Author: Darren Goodhart

Humanity has exhausted the Earth’s resources and left the planet nearly uninhabitable literally turning the planet into a huge dumping ground. Thanks to the BnL Corporation (Big n Large), humanity has left the planet and is living in space aboard huge luxury space liners, courtesy of BnL. On Earth, they’ve left behind robots, to clean-up the mess, and now 700 years after humanity has left the planet, one lone robot remains to clean up the mess, Wall•E. And now, Wall•E has found one little bit of vegetation and he’s taken it to his refuge to preserve it amongst other pop culture treasures that he’s found. Wall•E’s lone friend, a lowly cockroach, travels with him as he’s cleaning up the mess, building it into piles skyscrapers high, when all of a sudden, something comes back to the planet, a robot probe called Eva, with it’s mission being to find some sort of life on Earth, and when it comes, Wall• E becomes infatuated, and then travels back with the probe to the remnants of humanity who’ve become massively overweight and totally lost within their machine world, having everything done for them by the machines.

That’s a simplified version of the newest movie from the geniuses at Pixar, Wall•E, and yet again, Pixar shows us just why they are geniuses, yet again raising the bar with this newest movie.

It’s not enough that their own particular brand of computer animation is the highest quality there is, Pixar’s always striving to do something a little different with each new movie, and they do it again here. Yeah, sure, Wall•E is a comedic film, but it’s also a pretty decent sci-fi story and it takes a lot of huge chances by having minimal dialogue in the film, and creating characters that on their surface are far less anthropomorphized than previous films.

The opening bits of the film, on a dirty and dusty Earth, are amazingly realistic, not just in the look, but in how it’s actually photographed, in some places using a nice little handheld touch similar to how Battlestar Galactica’s space scenes are shot. And just the design alone seems to owe much more to actual science fiction illustrators more than what you might expect out of this sort of movie (or if this movie was done by anyone else other than Pixar).

And yet, they’ve still crafted a heartwarming, sentimental and funny center to the whole thing, and while the behavior of the robots won’t exactly fit the hardest standard of a sci-fi aficionado, for this movie, it shouldn’t really matter (and it certainly didn’t for me).

Pixar also bucks the trend here by not casting big names for the vocal work, in fact Wall•E’s voice is provided by master sound man, Ben Burtt, but true to form though, they still find a part for John Ratzenberger to perform.

Pixar also takes their first step with combining live action with computer generation especially in telling the story of humanity’s first step into the stars (and using veteran comedy actor Fred Williard in the part of the president of the BnL Corporation) and it’s not overdone, and still seems pretty natural and a good fit with what’s already set-up.

Wall•E is just a whole lot of big fun, not only state-of-the-art, but also with careful consideration for it’s story, it’s characters and all of the details in between. As usual, you also get a short film in front of this called Presto about a magician and the rabbit that he pulls out of his hat, and this thing in itself is amazingly well done, again technically proficient and gut-bustingly funny, evoking more the classic style of classic Warner Brothers cartoons more than anything else.

I got to see this in digital projection and honestly, if you have the chance, that’s the way to see it, but regardless, this one’s still just a hell of a lot of fun and well worth seeing whether you get to see it in digital or not. Highly recommended and right up there with the best of the year…

Maxwell Smart is an analyst with the covert secret agency CONTROL. Max is very good at his job, but now yearns to be an agent in the field. After passing the tests that he needs to in order to advance, the arch forces of the enemy agency KAOS threaten to strike in a devastating way. Now it’s up to Max to find out for sure what is being done and to stop them.

And that’s a very loose description of the premise to Get Smart, a movie updating and re-imagining of the classic comedy TV series from the 1960s…

… and the new winner to the title of “Worst Movie Of The Year,” and here it is, I thought it was going to take some time before something could take that title away from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and yet this movie does so with ease.

This is supposed to be a comedy and yet, I didn’t laugh at a thing in the film and so right there it fails and fails miserably. Even when this is relying on some of the old chestnuts from the original series (with one notable exception), this just fails.

And the reason for that failure is on two counts- it’s ill-conceived as a movie, and the character of Maxwell Smart has been seriously compromised.

Now, y’see, back when the show was on, it was genuinely funny and being the brainchild of comedy legends Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, you’d expect it to be. The TV series was a spoof of spy movies, it was a low budget and very small show, and yet it was loaded with big, but two-dimensional characters, and the biggest of them all was Maxwell Smart. And it was also ridiculously rapid-fire with it’s jokes and gags. And also, I loved the original series, I think it was one of the all-time greats in television comedy.

Here… here, director Peter Segal gets it entirely wrong. First, this is trying to be an action movie with lots of comedic overtones, and it’s also very big, especially in consideration of it’s source, and the biggest thing that they do wrong in the midst of all of that is that they try to make you think it’s real, and that was never the spirit of the original show by any means.

The second thing that they get wrong is in the character of Maxwell Smart. Now Don Adams was a genius and he knew just how Smart was to be played. Smart was the GREATEST secret agent in the world, especially in his own mind, even if he screwed up more often than not, but above all he was extremely confident. Here, they’ve turned Maxwell Smart into the most politically correct pussy on the planet, and there’s some small part of me that can’t help but wonder if this is in some way partly due to Steve Carell and what he’s been doing in some of his other movies lately. This Maxwell Smart’s main drive is to understand that his enemies in the world are people first and if you get to know the person, you then find the weakness, but his way of getting to the weakness is with compassion more than anything else…

… oh for cryin’ out loud…

This movie is nearly two hours long, and that’s because it’s trying to be an action movie and it’s pacing itself that way, and when it throws in it’s gags, it just falls flat and even worse than that… boring. I certainly had plenty of criticism with The Love Guru but one thing that they certainly get is that it is supposed to be a comedy, and in comparison to Get Smart, it’s comedy genius.

Now there is plenty here for the Get Smart TV series fan, lots of bits and sight gags, and every now and then, Carell well spout out one of the lines that Max used in the day and because of the change that they made with Smart himself, that line just feel like Steve Carell saying the line by rote and little else.

On paper, Steve Carell should be perfect for the part… that is if he would be willing to play something just as two-dimensional as what Maxwell Smart was (and even moreso if the movie would’ve been willing to go that route- this movie is looking at Mission: Impossible when it should be looking at Airplane! or Blazing Saddles), but here, he just seems like amateur night or what you’d get if Michael Scott (his character from The Office) was trying to act. Anne Hathaway plays Smart’s partner, Agent 99, and first off, she just looks fantastic and also looks like she would have a real affinity with being in a legitimate action film, it’s just too bad that she’s in this one. And her character has been changed as well, in particularly to be a little more shrewish than anything else. Alan Arkin is The Chief, the head of CONTROL, Dwayne Johnson is Agent 23, the coolest agent on the planet and a good pal of Max’s (of course here every one calls him Maxie) and Terence Stamp is Siegfried, Smart’s opponent at KAOS. All three of these guys do the best they can with what they’ve got, it’s just that what they got is incredibly weak. There’s a brief cameo by a surprise guest star, and that’s the notable exception that I mentioned near the start of this review- this bit is funny (though not a gut-buster, but still amusing), it’s in keeping with the show, and it really should’ve been followed up on about to more times in the film, but it was pretty much left alone after that, but still this moment is the best part of the film.

So you don’t believe me, it can’t possibly be this bad? Fine… go see it for yourself and then come back here and try and tell me just how much you laughed during this. Go ahead, I dare you… do it…

Get Smart is as ill-conceived as a TV-to-movie adaptation/remake/re-imagining can get and even though it tries to have some echoes of the original series, those echoes fall flat due to a poor conception of the film and a dramatically ill-conceived new interpretation of it’s lead character. As such, you have a comedy here that’s just not funny on virtually any level (with the one exception) and if a comedy isn’t funny then it’s a bad movie, and this one is just about as bad as it gets. About a half hour before this ended, I was just about ready to ask if anyone wanted to leave, but we stood through it all the way until it’s incredibly sappy end… oh I wish we had, but then I couldn’t pass on this cautionary review on to you…

Right now… Get Smart is the worst movie of the year, period.

The renowned spiritual guru, Guru Pitka, has found himself always being the second best to the famous Deepak Chopra and now he’s got the opportunity to turn things around and get himself his appearance on Oprah, thus elevating himself above the aforementioned Mr. Chopra. All the Guru Pitka has to do is help the hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, with their star player, Darren Roanoke. Roanoke’s girl, Prudence has left him and left him as a shaken player. Pitka’s task is right in front of him and along the way he’s hoping to catch the fancy of the team’s owner, the uber-sexy Jane Bullard.

The Love Guru is the latest film from writer and star Mike Myers, who’s obviously best known for being on Saturday Night Live, the Wayne’s World films and the Austin Powers movies and the Guru Pitka is his latest character.

I’ve got to give Mike Myers credit for creating something pretty original here as far as the character goes, I certainly don’t recall anything like this out there recently anyway.

The movie has it’s moments, some that are actually really funny, but for the most part, it falls pretty flat. Part of this is with the main character, Pitka, himself, who’s constantly winking at the audience, and thus kind of staying detached from the whole thing. The other part is just that the actions them self are just displayed in an order like they’re something to be hit as opposed to happening naturally. There’s also an over-reliance on bathroom humor, again some of which is quite funny, but a lot of it just falling flat.

Some of the segments that consistently fall flat for me are bits with the announcers for the Maple Leafs played by Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan. They’re trying too hard and there’s just too many of these segments in the film and none of them really work.

Funnier stuff is there courtesy of Verne Troyer, who has the best line in the film seen right over the end credits.

Jessica Alba is Jane Bullard, and she’s little more than eye candy in the film, which really I don’t have that much of a problem with her in that capacity.

Ben Kingsley and Justin Timberlake are also in the film and they both do a decent enough job with their parts, but it’s still nothing to bust a gut over.

But most of the fault is with the story construction itself and Myers’ portrayal as Pitka without any real sense of urgency to his character, he’s more there just doing a series of set pieces (some of which are good) but there’s really nothing there with a good through-line.

You might have a good time with this, but I’d more advice this as a rental or watching on cable down the road. Overall though, I thought this was pretty uneven with a few good laughs here and there, but nothing that really says run out and see it (but I must admit, they got me with the trailer to this, I thought that the trailer was great and it really made me want to see it), so catch it at your own risk…

Scientist Bruce Banner found his cellular structure changed from exposure to Gamma radiation to a point that when he finds himself pushed to a certain anger or excitement becomes the rampaging monster known as the Hulk. Now on the run in South America, his trail is discovered again by the U.S. military, led by General “Thunderbolt” Ross and in his employ is a soldier by the name of Emil Blonsky who thinks that in order to catch the Hulk, it must be on equal ground. Caught in the middle of this is Ross’ daughter Betty who’s in love with Bruce Banner, and when they’re able to meet again, Betty tries to help Bruce get his cure, all while on the run and with Banner trying to keep himself under control.

The Incredible Hulk is the second major movie from Marvel Studios right on the heels of Iron Man, and it’s also a major re-do from the film that Ang Lee made a few years ago. Now I really like Ang Lee’s movie, but even with that, this is the Hulk film that I think more wanted to see.

Director Louis Letterier has delivered an extremely intense film here, in my opinion, maybe the most intense Marvel super-hero movie yet- loaded with some really cool big-ass action and some really great performances, this one’s right up there with Iron Man and in some ways, in my opinion, even surpasses it.

For a Hulk or Marvel fan, this is loaded with references from the comics, the Marvel Universe and the TV show. It delivers one of the major Hulk villains with Emil Blonsky’s transformation into The Abomination, and it even sets up another one of the Hulk’s major enemies in the process. and it does it all while keeping you involved with some really good performances.

Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner, and again, as much as I liked Eric Bana in the first film, this part was tailor-made for Norton. He’s got great subtleties here, and good intensity when it’s called for. William Hurt plays General Ross, and again as much as I like Sam Elliot in the first film, Hurt does just as good a job. Tim Roth is Emil Blonsky and is certainly up for this, really delivering some real vigor to it. And Liv Tyler plays Betty Ross, and she looks fantastic, is loaded with sincerity and has a quality to her that really brings out good chemistry with Norton (and just about any leading man she works with, I thought she did the same thing with Scott Speedman in The Strangers and I wouldn’t be surprised if just about every leading man who plays opposite of her falls in love with her even just a little bit).

To me anyway, this is how you do it, the origin of the Hulk is set-up in the opening credits and right after that we’re flung into it, with naturalistic character motivations and situations and some extremely exciting action sequences. This is just a helluva lot of fun and in my opinion, one of the best movies of the year… highly, highly recommended, do not miss this…

Across the eastern seaboard a strange phenomena is occurring, people are becoming disoriented, stopping dead in their tracks and then have the overcoming urge to kill themselves. This first starts in large populated areas and then moves on to smaller areas of population. It’s first believed to be some sort of terrorist attack but soon we learn that it’s something beyond that. Now we follow high school science teach Elliot Moore and his wife Alma as they try to escape this strange happening…

… and that’s the premise to The Happening the newest movie from director M. Night Shyamalan who’s given us such great movies in the past as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs and lesser efforts like The Village and The Lady In The Water.

Count The Happening as one of the lesser efforts, and hell, I count it as the worst movie I’ve seen this year thus far, and I thought it would take something to beat Jumper for that title.

Shyamalan’s film presents this immediate threat and yet as short a movie as this is (only 96 minutes) it hardly has any sort of real air of urgency to it and it’s not helped by the fact that it’s poorly cast and maybe features Shyamalan’s most ridiculous characters to date, Elliot and Alma seem more like they should’ve been in some other film (like something from Disney) as opposed to this.

Situations just seem to happen more at Shyamalan’s whim than seeming natural to any sort of story. And while Elliot Moore seems an amiable enough character, the situation that’s set up between him and Alma seems almost petty in these circumstances. It doesn’t help by the fact that Alma is just such a strange character on her own in the first place, and that’s certainly not helped by the fact that she’s played by Zooey Deschanel.

Mark Wahlberg is Elliot and I like Wahlberg, I do… I thought in Boogie Nights he was absolutely terrific and he’s certainly ben fine for me in other movies up to the point of delivering one killer performance in The Departed. But here, he’s just woefully miscast, not really seeming that convincing to me as a science teacher and having a line delivery that’s more sing-songy than anything else. but he’s not the worst of it, no that goes to Zooey (and I pronounce it as zoo-ee) Deschanel who’s just so damn odd in the first place that there’s really nothing to grasp onto here, and it makes you wonder what the hell did Elliot see in her in the first place. but as long as we’re on the subject of unconvincing casting, we can’t ignore John Leguizamo who’s cast as a math teacher friend of Elliot’s who basically delivers his lines in such a mealy-mouthed way, that it seems just like he’s reading the part of this math teacher rather than inhabiting it. And later in the film, Elliot and Alma come across an old woman played by Betty Buckley that literally just comes out of left field as she first seems like a light of salvation to the couple (and the young girl with them) but instead ends up as just… strange. There was one point where Elliot was wandering through her house and the tension builds up and all of sudden she just appears in a white nightgown with menace about her and the only words that came through my head were “and then there’s Maude.”

In the end, Shyamalan is trying to hit you with an environmental message, but it just sort of flounders around, oh some explanations are given thanks to televised reports, but again, they just seemed tacked in simply to move things along more than anything else. This floundering message combined with unconvincing characters and some really stilted dialogue right now results in the worst movie of the year… see it at your own risk…

After returning to a vacation home from a wedding reception, a young couple James Hoyt and Kristen McKay- who’ve just gone through their own emotional turmoil, find themselves suddenly terrorized by three unknown people (two women and one man) and must endure a horrifying evening just hoping to make it out alive.

First-time writer/director Bryan Bertino gives us a good, old fashioned creep-out with The Strangers. it’s a movie that on it’s surface might seem like it’s going to follow in the “torture-porn” (man, I hate that term) path of other popular horror films of the day, but instead at least to me seems more a bit of a throwback to something like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s filmed in a slight handheld style and setting a mood of tension right from it’s very start without necessarily relying on large amounts of blood and gore (though that’s in it too, but not say to the extent of a Saw movie) and in the end delivering some genuinely frightening moments.

Something similar came out last year in a movie called Vacancy (another genuinely entertaining horror film in it’s own right), but The Strangers veers from some of the paths that Vacancy took, primarily in giving motivations to it’s assailants.

With this being Bertino’s first effort, it’s extremely strong and very well-paced, and it certainly makes me look forward to what he’ll do next.

He’s really well aided here though with his cast. Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler play Hoyt and McKay, giving them the right depth that you need, especially considering you’re coming in on their story right in the midst of things. they’re certainly likable and sincere and you feel their horror as they endure the evening’s events.

We had a pretty decent audience with this one, especially considering how quiet in spots this movie gets, they got frightened at the right moments and certainly helped make this a good viewing experience.

If you’re a fan of horror movies and in the mood for something just a little different from the big-ass summer blockbusters, The Strangers certainly delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

It’s 1957, and in the Nevada desert, a covert Russian military force has captured the archaeologist adventurer Professor Indiana Jones to find one of his finds to serve their own needs. Jones, with his usual aplomb, manages to make his escape, but not without consequence to himself. Because of what happened, and because of the “Red Scare” period of time, Jones finds himself under the watch of the FBI as a possible subversive. Jones is ready to leave the country when a young man by the name of Mutt Williams approaches him about helping to find a mutual friend, and Mutt’s mother. Their journey leads them to South America and a further tie with the adventure that Jones started this story out with. and of course, hijinks ensue…

… and I could tell you more, but to do so would be to spoil more of the and if you’re an Indiana Jones fan, you surely do not want me to do that.

I’ve gotta say, out of all the big summer blockbusters, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the one that I was least looking forward to, primarily because it’s been 20 years since the last story and I thought this might be dipping into the well one time too many and also because lead actor Harrison Ford hasn’t done that much to impress me with any of his other films of late, even being in one, Hollywood Homicide that I just consider extremely awful. So what an extremely pleasant surprise for me that so far, I think director Steven Spielberg, producer and writer George Lucas, and star Harrison Ford have delivered the best summer movie going experience yet. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just a rousing good time and does some wonderful stuff to fill in the gaps of the 20 years since we’ve last seen Professor Jones back in action.

I’d put this one right on a par with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade which I also thought was just one hell of a good time.

Oh sure, this has the signature stuff that you expect it to have, legends of old and thrilling adventure set pieces to go with it, but it also expands the story, adding significantly to Indy’s personal history and taking one of Indy’s quest in a whole new direction, one much more in the science fiction vein.

Harrison Ford is absolutely terrific here, and the fun he’s having shows all over the performance. Yeah, sure he’s aged 20 years and they don’t exactly hide it either and that’s just terrific. I also have to give Shia LeBeouf high marks as Mutt Williams. the scenes that he and Indy have together, especially after getting to South America are terrific. Mutt’s certainly a product of the time, a motorcycle riding greaser who’s certainly got a tough guy exterior, but once he’s in Jones’ world, he certainly bows to the experience. filling out the cast are Cate Blanchett as the villain of the piece, Ray Winstone, John Hurt and the return of Karen allen in the part of Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s really a wonderful cast and they are truly enjoying themselves here.

As is the case with the other films, this is a pure salute to the classic movie serials of old, and the action certainly comes from that, with some of it (mostly around Mutt) being a little over-the-top. But like I said, that’s mostly with Mutt and it works in a way that basically says, this is what this character would be all about, and I think by the film’s end, you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, I just think Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just absolutely fantastic entertainment and so far the best of the big summer blockbusters. don’t miss this one for one moment… highly, highly recommended…

Mike Terry is a mixed martial arts instructor specializing in Jui Jitsu. Terry is a very honorable man, using his martial arts and the instruction of to prevail in life, even though he finds that that’s not quite enough when the bills come due. And as Terry and his wife, struggle to make their ends meet, seemingly random events are starting to happen that look like they could be the answers to all of Terry’s problems. Except of course they’re not, and this ends up putting Terry in a position where he must compromise his values.

Redbelt is the latest movie from writer/director David Mamet, and I’ve got to say, I’m a huge Mamet fan, and with Redbelt he’s kind of making a throwback sort of film, like the type of movie that you might have in the day when say a boxer must find himself in a situation that in order to prevail he might have to compromise himself (or, in movie terms, In the movie Barton Fink, the title character finds himself in Hollywood having to write a Wallace Beery wrestling movie- Redbelt is probably the kind of movie that Fink would aspire to) and personally, I think this is one of the better films that I’ve seen yet this year.

The subject of mixed martial arts doesn’t exactly seem like the sort of thing that I’d ever really expect Mamet to delve into, and yet he pulls it off pretty nicely. There’s plenty of examples here of the fighting going on, and Mamet never gets theatrical about it, there’s no flashy moves or stylish edits, it’s all handled pretty matter-of-fact.

Chiwetol Ejifor plays Mike Terry and this is his film, hands down. For awhile now, Ejifor has demonstrated that he’s certainly one of the more versatile supporting talents in Hollywood today in such films as Serenity, Inside Man, Talk To Me and Children of Men, but in Redbelt, he gets the opportunity to carry the movie himself and he’s pretty much in every single scene of the film and does a fine job here, having a whole lot of heart in his performance, but discipline as well. He’s got a great supporting cast here including Mamet regulars like Joe Mantegna and Ricky Jay, but without a doubt the most unusual bit of casting is comic actor Tim Allen as an action movie star like Bruce Willis, who finds himself crossing paths with Terry. Allen’s really good doing this bit of stretching for himself and I just hope he manages to do some more of this over time. My only complaint with him is just that his part is pretty small in the big picture, but he still gets the job done.

Right as we’re in the midst of all of the big summer blockbusters, it’s certainly nice to see that a small movie like Redbelt can come out there and deliver the goods. Oh sure, it’s still going to get lost in the shuffle, but then expectations are a lot lower as well. Still though, this is a quality drama, and another great movie in David Mamet’s filmography. Highly recommended…

Young Speed Racer has always had a big dream of being the greatest racer in the world and living up to the high standards set by his father in the production of racing cars and his older brother, Rex. As Speed has gotten older, he’s able to face that dream, though he believes his brother Rex to have been killed living out his dream. Now Speed and his family have the chance to be part of a huge racing conglomerate, Royalton Industries, but he turns it down, because even though he knows it could be a big personal gain, in the end it’s at the expense of what he and his family believe in with this sport. Speed ends up being recruited by a secret agency to root out the corruption and at the same time, bring back some glory to the sport.

Speed Racer is the latest film from The Wachowski Brothers (at the time they were still brothers anyway) who of course gave us The Matrix trilogy, and were executive producers of the adaptation of V For Vendetta. With Speed Racer their goal was to make a family film but something that pushed their own filmmaking skills in some new directions. And while Speed Racer certainly has it’s roots in other films (I’m thinking things like Flash Gordon, Popeye, Dick Tracy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and damn near anything that Tim Burton does) it goes further than any of those ever did (no doubt by technological advancements) literally making a live-action anime that’s a sight and sound sensory overload. I can honestly say, I’ve never seen anything quite like this from American filmmakers before.

And all the while, they do it by staying true to their source material. For many of us, the original animated Speed Racer was our first exposure to Japanese animation (or anime for those that don’t know the term) and I know as a kid weened on cartoons from Warner Brothers, Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, it was something totally new and exciting. Looking back at the cartoon now, it’s hokey and corny, and the movie certainly replicates that and even though, it’s visually and aurally amped up by a factor of ten, at it’s core, it’s absolutely true to it, even maintaining the innocence that I got from it.

Now I really enjoyed this, but it’s not without a criticism and mine is that it’s a little too long. The Wachowskis do their best to keep it all moving at a rapid clip, even employing a new editing style that has it’s own rhythm to it, but still this probably could’ve been shortened by a good ten or fifteen minutes (right now the movie weighs in at 2 hours and 15 minutes long).

The Wachowskis have a good solid cast here, with Emile Hirsch in the title role and backed up by Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and Matthew Fox amongst others. And while no one here is going to win any awards for what they’ve done, I have to give them credit for fully handing themselves over to the Wachowskis and trusting in their vision. I could see for a lot of people as a bone of contention being the characters of Speed’s little brother Spritle and his pet monkey Chim-Chim, and yet again, they’re true to the cartoon- sometimes you just hate them, sometimes they’re as funny as can be and sometimes their humor is just the pure groaner variety, but that was the same way as it was in the source as well. I really like the cast and give special kudos to both Sarandon and Goodman for some bit of weight here, especially Goodman who’s no stranger to playing an over-the-top character by any means. He’s played Fred Flinstone and any number of his characters that he’s done for the Coen Brothers can just as easily be seen as living cartoons, and Pops Racer is just another notch in his repertoire, but still he’s fun and it sure looked like he had fun here (at least to me).

Now with all this said, and again I really enjoyed this (though I’ll certainly grant that I was predisposed to as well- this was the one that I was most looking forward to seeing this season just to see what new stuff the Wachowskis had in mind), I find this hard to recommend unless you’re really, really open to it. There’s so many strikes against it as far as a general audience goes, that if you’re coming into it with any sort of bias against it, there’s everything there to feed into it- there’s the anime angle, there’s the CGI angle, there’s it’s explosion of color, there’s the corniness and there’s the whole thing that many have against the Wachowskis for the second and third Matrix films (and I’m not one of them, I’m pretty much ready to go toe-to-toe with any one that hates those movies at any time). So seriously, if you have that anti-bias on any of those levels, stay home, don’t bother. But if you’re open to some new stuff and if you’re a fan of the original cartoon (corniness and all), I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to see it in a theatre. And I was lucky enough to see this in a room with digital projection as well, so the experience was even better, actually seeing this in a way that will be even better than what I could have at home.

I’m expecting this one to be pretty polarizing, and can already picture the critics on the weekend movie shows (Ebert & Roeper and Reel Talk just chopping this one up in a big way), but I thought it was a lot of fun and look forward to watching it again and again when it makes it’s way home.

In 1988, a cool and different little genre film premiered called Alien Nation this movie which sprang from the mind of Rockne S. O’Bannon told the story of how an immense group of alien slaves (over 250,000) found themselves stranded on Earth and had now been incorporated into our society. The movie starred James Caan as Detective Matt Sykes and Mandy Patinkin as his alien partner, George Francisco, and it’s nice and different take on the cop/buddy film but with a genre twist.

The movie as a pretty moderate success and in 1989, a fledgling FOX TV network took the movie and had it modified to be a weekly series (and if memory serves, it ran on Monday nights). The series was spearheaded by producer/writer/director Kenneth Johnson who, like Rockne O’Bannon, comes with an impressive genre pedigree (O’Bannon was also a big contributer to the 80s revival of The Twilight Zone, but he’s far more famous for creating the world of Farscape). Kenneth Johnson was behind such TV hits as V and The Incredible Hulk and had worked on The Bionic Woman and The Six MIllion Dollar Man.

The series starred Gary Graham as Matthew Sykes (certainly far and away a different presence than James Caan) and Eric Pierpoint as George Francisco, and these guys were really a good team on the show, I actually preferred them over the theatrical version. And while science fiction shows have really progressed since this premiered, for the time that it was on, it was certainly something that really hadn’t been seen on TV before.

I used to watch the show regularly and I was disappointed that it was only cancelled after one season, but certainly give Fox credit for sticking with this at the time and obviously for bringing it back in a series of movies (and no, I’m not one of these guys who’s going to jump on an anti-FOX bandwagon because their genre series gets cancelled).

After the series was cancelled (and on a cliffhanger no less) FOX commissioned Johnson and company for a TV movie to let them wrap everything up, that movie Dark Horizon covered a number of things, another Tenctonese ship in space looking at Earth as the spot where 250,000 of their slave class had been misplaced, the danger that the settled Tenctonese were facing from a secret virus developed by a purist political group, and further development and near resolution of the relationship that was always being teased at between Sykes and a Tenctonese doctor named Kathy (played by Terri Treas). It’s a fun film, especially if you used to watch the show. I know when I watched this, it was literally the first time I’d even given Alien Nation any thought over the years, and I have to say, I had a very pleasant time re-living this again.

This was a success for FOX and the following year, another movie came out, Body And Soul, and with this film, we sort of drop back to an expanded TV episode, this one centering around a Tenctonese/Human hybrid…

In Millennium, George’s son, Buck, who’s displayed Tenctonese loyalist qualities throughout the run, gets drawn into a cult, with of course Sikes and Francisco out to uncover the secret.

In The Enemy Within, George has to confront a some of his own prejudices after investigating the death of a lower class of Tenctonese.

And in The Udara Legacy, we get a story involving how some of the Newcomers who’ve adjust well to their new world are now committing crimes and find out if there’s a connection to the Udara, a segment of the Tenctonese who’s committed themselves to overthrowing their Overseers.

I think your satisfaction with the movies themselves will just come from whether you’re a fan of the show, though there is enough here in these films to tell you the background and overall story without having seen the first season, these do all seem now almost a little too late 80s cop/buddy fare and a modern genre fan (who’s never seen any of these shows before) might see this stuff as almost a little hokey or corny compared to shows that they see now. Well, that’s your TV history for your… when the series was on, cable wasn’t yet the beast it was today, and FOX had yet to discover American Idol gold… and they were still trying all sorts of stuff to see what would hit. I think overall, these movies are some good fun, and if you were a fan of the show, then by all means, look at picking this set up, because FOX has done a real nice job with the set.

First off, they all look fantastic, far better than you ever saw them on broadcast. I was particularly taken by the visual effects around the Tenctonese slave ship in Dark Horizon and just how crisp it looked here. The presentation is full-frame so for you folks looking for anamorphic widescreen, this was made before that was going on.

Kenneth Johnson provides commentary for all five of the movies, and Johnson is just as sharp as can be when talking about these films. He’s willing to go into technical detail as well as a little bit of personal discussion. As much fun as the movies are themselves to watch, they’re even more fun to watch with Johnson’s commentary tracks and getting a glimpse into both his production style and what it takes to shoot a TV movie.

But there’s more… Each movie also features a making of featurette that’s not the slickly produced things that you see, no what you have here is literally home movies made around the shooting of each film. These are all shot by a woman on Johnson’s staff, and here Johnson provides commentary for these films. After I saw the first of these for Dark Horizon (which was about 20-25 minutes long), I’d really thought I’d gotten a nice little bonus here.

There’s also extensive photo galleries for each film, much of these from Kenneth Johnson’s on collection, and these were pretty cool with the added bonus of seeing photos from recent Alien Nation cast reunions, so you’ve got a chance to see what Gary Graham, Eric Pierpoint, and the rest of the cast look like now. I’m not usually that big on photo galleries on DVD sets, but for this set, well these just go beyond the normal studio publicity stills and as such are a great part of seeing some of the history and production of this show.

This set gets a big thumbs up here, though I recognize the fact that it still may not be for everybody. Genre fans that like the old show shouldn’t hesitate for a moment here. Genre fans who have a sense of perspective and an appreciation of what was in the past will probably like this as well. After that, it’s hard to say who will like the set, but I can at least tell you that I think it’s fantastic. Kudos to FOX for a job well done…