a different state. Like with teleportation and shit, or something. Anyhow, that's not important. The town he ends up in has experienced many weird things. A 'Mothman' appears to some people and gives warnings of future happenings to others. Gere's wife appears to communicate with him, I think. There's also a premonition of something to do with a river and many deaths. In the end a bridge collapses but through his choices and actions, a youngish female cop whom he flirted with throughout the movie doesn't drown. The end. I kind of liked this movie, it was well made and just a touch creepy. I expected more scary based on the reviews I'd read but it will probably depend on your fear tolerance.

7/10





Battle Royale

A bunch of Japanese schoolkids are put on an island with random weapons and commanded to kill one another. The last survivor will be released, but if there is no result after a specified time frame they will all die when the collars they wear explode. This movie explores what depths people will sink too when fighting for survival and how the dictums of law and society are sometimes the only things keeping certain people fro doing as they please - in the case killing all the people they dislike. There's a decent ending and some good characterisation here, though the ending is overly drawn out. Battle Royale gets a thumbs up as well.

6/10



The 4th kind

Junk. An interesting premise but laughingly put together. Another movie based on the 'real-life' accounts of a few crackpots. Not at all believable and even worse, it's presented as an actual documentary - 'real' footage and recordings interspersed with reenactments, sometimes side by side in split screen for reasons that can only be 'arty'. The fourth kind title comes from their being different levels of alien contact as specified by the FBI (or was it CIA), from first kind to fourth kind. The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind uses the same designations. 'Starring' Milla Jovovich.

3/10