Surrogates

Let's get a couple of things straight: Surrogates is not a bad movie. It is not anything like Gamer, and yet Rotten Tomatoes has a spread of under 10 points between the two. This is a crying shame. With Gamer and Surrogates coming out within months of each other, it's almost like Hollywood wanted desperately to make a Second Life movie but realized too late that Second Life is no longer cool.

Surrogates has a lot in common with I, Robot and yes, Gamer. Implausibly, the world is dominated by remote-controlled robots, a parallel to Internet avatars. Thanks to these robots, known as surrogates, crime is unheard of and the dream of a utopian society beckons. Of course, not everyone is okay with the status quo, including a radical group known as the Dreads. The Dreads are the underclass, people who don't believe in a robot-filled reality. Everyone else has become shut-ins, hiding in their bedrooms in their pajamas, living life through perpetually beautiful twenty-something robots.

FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) investigate a pair of murders in which the operators died too. There's just one problem: there are safeguards to protect operators from being harmed by the death of their surrogates. If word got out that surrogates were not immortal, the social fabric of modern society would fall apart.

On screen, the surrogates are disturbingly perfect. Their teeth is pearly white, their eyes without any hint of veins, their stubble-free skin cheeks are as rosy as a newborn's. The robots (and thus, the actors portraying them) only move their heads when they talk, even when angry. Sights and sounds are softly muted. Until the real world hits and Greer is forced to come out of his shell.

Willis' skill playing a sad sack and a scruffy loner are on full display here. Surrogates is as much about the increasing isolation of technology as it is about the wreckage of a marriage. As the stakes get higher, the movie becomes about the broken relationship between a husband and wife who were disconnected from each other long before surrogates were invented.

If along the way it happens to involve some amazing special effects and a lot of cool action sequences, that's not such a bad thing.

Gamer

Dear Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor,

We appreciate your recent attempt to create a movie that would appeal to gamers by naming it after us. Really, we do. But now that we've stopped throwing up from all the motion sickness and our pupils have finally refocused from the flash cuts, we thought you might appreciate some tips to help you farm XP faster.

Stop with the static: Seriously guys. Stop it. Apparently in your version of the future all video games have terrible reception. We have lag, we have crashes, we have all kinds of problems, but the one problem we do not have is static. That's because our video games are not television screens. You'll also notice that our television do not have static either, and haven't had static for about a decade since they invented this thing called cable. Look it up.

Speaking of Kable: Cable is the name of a time-traveling cyborg in the Marvel Universe. Kable is the name somebody thinks gamers think is cool. Nobody thinks Kable is cool. Nobody believes Kable is the best killer in the gaming universe. You didn't even use 133t speak, so…fail.

Making Michael C. Hall an evil genius is…a stroke of genius. Go Dexter!

Stop with the red/blue colors: Ludacris is cool and all, but even his cyber cred is sorely tested by a blurry 3-D image on screen.

The teabagging gag was funny.

Your jump cuts suck: We notice when you replace rapid jump cuts with actual fight choreography. It's the movie equivalent of shouting and pointing, "LOOK! A KITTY!" every time a fight starts. You just look stupid and we feel embarrassed for you.

Dancing convicts are hilarious. Dancing to a Frank Sinatra song is vaguely creepy. But still hilarious.

Why is there still lag in the future? Bad guys can control other human beings by changing their brain cells into [INSERT STUPID MADE UP NAME] but we haven't solved lag? Is this future made of stupid?

Evil Villain Tip #58: Next time around, you might want to consider not making the guy who holds your deepest, darkest secret an international broadcast superstar.

Don't insult us: No offense, but portraying the gaming universe as nothing but "deviants and murderers" doesn't really make us want to watch your movie. Yes, the Internet has a dark side. But since you called the movie "Gamer" and not "All Gamers Are Disgusting Fat Perverted Slobs Who Watch Porn All Day," we'll assume you actually want us to buy a ticket. Please consider this the next time you name a movie after us.

And finally…

Thank you for killing John Leguizamo: That's not a tip. But thank you.

We hope that these tips prove useful the next time you level up as directors and writers. Incidentally, multiclassing as both might not be such a good idea.

District 9

While searching for alien encounter videos, I discovered a little clip titled "Alive in Jo'burg" on YouTube by Neill Blomkamp. Fortunately for us, Blomkamp's ill-fated Halo movie was delayed, so he went back to his roots with the film that started it all: District 9.

If you've seen Alive in Jo'burg you know much of what's going on in District 9 (this review contains spoilers!). In essence, a giant alien saucer lands on Earth and its citizens are repatriated in Johannesburg. However, the aliens are ugly, uncivilized squid-like monstrosities and thus integration attempts (when they happen at all) go poorly. The movie begins with a battle with a telekinetic mech and ends with riots in the streets.

District 9 adds meat to the bones of this highly original film. The aliens are no longer blurry actors in masks but crustacean-like beasts in fully-realized CGI. The ship and the conflict in Johannesburg is still a major plot point, but it is explored through Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). Wikus is a bigoted but cheerful company man who just happens to be married to the daughter of the head of Multi-National United (MNU). He documents the task of relocating the "prawns" (a racial slur for the aliens) to a concentration camp through video, with frequent asides asking the producer to remove particularly embarrassing shots in editing.

In this tightly scripted film, every detail is important: the fact that the aliens have powerful weapons technology only they can use; that the Nigerians take advantage of the prawns by selling them prostitution (and all that implies) and cans of cat food in exchange for said weapons; and that the Nigerians believe they can acquire the power of a prawn through cannibalism.

Blomkamp quickly achieves a sense of rising dread through documentary-style clips where various experts expound on "what Wikus did." The special effects used in creating the prawn are a critical part of making them utterly alien. This is counterbalanced by a horrifying scene where Wikus destroys prawn eggs by setting them ablaze, comparing the popping sound of the roasting babies to popcorn. As a new parent, when Wikus threatens a young prawn, I flinched. And just like that, I was now on the side of the aliens.

An important but unlikely plot twist brings Wikus around to the alien side of life. Betrayed by his company and his father-in-law, he has no choice but to work with Christopher Johnson, an alien who knows more than he lets on. Together, they unveil the depth of corruption in both the squalid slums of Johannesburg and the clean corporate offices of MNU. No organization or race walks out of this film unscathed.

Combining elements of Alien Nation and Enemy Mine, District 9 adroitly balances political commentary on apartheid with Peter Jackson-ian levels of violence. The movie ends with more questions than answers and the certainty of a sequel. I can't wait!

Ball Peen Hammer

Ball Peen Hammer was never meant to be a comic. It's clear, from the claustrophobic setting of a basement and a clock tower to the long silences and close-up panels of characters' expressions, that this graphic novel is a parable. The post-apocalyptic world outside is a foil to reinforce the claustrophobia and paranoia of those two little rooms. This review contains spoilers.

Ball Peen Hammer is about three art forms: music, writing, and acting. Welton is a musician, Underjohn is a writer, Exley is an actress. All three are part of a commune of artists who have seen been scattered from the Undertunnels by the Syndicate, an oppressive regime of gas-mask wearing soldiers. Adam Rapp, a novelist and playwright himself, is merciless in his critique of these three pathetic creatures. Welton is a shiftless guitarist, never leaving the basement and playing the same song over and over about a woman he loved – but is too frightened to try to find her or save himself. Underjohn is immune to the plague but returns to Welton's basement to write about his experience, cataloguing the slow death of the bleak world around him. Exley insists on wearing her little black dress and up-do hairstyle even in the middle of a city besieged by acid rain and wild dogs.

Ball Peen Hammer is about love lost. Welton, who fell in love with Exley, is paralyzed by the experience, stuck in a perpetual state of yearning for a moment he can never reclaim. Underjohn was in love with a man who died from the plague, but never expressed his affection for him before he passed. Exley carries Welton's child and in her journey to find him regresses to acting – as a mother, as a teacher – to Horlick, a thirteen-year-old street kid who lives in the clock tower with his older brother, Dennis.

Ball Peen Hammer is about filling holes. There are emotional holes in all of the characters, but there are also physical holes: the Collector, who slides in and out of manhole covers to ring bells, repair lights, and tattoo numbers; Horlick, who reenacts American Pie with a melon; Welton, who can never get his toilet to flush; Underjohn, who fled the underground commune after it was filled with concrete by the Syndicate.

Ball Peen Hammer is about the loss of innocence. There are sacks in the basement. Underjohn discovers later that he's a Sacker, whose job is to use a ball peen hammer to fill those sacks. Welton, a Dragger, is haunted by the ghosts of those he helped drag into the basement. Exley inserts herself into a family that doesn't want her. And Horlick pretends he is much tougher than he lets on.

Ball Peen Hammer is not a glimpse into a larger world, part of a running series, the beginning of a comic book franchise, a happy story, a quick read, or meant to be understood literally. It is Rapp's No Exit, banished to comic form because nobody's going to want to see a play that revolves around killing kids with a hammer.

Star Trek

The original Star Trek series took time to establish itself as the premiere franchise it is today. The movies steadily improved the characters and special effects, building on a large canon of established Trek lore. The best movies gleefully embraced this rich history; the failures ignored or contradicted it. Star Trek is simply too big to reinvent, and J.J. Abrams knows it. So he did the next best thing by tweaking the established universe of Star Trek just enough to carve out his own little patch for the movie.

This is the beginning of Star Trek re-imagined as a futuristic Earth that incorporates the go-go 60s with iPod style. We see Kirk as a kid on the farm, Spock struggling with his half-Vulcan nature and Bones becoming a crotchety windbag—which, it becomes quickly apparent, he always was. We witness Kirk’s solution to the Kobiyashi Maru, Spock’s acceptance to Starfleet, and the construction of the Enterprise. In short, this is a true and proper launch of a Star Trek movie, from the beginning, so that all those non-Trekkies won’t feel like they missed out…

But if you are a non-Trekkie, you missed out. There are so many nods to Trek lore that my head nearly exploded. SPOILER RED ALERT.

Sulu fences! There’s a splash of light over the captain’s eyes when he sits on the bridge, just like the original series. Red shirts die! The same sounds beep and bleep in the background, from the sensors to the transporters. There are several Wrath of Khan references, from Spock’s famous last words to creepy worms that take control of your brain. There’s even old-style Romulans and Klingons. Fans worried that Abrams was going to remake the series in such a way as to make it unrecognizable can rest easy; this is the Star Trek we know and love, dusted off and buffed to a 21st century shine.

The plot involves time travel, a guest cameo, and references to the central conceit of the series: Spock follows the rules, Bones doesn’t, and Kirk floats above it all, waffling between the two ideologies and blazing his own path as his ego suits him. The movie has no qualms about portraying Kirk as a womanizing jerk or using him as the butt of some hilarious slapstick. It also isn’t afraid to push the envelope with the aliens, going beyond makeup to ensure they’re just unnerving enough for you to notice them even if the rest of the crew doesn’t. This is more than just a new Star Trek, it’s Star Trek done right with a bigger budget.

There are some flaws. The villain is one dimensional. Uhura’s headstrong personality has to carry the burden of embodying all females in Trek, which begins to grate. Winona Ryder (age 38) seems to have wandered onto the set to play Spock’s (Zachary Quinto, age 32) mother. And an uncharacteristically vengeful tactics from the good guys at the end of the movie borders on “ludicrous speed.”

But you know what? I forgive all that. This movie made Trek worth watching all over again and reminded us why it’s okay to travel through time and space, encounter green alien hotties, and bed them. Because it’s FUN.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Remember the old Journey to the Center of the Earth movie, with the optically enlarged lizards presented as dinosaurs (colloquially termed "slurpasaurs")? That was what passed for a nifty special effect in 1959. Today it's 3-D effects.

Of course, audiences of today are far too sophisticated to fall for lizards with horns and fins glued to them; in the age of movies like Jurassic Park, only a digitally animated Gigantosaurus will do.

This latest incarnation of Journey is surprisingly true to its roots: Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is an absent-minded volcanologist who is spending ten days with his nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson). Trevor's brother and Sean's father Max disappeared a decade before looking for the center of the Earth. Max left behind sensors that detect geological shifts in the Earth's crust and a cryptic series of notes in a Jules Verne novel (guess which one?). When one of the sensors fails in Iceland, Trevor decides to go on an adventure in 1950s fashion, bringing along his plucky nephew for the ride.

Accompanying Trevor and Sean is the fetching Hannah Ásgeirsson (Antia Briem), the daughter of another volcanologist and the only person with any spelunking skill whatsoever. While checking on the device, lightning strikes, our heroes dive for cover, and from there it's a lot of falling, screaming, and running.

This is a 3-D movie, which means that at various times and for no reason whatsoever, something flies straight at the screen. Since you will likely not have invested in the expensive 3-D glasses and you may not have even had the good sense to rent the 3-D version, this makes the movie seem even dumber than it is.

The other surprise is that despite the dinosaurs and the hottie, this movie is aimed at a younger set. The dialogue isn't very good, although Fraser does his best. Sean is meant to be a wisecracking preteen modern hero, but he reverts quickly to type. Scenes that are meant to be scary are played up for laughs: giant venus flytraps get pummeled in wrestling-style fashion, flying killer fish get batted away like softball practice, and there's a long and pointless mine cart sequence whose sole purpose is to show off the 3-D effects of the glasses you didn't buy.

Did I mention the irritating glow-in-the-dark mascot? There's a bird. It follows Sean around. Only he can understand it. And it glows in the dark.

Ultimately, Journey is more an amusement park ride than it is an actual movie. Because amusement park standards are much more family-friendly, Journey to the Center of the Earth is heavy on the Journey, light in the Center.

Pi

When my parents came to visit to celebrate my father's birthday, my wife rented Pi, an "indie sci-fi" film as described by Netflix. When I used those two words to describe the movie, he said, "oh great, I've never seen an Indian science fiction movie!"

Pi was not made by Indians. And it's not really a science fiction movie. It's more of a weird fiction movie, extrapolating a single idea and obsessing over it. Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a brilliant, eccentric mathematician who is convinced he can apply the laws of mathematics to nature, and by proxy, the stock market. Since the stock market is a reflection of humanity, which is a reflection of nature, he believes there is a pattern that can be mathematically predicted. Predict the stock market and get rich, right?

From the beginning, we're never sure why Max wants so badly to pursue this path to power. Is he sick of being poor? Perhaps it's to succeed where his mentor, Sol Robenson (Mark Margolis), failed. Sol's stroke stopped him from puzzling out of the answer, which is precisely 216 characters long.

And so we have two philosophies that are actually one and the same: that mathematics of sufficient scope IS nature. Or in other words, the entire universe could be predicted if we just had enough computing power to handle it. Which could be interpreted as the definition of God. This dichotomy manifests as the Kabbalist Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman) on one side and the corporate goon Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart) on the other. Meyer seeks to reclaim the connection with the heavens through the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, and he believes it's 216 characters long. Dawson just wants Max to figure out the secret of the stock market, presumably to make a lot of money. It's the old religion vs. science debate.

The stark black and white film further delineates Pi's either/or approach. It's so washed out that it begins to induce the migraines Max experiences as he gets ever closer to the truth. Aronofsky is a master of translating human misery through visceral images, and the whip-snapshot sequences of Requiem for a Dream's drug addiction are in full evidence here. Even the soundtrack sounds similar, which plucks at the nerve endings in your gums with ever-increasing urgency.

Pi isn't a bad film, but it's intellectually challenging. There's precious little science in Pi, or valid mathematics, or even an accurate portrayal of Kabablism. It uses artistic license to make its point -- that the nature of God is beyond human ken - and ultimately beats the viewer over the head with it in the end. Literally.

Gears of War 2

I've beaten the campaign mode of Gears of War 2 (GOW2) on hardcore and I play multiplayer regularly on Wednesday nights (friend Talien if you're interested). I switched from our Halo 3 weekly games, so I will use that as a point of comparison.

The campaign is great. GOW2 fixed a lot of things you wanted to do before, like taking on a chainsaw with another chainsaw, holding someone hostage, fighting Reavers and even Brumaks, drive tanks, and more. More importantly, Dom's quest to find his wife adds pathos to a brutally violent game - pathos, I might add, that was so heavily hyped in Halo's campaign but never really pulled off. That's the difference between having a faceless protagonist and a character that's fleshed out through flashbacks. Through his heartbreaking quest to find his wife, Dom comes to life. It reminds us of the human cost of war, and helps take the edge off the endless macho posturing of four hugely juiced combat gorillas in armor.

There's also some weird plot involving Lambent Locusts, a revolution, an awfully humanoid-looking hottie of a Locust queen, Marcus Fenix's father, a computer gone mad, and the sinking of Jacinto. Mind you, I thought we were supposed to save Jacinto, not sink it; once it becomes clear that it would hurt the Locusts more by destroying it, the COGs seem to do the job on behalf of the bad guys. But those are minor quibbles and more than made up for the fact that the action is relentless, a pace difficult to keep up even in first-person shooters.

There are flaws in the campaign. If I never play another rail game again in a multiplayer, I would be happy. GOW2 also forces some button-mashing battles that are very different from the normal run-and-gun tactics that are part-and-parcel of the rest of the game. From a cinematic perspective this is great; from someone who just likes to shoot stuff, it can get frustrating.

The multiplayer is where GOW2 really excels. It's like a bloodstained Santa showed up and gave us everything we ever wanted that was missing in GOW. Want to be able to play with up to ten people? Check. Want to be able to just fight wave after wave of Horde cooperatively? Check. Want to play against computer-controlled opponents in multiplayer until you can fill the slots? Check, baby!

Unlike Halo 3, GOW2 feels like a vastly improved version of the original. It takes everything you loved about GOW and amps it up to 11. If you love first-person shooters, if you like team multiplayer games, or if you're just addicted to the gruesome implications of combining a chainsaw with a machinegun ... this game's for you.

Futurama: Bender's Game

I'm the target audience for Bender's Game. A lifelong gamer of over two decades (yeeck, I'm getting old), I also know and love the book by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. With the title alone, the Futurama writing staff is clearly letting me know this is the movie for me.

Bender's Game starts promising, with jokes about the rising cost of fuel prices. There's also a sly joke about Leela's anger issues, which are controlled by a shock collar. A shock collar Leela starts to find ... titillating. Just when things get interesting and this plot point could turn into something awkward and funny, it's dropped.

Bender discovers that he has no imagination and, aggravated that he can't participate in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, flips out Mazes & Monsters-style, renaming himself Titanius and wandering the sewers. He then gets sent to the HAL institute, Arkham Asylum for robots. This plot point is pursued to a point and then dropped.

Meanwhile, Mom (that's her name) has been controlling dark matter prices for years, but there is a means of invalidating her stranglehold on fuel prices. Professor Farnsworth accidentally invented "anti-backwards matter" which, should it ever encounter dark matter, would render dark matter useless. It just so happens that this anti-backwards matter is a 12-sided die. Hilarious, right?

As our lovable misfits build towards a confrontation with Mom and her Killbot goons, reality shifts and suddenly everyone's in a parallel fantasy dimension. And then we get, in descending order of comedic value: D&D jokes, Greek myth jokes, Lord of the Rings jokes, Star Wars jokes, Call of Cthulhu jokes, and did I mention the Lord of the Rings jokes?

There's actually more interesting material on the extras, covering all the allusions to D&D that have appeared in Futurama and confirming that the guys who write the show are hopeless geeks themselves. Unfortunately, they're not really boosting their own geek cred with this movie.

Look, I love Futurama and I love D&D. But this movie is all over the place, using tired, easy jokes for fantasy. I always identified Futurama as a series of in-jokes for sci-fi and tech geeks, which is a much broader category than fantasy gamers. The bizarre diversion into the fantasy realm isn't well thought out, isn't particularly funny, and not all that interesting.

Sorry guys. This is one D&D adventure that doesn't give out nearly as much XP as it should.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

I was already unhappy with the first Futurama movie, so I didn't have much hope for the second. I was surprised to see that this installment of Futurama is actually two awkward subplots mashed together: Lovecraftian horror for the first half, and a meditation on religion on the second half.

On the Lovecraftian side, throw in tentacle attacks, slimy ancient gods from beyond time and space, and the nihilistic view that Heaven is a fabrication and you've got a pretty depressing, semi-creepy, not really all that funny first half. Bender finally makes good on his threat to destroy all humans, Fry conveniently forgets his entire relationship with Leela, the Robot Devil shows up for a one-note gag ... I could go on but I'll stop there.

Judging by the reviews so far, the second half went over a lot of peoples' heads. Yivo is a parody of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is itself a parody of religion. Basically, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a mental construct posed to challenge the notion of a divine being; if you can disprove that the Spaghetti Monster was responsible you win the argument. "Win" being a pretty subjective word, as anyone knows who has argued about religion or politics.

As one big joke about relationships and religion, Beast With a Billion Backs works pretty well. But for reasons known only to the writers, the plot shambles forward well beyond the Big Revelation by Leela about Yivo, the aforementioned Spaghetti Monster. It's like the drunk guy at a party who tells a joke, discovers no one thinks it's funny, then tells it in a slightly different way that STILL doesn't make it funny. We get it: relationships with people can be just as ridiculous as relationships with God. But this is Futurama, and while I appreciate the depth of meaning the show strives for with this movie, it feels forced. A multitude of guest appearances doesn't make up for it.

Still, I can't be too harsh on Futurama. You won't find many animated shows that are willing to take on topics like relationships and religion at the same time, so Futurama gets points for trying. I just wish it didn't try so hard.

Futurama - Bender's Big Score

When Futurama first came out, I was convinced it would never last. Unlike the Simpsons, Futurama makes you feel a bit like a moron when you watch it, with perpetual in-jokes to science fiction and fact that you may only catch years later. To my delight, Futurama had a very successful run.

One of the last episodes involved the Robot Devil, a favorite character of mine, and the burgeoning romantic subplot between Fry and Leela. Fry, having traded his hands in for the Robot Devil's hands so that he could play the hypnoflute ultimately has to give the hands back and the episode ends with a sweet but sad little tune imagining Fry and Leela together. Filled with clever banter, excellent music and choreography, plot twists, and a bittersweet ending, this was Futurama at its finest.

Bender's Big Score is not Futurama at its finest. All of those plots have been discarded.

Mind you, it's not bad. It's just not fantastic. Bender's Big Score is a series of muddled plot points, pointless cameos, and a lot of "hey, look, we gave you what you wanted!" fan service. It's great to have a DVD comeback of a great show, but I expected better from a feature-length movie. I mean, Internet scams? That's so ten years ago!

That said, I'm a huge fan of Hypnotoad. Twenty minutes of Hypnotoad. TWENTY. MINUTES. That's right, twenty glorious minutes of HYPNOTOAD. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!

So for that, it gets an extra star. But only because Hypnotoad compels me.

Mass Effect

When I first played Knights of the Old Republic (KOTR) I was enthralled. Here was a Star Wars game that was better than the latest Star Wars movies, full of engrossing characters, interesting plots, and aliens true to their roots from the Star Wars universe. At the time, one flaw popped up that really bothered my wife: talking to the aliens ad nauseum meant that certain sound bites were repeated by certain alien races over and over. So you had a lot of "ooka shishka jedi" stuff going on that, while it didn't bother me too much, certainly annoyed the heck out of anyone having to listen to it over and over as I talked to everything that was willing to carry on a conversation. Then I bought Jade Empire and to my horror, discovered that it was the exact same game engine. It's the same engine used for Mass Effect. And all that dialogue is starting to get old.

Allow me to deconstruct the myth that Mass Effect is a supreme role-playing game experience.

• SCIENCE-FICTION ROLE-PLAYING: PERFECTED. The setting is a combination of Star Wars' exotic worlds, Star Trek's ship interiors, and Babylon 5's battle to establish human dominance in an alien world. Mass Effect uses conversational pathing. Generally speaking, the top choice is positive, the middle choice is neutral, and the bottom choice is negative. So if you want to be a jerk, you can always pick the rude bottom choice, and if you want to be a nice guy, you can always pick the positive top choice. Or if you're in a hurry, you click the button and move to the next chat menu. This is not role-playing, it's a game of multiple choice, and the majority of the time the choices are obvious. This game has more in common with KOTR than the game engine. The customizability of equipment and characters, the level up system, it's all the same. So instead of the Force we have "biotics." You can also customize your character's appearance, which is neat. However, Xbox's new interactive menus allow the same thing - avatar customization. It hardly makes this a "perfect" role-playing game. The equipment improvements come down to: Fire Ammo IV and Laser Rifle VII. There is a whole pile of scrolling text you can read about the history of the weapon, but the short of it is VII is better than VI which is better than V. You could get those kinds of power ups in a game of Diablo.
• THE VASTNESS OF SPACE BECKONS. Like KOTR, you have a ship that you can fly all over the universe. This is like the world's worst sandbox - it's hard enough to figure out what to do and where to go in a small city. Yes, there's lots of content, but it's not necessarily relevant or interesting. Almost all the quests involve "go here, get widget, return it to me." Then there's the MAKO, a dune buggy-type roving cannon. Exploring the surface of worlds primarily involves shooting at giant crab things that you can run over. In this respect Mass Effect is reminiscent of the Final Fantasy games.
• LOSE YOURSELF IN A LIVING GALAXY. The graphics are amazing, the voice acting top notch, the character expressions just as nuanced as promised. It has Seth Green as a voice actor, which rocks. But for reasons I will never understand, there are long elevator sequences. In the world of science fiction, where ships can travel through space and alien races intermingle, we have not yet invented a means around elevators. EVERY time you get in an elevator, your characters freeze, face forward, and you listen to the sci-fi equivalent of elevator Muzak. The only thing you can do is spin the camera around the characters while they stand there. You can't reload, check equipment, or anything else. It's useless downtime. For some reason, the highly advanced civilizations still like to keep their belongings in boxes. The boxes can be hacked; I'm a sucker for these mini-games, so I confess I enjoyed them. But really, boxes? There might be other interesting ways of finding equipment, but since this is the same game engine as KOTR, boxes are everywhere. There is also the romantic subplot. This subplot involves choosing between a sexy blue alien (reminiscent of Zhaan from Farscape) and a pushy human racist woman. It's pretty clear which woman the game would like you to hook up with (or man, if you play a female character, but the alien female retains her faux gender). This is hardly a deep romantic plot, and the ruckus raised over the intimate scene between the two characters is unwarranted; it's far tamer than anything on the Internet. To save on memory, the majority of aliens are the same bodies duplicated multiple times, in the same way Star Trek tended to have every alien be humanoid since that meant less makeup was required. There are a lot of the blue female aliens throughout the game, and they all look similar. There's not a fat person among them. Even the ship's doctor, a much older woman, is a silver fox with the body of a twenty year old (where was the romantic subplot with HER?).
• LEAD YOUR SQUAD IN INTENSE, REAL-TIME COMBAT. Although your best bet in beating this game is as a soldier, Mass Effect is no Halo. The third person perspective is difficult to follow, especially when you fight many enemies at once. What this means is you're constantly pausing the game to give your squad commands, which completely ruins the "real-time" combat element. There isn't the nail-biting thrill of trying to reload a weapon perfectly like Gears of War, and the ability to use terrain as cover isn't nearly as smooth.
  

Mass Effect isn't a bad game by any means. The graphics are excellent and if you have the time, you can wander the world interrogating every single alien, reading and listening to every path of dialogue, and looting everything on every planet.

Mass Effect is ultimately a giant sandbox that's somewhat different from KOTR, only with none of the cachet of Star Wars. The main plot line, the one in which you save the universe, is a lot of fun and makes for an interesting game. But you'll have to sit through a lot of elevators to get there.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend, the novel, spawned the vampires-as-physical-phenomena genre. Vulnerabilities to religious icons were merely psychological holdovers from victims of a disease who believed they were vampires. But the thirst for blood was very real. It established the post-apocalyptic fear of contamination.

Since I Am Legend is a Will Smith vehicle, I figured it'd have some wisecracks, a lot of action, and Smith saving the day. So I was surprised to get exactly that - but not delivered in the way I expected.

I Am Legend is very much like a A Boy & His Dog in that our two protagonists are Robert Neville (Will Smith), a virologist responsible for finding a cure in New York City, and his dog Samantha, wandering a world gone mad. What's interesting about I Am Legend is the question posed by the title. Why is Neville a legend?

The most obvious answer is that Neville is immune to the disease that has converted 90 percent of humanity. As such, he believes he holds the cure within himself. In that regard, if Neville can succeed in stopping the plague, he will be a legend to all of humankind. But there's more to I Am Legend than that.

It's fitting that his companion is a dog. With only Sam as his companion, Neville is truly a legend; the only other living being idolizes Neville, just as dogs idolize their masters. Neville also creates a fictional community of people out of mannequins in a DVD rental store, where everybody knows his name. Neville is indeed a legend in his own mind.

There's also the possibility, posited in the original story, that Neville isn't famous as a savior, but infamous amongst the new breed of humanity as a mass murderer. In that regard Neville is legendary not because of whom he saves but whom he kills. Neville sacrifices countless of the infected in a quest for a cure, and in the process loses a little bit of his own humanity.

I Am Legend could easily have been an egotistical macho romp in a world gone mad in the vein of Mad Max. Instead, it is a thoughtful meditation on how communities define ourselves, even if your only friend is a dog. Although the director flinches at the uncompromising ending that could have been (and is on the two-disc special edition), I Am Legend is a serious entry in both science fiction movies and Will Smith's string of blockbusters.

How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion

When I was in second grade, I was asked to write down what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote "Robot Maker." That was before I discovered that robot making wasn't about design so much as it was about programming. And programming meant math. I'm an English major.

Decades later, I finally got the chance to purchase my very own robot: a Roomba. I fell in love with my little Roomba, Red, until it died on me and started backing up in circles. After months of tinkering with it, where I imagined myself to be the Robot Maker I always dreamed I could become, I gave up and threw Red in the garbage.

I feel guilty about that. I know, deep down, that the other Roombas are watching. They are planning their revenge. So I turned to How to Survive a Robot Uprising for the inevitable Roomba retaliation.

HTSARU is a handsomely crafted book, with bright pages and reddish-gold trim. It also has some huge pages of blank space in which there is neither text nor graphic, and in some cases the text seems to be awkwardly laid out.

This book isn't as polished Where's My Jetpack?. It veers from lecturing on the feasibility of robots doing particular ominous tasks (nanobots, robot swarms, giant robots) to how to survive the attack. The problem is that a lot of the advice is pretty standard stuff - I don't need a book to tell me to run away, hide behind objects, and listen for robot noises when the Roombas come looking for me.

There are two chief problems with this kind of humor: whereas say, a zombie guide wholeheartedly embraces the notion of zombies and what to do about them, HTSARU sticks to reality. And you know what? Reality's pretty boring. About the scariest robot out there are the ones currently used by the military to take out targets from a distance, and those aren't really robots at all but remote controlled drones. So no, the robot uprising isn't going to happen any time soon. Unless you count the Roombas.

The other problem is that the book tries to dispense advice on how to deal with robots. But if a robot uprising happened, which comes with quite a few assumptions (that we have that many robots, that we use them in everyday life, that they could actually pose a physical threat to us as opposed to say just not cleaning our rugs), then we'd probably be screwed within the first hour. It becomes sadly apparent that we DON'T have the ability to beat a robot. The best advice is to wait until the robots run out of power, unless they're solar-powered, in which case you have the Matrix-solution of nuking the sky. And if you go down that path, now we're back into the world of Make Believe, where we consider humanoid robots (Terminator) or squid robots (Matrix) or robot servants (I, Robot) taking over the world. Where is the plan to deal with a million carpet cleaning deathbots?

HTSARU awkwardly straddles the real and imaginary worlds of robots and tries to be humorous to boot. Because it never focuses on a particular kind of robot uprising, HTSARU has difficulty explaining what to do except in the most general terms. This makes the book only kinda-useful as a survival guide and only kinda-amusing as a humorous flight of fancy. I am still woefully unprepared for when Red enacts his revenge.

So if you see a little Roomba puttering down the street (or puttering in circles), think of me. Then run in the other direction.

Turok

Ever since I saw Jurassic Park, I had a newfound respect for Tyrannosaurus Rex. Forget dragons: a T-Rex is a terrifying killing machine, and Jurassic Park made it clear that you didn't just see one of these monsters coming, you actually felt its presence. Of course, my love for dinosaurs started well before that, back when I was in elementary school. What's sad is that I wanted dinosaur curtains, dinosaur bedspreads, dinosaur anything -- and back then there WERE no dinosaur-themed stuff for kids. Now my one-year-old wears a new dinosaur-themed outfit practically every day.

It's probably no surprise that I'm fond of Jurassic Fight Club, which matches two (or more) dinosaurs in tail-to-head combat. The speculation and history lessons are fun, but the actual computer graphic battles in all their bloody glory left me itching for something more. And that more is Turok.

Turok is a first-person shooter, but the thrill is in the use of the bow and the knife to silently take out your enemies. Dinosaur combat is less about shooting them and more about pressing the right combination of buttons to fend it off; the combination changes with each dinosaur attack, which keeps Turok fresh with sudden mini-games that are thrust suddenly upon you.

The other neat element is that dinosaurs are animals at heart. They run from explosions, sniff out prey, and can be lured into traps. My personal favorite: shooting a flare over a grenade, a dinosaur wanders over to sniff it and...BOOM! Instant meat shower! The dinosaurs are more forces of nature than enemies; there are plenty of opportunities to have shoot-outs with better-armed and armored opponents.

This is the first game to really do the T-Rex justice. Showdowns with this monster (which, I'm pleased to report, happen frequently) always end in horrible carnage. The great voice acting and slick script only add to the paranoid atmosphere. There's even a shout-out to Aliens, complete with flamethrowers and giant bugs.

Remember that scene in Predator, where the Native American, Billy, stays behind to take on the alien with jut a knife? His off-screen death was really lame. Turok's much better answer: Hell yeah, an Indian can take on a dinosaur...give him a knife, and he can stab a T-Rex to death with it!

Cloverfield

Like so many other monster fans, I was taken in by all the hype around Cloverfield. I incorrectly predicted the monster's appearance based on a sketch, I correctly predicted that the movie wasn't about Cthulhu or Voltron, and then my son was born and I forgot about movies for a year.

I finally saw it. And man is it good.

But you see, I'm a monster movie fan. Cloverfield's marketing was intentionally minimalist, relying on viral marketing instead. One of the dangers of viral marketing is that it's viral, and thus doesn't necessarily distinguish by target market. Indeed, the whole point of viral marketing is to get the word out to as many people as possible. And many of those people aren't monster movie fans.

Look. This is a monster movie. If you don't like the fact that attractive people run around screaming, maybe you shouldn't watch a movie about a giant monster. If you don't like the shaky cam effect, maybe the preview gave a hint that the movie wasn't for you. And if you don't like the unrealistic nature of characters running in high heels, people surviving horrible wounds, and the insane bravery/stupidity of the protagonist, perhaps you shouldn't see a movie about a giant monster that comes out of nowhere and rips the head off the Statue of Liberty.

The joke's on us: Cloverfield is a love story cloaked in a monster movie. It's about the lengths our hero is willing to go to save his true love, a girl he's only just recently met. In times of stress, our tenuous attachment to loved ones becomes all the more precious--if you lived in New York City during the 9/11 attacks, you knew that already.

Stripping away the complaints about the genre, as a monster movie Cloverfield knocks it out of the park. To Abrams' credit, it's just as scary as we feared. Only now we have real reason to fear the impact of a colossal assault on our city. The movie is filmed the way we experienced 9/11, and the floating papers and dust from the collapse of a building are a sign that we know exactly what a monstrous attack looks like.

When 9/11 happened, I walked home from work. I watched a cop stick his head out the driver's side window, so terrified of another attack from above that he was nearly drove off the road. Cloverfield invokes those fears: of confusion, of anarchy, of wanting to run but not knowing what's a safe place to run to anymore. It is a monster movie made when the charm of monster movies can no longer be appreciated by the audience - we now know that if a giant monster attacked New York, evacuations would clog the streets, people would be poisoned by the debris, stock markets would crash, and worse. It's not just about being afraid the monster will eat you.

Cloverfield has its giant monster and lets it eat too: it's an immediate physical threat and a mysterious menace, far more frightening than anything the Godzilla remake could muster. In the same way Godzilla evoked fears of the atom bomb, Cloverfield is 9/11 reimagined as a hideous, unexplained thing from beyond. The film is also fearless in facing the monster (literally) and reinforcing the helplessness we all felt in the face of such a huge disaster. Forget the boogeyman under your bed: it's hundreds of feet tall and smashing its way down your street.

For monster movie fans, it doesn't get any better than this.

Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived

When I was little, my uncle collected newspaper clippings of various articles about the American foray into space. Like my father, he was a big fan of science fiction, so it was only natural that he bequeathed his collection to me. And for a little while, I kept it up.

But eventually I got bored with it. For one, there wasn't anything new happening in space--certainly nothing on the scale of a lunar landing. For another, a lot of the optimistic predictions about space development weren't coming true and in fact were becoming something of a cliché. Where's My Jetpack? seemed like a response to that disillusionment, so I was glad I picked it up.

The book is well-illustrated with blue and white line art of various subjects. The cover is reflective, and the pages are trimmed with shiny blue material so that it sparkles when you look at the book from the side. It looks like a gimmicky-type of book, the kind that has no useful information in it but that you put on your bookshelf to make everyone think you're smart.

I'm pleased to report that Where's My Jetpack? actually has content in it worth reading. When it comes to science fiction and fact, I'm pretty well read. While I'm no engineer, I knew all about jetpacks, zeppelins, moving sidewalks, self-steering cars, flying cars, hoverboards, and teleportation. Fortunately, the author does too - and he nails each subject with just the right combination of humor and relevant information. Some of these topics are pretty esoteric -- for example, few people realize that we technically achieved teleportation years ago - but it's all here.

There's other stuff I didn't know about. Anti-sleeping pills are a new one. I haven't kept up on universal translators or food pills, and I didn't know the status of space elevators. I'm also mildly creeped out by a section on dolphin guides, wherein a woman built a house for her "dolphin companion" and the dolphin started exhibiting "courting behavior." Ick.

The fact that there's something in here for everyone makes the book worth the price. Although it's technically classified as humor, Where's My Jetpack? sometimes comes off as a little too eager to please, with jokes that are so topical the book will be horribly dated a decade out. Then again, the nature of the book probably guarantees it will be outdated anyway.

Although the jokes sometimes fall flat, Where's My Jetpack? is a breezy, educational read. If you're still wondering why there's no robots serving you, why you can't fly to your neighbor's house in style, or why you still have to sleep a few hours each night, Where's My Jetpack will gleefully tell you why.

Swan Song

I read McCammon's "The Wolf's Hour" when I was a teenager and was amazed by the author's daring: who would have thought to combine werewolves with the spy genre? In the intervening years I forgot the name of the book as well as the author. When I finally remembered the author's name and discovered McCammon wrote a post-apocalyptic novel, I just had to pick it up.

I was not prepared for Swan Song. This review contains spoilers, so if you want to be as unprepared I was read no further.

Steeped in 1980s Cold War paranoia, Swan Song is an end-of-the-world parable about good and evil. There are multiple protagonists, including Sister the formerly crazy homeless woman, Swan the girl who can make plants grow, Josh the giant black wrestler, and a whole pile of supporting characters that are too numerous to list here. On the bad guy side we have Colonel Macklin, a former military officer holed up in a mountain fortress, Roland Croninger, a psychotic gamer and Friend, who might just be the Devil incarnate. There are occasional nods to mysticism, including a glass ring/crown, a magic mirror, a dowsing stick named Crybaby, and a bit of fortunetelling. Indeed, much of the book's plot involves tarot mysticism, a point I gradually lost track of throughout the book's nearly thousand pages.

It's a tribute to McCammon's writing that World War III is every bit as horrible as we fear. The sight of a bus hurled high into the air, flaming bodies falling out of it like burnt embers, stuck with me long after I finished the book. And the fear and hope of the survivors holed up in the mountain fortress as they watch the missiles pass overhead is palpable. His text often verges on the poetic, and McCammon's is careful to realistically portray the effects of radiation and conflict: shock, blisters, and bruises are a common occurrence. I never realized how rarely you hear about shock in fiction until I read Swan Song.

On the other hand, McCammon occasionally veers off into crazy mutant-land with two headed mountain lions, another doomsday device, and another mountain fortress. And that's where Swan Song breaks down a bit. Midway through the book, the plot advances by seven years. The purpose of the time shift seems primarily to move Swan's age forward so she can have a romantic interest, but it's a bit much to swallow--McCammon works so hard to make the world feel real, and then doesn't do enough to make it feel aged by seven years. Relationships seem frozen in time and characters rarely reference the intervening years.

Swan Song is also relentlessly grim: sodomy, rape, infanticide, patricide, matricide, disease, torture, suicide, drug use...it's all on ugly display here. After awhile, it gets so bad it's difficult to stick with the book. When McCammon skips forward in time, I had difficulty believing the characters survived in such a depressing land. But it does get better, eventually, and that's where the biggest problem lies...

There's no real climax between good and evil. The crown/ring of jewels that Sister spends her whole life protecting is hinted at being even more powerful in Swan's hands. And that's it. Friend, the shapeshifting demonic presence, is clearly constrained by limits of the flesh...until it's inconvenient to the plot.

After a thousand pages, you better believe I expect the book to culminate in a holy war. I'm glad McCammon finally gives his poor characters a break (the few he leaves alive, that is), but I'm less pleased by the failure to really settle things once and for all. It's like reading only the first two books of Lord of the Rings. I wanted closure, dammit!

Still, Swan Song is a triumph of writing and definitely worth reading. McCammon provides a tantalizing glimpse of a world that we all secretly know and fear. And he writes with the deft vision of a movie director, creating moments (a race to the death in a mall filled with psychopaths, a showdown with hungry wolves, the aforementioned nuclear war) that haunt your dreams long after you've finished Swan Song.

Eye in the Sky: A Novel

Eye in the Sky was written by the eponymous Philip K. Dick, he of Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") and The Running Man, among other seemingly made for the big screen novels. Dick's meditations on consciousness are a running theme throughout all of his works, and Eye in the Sky is no different. In this tale, our hero Jack Hamilton and has just been given a choice at his military contractor job, where he works at a facility that contains the particle accelerator known as the Bevatron. Jack's wife, Marsha, is suspected of being a Communist sympathizer, and as a result Jack's job is at risk. Adding to the betrayal, Jack's friend Charles McFeyffe is head of security and leads the prosecution against them.

With Jack questioning his own wife's loyalty and choosing between his marriage and his career, Jack, Marsha, Charles, and a few other folks take a tour of the newly operating Bevatron. Then disaster strikes.

The Bevatron's particle beam tears through the visitor catwalk above, dumping eight people into it, including Jack, Marsha, and Charles, along with Bill Laws, an African-American scientist reduced to giving tours of the Bevatron; Arthur Silvester, a fundamentalist World War II veteran; Joan Reiss, a neurotic secretary; and Edith Pritchert and her son, a prim-and-proper patron of the arts. While their bodies lay crumpled on rubble of the broken Bevatron, their consciousnesses are whisked away to alternate universes created by each of the visitors.

In some ways, Dick was light years ahead of his time. Although the novel is obviously dated by references to McCarthyism, the challenges posed by each world couldn't be more apt for our modern times. The first world, created by Silvester, is a fundamentalist's dream, combining geocentric Christian and Islamic beliefs. Dick skewers both religions with one deft chapter, and the reference to Eye in the Sky has (among other parallels) a literal manifestation in Silvester's God. That's right, he's a big Eye of Sauron, so big that it looks like a gigantic lake.

Silvestri's world is either terrifying or hilarious, depending on your perspective. With the divine so intimately real, prayers manifest (one simply prays for money), God's wrath is always around the corner (transforming straying believers into hunchbacked damned souls), and science is a cult that nobody seriously practices. Dick shows just how capricious and dangerous an old Testament God would be, and the difficulty of navigating a modern world with such an omniscient presence.

And yet, Silvester's world has laws. Subsequent worlds range from the bizarre to the outright terrifying. Pritchet's world is one of absolute tranquility, a super-filter that causes anything offending Edith to disappear from existence. Again, Dick hits the mark: in the world of Tivo, the Internet, and politicized news channels, the ability to filter out dissenting opinions has become all too common. If it were literally true, Dick demonstrates how what might on the surface seem ideal rapidly descends into a very personal hell.

The next world is by far the most terrifying; If Mrs. Pritchet found everything offensive, Reiss is afraid of it all. The water is poisoned, houses literally try to eat you, and lurking inside every one of us is a cold, calculating insect just dying to burst free...

The final world brings us back to the crux of the conflict for Jack and Marsha - a Communist's view of what America must be like. The identity of the creator will ultimately determine if Marsha is guilty of being a Communist.

The book is not without its flaws. Dick comes off very much a political author who doesn't necessarily know the targets he skewers. A fight with angels devolves into a peculiar human-like brawl, with angels being kicked in the groin, skewered in the spleen with a hatpin (seriously), and otherwise being beaten up as if they were common thugs. No fundamentalist worth his bible would ever believe angels could be so easily defeated, much less beaten up.

Bill Laws, the African-American, is cast in a sympathetic light, but he has little to do. Laws never gets his own world and thus he seems more of a caricature, content only to chastise Jack on his own hypocrisy. Marsha comes off as whiny and self-centered, and her supposed interest in political causes makes her seem more like a suburban socialite with too much time on her hands than a believable advocate of human rights. And then there's Jack, who just comes off as an arrogant jerk most of the time.

And yet, Eye in the Sky is so far ahead of its time. Dick has set up a perfect series of foibles to demonstrate his own beliefs, and in doing so shows how we all barter our individual freedoms for religion (Silvester), peace (Pritchet), security (Reiss), and democracy.

Bad Taste

Peter Jackson is best known for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, but a long time ago he made his own cult film: Bad Taste. Watching it is a bit of cinema history, in the same way that watching The Evil Dead series is a prelude to Sam Raimi's later work. This whole movie reminds me of a role-playing game session from my high school days, where game masters and players made things up as they went along.

The first thing you notice is that Bad Taste is well, bad. The film and audio quality is terrible. The accents are a bit difficult to understand for Americans. One of the characters, Derek, appears to be mentally ill. And yet there's a certain rough charm to the whole thing.

The plot, such as it is, involves a crack team of government agents who work for the Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIDS) sent to investigate the disappearance of the citizens of Kaihoro, New Zealand. Your reaction to the in-joke name of the agency will dictate whether you find Bad Taste to be hilarious or stupid. An agency with an acronym like AIDS is something my high school buddies might dream up on a whim.

The AIDS strike force consists of Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Peter O'Herne), Frank (Mike Minett), and the aforementioned Derek. They stumble onto an alien race of merchants who know all about "how to serve man," and not the butler kind of service. The film begins with the capture of one of the aliens, Robert (Peter Jackson), who is held captive by hanging him over the edge of a cliff by his ankle. While Barry explores the ghost town, Derek decides to torture the leader for information by stabbing him in the foot. This ultimately leads to the other aliens coming to the rescue, Robert escaping, and Derek falling off a cliff to his supposed death.

"Wait, Derek died?" asks Derek's player.

"Yeah," says the GM. "You had a good fight there with the alien sledgehammers but you slipped off the cliff."

"But," whines the player, "I was just getting started! You can't kill Derek off like that!"

"Okay, fine. Derek lands on seagull eggs and only some of his brain falls out, but he's still alive. Now he's crazy as a loon."

"Great! I stuff his brains back into his skull and keep going..."

In comes Giles player. "Hey guys. Is it too late to play?"

"Nah," says the GM. "You're a collector whose come to Kaihoro to collect. And the aliens abduct you and toss you in a stew!"

"Oh, great..."

Bad Taste pretty much devolves from there, leading to Derek attacking people with a chainsaw, Ozzy and Frank firing rocket-launchers at the aliens, and the aliens themselves turning out to be shoulder- and butt-padded monstrosities who can barely run much less pose a threat to anybody. It all ends with a house flying into space.

Bad Taste veers from thrilling action to long, boring pans of characters walking from Point A to Point B. There are random gags (most of them involving slipping on some form of excrement), over-the-top violence ranging from organs being stuffed into places to drinking someone else's vomit, and plenty of jokes about aliens and action movies. The action scenes are actually very well done, and there's plenty of people running as machine gun fire peppers their feet.

Bad Taste makes no bones about what it is - a cult film. Jackson's humor is evident here, but he would go on to do much more horrifying and humorous films. While Bad Taste is no Evil Dead, it's still enjoyable as a piece of film history over a couple of beers with your buddies.

Cube 2 - Hypercube

Cube 2: Hypercube is actually a sequel to the highly successful if little known sci-fi exercise in hopeless existentialism, Cube. The premise is that a bunch of complete strangers wake up in a series of interconnected cubes. There are ladders and doors in all six panels of the room. Traps await the unwary, but the real danger is, as Sartre famously quoted in No Exit, "other people."

What made Cube more than two hours of torture was the mathematical puzzle that powered the environment. Because the cube was a three-dimensional environment, it came with certain rules that could be puzzled out. Hypercube adds a fourth dimension, time, and that changes the rules significantly.

The poor saps stuck in the cube this go round include: Rebecca Young (Greer Kent) who went missing into the Cube, Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies) the private investigator hired to find her, Sasha the blind girl with a mysterious past (Grace Lynn Kung), Max Reisler (Matthew Ferguson) the gaming geek, Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone) the architectural designer, Juila Sewell (Lindsey Connell) the hot attorney, the irritating Alzheimer's afflicted Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon), and finally Kate Filmore (Kari Matchett) a psychologist with a dark past and our protagonist.

Like the first movie, Hypercube dumps our mysterious characters right into the grand guignol. Unlike Cube, Hypercube explains how they got there. All of the characters have a past to an organization known as Izon. This nefarious organization doesn't take kindly to failure, and all our characters are flawed in some way. Without hope, our characters revert to their basest natures. For Max and Julia, it's lust. For Simon, it's violence. For Sasha and Kate, it's deception.

Unfortunately, there are long stretches of talking wherein Jerry explains how hypercubes (also known as a tesseract) work. Because it exists in more than three dimensions, just about anything is possible, including parallel realities. Which means there's no reasonable chance for our protagonists to escape, except for the distinct possibility that in another reality, they already DID escape. Once the parallel world concept is introduced, Hypercube really comes into its own. Remember, there's no food in the cube...

The special effects are minimal and the traps are less inventive than the first. Hypercube is more concerned about the possibilities of alternate dimensions than it is about killing people off, relying instead on the inevitable backstabbing. Although there is a tantalizing series of clues as to the true nature of the hypercube, it's a bit of a feint - figuring it out doesn't help the characters escape or give them much of an advantage. This is a refreshing twist for jaded moviegoers and a depressing downer for those who are looking for a satisfying conclusion.

To the director's credit, Hypercube is relentless in its cynicism. If Cube was existentialist, its sequel is nihilistic.

Blacksite: Area 51

This game is bad. Bad, bad, baddity, bad. I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. Here's why:

• It crashes. Constantly. It would crash at random moments, whenever the game tried to load the extremely detailed environments.
• There are a million load sequences that interrupt the flow of the game. And the load screens are repetitive. And the "hints" the game shares with you are useless. Reload frequently? Thanks, Blacksite, I never thought of that!
• It's linear. At one point, the resident tough guy character quotes Star Wars, cause, ya know, the area looks like one of the chasms on the Death Star. When a character points out how linear the game is, you know there's a problem.
• The enemies are boring. There's one actually freaky alien, and it's telling that the thing is showcased in all the art advertising the game. All the other creatures look like they were ripped out of Starship Troopers. There's also the stupid "exploding monsters" which are a tired staple of FPS. Did I mention that one of them is a giant tower that slowly rotates and farts out alien bugs?
• Squad-based tactics? Sure, that amounts to telling people where to go (they never listen) and telling them whom to shoot at (because it's not obvious?).
• Non-destructible environments. Sure, the fuel trucks can be shot. There are crates you can break, but there's nothing in them. The environment is largely static.
• There's also a rail game component. With monsters that shoot projectiles at you. I've never seen this before. All that's missing is the "shoot me in the head" game.
• You can't affect anything the game doesn't want you to shoot at. You can empty an entire clip into your allies heads, shoot their vehicles, and basically act like a moron without affecting the game. And when I get bored, I can really be a big moron.
• You can jump about two inches in the air. There is no purpose to jumping. You can't scale any environment, except to slowly fall down a zip-line like you're on an elevator. In the one area where you can fall to your death, the final boss battle, your dead body stutter-steps down to the ground. This is a fabulous piece of code, let me tell you.
• It's short. I mean, really short. Even for me. I tried to play the game on a much harder difficulty, but the crashing actually drove me so insane that I wanted to at least get my money worth. So I played it on easy to get it over with.

There are some redeeming traits, but none good enough to make the game worth buying. It's got some interesting environments, including a battle in a suburban neighborhood. At one point you receive air support from a chopper flying overhead while you're duking it out on the ground. And the rail gun battles, while rote, are at least scripted to be exciting. There's also the amusing, ripped from the headlines dialogue. None of that saves this stinking fetid pile of excrement.

In the era of Bioshock, Halo 3, and Gears of War, Blacksite is proof that graphics alone are not enough to make a great game. The developers should be ashamed of themselves, but I can't tell you who they are because while I was forced to watch the end credits...the game crashed.

Crackdown

When Halo 3 was announced, I actively resisted buying Crackdown for the sole purpose of getting onto the Halo 3 beta. Mind you, I love Halo 3. I play team slayer every Wednesday night (add Talien to your friends list if you want to join). But I wasn't going to pay more money just to get into the game early. So for a long time, I just avoided Crackdown out of principle. Which is a shame, because Crackdown is awesome.

Basically, you're a genetically-engineered superhero who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, lift trucks over your head, and shoot criminals real good. Did I mention the criminals? They're the reason you exist: in a society overrun by scum, you "AM de LAW!" There are three gangs you must defeat, each helpfully segregating themselves by taking over a different island. There's the Hispanic Los Muertos (death), who swear at you in Spanish and drive muscle cars. There's the Russian Volk (wolves) who drive Soviet-Era transport trucks carrying Stinger missiles. And then there's the Shai-Gen, sort of the uber-corporate villain reminiscent of Gibson-style Japanese megacorporations. You take down each of these bad guys by taking out the lieutenants, which in turn weakens the gang leader by reducing the effectiveness of his bodyguards.

There are a wide range of weapons and vehicles you can use to wage your one-man war on crime. You can impound weapons and vehicles so you can use them later. Your uber-cop advances through the skills he uses; use lots of explosives and your explosives skill goes up, run over bad guys with your car and your driving skill goes up. There are also power-ups floating around the city, blue question marks that give you bonuses to all skills and green exclamation points that increase your speed and jumping ability.

Crackdown's methodology heavily relies on the carrot approach, rewarding you for going to difficult places in the game by providing incentives. Even death isn't permanent; thanks to cloning, you reappear at one of the supply points throughout the game with a loss in some skills.

Crackdown's cell-shaded universe is both comic book-y and beautiful. It's amazing to watch the sun set and rise, or be dangling from a twenty story building when the lights flick on. I was especially fond of killing major villains and hurling their bodies off of skyscrapers, watching them fall doll-like hundreds of feet to the ground. Wait, should I not have shared that? I've said too much.

Ahem. Anyway, what makes Crackdown so different is that it truly delivers on the sandbox-style of play. You can fight gang members or kill citizens, drive vehicles anywhere, pick up anything, destroy everything. You can jump, you can swim, you can climb. Every character is as interactive as your character, and the AI reacts in a reasonable fashion: citizens run screaming, driving their cars erratically to get away from firefights. Gang members shoot you, run you down, and throw grenades at your head. When a firefight breaks out, police come screeching onto the scene, and usually get in the way. When you jump down from a distance, you shatter the pavement. When citizens see you leaping through the air or carrying heavy artillery, they flee for their lives.

There are moments in Crackdown where I was reminded of the target audience. The non-English speaking gangs and citizens shout phrases, adding to the atmosphere of the game. The English speaking drones in Shai-Gen are a lot less amusing and become downright annoying. The swearing is a little silly (with so many citizens randomly saying things, when combat goes down they end up cursing quite a bit) and over the top. But this is a game about killing gang members by throwing trucks at them, so I give Crackdown a pass.

Speaking of the audio, the narrator is the only character of substance, and he guides you through the game. His encouragement and chastisement is pitch-perfect, an older, grizzled white guy's voice telling you how it is and how to do better next time. I wasn't thrilled with the ending - like so many games, it feels rushed and a bit of a cop out - but playing the game was still a rewarding experience.

If you're a fan of Robocop, Judge Dredd, or the Tick, get Crackdown. You'll be shouting "SPOOOONNN!", hurling chimneys, and leaping across rooftops in no time. Unless you're not a fan of the Tick, in which case you'll appreciate laying down the law the old fashioned way: with a rocket launcher.

Bioshock

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?"

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I didn't really want BioShock. The name didn't exactly thrill me, and the concept was a little hazy. Some guy underwater in the 50s being attacked by weird monsters in diving suits? What the heck was that all about? But my brother talked the game up so much that I put it on my wish list. I got it for my birthday and was instantly hooked.

BioShock has a vision, just like its creator/villain, Andrew Ryan (Armin Shimerman). And that vision is Rapture, an underwater city built with 1940s style architecture and Ayn Rand's (note the similarities to Andrew Ryan's name) principles. You are plane crash survivor named Jack and you are trapped in a hell that was once supposed to be Eden.

BioShock's central philosophical question is the plight of children. There are Little Sisters wandering throughout the complex, little girls who have been merged with some kind of mutant parasite that allows them to process ADAM from dead bodies. ADAM is a mutagen that bestows superpowers on whomever uses them, which puts the girls in a precarious position. Fortunately for them, they are protected by Big Daddies, diving suit-wearing behemoths with drills and rivet guns.

Running around Rapture are the shattered remains of civilization, the Splicers. These poor people are deranged; listening to them at length is a sanity-straining experience. Warped by their own mutations, Splicers argue with each other, weep over their fate, and of course try to kill you. Throw in a series of automated weaponry and robots dedicated to snuffing out all who cross Ryan's path and you've got one exciting first-person shooter.

BioShock is retro-sci-fi, all viewed through a 50s lens. There are hilarious instructional videos that explain how the various mutations work, vending machines that cheerfully solicit you, and public service announcements worthy of a Leave it to Beaver episode.

BioShock is well written. The plots take twists and turns and the villains aren't who you'd think. It's well acted too. You meet very few sane people, but interactions are largely through old-style cassette tapes that play in creepy, grainy fashion as you stalk the halls of Rapture. I'll still be haunted by one actor screaming, "I CAN'T TAKE OFF THE F****ING EARS!" over and over.

The graphics are phenomenal. Fire and water are rendered realistically, with bits of water beading on the screen. The Splicers are all creepy, from mask-wearing debutantes to crazy doctors in surgical masks, to Spider Splicers who crawl along the ceiling. And the Big Daddies are disturbing and a little pathetic, groaning and moaning as they pound their way through Rapture.

The game play is fun. A variety of styles can be used to win the game. Bad at combat (like me)? No problem; hack the robots and automated weapon systems using a series of tube puzzles. I'm a sucker for puzzle games, so the hacking really hooked me and kept the game from ever getting boring. I got really good at hacking. More than once I turned the entire security system against the bad guys. Using the right mutations, you can be stealthy, you can just blast your way through, or you can even turn your enemies against each other.

BioShock also gets all the basics of gameplay right. If you get lost, it tells you where to go. It helpfully lists your goals. A map is always available. These should be ingrained in every game created post 2000, and yet it's far too rare.

But back to the Little Sisters. The main question BioShock asks is: would you harm a little girl to get ahead? Maybe it's just the fact that I have a newborn son, but I found the idea revolting. You're given a choice with every Little Sister you rescue, harvesting her or saving her. Harvesting kills the girl and garners more ADAM, while saving her gives you less ADAM but the gratitude of their creator (who gives you a gift for every three girls you save). It struck a chord with me, and soon I was determined to save every one of the little girls.

I thought this was just yet another means of BioShock hooking you into the game. But in actuality your decisions in how you treat the Little Sisters affects BioShock's conclusion. The Little Sisters are integral to the plot and how the game ends. They are the future, the future Ryan claimed he wanted but could never see.

Everyone else I've spoken to gleefully cracked the little girls open and took their stuff. As one gamer put it, "I'm a powergamer and that helped me get ahead faster, so of course I killed them." I still find that notion chilling. In fact, the very first opportunity to harm or save a Little Sister is very traumatic, with the little girl begging for her life. I couldn't bear the thought of killing one, even in a sci-fi video game. Maybe I'm getting soft.

In the end, BioShock isn't just a retro sci-fi shooter. It's a moral test. Of us.

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Halo 3

I came into Halomania with Halo 2 on the original Xbox. During the time we waited for Halo 3, I played Gears of War online with an expanding circle of friends, including the Geezer Gamers (look 'em up). We chafed at the eight-man team maximum and were itching to play in the larger sandbox that was Halo 3.

My wife bought the Halo 3 Limited Edition the day it came out. Did I mention I love my wife?

There's been so many reviews about Halo 3 that there's little new I can contribute here. The campaign is serviceable, but takes itself a little too seriously. Viewing the web site for Halo 3 is unintentionally hilarious, treating the game like a World War II memorial, as if it has that much emotional gravitas. It doesn't; the hinted-at relationship between Master Chief (Steven Downes) and Cortana (Jen Taylor) gets a little silly at times, the stalwart allies die heroically, bad guys become allies and then betray you later, and aliens natter on about setting off the Halo rings and destroying the universe. The talking plant known as the Gravemind (Dee Bradley Baker) doesn't make an appearance, but his voice is ever present. In fact, the game uses the awful method of flashbacks, both from Cortana and Gravemind, to interrupt game play and force the plot down your throat. It gets old fast. The game reaches a rollicking conclusion with a crazy Warthog chase across collapsing platforms that recaptures some of the fun of Halo 2. The ending is predictable but well earned.

But forget the campaign. The real beauty of Halo is the multiplayer game. I play the game every Wednesday night (look for Talien) and we play Team Slayer with sixteen people at once. It's great fun, and the boards provide an endless array of challenges that make Halo 3 the excellent multiplayer experience we've come to expect.

There are some changes. The graphics are better, but not much better. I miss the value of a perfect reload from Gears of War. Speaking of Gears of War, Halo's environments aren't as destructible. And my favorite tactic, two-fisted Needler-ing, has been rendered obsolete. In fact, Needlers don't track nearly as well as they used to.

There are new guns and vehicles, but the biggest change is the ability to remove heavy machineguns from their mounts and walk around the board, mowing people down. I've had more kills using this new tactic than using all the other weapons combined. As for vehicles, there's a new bike and an enormous beast known as the Elephant that I'm fond of driving (I flipped an Elephant once, ask me about it some time). Speaking of war stories, there's also a neat function that allows you to view replays and share it with friends.

The packaging of LE of Halo 3 isn't very practical. Made of metal, the package I received was warped. Since the piece that holds the disc in the box is also made of metal, the disc was banging around inside the case. Even the booklet, which is in the center of the container, was warped. No wonder the discs in some copies were scratched!

Despite the changes from Halo 2, Halo 3's multiplayer can't be beat. It's a testament to the game's staying power that we come back to it every Wednesday.

Earth Defense 2017

It's rare that a game gets panned and, upon reading about it, I realize it's the perfect game for me. Earth Defense Force (EDF) 2017 is a bit of a clunker, with unrealistic physics, repetitive enemies, and a terrible vehicle mechanic. Folks accustomed to the first-person smoothness of Halo or the gritty action of Gears of War would most certainly turn up their nose at EDF.

But I loved every single level of it.

You've probably guessed what the plot is: flying saucers invade and deposit hordes of giant ants, spiders, robots, and Godzillas--sorry, "Dino-mechs"--onto the Earth's surface in an attempt to take over the word, Independence Day-style. You are Storm 1, EDF's premiere ground soldier. You and a bunch of your hapless fellow soldiers are tasked with repelling alien invaders several times your size with nothing but handheld weapons. Remember Starship Troopers? It's like that.

With apologies to Winston Churchill: You fight on the seas and oceans, you fight in the air, you defend your planet, whatever the cost may be. You fight on the beaches, you fight on the landing grounds, you fight in the fields and in the streets, you fight in the hills...and you never, ever surrender. From Aliens-style bug hunts in cramped tunnels to bitter Children of Men-style warfare in ruined cities, EDF drops you into every environment imaginable, puts a gun in your hands, points you at a giant monster and asks you to take it on mano-a-giant monstero.

The enemies are glorious to behold. The giant robots are 1950s style automatons reminiscent of the Iron Giant, clunking their way through city streets with gigantic beam weapons, one eye, and weird rope-like limbs. The giant dinosaurs breathe atomic fire and smash through buildings and troops.

And then there are the bugs. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. The giant ants squirt acid or bite, swarming in an erratic pattern just like their tiny brethren. The giant spiders, a combination of tarantula and wolf spider, jump AND spit webs. As if this weren't bad enough, sometimes EDF throws all of these types of enemies at you at once.

The other major part of the game are the weapons. There are intelligent miniguns that track monsters just like in the extended cut of Aliens, bullets that ricochet off of the walls, flame throwers, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, acid sprayers, time release mines, rocket launchers, guided missiles, and of course shotguns. Each has a reload time, although you rarely run out of ammo, and a range and damage, so there's plenty of variety. The more enemies you kill, the more weapons and armor you pick up. There are also vehicles, including tanks, helicopters, hoverbikes, and mechs, but the controls are clunky.

EDF revels in its size. Everything is destructible, from bikes and cars on the street to skyscrapers. And they can all be taken out with one well-placed (or poorly placed) missile. Bugs run up the buildings and attack from above--but if you shoot one of the buildings down, the bugs just float to the ground without a scratch. In fact, there's really no penalty for falling (including blowing up the building you're standing on). I destroyed quite a few buildings and struggled to run out of the falling shadow, only to watch the rubble fall right through Storm 1.

On the other hand, the UFOs that fly overhead are also a destructible part of the scenery. As a result, there's a massive sense of scale as you fire rockets at the giant spaceships floating above you; it's exhilarating to watch one of the UFOs crash to the ground after several well-placed shots. And since the things are so darned big, they often fall on TOP of you.

The AI is dumb as rocks, of course. While there are occasional bosses, this game is mostly about blowing up the entire scenery. Sure, Storm 1 leads the EDF troops once their captain dies. And the dialogue really is hilarious: it's been structured so that they talk in vague terms about the enemy to increase the applicability of spoken phrases. Here's a typical snippet of dialogue:

"Where's the enemy?"
"The enemy is out of range!"
"Are you scared?"
"Shut up!"

This silliness adds up to the perfect B-movie dialogue. Even better, the troops are almost of no help whatsoever and actually a threat--though buildings fall through them, your troops can be hit by friendly fire. I killed off the entire platoon several times when an idiot EDF soldier ran in front of my rocket launcher.

About the only unforgivable flaw is that the game's difficulty levels are widely variable. I beat some levels with ease on hard while others were impossible. Unfortunately, EDF does not count beating a level on hard difficulty as beating it on normal difficulty. Since EDF awards points on Xbox live only upon completing every level on one difficulty, switching back and forth between normal and hard levels meant I ended up with no credit for beating the game at all.

You have to be a certain kind of person to appreciate EDF. If you've ever enjoyed THEM!, Tarantula, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Godzilla, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Independence Day, War of the Worlds, or if you just happen to like blowing things up but suck at games like Gears of War and Halo...then grab your rocket launcher, soldier, because the EDF needs you!

Transformers

Michael Bay's reputation for non-stop action flicks that involve multiple explosions has given me pause in the past. I mean, too many high concept films have been ruined by this sort of lowest common denominator pandering, and when Transformers came out...

Wait a minute, what am I saying? Non-stop action flick? Check. Multiple explosions? Check! Big budget special effects? CHECK. Peter Cullen, the original voice actor of Optimus Prime in the cartoon series, playing Optimus Prime in the movie? OMG I AM SO THERE!!1!1!

Sorry, sorry, I reverted to my inner twelve-year-old. Screw high concept films, I wanna see giant robots beating the mechanical crap out of each other! I wanna see the military firing bazookas at said giant robots and then running in terror! I wanna see giant robots transform in all their mechanical, impossible glory and I wanna see them duke it out in the middle of a crowded street!

Transformers delivers like you wouldn't believe. What I didn't expect is how patriotic the film is. It's essentially a war movie, filmed with realistic shaky-cam effects from puny human point of view. It's like that first scene in Spielberg's War of the Worlds, when the tripods pop up out of the city street, only that's the whole movie. It's like the promise that Independence Day was going to be a blockbuster, patriotic movie, only Transformers actually delivers on that promise and doesn't make you feel like an idiot for getting a little misty when our troops fight back against all odds.

Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, if you love Transformers, it's all here: the Allspark cube (I think it was called the Energon cube or something in the cartoon), Optimus Prime, Jazz, Bumblebee (not a VW Bug, but there's a reason for that), Megatron, Starscream, and a bunch of other Transformers nobody cares about. Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is here, Scorponok is here...there's so much here that my head threatens to explode from the Transformerery goodness of it all. It's Transformers, written for fans who remember the series, with a deadly serious take on an invasion of giant transforming robots.

But of course, all this must be rationalized for modern audiences. So Megatron takes the place of Roswell, and true to conspiracy theories, a shadowy agency (Sector 7, instead of Majestic 12) led by President Hoover keeps Megatron locked up. And just like in conspiracy theories, all of our futuristic technology is derived from captured Decepticon technology. The Transformers project holograms of pilots and drivers to fool humans, and they've been among us for awhile, watching, waiting, for the right moment to retrieve the doohickey from the government and turn EVERYTHING into a Transformer. It's robotic terrorism at its finest!

Throughout, Transformers finds plenty of humor with the foibles of the humans the Autobots are assigned to protect. Be it the awkward dance between Sam and the lust of his life (Megan Fox), a hacker (Anthony Anderson) and his smoking hot Australian NSA gal pal (Rachael Taylor), or a military team struggling to survive in the desert (led by Josh Duhamel), Transformers is more than just giant robots and special effects. It's giant robots, special effects, and really hot chicks. This movie is rated PG-13 and aimed for those who remember when they were thirteen.

Transformers wants you to really, really like it. Some of the scenes, noticeably the "thing" (that's a lot like John Carpenter's The Thing) that I presume was Shockwave, are a little over the top. But then I remembered that this is a movie about giant transforming flying robots from outer space, and promptly gained some perspective.

From its breathtaking shots of desert combat, reverent scenes of our military in action, to an entire shootout on Air Force One, Transformers is truly a movie made for modern audiences. And it was a perfect film to watch on Fourth of July.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

I put Lost Planet: Extreme Condition on my wish list because it looked like Gears of War crossed with Robotech, featuring giant mecha and tiny soldiers battling huge monsters in a frozen environment. That's more or less what I got.

Our hero, Wayne Holden (modeled after Byung-hun Lee and voiced in English by Josh Keaton), loses his father to a giant Akrid known as Green Eye. When the archvillain of the game is chiefly known by the color his eyes, it's an indicator that perhaps the translation isn't perfect. Or to put it another way, we don't call Godzilla "Flaming Mouth."

Anyway, Wayne wakes up on the same frozen planet, rescued by the tasty purple-haired Luka (Christina Puccelli) and her aggravating little brother Rick (Justin Shenkarow). Rick's one of those characters who always wears goggles, as if they're surgically affixed to his face. He's a staple of anime, the energetic techie that tags along with the hot chick to make her more effective, since said hot chick doesn't seem to do a whole lot besides make poor fashion choices.

Yuri (Andrew Kishino), who looks like a villain, complete with narrow gaze and white hair, leads Luka and Rick. With Wayne joining their merry band, they're ready to go out into the frozen world and steal stuff.

They're Ice Pirates...sorry, I mean Snow Pirates. Well, not really - they're actually the Rebels to NEVEC's Empire, battling on Hoth...

Wait, this isn't the Empire Strikes Back?

Which review is this? Lost Planet? Oh yeah, right.

Sorry, sorry, my attention wandered from the convoluted plot. It involves Wayne losing his memory, a bit of time travel, a weird glowy thing attached to his arm that powers the mecha (sorry, VIRTUAL SUITS...can't the anime community agree on a standardized term for these bloody things?), some rivalry between Luka and some other mannish-sound woman, and another bad guy (we know he's bad because he wears glasses) who wants to take...over...THE WORLD! MUAAHAHAHAHA!

This is a mech game masquerading as a third-person shooter. Wayne plods along, even when there's no snow. He stumbles when he jumps. Fortunately, he has a grappling hook that fires from his wrist and never manages to dislocate his arm. I ended up shooting the grappling hook at a lot of stationary objects and dragging Wayne along like a slower, dumber version of Spider-Man.

The other challenge is that Wayne requires heat to live. Fortunately, the Akrid provide it, which really motivates Wayne to kill them however he can. There are also huge vats of energy lying around that are just waiting to be shot up. What doesn't make nearly as much sense is why Wayne has to power up his heat energy when he's indoors. Or in a volcano. Seriously.

The Akrid are beautiful to behold. They are all weird, squiggly bug-types, each unique and varied and most of all HUGE. Lost Planet revels in the size of the landscape, throwing giant worms and massive moths at you as you struggle with poor mini-Wayne to get to a mech. Once you're in a mech, the game becomes much more fun, because you can move faster than a snail's pace and blow things up much more effectively.

The human opponents, also in mechs and on foot, are annoying and suffer from the I MUST SHOUT SOMETHING BEFORE I DIE syndrome. Every time. When you kill a lot of these guys, the slogans and rallying cries get old. The Akrid bosses, who don't speak, make up for it.

In fact, the game is all about the bosses. Each is innovative, challenging, and terrible to behold. However, Lost Planet is a game of attrition; on the longer levels it carries over the energy you collected in the beginning. Since heat energy and damage are tied together, failing to get enough energy or taking too much damage in an earlier part of the game can make a boss battle impossible. I had to restart two levels from scratch until I got it right.

But Lost Planet is addicting. I played it on hard and all of the boss battles were very close. Two of the boss fights ended with Wayne going through two mecha, a handful of grenades and a missile launcher. Now THAT'S a fun game!

Deja Vu

I heard a lot of bad things about Déjà vu, with words tossed around like "contrived," "unbelievable," and "Jerry Bruckheimer." My parents, with their big screen television, forced me to sit down and watch the movie at 11 p.m., when I was ready to go to bed. But instead, I watched right to the end around 1 a.m. It's that good.

Déjà vu entails a terrorist attack by a really safe-kind of terrorist, the now almost-quaint homegrown American type who doesn't like America because...well, just because. Back when we didn't have enemies lurking around every corner, for a brief time America was its own worst enemy, and it's obvious Déjà vu was created from that era.

Our resident terrorist Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel, who once played a famous carpenter you might have heard of) decides to bomb a New Orleans ferry full of Navy sailors. The incident is no less horrific despite Oerstadt's unspecified reasons for the attack. Enter our hero, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), invited to join the investigation by FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer). Since Carlin can't seem to find his partner and has the expertise to "examine the data," it seems like a good idea.

The plot thickens when Doug discovers the body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), who appears to have been murdered before the bomb went off. That's when the science fiction piece comes into play. The FBI team has a device that allows them to track four days in the past. Of course, Doug figures it out soon enough--they're not just viewing the past, they're actually experiencing the past. And if one can experience the past, then maybe one can travel there...

This little restriction (only four days in the past, no more, no less) is an important plot twist. It lends a sense of urgency to an otherwise difficult concept for a thriller. Déjà vu makes the time travel element easy to accept, because the tantalizing possibilities spiral from there: other plot paths tie together (what happened to Doug's partner?) and there's even an amazing car chase where Doug must race in the present to view where Carroll goes in the past. It has to be seen to be believed.

Summaries of this film make much of Doug falling in love with Claire. But it's a borderline stalker relationship, as Doug knows Claire primarily through his time traveling surveillance. Fortunately, Déjà vu doesn't overdo it; there's not even a major onscreen kiss (more like a peck on the lips). And that's just as it should be...the events are too action packed, the pacing too frenetic. Anything more would border on camp.

Because Déjà vu is always moving, the actors primarily stay out of the way and let the action roll. There are a few clever lines ("We held hands once."), a few bad script rewrites ("I need more cowbell"? Come on guys, stop trying to be so hip) and plenty of gravely serious meditations on the existential nature of the universe. But mostly it's about blowing things up.

Déjà vu is an awesomely entertaining thriller with enough action, enough science fiction, and just enough skin to keep everybody interested. Don't miss it...again.

Primer

TRESCA-PRIME: Primer is a no-frills science fiction film that details a realistic portrayal of time travel. Like Donnie Darko, it examines what happens when humans discover they can influence time...and then just how little control they really have over it. Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) struggle to create a magnetic invention in their garage, only to stumble upon time travel. And once Pandora's Box is opened, there's no going back. In no time (pun intended), they're sending themselves into the past. This leads to a perpetual struggle to avoid paradoxes that most time travel stories don't consider. When duplicate cell phones are in the same time stream, which one rings first? Can you really avoid changing the outcome of reality simply by avoiding your prime self? And who is really the "first" prime anyway? The film explores all these possibilities, which makes it an interesting "what-if" scenario that exponentially spins more and more questions. That said, I have to admit that my first viewing of Primer wasn't all that favorable. The dialogue sounds like it came out of Clerks, the film is often grainy and choppy, and there's almost no action whatsoever throughout the script. Perhaps my future selves will have a different opinion.

TRESCA-2: On second viewing, the term "Primer" takes on new meaning. Primer can mean an introductory textbook, and indeed we discover that Aaron was providing a guideline for future events to his Prime self--in other words, a textbook of sorts as to how to relive his life again without causing a paradox. Primer can also mean white paint, used coat something for the first time. As Aaron discovers he can go back in time, he begins to whitewash events, making himself look like a hero and giving himself the best possible outcomes. But are these changes merely cosmetic, like paint? Finally, there's the notion of Primer as an explosive, setting off a disastrous chain of events. And the end of the film leaves us with the certainty that something very bad is about to happen.

TRESCA-4: Another alternative my former selves hadn't thought of was Primer as being first and primary. Once Aaron discovers the ability to create multiple versions of himself, he becomes increasingly obsessed with controlling them. And of course, each Aaron in the past feels exactly the same way. So how do you become the prime? How do you become the person who is control of your own destiny? How do you become your own God? Aaron and Abe (Abraham) are Biblical names and their inclusion is certainly not an accident.

TRESCA-8: Seeing the movie again really makes you appreciate exactly how much work went into crafting Primer. Dialogue and scenes that seem odd and disjointed make perfect sense when you realize it's the time doubles tweaking the timeline. The more duplicates that get involved, the more the film becomes fuzzy and unfocused, a sometimes annoying but important visual cue. And always there is the suspicion that something is off, from the "rats in the attic" to Abe waking up laying face down on the floor, to the fact that Aaron doesn't want to "talk to those kids who hang out" with Abe. Why? Multiple viewings tie it together.

TRESCA-16: Primer is probably one of the most realistic portrayals of time travel science in recent memory, but that doesn't necessarily make it an engaging film. Primer strains our patience. Most of the time, the characters stand around chatting with each other from innovative camera angles. The climactic moment, a scene where an ex-boyfriend shows up with a shotgun at a party, is never even shown. And the grainy footage, the monotone dialogue, the talking-over-each-other style of acting, all make the film seem more like a reality show than a movie. It doesn't have the slick sensibilities of Donnie Darko or the neatly wrapped storyline of Groundhog Day. And yet, the nihilistic outcome of the film is too powerful to ignore, sticking with you through multiple future viewings.

In short, Primer is both a fantastic piece of thoughtful science fiction and a challenging viewing experience. By all means watch it. You owe it to your future selves.

Aeon Flux

Ever since I saw Peter Chung's creation mow down piles of enemies with her two Uzis, a leather S&M get up, and little else, I fell in love. Aeon Flux was bizarre, action-packed, and short on words (actually, almost none at all when she first debuted on Liquid T.V.). I watched it over and over, I drew Aeon multiple times until I got her right, and the breakneck pace that was established in the film still affects my writing to this day.

So it was with no small trepidation that I approached the Aeon Flux movie. How could they possibly do justice to a bizarre series that was as much a style as it was a cartoon, alternately ugly and sleekly beautiful all at the same time?

Taking place in 2415, Aeon (Charlize Theron sporting a brunette `do) is an agent of the Monicans. The Monicans wage a secret war against Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas), a well-meaning despot who struggles to keep the fragile city of Bregna together. The Earth has long since been devastated by a plague, and there are only five million survivors left in the city. And yet there's something rotten in the city of Bregna, for Trevor's brother Oren (Jonny Lee Miller) is about to stage a coup.

After her sister Una (Amelia Warner) is murdered, Aeon's out for revenge against the supposed despot. Assisting Aeon in her mission of revenge is Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) who happens to have hands for feet. And yet when she finally faces her target, Aeon discovers there's something very familiar about Trevor that gives her pause.

Aeon Flux was directed by a woman (Karyn Kusama) and her sensibilities bring a refreshing touch to a genre that is all too muscular, boxy, and grim. Like The Fifth Element, Aeon Flux is an entry in a science fiction genre that avoids the standard futuristic tropes and injects new and bizarre technology into it. Body modification, as evidenced by Sithandra, is an accepted part of sciety. Technology is organic, ranging from killer grass to dart guns shaped like beehives, computers made of water to holograms formed of harp-like strings. All the Monican agents are linked by a telepathic connection that lets them visualize each other in a sort of World Wide Web of the mind. Fashion styles are reminiscent of French couture. A zeppelin computer that looms overhead has all the appearance of a monstrous jellyfish. Even the city looks like a giant carnation from above.

Aeon herself is played with deadly seriousness by Theron, who draws on her ballerina training to adopt a dancer's pose. Her martial arts is as much an art form as it is combat style, and the graceful leaps and jumps that the cartoon version effortlessly executed are much in evidence here; an amazing achievement, given that the original character's proportions barely conformed to reality.

So what's the problem? Critics lambasted the film, characterizing it as too complicated. It's difficult for me to agree with them, because fans of the show will know precisely what's going on...and yet the movie wasn't spoiled for me either. In fact, the biggest flaw of the film is the motive for Oren to "recycle" people in the city of Bregna. His "my way or else" proposition isn't really justified in the movie's narrative, such that we just have to trust that there's simply no room for compromise between the two ideologies battling it out on screen. But once you're past that hurdle, the film is as much eye-candy as it is an interesting post-apocalyptic entry into alternative sci-fi.

The backlash on this film is suspicious. Perhaps it was Theron's Oscar win. Perhaps it's simply that many critics don't like science fiction. Or perhaps it's that a truly feminist take on a science fiction world makes male reviewers uncomfortable. Whatever the case, sci-fi fans should definitely give Aeon Flux a chance.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another Jim Carey movie I wasn't too sure about. He's had a better track record lately with his more serious films, so I was willing to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did.

Combining all the mental hijinks of Memento and the mind-bending, "is this reality?" confusion of movies like Strange Days and eXistenz, the movie essentially posits one question: if you could erase any one experience from your mind, would you?

But before we get to that question, we see Joel Barish (Jim Carey) meet Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) on a train. It's supposedly happenstance, and the two hit it off immediately. These first five minutes carry the whole movie. The two actors exhibit just enough nuanced familiarity that it's alternately exhilarating and creepy-they FEEL like they've known each other their entire lives. The rest of the movie then swings back to the circumstances leading up to their meeting.

Joel has, in fact, met Clementine before and had a whirlwind romance that somewhere along the lines lost its whirl. They are strikingly different personalities who find attraction in their opposite: Joel is cautious, Clementine's a maniac. Joel is quiet (hard to believe Carey playing quiet, I know), Clementine is a bundle of energy. They alternately drive each other crazy and are crazy about each other. But unfortunately, the nature of the relationship is so tempestuous that the possibility of erasing one's memory is simply too tempting. Like a madman with a pocket nuke, it's inevitable that Clementine's personality will succumb to the lure of memory erasing...but the consequences have grave repercussions.

Hurt and desperate, Clementine's brash decision pushes Joel to do the same thing. If she's going to erase him, well he's going to do the same thing right back at her! It's a procedure that takes an entire night and it's only a few days into the erasing of her memories that Joel realizes he LIKES his pain, his angst, his embarrassment, and even his hatred of her. The ups and downs, the good and bad parts of their relationship, are ultimately inseparable, and Joel realizes he will lose a part of his soul along with Clementine should his memory of her be erased.

So he fights it. Thus have another plot thread, as Joel drags his memory of Clementine with him through the dark hallways of his mind. All the while, Joel is pursued in the real world by the Lacuna Memory Erasure team. Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) leads the team, a kindly father figure who is not nearly as nice as he seems. Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and Patrick (Elijah Wood) assist the good doctor, making an on-site visit to Joel's house. Which is at least as horrifying as it is comedic, because while Joel is in a drugged coma on his bed, Stan and Patrick eat his food, drink his beer, get high, and practically have an orgy in his apartment.

Like Memento, Spotless Mind posits that when people aren't looking, the ethics of society don't just fall apart, they explode...whatever you imagine people might do to you while you're helpless is just the tip of the iceberg. Patrick proves just who unethical he is when we discover he has decided to take advantage of Clementine by recycling all of Joel's memories-memories that were supposedly destroyed to complete the erasure process.

As if that weren't enough, Dr. Mierzwiak's assistant Mary (Kirsten Dunst), is dating Stan. The secret she uncovers about herself and her work will shatter the Lacuna program and the lives of all those who it touched.

The director takes an innovative twist on how he conveys the dream world. Images become faded and indistinct. Sound crackles in and then whispers away. Some scenes appear to be lit exclusively by a flashlight, perfectly representing the selective memory of Joel's mind. Other scenes are lensed in distinct colors of yellow and blue. Still other scenes are nightmarish-people are faceless, bodies slide off into darkness, and as Joel's mind stumbles under the technological assault, structures and people literally collapse in front of him.

Ultimately, it's Charlie Kaufman's writing that perfectly blends what could be a horrible mess. Just when you think all the various plotline could not possibly be resolved...we're back at that train, and the thrill and awkwardness of that first attraction.

Spotless Mind is about the maturation of a romance and the decision every couple must go through when they realize that the "honeymoon is over." Joel and Clementine come to a crossroads and stumble horribly astray, just as so many couples fall apart every day without the benefit of erasing the memories of their exes. Love, Kaufman seems to say, is about the person you are after the honeymoon is over.

Carey is suitably restrained, which makes him seem all the more pathetic when the movie focuses on the happier, more energetic times. His hair is a mop top, is sweaters always rumpled. In short, he's a sad sack that Carey captures perfectly...a funny man who has nothing to laugh about.

Dunst plays a perfectly awkward, clueless young girl dealing with a technology she does not understand. Her characters growth, destruction, and rebirth steals the show. The other characters are suitably dazed and confused, not the least of which is Wood's not-Frodo-anymore Patrick. He's so fresh-faced, it's hard to believe he's doing such disrespectful things to Clementine.

But by far, Winslet plays the most compelling character of her career. Winslet not only adopts an American accent, she plays Clementine as herself (a sometimes whiny, neurotic mess), as Joel remembers her (erotically playful, maddeningly confusing, and sometimes just a shrew), and as echoes of Joe's memories. This is a lot to pull off for anybody, but Winslet never missed a beat.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give this movie is that I KNOW these people. See it, and you will too.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, like Van Helsing, is a pulp film. The important twist is that it's a science fiction pulp film, which has long since fallen out of favor in an era of special effects and complicated scientific explanations. In sci-fi pulp, giant robots look like wind-up toys (actually, wind-up toys were supposed to look like giant robots), ray guns go "PEW! PEW!" and advanced technology doesn't require a lot of explaining. In pulp, there's non-stop action, the heroes are ridiculously well rounded, and a World War looms around the corner.

And oh yeah, dinosaurs. You can't forget the dinosaurs.

Sky Captain begins with the majestic view of a gigantic dirigible docking with the Empire State Building, and we know immediately that this is not the 1930s pre-World War II movie we're accustomed to. It is literally the World of Tomorrow, the kind featured at World's Fairs-utterly unrealistic and colored by the biases of the time. Thus, instead of planes ruling the air, we have massive blimps. Indeed, the zeppelin we see is titled "Hindenburg III." Presumably, the Hindenburg disaster did not take place in this future. This is the retro-futuristic era of the recent Batman cartoon and The Rocketeer, where dirigibles also rule the skies.

Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), an intrepid reporter who always gets her story. She's like the Lois Lane of the 1930s. She receives a desperate message from a hunted scientist. The inimitable Dr. Totenkopf, played by none other than Laurence Olivier, is chasing him. Yes, THAT Laurence Olivier. The fact that the few scenes of the "bad guy" are actually digitally inserted footage of a man who has been dead for 15 years carries a certain resonance, given the inevitable plot twist at the end of the movie.

As Polly struggles to unveil the mystery of just who Totenkopf is, she meets her mysterious contact at Radio City Music Hall. What's playing? The Wizard of Oz, of course (another plot hint). And then just as this movie appears to be a film-noir rather than a pulp action film...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

That's right. Giant frickin' robots. I haven't enjoyed giant robots this much since the Iron Giant. They drop from the skies a fashion similar to the villains from the old Superman cartoons. Or, if you've never seen those, the animated footage used to demonstrate the potential of flying Nazi invaders in The Rocketeer. Their single eye is Gort-like (from the Day the Earth Stood Still), vaporizing the ineffectual police who fire at the five-story robots with their pistols. And yes, the eye rays make the PEW-PEW-PEW sound.

Enter our hero, the Sky Captain, Joe Sullivan (Jude Law). Apparently, zeppelins didn't completely overtake the skies because Sky Captain flies a fighter plane that's a bit like a James Bond vehicle. It can shoot missiles, whip around corners with grappling hooks (a nod to Batman), fly underwater, and drop magnetic bombs. Joe, in traditional pulp fashion, is absurdly well rounded: he is an incredible shot, a fantastic pilot, and is well versed in ancient astronomy.

But what do the robots want? They want our generators, our fuel supplies, and two samples of every living being on the planet. Why? Well, for the World of Tomorrow of course.

The plot gradually unfolds as the rocky relationship between Polly and Joe is revealed. Joe accuses her of sabotaging his plane, Polly accuses him of fooling around. They have a love/hate relationship that ranges from comedic to sincere. The two agree to team up after a mysterious female assassin (who shoots rays out of her hands and can leap file cabinets in a single bound) kills the remaining scientist.

Back at his not-so-secret base, Joe plots how to track the robot attackers to their home base with his resident Q-character, Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi). Dex manages to invent a gun that makes PEW-PEW-PEW sounds; it has a fin on top and everything, as if it were right out of a Flash Gordon movie. Then, while Polly and Joe discuss their next plans...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

Dex is captured, but not before leaving behind a clue as to the whereabouts of the robots home base. Joe and Polly fly off on a whirlwind adventure that will take them to Shangri-La, underwater, and to an island filled with dinosaurs. Giant frickin' dinosaurs!

The entire film is shot through a fuzzy, washed out lens that gives it the feel of an old movie or a pulp comic book. Architecture is art deco. The robots are strange, one-eyed impractical things with joints in all the wrong places, just like the covers of a thousand science fiction novels. And all of it is done through the miracle of CGI.

There's not too much for the characters to say, because this is a pulp film after all. Polly's there primarily to look pretty and occasionally punch a bad guy (or good guy) in the face. Joe swaggers and shoots things. And Dex is the anointed spouter of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo.

Despite the special effects, Sky Captain retains its sense of humor. And whenever things get boring...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

This is a true rollicking retro sci-fi pulp film, in the tradition of The Rocketeer, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Van Helsing, and The Iron Giant. Fans of older science fiction films will thoroughly enjoy themselves. Everyone else will probably just get a headache.

Brazil

In Corporate America, screenshots of Brazil are great ways to make jokes about work. So I got the impression that Brazil was some sort of Corporate nightmare. Having seen the movie, I realize now that my original perceptions were only the tip of the iceberg.

The plot begins with a TV show of a kindly white-haired gentlemen talking about ducts and the loss of freedom of its citizens, government intervention, the quest for terrorists (the term "terrorist" is used often throughout the film) and the cost of all this information paranoia in the quest for a few individuals. The intro alone makes the film very relevant to America audiences and establishes that European countries have had to deal with the threat of terrorism long before tragedy struck the U.S.

The plot follows Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a programmer who actually knows how to program in a bureaucracy at the Ministry of Information (MOI), a monolithic governmental entity that has long since outlived its usefulness. Here, hundreds of clerks dodge in and out like cockroaches amongst papers and filing cabinets without actually doing any work; they immediately stop what they're doing whenever the boss goes back into his office. Here, teeming flocks of men in suits follow decision-makers in concrete hallways. Here, a wall divides a room to make for two offices, only the desk straddles the middle. And computers? Nobody really knows how to use them.

Sam eventually becomes entangled with the meta-plot: the search for a terrorist named Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro). The problem, however, is that the teletype machine entering Tuttle's name on the wanted list gets a bug-literally, a bug falls into the machine-and causes it to mistype "t" as "b". Thus, Harry Buttle (Brian Miller) is apprehended instead. Why is the MOI looking for Tuttle? Well, because he fixes ductwork without filling out any papers.

In the Brazil universe, ductwork is everywhere. Like the innards of some gigantic beast, they sprawl here and there, in every part of every person's home. They are plugged up in walls, tucked away in floors, and hang intestine-like from ceilings. They regulate everything from temperature to mail and getting them fixed is nigh impossible, given the amount of paperwork involved. However, the grappling-hook firing Tuttle achieves just that when Sam's cramped apartment needs emergency ductwork.

Throughout this drab existence is Sam's dream-life, as he flies with mechanical wings (Icarus?) towards a floating nymph-like woman wrapped in gauze. Unfortunately for Lowry, she has a nymph-like counterpart named Jill Layton (Kim Greist), who also happens to be the upstairs neighbor of the equally unfortunate Mr. Buttle.

Because terrorists are charged for their own interrogation by the Department of Information Retrieval (the DOIR, who specialize in torture), Buttle's death means Mrs. Buttle (Sheila Reid) is owed a refund. The catastrophic consequences of such an error convulse the entire MOI, but Sam sensibly decides to just deliver the refund check in person. Sam meets Jill when attempting to fix the typographical error.

It all goes downhill from there. Sam becomes fixated on Jill, such that he is willing to be promoted by his rich mother (Katherine Helmond, my fellow alumni from Dowling College) to the DOIR. Sam's behavior becomes increasingly erratic until it gets him in real trouble. The movie ends with a suitably frightening twist.

There is a lot to absorb from Brazil. A science fiction classic, it has the familiar hallmarks of a sprawling corporation gone mad (Robocop), the pervasive government in a quest to destroy threats to authority (1984, Equilibrium), and the horrors of urban sprawl (Judge Dredd). This jaded cynicism about society is rife throughout the movie, from the wicked children who set cars on fire to the awful "yes/no" gift that everyone gets everyone else for Christmas. Indeed, the whole movie takes place in one long Christmas; the holiday never seems to end, but at the same time only manages to make life in Brazil that much more pathetic. Even at a time when we expect the world to be a better place, Brazil merely covers it with tinsel.

The director (Terry Gilliam) has an amusing sense of humor, no doubt inherited from his Monty Python days. At first, the movie seems to be a light-hearted jab at our own foibles, as we watch Sam stumble his way through life. But to his credit, Gilliam never shies away from his message. When terrorists attack a high-class restaurant, the waiters merely move a screen in front of the carnage so as to not offend the wealthier guests. And yet people moan in pain, blood spatters the floor, and hands reach out for help.

When Sam is faced with the awful circumstances of Mr. Buttle's death, he backpedals with a barrage of excuses of how it's not his fault. Once he sees Jill, he forgets that he just delivered a reimbursement check to a grieving family over a clerical error and the audience forgets too. As he dashes into the street, he loses sight of Jill, only to be given her name by a little girl. He asks her what she's doing in the street.

"Waiting for my daddy to come home," she whispers.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be along soon," says Sam, only to pause in shock as he realizes he was speaking to Buttle's daughter.

Brazil is like that. I found myself in mid-laugh at one moment, only to cover my mouth in shame at the next awful event. Sam's old friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin), a veteran of the DOIR, conducts torture in another room mere feet away from where his daughter plays with her dolls. A big-haired receptionist comically records all of the tortured confessions. Is it funny? Macabre? Vile?

Brazil serves best as a dire parable about the dangers of giving up too much freedom in the hunt for terrorism, a lesson our British friends have learned well. For that reason alone, any American interested in politics or science fiction should see this film.

I, Robot

I haven't read the short stories by Isaac Assimov upon which I, Robot (the movie) is based, although I'm peripherally familiar with them in their relation to modern science fiction robots and androids. I am familiar with The Fresh Prince - errr, Will Smith. And I'm a big fan of Alex Proyas' previous films, including The Crow and Dark City. A thinking man's movie teamed with a lovable action hero. You can't go wrong...can you?

I, Robot takes place in the near future, a future that looks lot like Minority Report and A.I. Everything is automated to such a degree that travel has become more dangerous than before. For example, cars travel so fast, it's unsafe for a human (instead of an artificial intelligence) to drive one. Permeated throughout this society is one brand of robot-a mobilized servant workforce. They only mimic people in their humanoid shape; expressionless round eyeholes, a slit for a mouth, and a smooth body.

Enter Will Smith's character, Detective Spooner. Calling him Spooner is pointless, because Smith's personality is indelibly printed on the movie. He is urban, hip, and in incredibly good shape. He also has a dark secret that makes him prejudiced against robots. No one brings up the irony of a black American being prejudiced against a robot - Proyas probably considered it too crass.

The next generation of robots, the NS5, is about to be launched. It's a smoother, friendlier robot with facial features that look a lot like people. The effect is startling, as they are clearly made of plastic - it's like watching an iMac come to life. Enter Sonny, a robot present at the supposed suicide of his creator, Dr. Alfred Lanning. Spooner is called by Lanning's communicator, which leads him on a trail of breadcrumbs to find the truth behind Dr. Lanning's death and the new robots.

I, Robot talks a lot about the three laws and their application. It also has a lot in common with films that have paid their own particular tribute to Asimov's work, including the Matrix (the robot revolution started with a murder). VIKI, the artificial intelligence that runs much of the city's systems, harkens back to one of my favorite movies: Colossus: The Forbin Project. There's not much new in I, Robot.

But it doesn't matter. Spooner is a sane man in a world gone mad, a world that has willingly given itself over to automation. The timing of the movie is perfect; cries of outsourcing have given way to the uncomfortable realization that "optimization" (read: computers and robots) are the reason our manual workforce is suffering.

I, Robot resembles science fiction movies from the 1950s filled with marching robots and legions slavishly devoted to communal good with one important difference: fear of communism has been replaced by the fear of outsourcing. Indeed, the prejudice against the more mathematically precise robots echoes the prejudices against outsourced countries with better educations that are willing to work for much less. The NS4 robots are unfailingly polite and cheerfully perform the worst drudgery. What happens when we no longer know how to do the drudgery ourselves? Or to put it another way...what happens when a first world country becomes so dependent on the predatory labor force of others that it can no longer take care of itself?

Revolution, that's what. Now, we're no longer afraid of Big Brother...we ARE Big Brother, afraid of losing control of everyone else. I, Robot hits a perfect note in that regard.

And yet, nothing else is sacred. There is a love-fest over Smith's shoes, which actually get more screen time than some characters. Spooner drives a gas-powered motorcycle, a quaint anachronism...except that it feels like some suit shouted "let's put Smith on a motorcycle!" There are far, FAR too many unnecessary slow-motion action shots, including the aforementioned motorcycle.

The movie has all the right product placement and plot points: the cute furry animal survives, the good guys always get what they deserve, the bad guys gets their just desserts, and the wisecracking hero is rewarded for his outrageous antics. There are also gaping plot holes, like a service entrance that has no surveillance. In that regard, I, Robot tries too hard to please. Its action-hero concessions detract from its message.

Still, the special effects are fantastic. Sonny has more pathos than Smith on screen and is a wonder to watch as he displays child-like awe, anger, rage, sadness, and compassion. Conversely, we have the robotic pretty/ugly scientist (you know, the kind who wear glasses and their hair in a bun and are unappealing, but let down their hair and become gorgeous), Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), assisting the investigation. She reminds me of Sandra Bullock, minus the charm.

Smith floats through the movie with ease. He's sullen, wisecracking, and refreshingly free of any adult responsibility. He's a big man-child who comes off more as a spoiled brat than a streetwise cop, clinging to his anachronistic ways as if he invented them. Smith didn't have to strain to act this movie out - it's like Bad Boys was dropped into Minority Report.

The robots themselves, when roused to combat, move like gangly monkeys imbued with catlike grace. Combat scenes between robots would be too fast to even see if it wasn't for those darned slo-mo scenes, the only time they really are appropriate.

Ultimately, I, Robot strives to be both a thinking man's science fiction, an action vehicle for Will Smith, and a social commentary about the state of the world. It ends up being somewhere in between all three, but it's a tribute to the director's skill that I, Robot is still engaging despite its schizophrenic tendencies.

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is one of those movies you've always heard about but never saw. Here's why: Donnie Darko is about a young man in high school who sleepwalks at night, just in time to avoid a jet engine smashing through his bedroom.

Right around September 11, 2001.

So Donnie Darko, like the titular character of the same name, disappeared with nary a trace. Fortunately, we now have a DVD version and there will be a new theatrical re-release of a director's cut of the film in July, 2004. Perhaps Donnie will still get his day.

Donnie Darko is about the Darko family. They're an average family, with an older sister heading for college (Elizabeth, played by Jake's real life sister Maggie), a cute-as-a-button younger sister (Samantha, played by Daveigh Chase), a white-collar mom and dad (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne), and then there's Donnie. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Donnie as an alternately awkward, exhausted, strung out teenager who exhibits brief flashes of rage at the inanity of modern life. Donnie also suffers from a troubled past, a past that requires him to see a therapist and take medication.

Donnie's life is a textbook troubled soul on the road to nowhere. We could easily see him committing suicide, getting involved in drugs, getting some girl pregnant, maybe joining a gang, or even shooting up his school. All's the pity, because Donnie is also extremely bright and has a piercing wit that embarrasses adults.

All that changes when Frank shows up. Who's Frank, you ask? Why, Frank's a deranged bunny rabbit.

That's a simplification, of course. To be precise, Frank is a deranged being in a bunny rabbit suit. The distinction matters.

In fact, in Donnie Darko, EVERYTHING matters. Every word, every nuance, like an Edgar Allen Poe poem, has significance and meaning. Ironically, the director and writer, Richard Kelly, feels the movie has only one interpretation as a science fiction story. In spite of himself, Kelly has created a movie that alternately weeps at the desperate loneliness of so many humans living next to each other and exults in the sheer joy of existence.

Frank whispers suggestions to Donnie, things that, at least on the surface, seem like very bad things to do. Donnie, in his sleepwalking, always performs these acts of vandalism. And each time, Frank tells Donnie how much he has left before the world ends. He starts the film with 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Screen shots remind us that the end of the world is coming in a manner similar to The Ring (which came out in 2002, one year after Donnie Darko).

Reality lurks in the background. No one can explain where the jet engine came from. Government agents shadow Donnie's every step. In the mean time, town life goes on: Samantha's dance group gets discovered by an agent, a self-help guru (played by Patrick Swayze) spreads his mind-numbing spiritual pap, a book gets banned by the conservative elements for fear that it influences students to commit vandalism, bullies make fun of kids, teenagers do drugs and fool around...in other words, it's a microcosm of Everytown, USA.

All around him, Donnie's life slowly falls apart even as it starts to make sense. Each person in his life is challenged by their mediocrity and must face whether to rise above or succumb to their fears. The movie emphasizes the madness of putting "Fear" and "Love as diametrically opposed elements, emphasizing that the world is never that simple and often involves a mixture of the two. It also struggles with the issue of God's existence, of personal choice vs. destiny, of life and death, of madness vs. sanity, and more.

Drew Barrymore stars as an English teacher who attempts to open the student's minds. She's also executive producer. Unfortunately, her character comes off as stilted and unbelievable. Noah Wyle makes an appearance that's appropriately low key.

Kelly's camerawork is exceptionally mature for a new director. He doesn't shy away from wide-angle scenes and takes on some breathtaking shots; the most memorable being one sweeping panoramic scene that manages to encompass all that is high school in the span of a few seconds.

At least as integral to the film is the 80s music that permeates it. This movie is a love letter to the misbegotten youth of year 2000 twenty-somethings. The music is always appropriate and conveys the slow tumble of Donnie's life very effectively. The song "Mad World" sums up the essence of the film and its fundamental disagreement with what passes for our own mundane reality.

Donnie Darko has a lot in common with movies like Groundhog Day and Fight Club. The themes of personal choice, of growing beyond one's own selfish nature, of facing down one's demons in a universe that doesn't exist make for though-provoking cinema in the tradition of the silver screen. We don't get many films like this anymore.

As the movie comes to a close, Donnie must make a choice. It's not the choice that really matters, but that he was comfortable with his decision in the end. Viewers who stick with the movie and pay close attention will not be disappointed.

Besides, Frank told you to see it.

The Chronicles of Riddick

The Chronicles of Riddick is the continuing story of Riddick (Vin Diesel), the bald-headed, night seeing convict who escaped from prison and was ultimately so tough that he could beat up aliens with just a knife. Given that the first movie was called Pitch Black, Riddick's peculiar eyes lent him a particular advantage - both against his captors and the aliens that inhabited the planet.

On the surface, one could summarize Pitch Black as an Aliens knockoff. But it was so much more than that. Just as Aliens was more than about soldiers blowing up aliens, Pitch Black was about how people hide behind who they really are and that people don't change - they just reveal their true natures. The movie was also noteworthy for being a science fiction film that portrayed Muslim beliefs in a positive light and as the dominant religion.

Keeping those elements in mind, the Chronicles of Riddick (TCOR) is the logical extension of the first movie, even though it doesn't involve many aliens or all that much darkness. No, TCOR stays true to its characters and appeals to what made the first movie so much fun - Riddick's bad, sure...but the bad guys are even WORSE.

Those bad guys are the Necromongers, a race bent on the total conversion of the universe to the "Underverse" - sort of an anti-Mecca. The Necromongers aren't just bad guys; they're an entire style. Statues abound of torture and self-mutilation. The Necromonger ships have faces built into their hulls of the uncaring tyrant known only as Lord Marshal. Everything, from the staves the captains wield to the weapons of mass destruction the Necromongers use to obliterate planets - it all fits. The Necromonger ships even hum along on roiling clouds of black energy.

The troops match the architecture. Their helmets model the pain and suffering they believe in. Undead watchdogs, their faces encased in strange helmets, "lens" out the living, seeing through darkness and right through walls. Those who are caught are converted to "half-dead," uncaring soldiers in service to Lord Marshal. The most powerful Necromongers can steal a person's soul right out of their bodies.

In short, the Necromongers are really cool bad guys.

If the Necromongers seem familiar to some, it's because they're modeled after the concept of a negative energy universe that so many Dungeons & Dragons players are familiar with. Vin Diesel is a self-professed gamer and his roots show - heck, Judi Dench plays an "air elemental." Nobody uses an air elemental in a sci-fi context these days unless they're a gamer.

Unfortunately, this assumption may lose those who aren't sci-fi fans, gamers, or fantasy fans. Indeed, many of the criticisms of the movie is that it's too confusing. My parents (who admittedly, raised me to be the gaming freak that I am) understood the plot just fine, and they are not gamers.

If the plot were merely about the Necromonger's quest to take over the universe, it would make for a rather feeble rip off of the Borg from Star Trek. Instead, Riddick is prophesized to kill the Lord Marshal, and as a result his second in command (played by Karl Urban, of Eomer fame from Lord of the Rings) along with his scheming wife plot to bring about the conflict.

Why? Because the Necromonger way of life (er, death?) is "You Keep What You Kill." In other words, whoever kills the Lord Marshal gets to take over the entire legion of Necromongers.

Of course, Riddick wants nothing to do with his fate as one of the last members of a race known as the "Furions." The Furions have been all but wiped out by the Necromongers. But Lord Marshal is to be killed by his own knife by Riddick...so bounty hunters are once again on his trail.

Being on the lam is not a good way to raise a kid. Riddick has long since left the Imam on New Mecca and Jack (the kid from Pitch Black) to her own devices. When the Necromongers finally back Riddick into a corner, he discovers there's no escaping the bad guys...or his past.

TCOR is filled with a lot of important relationships, commentary about the nature of evil, snide swipes at religious institutions, free thought, and morality. It also has plenty of action. Instead of running across a pitch-black planet, Riddick must traverse a burning planet aptly named Crematoria.

With the majesty of the Necromongers and the amount of planet hopping that takes place, digital effects are rife throughout the movie. These are expected - indeed, the movie would be unwatchable without the effects, some of which are integral to the plot. The most subtle effect is Riddick's eyes, that shine like silver plates in the darkness.

Critics of the film have pointed out that Lord Marshal does not appear to be a physical match for Riddick. That's kind of like saying "The Emperor doesn't seem like he can take Luke Skywalker in a duel." The physical presence of Lord Marshal is not the point. He is the only one to have touched the Underverse and upon doing so acquired incredible power. He SHOULD look like a "normal guy."

The Chronicles of Riddick is a good old-fashioned science fiction ride across the universe in the tradition of Conan (especially the ending). The movie will only seem confusing to people who are not familiar with gaming and fantasy tropes...and thus critics and boring people SHOULD NOT SEE IT.

But for the rest of us...watch it, then watch Pitch Black again. They make an excellent pair.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Is it possible to have a game and a movie set in the same universe, and love the game more?

In this case, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic harkens back to an era even earlier than the Star Wars movies. Thousands of years earlier to be exact.

The Mandalorians (the originators of the armor that Boba and Jango Fett wear) were still in power then. Just as the Jedi were fending the Mandlorians off, a major upset in the balance of power took place when Darth Malak and Darth Revan turned on their allies and returned from the Mandalorian War with a Sith fleet. Only one Jedi's "battle meditation" saved the fleet and now the Jedi are in shambles, the Sith run rampant, and Mandalorian bandits abound. Your mission is to find the disparate "Star Maps" that will ultimately lead to a world crushing machine of Armageddon proportions: the Star Forge. You must beat Darth Malak before he uses the Star Forge to destroy the Republic.

In this mix of high adventure are a host of characters (nine in total) range from Mandalorians to Wookies to druids, assassin and otherwise. Each character is carefully crafted and voiced by professional actors who do an excellent job with the material. And by professional, I mean movie talent: Ethan Phillips (Neelix of Star Trek: Voyager) and Ed Asner (uh...ask your parents). Given the number of possible responses in the dialogue, it's a truly massive task.

The game system should seem familiar to many - it uses the d20 pen-and-paper role-playing game system of the Star Wars RPG, with tweaks to make it easier to use for a computer game. The abilities blend seamlessly with the game play itself. I never felt at any time that I was playing a pen-and-paper game on a computer. Additionally, the game system uses Bioware's ever-evolving game engine used in Neverwinter Nights, which makes everything easy to use.

With multiple worlds that you can fly to at any moment, multiple characters (up to three active at one time), and a dizzying number of side quests, you simply can't get to them all. It doesn't matter though, because the metaplot rumbles along in the background every time you find another Star Map on another world.

The graphics and sound are exceptional. Sun glare flares on the game's camera and darkens your character's shadow. The controller trembles when large beasts are afoot (or worse, in combat!). The sounds are all taken from the movies, so lightsabers sound like lightsabers, aliens speak in their native tongues, and starships roar just like their cinematic counterparts. This is about as close to playing a movie as it gets.

The character development is worthy of mention. Your own character can be customized by body type, gender, and appearance. Your gender modifies the plot (males can fall in love with Bastila, the pretty Jedi mentor). All this uniqueness and yet the game never falters in dealing with it - your character's head never looks out of place in any of the cut scenes. Speaking of the cut scenes, they are all done with the same in-game animations, marinating the feel of the overall game play without stepping out of the action. And of course, your own character's background has a twist.

The NPCs have their own range of personalities. Unlike the current crop of Star Wars movies, there is a careful balance between the elegantly serious Jedi and their adventuring counterparts. Bastila provides a dose of class in the group as the somewhat taciturn Jedi master, but Carth is her balance, a gravelly-voiced war veteran who believes in the power...of a good blaster, that is. My personal favorites include Canderous Ordo, a grizzled Mandalorian of too many wars who loves a good fight. And of course, everyone loves HK-47. Like AK-47, only with an "H." That's right, HK-47 is an assassin druid with a mind of his own. HK-47 is fond of calling people "meatbag," except for his master...when he remembers his place.

There are plenty of old favorites too: Sand People, Banthas, Krayt Dragons, protocol druids, it's all here. If the characters don't remind you of Star Wars, the soundtrack will. It's true to the original score and in some cases, IS the original score. It's impossible for even the mildest Star Wars fan to resist.

All that, and there's a good old-fashioned subplot involving romance and betrayal, Light Side and Dark Side. This is the story Lucas dreamed but never truly brought to life.

The game is amazing in its flexibility. There are Light- and Dark Side choices in every conversation. You can solve puzzles or blast your way through plots, help NPCs or set them against each other. There are even logic puzzles that require the player to think, something I haven't been accustomed to doing in a long time.

There are flaws, but they're minor. In one case, I ended up killing a major NPC twice. There are puzzles that result in instant death failure, a no-no in game development. And combat is turn based: the player doesn't really determine very swing of the lightsaber, but rather the battle freezes and resumes as the player provides real-time strategy. Also, the game uses the same engine as Neverwinter Nights, which means it involves a lot of walking around talking to people. A LOT.

Still, this is one of the best computer role-playing games I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I was thrilled when my character's romance with Bastila flourished, devastated when I saw a father-son argument between Carth and his son Dustil, and I laughed at loud at some of the spontaneous character interactions.

Can a game be as good as a movie with the same setting? Nope.

It's BETTER. I got far more bang for my buck playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic than I got after two hours of special effects in the movies. In this game, the special effects at least had a heart.

The One

Van Damme tried to do it in Timecop. Schwarzenegger tried it in The Last Action Hero. It seems every action hero has to eventually face himself. Literally, by playing his twin. Jet Li decided to get a head start by doing this movie relatively early in his career.

I really didn't expect much of this movie. The plot is complex: 125 parallel dimensions exist. A member of the Multiverse Bureau of Investigation accidentally kills one of his alter egos in a parallel universe and discovers that he becomes stronger, faster, and more powerful. Realizing that, if he kills all of his multiple selves, this process can make him a god, he goes off on a killing spree in the most egregious example of self-loathing this side of sci-fidom.

WAY too many critics put this movie down for its special effects. Specifically, that the effects mimic the Matrix. So what? Seeing Jet grab two motorcycles, one in each hand, and smash a man to death with them is a thrill. He kicks cops out of thin air, dodges bullets, and jumps across buildings. That's the best part of the movie.

The problem is, Jet Li just can't act. Or I should say, he can't act well. The plot demands a lot of him -- this is a rare instance of a script being better than the actor can handle. Jet Li is supposed to weep over his wife's loss, act in multiple roles as his multiple selves, display rage, hope, madness...more than most people display in a year. Jet can't do it. His English is quite good, but he simply doesn't have the range.

And in a movie all ABOUT range, Jet can't pull it off. But that's okay, what he does is some amazing martial arts, demonstrates really cool special effects, and provides a funky plot line that inspired me enough to want to run a mini-campaign in this setting (maybe I will, hmmm). That's the highest compliment I can give any movie.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

I pride myself on my ability to sniff a bad movie out before it hits the screens. After seeing so many movies, reading so many magazines (like Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Cinescape) and listening to so many interviews, you start to realize before a picture even hits the theaters when something is wrong.

I'm also a big fan -- I helped create the Terminator: Future Fate D20 Modern campaign setting. What, you haven't gotten a copy? It's free! Go! Go right now and get it (under Freebies)!

With Terminator 3, my Spidey sense was tingling.

The majority of interviews all centered on "how great it is to work with Mr. Schwarzenegger." Uh huh. That's nice. Whenever a director talks about how great the movie is, I get suspicious.

Then there's the, "we've made a new Terminator and she's a BAAAAAAAABE!" This idea already hit the comics and novels. But really, why? Why make her a beautiful woman? Is this going to be The Hidden all over again? The Hidden was great -- but it gave a reason for why the bad guy took on a luscious female form. And don't even get me started on calling her a Terminatrix.

And why bring Arnie again? My idea, which was used in the Terminator series of novels out now, was to have Arnie play himself as a human character in present time who is the model for Terminators. Glad S.M. Sterling agrees it's a good idea.

So, with all those thoughts going through our heads, Maleficent and I took in a matinee. Whenever we suspect a movie might suck, we go to a matinee so we don't feel like we were suckered. And...

We were pleasantly surprised. Terminator 3 is really quite good. It is not as good, in my opinion, as Terminator 2. Maleficent liked Terminator 3 better (she hated the squeaky punk in Terminator 2).

This movie follows a T-X (get it, Terminator-X or Terminatrix, although that's a term used only by Connor) who has gone backwards in time to kill all the lieutenants of John Connor since Skynet can't find him.

Right away, we know something is different. The T-X has a blue lighting scheme. Her interface looks more like a Windows environment than the old red-code Terminators. She moves with the same eerie patience that the T-1000 did. For the most part, she's expresionless. When she reacts at all, it's disturbing. A scary, beautiful woman. Go figure.

The reason for the change is because the future has changed. Skynet's birth came and went. If you saw the last two movies, the world was supposed to have gone to nuclear war already. But thanks to Sarah, Judgment Day didn't happen. Not yet, anyway.

Arnold is unbelievably bulked up. I thought maybe they digitally inserted his head on a younger man's body. Nope -- it's him. Naked. 50 years old and the man is bulked. I fear anyone dating his daughters (does he even have daughters?).

The movie doesn't take itself too seriously. It focuses on the chase scenes, the running combat between the two Terminators, and the slow recognition of the whole scary plot by Kate Brewster, John's future wife.

The movie makes several propositions, which I found interesting. For one, it implies that history is self-correcting. Although John didn't meet Kate right away, he met her again a decade later anyway. Although Skynet wasn't built as a mechanical fortress, it was created as a virus over the Internet instead. In short, the future is NOT what you make of it. It all HAS to happen. It's just a matter of WHEN.

The director, Jonathan Mostow, recognizes his core audience. We've all seen Terminator 2. We know how Arnie got his clothes last time. This time, he walks naked into a bar with another fat guy with another shotgun guarding the entrance...and he says without blinking an eye, "You're early, go around back." Now the audience is confused. Why isn't he surprised Arnie's naked? We get the answer in a strip club for ladies who are hooting and shouting at the stripper on stage -- who just happens to match Arnie's dimensions. You've got to appreciate a movie that's willing to laugh at itself.

Although it has an "R" rating, this movie isn't that gory. The moments of possible nudity are actually covered up (no, you don't get to see frontal nudity on the Terminatrix). Almost like they were trying hard to make it acceptable for parents to bring their kids to see it. Hmmm.

The ending is very well done. I say this a lot -- this is one of those movies that had the strength of its convictions. There's a logical, unpopular conclusion to the events going on in Terminator 3. The movie embraces them.

If you're looking for a good popcorn movie and want to see robots beat each other up, this is a film worth seeing. If you're a Terminator fan and want to see more adventures set in the wild and wacky timeline that is constitutes the Terminator universe -- this is a MUST SEE.

The Thing: A Novel

The Thing has gone through some interesting evolution from its original story, "Who Goes There?" In Who Goes There?, 30+ men working at a Cosmic Ray facility in the Antarctic discover, well, a thing. And that thing is part disease, part animal, part predator. It's a mimic that can replicate any form. And it has a desire to propagate. If it escapes from the facilities in the frozen wasteland, it will spread to humanity and ultimately take over every living thing in the world, all of them part of the original creature.

I had the privilege of reading the short story, the novelization, and watching the movie all within the span of a few days, so the differences and similarities were fresh in my mind. There are quite a few significant changes between the book and the movie, and the short story and the book.

Did I mention the men have cattle down in some weird storage facility? Cattle? I get the impression the original author never visited an Antarctic facility -- but hey, that's why it's called science fiction.

The short story is much more about the paranoia of men cooped up in close quarters, than about the alien itself. Everyone's too damn jovial -- they smirk and grin about everything even in the face of danger. It's all very pulpy too -- McReady is a "bronze god." He's strong, he's smart, and gosh darn it, everybody likes him!

In the short story, combat is so brief that in one case, it took several readings to recognize the men had attacked another transformed Thing. They "do their work" -- that sums up over a dozen men hacking a Thing to bits.

On the other hand, a lot of questions that I've seen on web sites dedicated to The Thing are explained. Do you know if you're a Thing? Yes, according to the short story. In fact, The Thing is telepathic -- that's how it can gain instant knowledge of everything about a person and imitate them so well. It also explains how the Thing is always one step ahead of the men in the movie.

I like to think of the short story as a summary of what happened to the Norwegians.

The novelization, extrapolated from the original script of the film, is one of those rare books that's better than the movie. There are less characters than the short story, but they react much more realistically. They are all seriously flawed (far more than the morons from Who Goes There?). Most importantly, the presence of guns heighten the tension.

The novelization makes the movie make more sense. Most specifically, the dogs don't run away from the Thing -- they attack it. This changes everything. The dogs become infected and run off, only to be chased by McReady and Childs. It's a shame the scene wasn't included -- it gives a hint of just what the Thing can do. It also explains how the Thing can be so large (another FAQ about Things).

One character (was it Saunders?) uses his roller skates to race for his life against the Thing as it plows behind him, only to get trapped in the bathroom and ultimately kill himself with a sharpened piece of wood.

There's a lot more discussion, but I understand why much of it was cut down. There's also better emphasis in the movie than in the book -- HOW the actors say their lines changes everything.

The most important discovery is that the Thing takes ONE HOUR to change into something else. This simple number changes the entire tone of the book. With a hard and fast rule, the character's paranoia and reactions are tempered by the knowledge that they have time on their side. Very different from the movie.

If you're a fan of the movie, buy the book.

Timeline

I read the book, Timeline, back when the game came out for it. Oddly, the game came out far too early - perhaps Timeline was supposed to come out much earlier as well. It probably doesn't help that the French are the good guys in this film.

From the looks of the poster for Timeline, the advertising team didn't know what to do with it. Why in hell they didn't make it look like Lord of the Rings, I have no idea. But instead, we get a weird looking shot of a bow with a flaming arrow that also happens to have a timeline superimposed over it with some vector-like graphics. In short, it doesn't look medieval, or science fiction-ish, or Lord of the Rings-ish. It looks like crap, and that's a shame because Timeline is not crap.

The plot is convoluted but essentially involves what I like to call Medieval Park. It's like Jurassic Park, only it involves knights. A rich billionaire wants to create a theme park that literally is a window into another time rather than genetically created dinosaurs. The concept is the same: rich guy plays with human lives in a supposedly safe environment - only it's not safe and ultimately the rich moron's arrogance is the death of a lot of people. This does not detract from the entertainment value of the movie, which hews closely to the book with a few exceptions.

The story begins with archeologists in a boring field, showing students why it's not boring. Just like Jurassic Park's paleontologists. In this case, the real skeptic is the older son of the chief paleontologist. Their dig is around Castlegard and a guy who looks suspiciously like an evil Bill Gates funds it. Okay, that would make him a good Bill Gates. Let's just say he seems oilier and geekier than usual, a credit to the actor.

The plot hurdles along as a wide variety of characters travel through time, including a historical reenactor, a pretty love interest, a marine or two, and a French guy. Things of course have already gone awry, which is why our protagonists are called in to save the day - and then things get screwed up even worse.

There are a lot of characters and a lot of details that connect to each other in the past and present. The movie itself skips back and forth, detailing the action in medieval times as well as the panicked arguments of scientists in the present. The pacing is a little off at times, but the movie manages to interject quite a bit of excitement into what could otherwise be a drab, "look at the peasant woman carrying sticks!" (to quote Time Squad).

Fortunately, that's not necessary, because medieval times were sufficiently exciting without embellishment. Unfortunately, a lot of the startling details in the book are lost in the movie translation. Axes and swords did not slide through mail so quickly - it would take several awful hacks at a prone opponent to kill him, a fact that horrifies the modern visitors. On screen, one stab kills a guy except for one notable exception (which made for a great moment of suspense).

Similarly, both the horses and the men were described as being physically imposing, looming much larger than anyone is accustomed to in their daily modern life. All that is lost with the wide angle shots.

Some characters lose their significance. Lady Claire is relegated to a messy peasant spy instead of a scheming sexpot who sleeps with a bishop to help the French. I of course understand why that detail was excised (America doesn't tolerate sexual freedom in female leads). Less forgivable is the role of the scientist who remains behind - he ultimately saves the day in the book after the time machine breaks down, but in the movie he pretty much just runs around screaming, "Oh my God, WADDAWEDONOW?!"

The most obvious difference is the time travel itself. Since time travel in Timeline involves the use of a microscopic wormhole, the time travelers are shrunk down and then pushed through the hole. That would look positively ridiculous in the movie, so they wisely just left the time travel relatively F/X free.

And yet, Timeline does hit the mark in several scenes. The launching of arrows from both the French and English are terrifying as they rain silent death on everyone in their path. Even better, the English lord uses "night arrows" after firing a volley of flaming arrows, surprising the French and horribly maiming many of the enemy archers. Being a history buff myself, watching trebuchets in action is a real treat.

Because the grime and chaos of history is difficult to convey on screen when so many other historical epics have been portrayed, some of the characters' actions make less sense in the movie than in the book. In the book, the protagonists can escape because it's very hard to keep track of people with peasants, chickens, and decaying brick all around. In the movie, the good guys just run in a random direction and get away from the bad guys - over and over and over, even though the majority of events all take place within the same location.

Taking all this into account, Maleficent and I both enjoyed Timeline quite a bit. It's good fun with a bit of history thrown in.

But I still think they should have done a better job advertising it as if it were Lord of the Rings 2.5.

Paycheck

Paycheck has a cool if somewhat recycled premise: our protagonist (in this case, an engineer played by square-jawed Beniffer - I mean Ben Affleck) works on reverse-engineering projects and then has his memory wiped so that there's no evidence left behind. But then comes along the job of his life - a multimillion dollar deal that has one catch...he must lose three years of his memory.

So Michael Jennings (Affleck), who is a greedy bastard, takes the deal. A lot can happen in three years and of course, he manages to fall in love with the doctor (Uma Thurman) who he had a brief flirtation with at a party. He also worked on a top-secret project (it's spoiler time folks, so get ready)...

Jennings of course wants no part of the project so he has to send himself secret coded notes in the form of 20 generic, boring everyday items. Then he gives up all that money to "keep him focused on those 20 items."

The movie's plot is intriguing. The initial science of memory wiping seems plausible. Jennings brain must be kept at a certain temperature or he "turns into a vegetable" during a process where they literally zap brain cells away. You lose brain cells every day, so this isn't quite as awful as it sounds. Of course, one of the problems is that the guy who does the zapping sees on screen what Jennings saw. So should HE have to be zapped too? Shouldn't it be an automated process run by a machine or something?

There are a lot of plot holes like that, and once you go down that path the movie turns into a big, breezy pile of Swiss cheese. As I work for a Fortune 5 company myself, I know for a fact that if a highflying executive sold all his stock or gave up his shares, he'd be immediately called into an office to ask why. People don't just give up millions of dollars because they're having a bad day.

The second memory wipe is also plausible - they insert a tracer into Jennings and then, when the three years are up, follow back to the point of the tracer and chemically wipe his brain. Since it's a chemical process, it's an imperfect one and Jennings has dreams and nightmares of what he saw.

John Woo has an issue with pacing. It's obvious he wants to show off his martial arts filming techniques and there are plenty of opportunities for Jennings to do just that. But they drag on too long. Jennings is also a fantastic motorcyclist - bizarre, since Rachel (Thurman) tells him he's "only okay" on the bike. Then we're subjected to a 10-minute-too-long action sequence of Jennings and Rachel being chased by cop cars, bad guys, and multiple car explosions.

This happens again and again. The protagonists get into a tight spot and some of the time, Jennings McGyvers his way out. The rest of the time, he fights his way out. The engineer. Fighting his way out like a Marine.

There's no chemistry between Thurman and Affleck. I'm not sure how there could be. I'm so accustomed to seeing Uma in movies where she's a tough, pushy, almost manly character that seeing her in pink and giggling seemed extremely out of character. Affleck does a fair job of trying to be bewildered and compassionate at the same time, but nowhere is there any evidence of the incredible brilliance that Jennings used to create the device or negotiate his way through the future.

To sum up, Paycheck has all the twists of Total Recall but drags on its action sequences too long; it has all the mystery of Minority Report but not enough technical savvy to convince us it's a possible future; all the mind-bending antics of Memento but not enough carefully crated design to be a brilliant script, all the apocalyptic predictions of Terminator 3 but not the strength of its convictions to end the movie on a low note.

The Madness Season

Most people would pass this book up if they saw the above title (I would, if I saw it on a shelf). But then, a lot of people who bother to examine the plot of those Grade B Science Fiction movies would come to the same conclusion: those hackneyed plots are gems in capable hands. And Friedman certainly is capable! The Tyr, an alien hive-mind race, has already dominated humanity and much of the universe. Unexpectedly, they come upon a vampire who doesn't succumb to their normal soul-breaking tactics. This vampire (who, it should be noted, is never referred to as a vampire throughout the book) is humanity's salvation - he and another alien being known as a Mara fight a battle of intrigue against their captors. The Tyr undergo a dangerous and unpredictable transformation to improve their breeding chances with their queen, and the protagonist must unlock the secrets of their race if he is to survive. The ending will surprise you (and gross you out), but it's well worth the read. A rare find in science fiction and vampire novels alike.

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

This is one of those books that seems like it's a byproduct of the true publication date (it's old enough that people use slide-rules, not calculators). Many of the science fiction works of yesteryear are outdated leftovers, left behind because technology has far surpassed the writer's wildest dreams. Not so for Heinlein, whose vision is powerful enough to make this book still enjoyable (despite the ever present slide-rules). It's one of those "perfect timing situations" in which the main character wins a spacesuit as a second place prize, refills its airtanks, and then when he realizes he has no use for a spacesuit at all, is kidnapped by aliens -- of course! Although it may seem like light-hearted pulp fare, it has an underlying seriousness that makes the novel exceptional. It may also be a sad testament to our own space programs that Heinlein's work, after all these years, is not yet outdated.

Ender's Game

Ender's Game is the first (and best) in a series about Ender, a young boy bred to be a leader in a society where more than two children is illegal. An alien race, insect-like possessing a hive mind (sound familiar? see The Madness Season), has attacked Earth, and we live in fear that they may strike again, even though it was decades ago. Ender, a child of the state, is drafted into this war, and he is forced to survive a bitter and difficult life in military school. His sister and brother (his brother Peter seems to be based on a popular killer, who dissected roadkill in his backyard), take over the Earth while he's away at war - an idea that's doesn't sound so silly when you read how they manipulate the internet society. True genius at work, Ender's greatest triumph and worst tragedy make for a powerful ending. Once you're done reading it, put it down and read something else unrelated - the rest of the series doesn't carry as much of a punch.

The I Inside

This book is one of a little known work of Foster's that gets lost in the shuffle because he's written so much and so much better. But this speaks highly for his writing talent - this book is damned good, and few people know about it. The Ultimate Infatuation: You see a woman in a car as you're walking down the street, and you drop everything, literally, to meet her. Nothing can stop you. Your life is meaningless if you cannot be with her. This is how the novel starts, and set in an era when alien contact is a reality (and the aliens can teleport at will), how in a little genetic cloning, interplanetary gates, and an invasion, and you have a novel that makes ID4 look tame - you could punch the aliens in ID4, these guys just teleport away. It's an excellent novel, and the hero has some very real moments (he is so upset at one point that he shuts a communication off momentarily so he can weep) that makes this novel shine.

Liege-Killer

Make no mistake, Liege-Killer is a very strange novel. The name gives little indication to just how bizarre it is, but it's an excellent insight into a new alien race (which consists of two beings who are similar to Siamese twins, but can merge at any time) that has a few surprises of its own. Enter our hero, a cryogenically frozen man out for vengeance (the Paratwa killed his wife), and a dwarf. Their specialty: to kill the unkillable Paratwa. This book has a pounding rhythm that matches its hero's mantra: I move, I am, I want, I take, I see, I learn, I grow, I make. The story ultimately ends in a bitter victory that makes you thirst for more.

Red Dwarf : Series 3

I've been watching the Red Dwarf series in order, which means I'm not getting quite the same effect as if I had viewed the series on television. So I saw Season Three a week after viewing Season Two. I imagine TV series hold up much better when they're not viewed back-to-back.

Season Three is a complete reboot of Red Dwarf, in the same way that Alias reshuffled its characters but kept the show's premise the same. So what happened? You can find out if you slow the DVD down to read the Star Wars-like credits.

We last left Season Two with Dave Lister (Craig Charles) discovering that he had two children. For the first Season Lister figured he met a great bird (to use Brit slang) eventually, even though he was on a massive ship (Red Dwarf) with no other companions except a humanoid cat (Danny John-Jules) and a hologram (Rimmer played by Chris Barrie). Lister was in for a big surprise when it turns out that it was he who got pregnant, by sleeping with a female version of himself in a reverse universe where women impregnate men. So the twins Lister saw in a picture in one of the earlier episodes were indeed his.

Season Three explains that they kids grow to maturity due to the difference in parallel universes and that eventually Lister drops them off in their mother's parallel universe. Poof! No more twins/Lister pregnant plot.

Holly (Normal Lovett), the monotone droning computer who runs Red Dwarf has changed his appearance. Strangely, he changes it to the female computer he encountered in the parallel universe. Why the creators chose to do this is anyone's guess, but we're led to believe it's because Holly really, really liked the other computer. The new Holly (Hattie Hayridge) isn't so much a deadpan genius as a dithering bimbo with a wide-eyed, vacuous stare. No more "is Holly insane?" plot.

The android Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) that was in one episode in Season Two crashes into a planet. The Red Dwarf crew rescues and reconstructs him, which explains why he looks different. Remember how Kryten had gotten over his subservient attitude and drove off in biker leathers? That plot's over too.

In fact, the only characters that remain the same are Rimmer, Lister, and Cat. Rimmer's still annoying, although less antagonistic than before. Lister's still a slob. And Cat's still Prince with fangs.

When Red Dwarf is funny, it's side-splittingly funny. But those moments take a longer build up. In essence, there are better jokes in Season Three, but there aren't as many. A lot of time is spent developing characters and plots.

Unfortunately, there's increasingly less attention paid to any sort of internal logic to the show. There are a myriad of problems with the Backwards episode, where everyone on Earth does everything backwards (but it only sporadically affects the crew). Rimmer, the hologram who cannot physically interact with anything, increasingly seems to be able to touch and smell, get drunk, and run away in fear from a killer android. At one point, Rimmer even points out how badly Lister smells and then claims he can't smell anything in the very next episode.

There's a very significant shift in the show's focus, from just going for laughs to going for character development and popular science fiction movie references. There are better special effects and more obvious plots. Whereas the first two seasons of Red Dwarf were trailblazing forays because the show seemed innocently unaware of the rest of the science fiction genre, the third season is painfully aware of every movie trope, from the Star Wars scrolling text introduction to an alien that looks like an Alien to a big killer android named Hudson.

The show suffers a bit as a result. Red Dwarf simply didn't have the budget to start spoofing Aliens or any other science fiction show for that matter, and I ended up longing for more low-budget comedy rather than low-budget action. Kryten is a great addition to the crew, but at the sacrifice of Holly, who doesn't seem to have much to say.

Perhaps most unbelievable is that the characters violate each other in deeply personal ways that you can't imagine they would forgive: Rimmer takes over Lister's body, abuses it, and when Rimmer takes it back, Lister kidnaps it and abuses it even more. It's nasty stuff, if you think about it, and it makes Rimmer out to be so utterly unlikable that it's difficult to imagine the two trusting each other ever again.

But chances are viewers who watched the show for the first time weren't keeping track from episode to episode. The scriptwriters certainly relied on that fact. There's a price to be paid in the DVD age and attention to detail is one of them.

Funny? Yes. But I can't help but feel that Season Three is a bit of a step down from Season Two, reboot and all.

The Forgotten

My parents liked The Forgotten. I mean, really, really like it. Once a week, they would ask "did you see The Forgotten?" And then when it came out on DVD, "did you rent The Forgotten?" Finally, they just bought the CD, propped toothpicks under my eyelids, and made me watch it.

Telly (Julianne Moore) and Jim Paretta (Anthony Edwards) and Ash Correll (Dominic West) have lost their children to a mysterious plane crash. Telly is a wreck, but she's trying to get better. She regularly visits a psychologist (Dr. Jack Munce played by Gary Sinise) to help her deal with her son Sam's (Christopher Kovaleski) death. Ash finds his counseling at the bottom of a bottle.

Then one day, all evidence of Sam disappears. And suddenly, everyone in Telly's life has forgotten she ever had a son.

It's a mother's worst nightmare multiplied by a thousand: it's bad enough that Telly loses her son, but her inability to grieve makes her pain all the worse. Convinced she is not insane, Telly tries to convince Ash that he had a daughter who also died in the plane crash. When she makes some progress, things get weird.

It's to the movie's credit that Telly and Ash never sleep together. This is a character piece, not a popcorn flick. Just in case the guys get bored, I should point out that we do get to see Telly in some decidedly unmatronly underwear. But that's about as hot as it gets.

Things go from bad to worse as NSA agents and a very weird guy that never blinks (Linus Roache) begin stalking the pair. They finally get a break when they turn the tables on an agent, knock him out, and begin forcefully interrogating him. When pressed, he finally admits, "they're listening." And then...

And then...

Well you know what happens because you saw the trailer. Indeed, if you've seen the trailer, you've correctly guessed the big secret behind the entire movie. And that's a shame, because the movie hangs much of its suspense and terror on that curious plot point.

Plot-wise, there are a lot of problems with The Forgotten. The fact that Ash (an ex-hockey player) and Telly (an editor, if I remember correctly) become these amazing commandos who can put the drop on an NSA agent seems fishy. That they then become an amazing Good Cop/Bad Cop duo that can wring the truth out of said agent is preposterous. But then, the movie doesn't invest too much in logic.

That's not to say that The Forgotten is boring. Once the first agent gets sucked up into the heavens, you're always waiting for it to happen again. Too bad the characters act as if they never witnessed such an event. I don't know about you, but if I watched the roof get blown off of a cabin and a grown man shoot skyward, I'd be burrowing underground and hiding in subways. I would NOT 1) stand outside, talking about the insanity of it all, 2) drive in open country, talking about the insanity of it all, 3) run around on beaches, talking about...you get the picture.

The movie really hinges on Moore's acting ability, which is in full strength here. At least, her tear ducts are; it's a rare moment when she's not weeping. Still, she manages to switch between motherly love, heartbreaking sorrow and parental rage with expression alone. West makes a great ex-hockey player, but he's a little too conflicted to scratch beneath his surface. Just about everyone else is window dressing, or worse, mumbles their lines. That includes Sinise, who really deserves more respect.

Joseph Ruben expertly directs the movie, with long floating shots and stalker-cam views. Almost all of The Forgotten is filmed with a blue lens, and the music is perfectly matched to the mood. Let there be no doubt, The Forgotten's got style.

But ultimately it's a movie without a lot of depth. The alternate version explains things a bit more but has far less pathos. In the end, The Forgotten feels a lot like a really creepy Twilight Zone episode than a fully formed movie.

Red Dwarf: Series 2

After watching the first season of Red Dwarf, I wasn't expecting very much from the second season. I figured it'd be more of the same...cheap sets, the slob and the neat freak, and some crazy cross between James Brown and a feline bouncing around on screen.

I was right...it's all that and more. But I was wrong to think it would be boring. The show actually takes the time to explore the characters and really get into their heads. In season 2, the show hits its stride.

David Lister (Craig Charles) is still Lister, but he's more subdued. Someone finally realized that watching a slob be a slob is funny in small doses. Which is good, because Lister got on my nerves after awhile. More screen time is given to Arnold Judas Rimmer (Chris Barrie), the real star of the show. It's easy to figure out why Lister is a pig, but the uptight Rimmer is much more intriguing. We delve into his neuroses as well as his past. And Cat (Danny John-Jules) exists primarily as Lister's foil. His quieter screen presence helps let the show be funny rather than distracting.

It is in this season that we first meet Kryten the android (David Ross), a manservant who isn't too good at determining the liveliness of his hosts. We learn about Lister's love life, the death of Rimmer's father (a touching scene that's played straight even though everyone's long dead anyway), watch the blokes play in a virtual reality game, mess with time travel, and enter a parallel universe where women rule.

I can't harp on this point enough: a lot of other science fiction shows ripped off Red Dwarf. Lister gets pregnant by a female, just like Charles Tucker in "Unexpected" on Star Trek: Enterprise. The holographic game is just like the movie eXistenz, right down to the "are we still in the game" twist. And don't even get me started on the time travel plot.

Red Dwarf isn't afraid to mess with its characters something serious. Lister feels bad for Rimmer's lack of a love life, so he transplants a few months of his own romance into the hologram's memory. What a mind-screw that is! Speaking of messing with their minds, Holly at one point decides to play the meanest practical joke in history. Only Red Dwarf has the courage to pull off entire episodes that are fake or inconclusive.

Indeed, Red Dwarf often ends without any solid conclusion. Characters wander off into the bowels of the city (where the heck DID that android go?) and storylines are dropped, only to be picked up in later episodes. Having been exposed the first two seasons of Red Dwarf for the first time ever, I'm looking forward to the show's evolution.

It may be wacky, it may sometimes not make sense, but Red Dwarf's influence on science fiction should not be underestimated. All that, and it's really funny too.

Red Dwarf: Series 1

I've never seen Red Dwarf and really had no specific interest in watching it. But my wife rented it, so it was only a matter of time before I was sucked into the madness that is Red Dwarf.

What is Red Dwarf? Why, it's Star Trek: Voyager. That not good enough for you? I speak as a Red Dwarf newbie, so if you're a rabid fan of the series you can skip this.

Still here? Okay: Red Dwarf is actually a ship. A big, ugly floating city. It's a mining colony, to be precise, and it's crewed by a bunch of folks who are much like the working blue-collar slobs you might find in any city. The closest approximation to the atmosphere is the workaday life of the poor saps that get eaten in the movie Alien. It's grungy, it's gritty, and it's very easy to identify with the crew.

One-armed robots known as "scutters" zip around the ship, performing maintenance jobs at the behest of Holly (Norman Lovett), the ship's computer. Holly appears as a floating head on computer screens; a balding, monotone-voiced face with bad teeth and deadpan delivery. Just about everything else has the possibility of talking on the ship, from the food dispensers to toasters. Most integral to the technology are the holographics, used to recreate one dead crewmember whose knowledge is too important to the mission of Red Dwarf. In essence, the hologram is a technological ghost, able to interact with everyone (even sleeping) but incapable of touching or being touched.

Our two main characters are Dave Lister (Craig Charles), an uber-slacker who pretty much doesn't want to do anything but get drunk, high, or laid and his manager, Arnold J. Rimmer (Chris Barrie), an uptight, neurotic stick in the mud. They hate each other with a passion, a problem exacerbated by Lister's insistence on bringing an illegal animal (a cat, played by...well, a cat) on board. This leads to Lister being put into stasis, a sort of benign punishment straight out of Judge Dredd: the prisoner is put in suspended animation and doesn't actually experience the passage of time.

Then Something Bad Happens ™ that kills off everyone on board. Except Lister, who is safely ensconced in his stasis prison.

Three MILLION years pass.

...

That's right, THREE MILLION YEARS. If there's a concept I had difficulty wrapping my mind around, it's the implications of what it means to have three million years pass you by. A lot can happen in three million years. A lot probably SHOULD have happened in three million years. But Red Dwarf had a small budget to start, so you'll have to forgive the three million questions that undoubtedly pop up about a ship in space for three million years. I mean, metal degrades in three million years, doesn't it?

Anyway, the assumption in Red Dwarf is that most things kept working as they always did. Which really does beg the question as to why there was ever a crew in the first place (and perhaps verifies Lister's belief that he may as well slack off as none of it makes any difference).

Lonely and a little crazy, Holly wakes up Lister. To Lister's horror, Holly uses the holographics to recreate the crewmember "most important to the mission," to keep Lister from going crazy: Rimmer. Rimmer's more or less the same as his past self, except he has a huge "H" glued to his head. Rounding out the cast is the evolutionary descendant of the cat Lister brought on board, known only as Cat (Danny John-Jules). Cat is basically Prince with fangs...my wife, who never saw the first season prior to renting the DVD, thought he was a vampire.

If there's a weakness in the show, it's Cat. He has little to do and is only really amusing to people who have cats, in which case he's either hilarious or very obvious. He does help liven the show up by hopping around and screeching in colorful outfits in a series that tends to have very little movement. There's also the dreadful long shots of the model that is Red Dwarf. These boring pans seem to take place every five minutes and make you really feel like you're trapped on the ship along with Lister. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

The humor is decidedly British, which is good if you're British and not quite as good if you're not. There are a lot of references to European popular culture that are easily lost on Americans (I know I was confused a couple of times) as well as 80s references that really date the show. Still, I was a child of the 80s so I got most of those jokes.

What's amazing about Red Dwarf is its ability to go for the absolutely lowest fart jokes and simultaneously work in high-minded science fiction concepts. Everything from faster-than-light travel, time travel, and holographic technology is explored at any one point in time. This can make the series both confusing and surprisingly fresh, depending on the circumstances.

The first season has almost no budget, but that only adds to the claustrophobia. It does have a lot of funny witticisms, but you have to get past the accents. Lister slurs a lot of his lines (as well he should), which makes him sometimes difficult to follow. But I find it difficult to be too harsh with the show...it's like criticizing an off-Broadway show for being off-Broadway.

What's most telling is how much Red Dwarf influenced other science fiction shows. Star Trek Voyager is an almost play-by-play rip off of Red Dwarf, down to the holographic doctor, the resident comic alien, and the fact that the crew is so far out in space that no laws apply. The only thing that's missing is hostile aliens, but I'm sure they'll turn up soon enough.

It may not be the most polished production, but Red Dwarf did it first.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another Jim Carey movie I wasn't too sure about. He's had a better track record lately with his more serious films, so I was willing to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did.

Combining all the mental hijinks of Memento and the mind-bending, "is this reality?" confusion of movies like Strange Days and eXistenz, the movie essentially posits one question: if you could erase any one experience from your mind, would you?

But before we get to that question, we see Joel Barish (Jim Carey) meet Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) on a train. It's supposedly happenstance, and the two hit it off immediately. These first five minutes carry the whole movie. The two actors exhibit just enough nuanced familiarity that it's alternately exhilarating and creepy-they FEEL like they've known each other their entire lives. The rest of the movie then swings back to the circumstances leading up to their meeting.

Joel has, in fact, met Clementine before and had a whirlwind romance that somewhere along the lines lost its whirl. They are strikingly different personalities who find attraction in their opposite: Joel is cautious, Clementine's a maniac. Joel is quiet (hard to believe Carey playing quiet, I know), Clementine is a bundle of energy. They alternately drive each other crazy and are crazy about each other. But unfortunately, the nature of the relationship is so tempestuous that the possibility of erasing one's memory is simply too tempting. Like a madman with a pocket nuke, it's inevitable that Clementine's personality will succumb to the lure of memory erasing...but the consequences have grave repercussions.

Hurt and desperate, Clementine's brash decision pushes Joel to do the same thing. If she's going to erase him, well he's going to do the same thing right back at her! It's a procedure that takes an entire night and it's only a few days into the erasing of her memories that Joel realizes he LIKES his pain, his angst, his embarrassment, and even his hatred of her. The ups and downs, the good and bad parts of their relationship, are ultimately inseparable, and Joel realizes he will lose a part of his soul along with Clementine should his memory of her be erased.

So he fights it. Thus have another plot thread, as Joel drags his memory of Clementine with him through the dark hallways of his mind. All the while, Joel is pursued in the real world by the Lacuna Memory Erasure team. Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) leads the team, a kindly father figure who is not nearly as nice as he seems. Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and Patrick (Elijah Wood) assist the good doctor, making an on-site visit to Joel's house. Which is at least as horrifying as it is comedic, because while Joel is in a drugged coma on his bed, Stan and Patrick eat his food, drink his beer, get high, and practically have an orgy in his apartment.

Like Memento, Spotless Mind posits that when people aren't looking, the ethics of society don't just fall apart, they explode...whatever you imagine people might do to you while you're helpless is just the tip of the iceberg. Patrick proves just who unethical he is when we discover he has decided to take advantage of Clementine by recycling all of Joel's memories-memories that were supposedly destroyed to complete the erasure process.

As if that weren't enough, Dr. Mierzwiak's assistant Mary (Kirsten Dunst), is dating Stan. The secret she uncovers about herself and her work will shatter the Lacuna program and the lives of all those who it touched.

The director takes an innovative twist on how he conveys the dream world. Images become faded and indistinct. Sound crackles in and then whispers away. Some scenes appear to be lit exclusively by a flashlight, perfectly representing the selective memory of Joel's mind. Other scenes are lensed in distinct colors of yellow and blue. Still other scenes are nightmarish-people are faceless, bodies slide off into darkness, and as Joel's mind stumbles under the technological assault, structures and people literally collapse in front of him.

Ultimately, it's Charlie Kaufman's writing that perfectly blends what could be a horrible mess. Just when you think all the various plotline could not possibly be resolved...we're back at that train, and the thrill and awkwardness of that first attraction.

Spotless Mind is about the maturation of a romance and the decision every couple must go through when they realize that the "honeymoon is over." Joel and Clementine come to a crossroads and stumble horribly astray, just as so many couples fall apart every day without the benefit of erasing the memories of their exes. Love, Kaufman seems to say, is about the person you are after the honeymoon is over.

Carey is suitably restrained, which makes him seem all the more pathetic when the movie focuses on the happier, more energetic times. His hair is a mop top, is sweaters always rumpled. In short, he's a sad sack that Carey captures perfectly...a funny man who has nothing to laugh about.

Dunst plays a perfectly awkward, clueless young girl dealing with a technology she does not understand. Her characters growth, destruction, and rebirth steals the show. The other characters are suitably dazed and confused, not the least of which is Wood's not-Frodo-anymore Patrick. He's so fresh-faced, it's hard to believe he's doing such disrespectful things to Clementine.

But by far, Winslet plays the most compelling character of her career. Winslet not only adopts an American accent, she plays Clementine as herself (a sometimes whiny, neurotic mess), as Joel remembers her (erotically playful, maddeningly confusing, and sometimes just a shrew), and as echoes of Joe's memories. This is a lot to pull off for anybody, but Winslet never missed a beat.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give this movie is that I KNOW these people. See it, and you will too.

In Conquest Born

In Conquest Born is about two individuals of different races whose worlds collide. One race is highly psionic, the other is terribly close-minded. One is golden-skinned, the other pale. One is a free-thinking society, the other rules by a strict and secretive nobility. The female protagonist, having witnessed her parents' horrible death at a tender age, is unleashed as a psionic secret-agent against the other side, where she wanders throughout the universe looking for a mate who can survive her mental and physical powers. The meeting between the two is a bit confusing (I read it twice and even now try to guess what REALLY happened), but rewarding. A novel that starts with a whimper and ends with a bang.

Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future

This book is a must have for any serious Star Trek fan. It details the time-line of the often confusing Star Trek universe in careful academic detail, yet the narrative is entertaining enough to make it readable from cover to cover. The pictures are rife throughout the book and intelligently placed (a big gripe of mine is when people show you pictures of things you don't care to see, or put pictures far away from the text referring to them), and there are plenty of discussions about character designs, star ships, and other subtle nuances and contradictions that a book of this depth inevitably stumbles across. Buy it...it will make the Star Trek universe a bit more comprehensible...and a lot more enjoyable.

Eye in the Sky: A Novel

Eye in the Sky was written by the eponymous Philip K. Dick, he of Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") and The Running Man, among other seemingly made for the big screen novels. Dick's meditations on consciousness are a running theme throughout all of his works, and Eye in the Sky is no different. In this tale, our hero Jack Hamilton and has just been given a choice at his military contractor job, where he works at a facility that contains the particle accelerator known as the Bevatron. Jack's wife, Marsha, is suspected of being a Communist sympathizer, and as a result Jack's job is at risk. Adding to the betrayal, Jack's friend Charles McFeyffe is head of security and leads the prosecution against them.

With Jack questioning his own wife's loyalty and choosing between his marriage and his career, Jack, Marsha, Charles, and a few other folks take a tour of the newly operating Bevatron. Then disaster strikes.

The Bevatron's particle beam tears through the visitor catwalk above, dumping eight people into it, including Jack, Marsha, and Charles, along with Bill Laws, an African-American scientist reduced to giving tours of the Bevatron; Arthur Silvester, a fundamentalist World War II veteran; Joan Reiss, a neurotic secretary; and Edith Pritchert and her son, a prim-and-proper patron of the arts. While their bodies lay crumpled on rubble of the broken Bevatron, their consciousnesses are whisked away to alternate universes created by each of the visitors.

In some ways, Dick was light years ahead of his time. Although the novel is obviously dated by references to McCarthyism, the challenges posed by each world couldn't be more apt for our modern times. The first world, created by Silvester, is a fundamentalist's dream, combining geocentric Christian and Islamic beliefs. Dick skewers both religions with one deft chapter, and the reference to Eye in the Sky has (among other parallels) a literal manifestation in Silvester's God. That's right, he's a big Eye of Sauron, so big that it looks like a gigantic lake.

Silvestri's world is either terrifying or hilarious, depending on your perspective. With the divine so intimately real, prayers manifest (one simply prays for money), God's wrath is always around the corner (transforming straying believers into hunchbacked damned souls), and science is a cult that nobody seriously practices. Dick shows just how capricious and dangerous an old Testament God would be, and the difficulty of navigating a modern world with such an omniscient presence.

And yet, Silvester's world has laws. Subsequent worlds range from the bizarre to the outright terrifying. Pritchet's world is one of absolute tranquility, a super-filter that causes anything offending Edith to disappear from existence. Again, Dick hits the mark: in the world of Tivo, the Internet, and politicized news channels, the ability to filter out dissenting opinions has become all too common. If it were literally true, Dick demonstrates how what might on the surface seem ideal rapidly descends into a very personal hell.

The next world is by far the most terrifying; If Mrs. Pritchet found everything offensive, Reiss is afraid of it all. The water is poisoned, houses literally try to eat you, and lurking inside every one of us is a cold, calculating insect just dying to burst free...

The final world brings us back to the crux of the conflict for Jack and Marsha - a Communist's view of what America must be like. The identity of the creator will ultimately determine if Marsha is guilty of being a Communist.

The book is not without its flaws. Dick comes off very much a political author who doesn't necessarily know the targets he skewers. A fight with angels devolves into a peculiar human-like brawl, with angels being kicked in the groin, skewered in the spleen with a hatpin (seriously), and otherwise being beaten up as if they were common thugs. No fundamentalist worth his bible would ever believe angels could be so easily defeated, much less beaten up.

Bill Laws, the African-American, is cast in a sympathetic light, but he has little to do. Laws never gets his own world and thus he seems more of a caricature, content only to chastise Jack on his own hypocrisy. Marsha comes off as whiny and self-centered, and her supposed interest in political causes makes her seem more like a suburban socialite with too much time on her hands than a believable advocate of human rights. And then there's Jack, who just comes off as an arrogant jerk most of the time.

And yet, Eye in the Sky is so far ahead of its time. Dick has set up a perfect series of foibles to demonstrate his own beliefs, and in doing so shows how we all barter our individual freedoms for religion (Silvester), peace (Pritchet), security (Reiss), and democracy.