the blog of nathan loding

Aliens vs. Preda­tor: Requiem
Star­ring: Steven Pasquale, John Ortiz; Directed by: Colin and Greg Strause
Rat­ing: 1/2 (half star out of five)

Sum­mary: When an Alien man­aged to destroy a group of Preda­tors, includ­ing impreg­nat­ing one with a lit­tle gut-busting baddy, the ‘head’ Preda­tor on the hunt seeks revenge. They meet in a small town in the US, whose res­i­dents range from a do-good sher­iff, an ex-con, his brother and the girl he likes, and a bunch of other peo­ple who die. Car­nage ensues as the Preda­tor hunts down the Alien, destroy­ing humans who get in the way.

Thoughts: Bor­ing. The orig­i­nal AVP, which was only PG-13, was much bet­ter than this one. With an R-rating, one would assume the extra gore would bring a new level to the story … but no. Dis­ap­point­ingly, no one makes any use of the alien-predator hybrid that is being hunted. When the Alien face-hugger implants the Preda­tor, the damned thing that bursts from it’s chest cav­ity is a hybrid between both species. How cool of a crea­ture could that be? Unfor­tu­nately no one seemed to real­ize this had poten­tial and it was much to the films detri­ment. In a word: Utter disappointment.

The Astro­naut Farmer
Star­ring: Billy Bob Thorn­ton, Vir­ginia Mad­sen; Directed by: Michael Pol­ish
Rat­ing: ** (two stars out of five)

Sum­mary: Charles Farmer has a dream to be an astro­naut. So he builds a rocket in his barn with the plan to orbit once around the earth then plum­met back down into his back­yard, all safely. His son has been work­ing with him and train­ing to man the com­mand cen­ter as his father orbits. His fam­ily, though in debt and in fore­clo­sure, end­lessly sup­port Farmer, stress­ful as it is. As does the town, at one point even buy­ing adver­tis­ing on the rocket itself (a la NASCAR). And then he tries to buy 10,000 gal­lons of fuel. In comes the FBI wor­ried he’s build­ing a WMD. In comes a reg­u­la­tory board which does all it can to ground Farmer. But they can stop a Dream? (Dream is the name of the rocket).

Thoughts: Not as touch­ing as it should have been, and the lack of any sci­en­tific expla­na­tions will likely turn of most peo­ple. Where he got his equip­ment, his physics and math skills, and, most impor­tantly, the knowl­edge to build a rocket with it’s com­pli­cated engine, struc­tural design, and ‘advanced’ elec­tron­ics (‘advanced’ is some­thing of an under­state­ment as the tech­nol­ogy in Dream itself harkens to the Gemini-era). The end is also choppy. So why give it two stars instead of one? It was orig­i­nal — what a fan­tas­tic idea! I was sold on it when I first saw a trailer, even though I knew it wouldn’t be quite as good as I wanted. In a word: Great idea that falls extremely short on execution.

Frac­ture
Star­ring: Ryan Gosling, Anthony Hop­kins; Directed by: Gre­gory Hoblit
Rat­ing: ** (two stars out of five)

Sum­mary: Ted Craw­ford is an artist who has dis­cov­ered his wife is cheat­ing on him with a police offi­cer. So he shoots her in the face and cleans up the mur­der scene. When the cops arrive, the man she was mess­ing around with is the head detec­tive; Craw­ford con­fesses to him. Enter Willy Beachum, a top-notch young lawyer for the pros­e­cu­tion. Can he play Crawford’s game? Or will some­one get away with murder?

Thoughts: Just plain aver­age. Both Gosling and Hop­kins give good per­for­mances, but there isn’t much to any of the char­ac­ters for these two great actors to truly build any­thing upon. The actual details of the case and the plan that Craw­ford has to get off are incred­i­bly pre­dictable. So, once again, why two stars instead of one? Because Gosling and Hop­kins were good, and the direc­tion actu­ally wasn’t bad. It was the script that was lack­ing, not the over­all film. In a word: Pre­dictable yet some­how well made.