Gemini Man (2019)

I love watching the coming attractions when I go to see the movies.  Some get me excited.  (I’m stoked about seeing the new Terminator movie.)  When I saw the preview for Gemini Man, it looked interesting.  A man is hunted by his own clone.  Little did I know that I had basically seen the entire movie.  I hate to spoil it for everyone, but it’s basically true.

Henry Brogan (The older Will Smith character) is a sniper who realizes that it’s time to quit.  He’s starting to grow a conscience.  His boss hates to seem him go, as Henry is the best.  Shortly after retiring, he realizes something is up.  There’s someone new working at the marina.  A friend gives him information that his last target wasn’t a terrorist.  Suddenly, a guy on a motorcycle starts hunting him.  Who could it be?  Oh, that’s right.  I saw the coming attraction.  It’s Junior, the Will Smith clone.

The two have several engagements and eventually hunt down the people doing this to them.  I was kind of hoping that this might mean some nice action scenes.  It didn’t.  There was some nice scenery.  This made the use of a high frame rate and 3-D worth it.  Being able to see it in Dolby didn’t hurt, either.  But this is basically the only good thing I can say about the movie.  When all a movie has going for it is the visual spectacle, it’s not a particularly good movie.

I kind of felt like the movie put all it’s money into getting a few big names and some good visuals.  There’s very little about the morality of what happened.  Instead, it focuses on the revenge aspect.  Yes, I know it’s difficult to come up with great movies all the time.  I’ve been seeing a few mediocre ones lately.  But this one is like the writer wasn’t even trying.  You know how people complain that cable has 400 channels and most of them are crap?  This isn’t one of the good channels.

There’s nothing really new or exciting about this movie.  Clones aren’t new.  Being replaced isn’t new.  I don’t recall that many witty one-liners.  You’d be better off just watching the coming attractions a few times.  Save yourself the ticket price.

IMDb page

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (Season 1)

There has always been a market for nostalgia.  There are t-shirts for 80s bands and old Nintendo games.  There are even emulators for the Commodore 64.  But to do a prequel series for a movie that’s 37 years old?

My first clue was when Netflix started streaming The Dark Crystal.  I hadn’t watched the movie all the way through in decades.  When I did make the attempt, something else would come up about 30 minutes in.  When I found out that Netflix was going to do a series about the Gelflings, I decided to set aside 90 minutes to watch the whole thing.

Both the movie and the series take place on the planet Thra.  The series would appear to be set well before the events of the movie.  There are seven tribes of Gelfling, all under the rule of the evil Skeksis.  Gelfling view the Skeksis as benevolent, which is just a little ironic if you’ve seen the movie.  The Skeksis have abused the planet for their own evil ends.  They want to live forever and will drain the essence of the Gelfling to get their immortality.

The ten episodes start with the Skeksis draining the essence of one Gelfling, Mira, and blaming her death on another, Rian.  Rian and two other Gelfling, Deet and Princess Brea, come to realize what the Skeksis really are.  This is what starts the Gelfling resistance to the Skeksis.

My one question was how true the series would be to the movie.  Stylistically, it would appear to be the same.  CGI was kept to a minimum, making the visuals look almost identical.  While many of the same characters are still present, very few of the actors have returned.  This is understandable, considering how much time has passed.   (IMDb has a tool to compare the cast and crew of any two productions.)

The story doesn’t drag as much as other series do.  You expect a little bit of padding, since it is a ten-episode arc, but there were very few places where this was evident.  A good deal of this is because we’re tuning in for the visuals.  With the movie, only a small portion of the planet was explored.  The series expands that quite a bit and gives each area a distinct look.  One tribe lives underground.  Another lives in a desert area.  It’s a lot to take in, but it still leaves you hoping to see more if we get a second season.

And it is a somewhat complex narrative.  There are three characters making their way to the same point to unite all seven tribes against a common enemy. Add to this the fact that they have to convince people that the Gelfling are an enemy.  It’s not that easy.  This is, after all, an epic undertaking on more than one level.

IMDb page

Moon (2009)

Colonizing the moon or another planet won’t be easy.  Any building will probably be designed for function rather than comfort.  You won’t be able to go outside due to lack of atmosphere.  If you’re among the first group to go, there won’t be many others going with you, so you’ll have a limited number of other people to interact with, if you have anyone else at all.

You don’t have to tell Sam Bell that, though.  He’s finishing up a three-year contract on the moon.  Two more weeks of monitoring a mining operation and he gets to go home.  His only companion is an artificial intelligence named GERTY.  Life is pretty boring for Sam.  The only ting of interest, in fact, is when something goes wrong.  For instance, he can’t communicate directly with Earth in anything resembling real time.  (This is due to an equipment failure.)

Things tend to get complicated when Sam notices people on the station.  Is he dreaming?  Are they hallucinations?  Either way, he gets distracted.  He wakes up with GERTY tending to him.  GERTY seems to be communicating with Earth, which should be impossible.  Answers are hard to come by as GERTY won’t let Sam out of the confines of the base.  It’s not clear why until Sam finds a reason to leave the base.

There’s that saying that you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.  It’s bad enough that Sam has to spend three years without human company.  That’s enough to make anyone a little unbalanced.  However, as time goes by, he has more reason to believe that it’s not paranoia.

Take the fact that Sam’s job is to spend his entire three years alone.  You’d think that they’d send up a few other people just in case the AI isn’t enough.  It could be that Sam works for a really cheap company.  It could also be that people willing to work on the lunar surface are hard to come by, no matter how much you paid them.  It’s also possible that something more nefarious is going on.  (At the very least, is it morally right to isolate someone for that long, even if they agree to it?)

There is a certain efficiency to the movie.  You have two main characters, Sam and GERTY, who make the bulk of the story.  There’s even a minimal number of secondary characters.  The only other movie that comes to mind as being similar is Timecrimes.  It’s possible to tell a story well with very few characters and sets.  In fact, I could say that Moon used too many sets.  Having more of the movie take place in the lunar base could have added to the sense of claustrophobia that Sam would have felt.

Most of my issues are technical, though, and are to be expected.  The first one that I noticed was in saying dark side of the moon.  The moon has phases from our perspective, meaning that the dark side rotates.  I know I’m not the first to point out that it should properly be referred to as the far side of the moon, as the moon is tidally locked.  The other issue is lunar gravity.  I could see the structures having artificial gravity, but it seemed like Sam experienced normal gravity outside the base.  I’ll admit that both of these are relatively minor points.

The movie is 97 minutes, which seems about the right time.  It doesn’t feel rushed at all, nor does it seem like there’s a lot of filler.  There are a few cases where I was able to see things coming.  If you watch movies and television enough, you’ll be able to catch some of the foreshadowing.  I didn’t see many of the big plot twists coming, though.  How much you enjoy the movie will probably depend on how much you can let stuff like that go.  If you know someone who likes to ask questions during the movie, don’t watch this one with them.

IMDb page

Doctor Strange (2016)

Origin stories are an important part of the mythos of a character.  The Incredible Hulk is the result of exposure to gamma radiation.  Captain America was brought about by way of a serum.  These are important parts of the characters’ stories.  Even when they’re changed for the sake of a movie, they help explain why that person is the way that they are.

Doctor Strange got his own movie in 2016.  At the start of the movie, Dr. Stephen Strange is a famous neurosurgeon.  He has his pick of patients.  (These include a few throwaway references to other Marvel characters.)  All is going well for Dr. Strange until he has an accident.  He loses the use of his hands, which prevents him from being the perfect doctor that he once was.

He tries just about any experimental surgery that comes his way, selling everything he has to be able to afford them.  He eventually hears about a paraplegic named Jonathan Pangborn who managed to regain use of his legs.  Pangborn to Kamar-Taj, a place where he might be able to regain the use of his hands.  Dr. Strange has just enough money to make it there and meet The Ancient One, who demonstrates her powers.  Strange is hesitant.  He doesn’t believe in the astral plane and spiritual healing.  Even after her demonstration, it’s a bit much to accept.

Still, he stays and learns what he can.  With a photographic memory, he’s able to become a skilled sorcerer quickly.  We learn that Earth is protected by Sanctums, led by The Ancient One.  There are many sorcerers trained there with the intent of protecting the Sanctums, which are all connected to Kamar-Taj.  When Kaecilius, a former student, attacks a Sanctum, there’s a real threat.

Kaecilius is trying to make a deal with a guy from another dimension.  If successful, Kaecilius would become immortal.  As you might imagine, an immortal Kaecilius would be bad for us.  Dr. Strange knows he has to help, but is conflicted about hurting people, as he never really stopped being a doctor.  It’s up to a few other sorcerers to get him where he needs to be to save the world.

I’ve read articles that have compared the movie to Inception.  I have to say that it’s a fair comparison.  The movie seems like it’s a vehicle for the CGI, coming across as a mixture of Inception and The Matrix.  M. C. Escher would enjoy the scenery.  On a technical level, the movie is great.

What I found lacking was the story.  Dr. Strange spends a lot of time trying to get his hands back.  Then, he spends a lot of time learning how to be a sorcerer.  We do get some fighting throughout the movie, but it isn’t until the end that we get any sort of real conflict.  The movie even opens with an inception-style fight, but there’s no sense of rooting for anyone.

I felt like the story focused too much on Dr. Strange before becoming a hero.  I get that this is what an origin story is.  However, we see too much of the Doctor and not enough of the Strange.  He’s the kind of doctor that that reminds everyone that he’s a doctor.  (He didn’t work hard all of those years at Strange Medical School to be called Mr. Strange.)

I think my problem was expecting more action sequences.  We are shown a journey that Dr. Strange has to take.  He’s a man of science told to simply believe in the metaphysical.  I admit that I would have handled it the same way.  If someone told me that the power to heal myself was based in mysticism, I’d think they were trying to sell me something and with good reason.

It was a lot like a pilot episode meant to set us up for something even bigger.  The movie is equal parts mysticism and action, but it doesn’t quite work.  It alternates rather than blends.  There were scenes that were too heavy on explaining things.  It works better when we have just enough to get what‘s going on.

IMDb doesn’t list a sequel as of yet, but it would be interesting to see how they handle it.  A lot could be forgiven if they knock that one out of the park.

IMDb page