Skyline

Skyline
Directors: Colin and Greg Strause
92 minutes
2.40:1

Earth is being invaded by aliens again. But when done right, you enjoy being sucked in the Skyline.

A group of friends party till the early morning when they are awaken by bright blue light and screams. The aliens are coming and they are ready to solve human's overpopulation problem.

The Brothers Strause doesn't give anything new plot wise - and writers Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell do not provide you with many exposition scenes either - but it plays much better than J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield. Shot on a shoestring budget but not looking it, they give us something that hasn't been seen before in an alien invasion movie - direct mass harvesting. The premise is enough to get people to watch this movie in droves.

The small cast do what they can with the minimal script and they did it well. Standout performances are from Eric Balfour and David Zayas. The score could use a little more work but the sound design and mixing are well done. The VFX is amazing but this is to be expected. The Brothers Strause are the owners of Hydraulx, the boutique VFX house that is frequently used by Hollywood studios which did all of the CGI work here.

For an independently-financed epic monster movie to be conceived and finished within one year is an amazing feat. It will be interesting to see what the Strause brothers will come up with next after their impressive debut with Skyline.

Unstoppable

Unstoppable
Director: Tony Scott
92 minutes
2.40:1

It is said that everybody loves to watch a train wreck. Unstoppable is not one and it is worth watching.

Human error caused a train to go off the train yard without an engineer on board. Carrying hazardous chemicals, the speeding train is a disaster waiting to happen, unless a rookie conductor and an experienced engineer can stop it. This story is loosely based on a true incident.

Scott did a tremendous job of heightening tension here as making a moving train look dangerous is not easy. It's also not easy to shoot the human drama when the actors are on the actual speeding train. Writer Mark Bomback script is smart in explaining to the audience the technical difficulties in stopping a train while keeping the suspense intact. Director of photography Ben Serensen captured the action and vista brilliantly. While Denzel Washington and Chris Pine get the top billing, Rosario Dawson is also a key cast member. Indeed the entire ensemble is commendable in making the show entirely believable.

There are CGI effects to be seen here but they are hard to find if you're not paying attention - and that usually means it's really good. The sound design and mixing are wonderfully balanced between the calming lull of the countryside and the rush of the runaway train.

Tony Scott has created one hell of a ride that features no bad guys and one Unstoppable train.

Megamind

Megamind
Director: Todd McGrath
96 minutes
2.40:1


When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, spike it with vodka and sell it to the boy scouts!

Megamind is a blue alien with a large head who, out of sheer luck, got mixed with the wrong crowd when he landed on Earth. Thinking that he will always be the bad guy, he becomes the arch nemesis to Metroman, also an alien, who fights the good fight. Their epic battles ends predictably every time until one day when Megamind's plan goes according to plan. He wins for the first and last time. So now what?

A fantastic twist of the superhero genre, this is a clever, witty and funny film from start to finish. It's also got plenty of heart. McGrath and writers Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simmons tell an amusing fairy tale of what goes wrong when your dreams come true. The Dreamworks Animation team did a great job at animating the exhilarating 3D fight sequences but the emotional scenes were their best work to date. The cinematography is impressive and it might give the audience an idea of what to expect when the Superman reboot is shown in 3D.

The voice talents is delightful and Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt in particular are brilliant at not sounding like their usual selves. The sound elements didn't offer anything new but the mixing is well done. The special effects - that is anything that is not part of the animation process - is detailed and amazing.

Take the time to enjoy Megamind in 3D! It's worth it!

Hisss

Hisss
Director: Jennifer Lynch
99 minutes
2.40:1



The point of a remake is to make it a fresh positive experience for contemporary audience. Unfortunately Hisss fails at that.

There is an Indian myth that whoever could possess the energy of Naagin, the snake goddess, he will live on forever. Believing this myth, a group of men in modern day India captures her mate in order to force the goddess' hand. As the goddess kills them one by one, a detective must wrestle with his disbelief of the myth and solve the serial murder case.

If the above paragraph makes the movie seems interesting, well then obviously the opportunity to make an entertaining remake was lost somewhere. To be fair, there are no English version of the move prior to Hisss; in fact, even the current one is a mix of Hindi and English. There were actually two Hindi versions prior to this. Within the Bollywood movie musical convention, the 1986 version was far more entertaining than this one!

The only admirable work to be seen here is the cinematography by Madhu Ambat.

Director and screenwriter Jennifer Lynch has disowned the film because she was booted out of the post-production stage by the producers. So much can make a movie better in editing, in music score and CGI effects but it is clear that this one received a sloppy post-pro work. Producers Govind Menon and Vikram Singh must shoulder the blame for letting this mess be released theatrically.

This Is It

This Is It
Director: Kenny Ortega
112 minutes
1.78:1

Prior to this, Kenny Ortega is most famous for molding a generation of musical-loving teens with his High School Musical movies. But with This Is It, he will be known as the director who gave millions of people closure.

Culled from hours of rehearsal footage, This Is It shows an artist who wants to give his fans the time of their life. He wants to entertain them and show them something they've never seen before. He had the unique vision, the kind-hearted tenacity and the brilliant instinct to deliver a concert series that would have been memorable.

Ortega would be the first to say that this is not about the director. This Is It is about his friend and collaborator whose professional side is finally being revealed. But here, professional is personal and that is what makes the film captivating. This is a documentary about a concert that was a work-in-progress, one that never sees its full-dress rehearsal.

The video and sound editors did one hell of a job of making the best of what is available. The film is made up of HD and SD footage. Because it was never intended to be a concert film, it does not have the high gloss of sweeping cameras moves and wide shots. Even some of the songs are made up of two or three different rehearsal dates. But what is lacking in video, the audio makes up for it big time. The digital projection of the movie means that the performances sound fantastic, full of detail and vibrancy. It makes it an up close and personal experience, better than the best seats in the stadium.

Running only for two weeks, This Is It is a tribute to a man whose lasting legacy is his mark in music and popular culture. It is a celebration of his eternal gift to the world. Clap, shake, groove and dance to the one and only Michael Jackson.

Surrogates

Surrogates
Director: Jonathan Mostow
98 minutes
2.39:1

Jonathan Mostow does not have a perfect batting score when it comes to directing movies but Surrogates will certainly improve it.

Based on a graphic novel, Surrogates paints the world as being populated by super robots, called surrogates, while their human controllers stay at home. Then one day, two surrogates got killed and so did their human, a crime unheard of in 15 years.

There are obvious flaws in the storytelling - the accelerated time line of surrogate adoption as well as the rushed ending - but Surrogates hold up as a good entry in sci fi. Writers Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato retain the essential parts from Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele's graphic novel to tell a thrilling story of the evolution of technology. Mostow made the story credible, exciting and relevant.

The cast is uniformly great. The ones that got the most breadth are Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike as the Greers and James Cromwell as Canter as they represent the cracks underneath the veneer of human liberation. Most of the VFX are seamless except for Willis' surrogates, which was intentionally plasticized.

Breakdown, a white-knuckle ride from start to finish, is still Mostow's best movie. But Surrogates is still commendable because it asks the right questions about the use of human substitutes and what it could mean for civilization.

Avatar - 15-Minute PREVIEW
Director: James Cameron
15 minutes
2.39:1

James Cameron is a very talented guy because whenever he makes a movie, people take notice. And it's hard not to take notice of Avatar.

The 15-minute preview of Cameron's latest is absolutely amazing. But to an average Joe who only saw the teaser, it can come off as looking unspectacular. The reason is the seamlessness of the photorealistic CGI of the Na'vi as they appear in the teaser. But the teaser don't show complete scenes with a lot of dialogue and THAT is where the magic is!

In the preview, the interaction of the avatar and human is shown within the same shot. And while this is not exactly new, what haven't been seen in movies since Gollum is that intricate and completely believable level of facial animation. It's absolutely seamless to the dialog! What J6P may not understand/know is that the Na'vi and the avatars are not humans in makeup and suits - they are completely, head-to-toe emotion-captured CGI creature! There's a scene in the preview where Sigourney Weaver's avatar is guiding the hero in the forest; it LOOKS, ACTS and SPEAKS like it's Weaver but she is younger, taller and BLUE!

Seriously, three months is a long time to wait to watch the entire movie! Avatar may not be have a groundbreaking story - some liken it to Pocahontas in space - but the method of storytelling is definitely revolutionary. The same experience can easily be expected next year when Spielberg's finish off his TinTin movie, since both films are done using emotion-capture and both are worked on by Weta Digital.

Avatar will mark another notch in the craft of filmmaking. Just like other visual effects before - think Cameron's T1000 liquid metal or the liquid ROV in The Abyss, or Spielberg's dinosaur and aliens, or the Wachowski's bullet-time or even PJ's Gollum - movies PROCEEDING it will overuse its technology to cover under-develop ideas. But come December, you have to go to a 3D theater to witness another film history unfolding before your eyes with Avatar.