Is it a prequel? It definitely takes place before the events of Alien, in 2093 (For those counting, Alien takes place in 2122). And it involves the Weyland Corporation.

In 2089, archeologists have found a half-dozen places on Earth where ancient cultures, widely separated by geography and time, have all depicted the same star-and-planet pattern in their cave paintings/stone tablets/etc. of a star system they couldn’t have seen from Earth.

Scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, the original Swedish Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) believe it’s a message from aliens who visited Earth long ago.

The Weyland Corporation finances a scientific expedition to the star system. Led by Company Woman Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), who as much as tells the crew everybody is expendable but her (She has her own life support system and escape pod on this ship). She locks horns with Captain Janek (Idris Elba), not a Company Man.

In typical Alien fashion, our crew of 17 travels for 2 years in suspended animation, watched over by the android David (Michael Fassbender), who’s spent his time learning ancient languages and watching Lawrence of Arabia.

I’m going to try to keep fairly spoiler-free, but this much can be gleaned from the trailer: You may remember in Alien, there were really two types of aliens: The eponymous critters (Who do not appear in this film), and the dead, giant humanoid found in the driver’s seat of the derelict boomerang-shaped spaceship. Fans of Alien have wondered for the last 33 years, “Who were those guys?!” This movie embarks to answer that question.

On the planet, they find a giant structure riddled with artificial tunnels. When they start to explore it, we’re back on more traditional science fiction horror ground.

Prometheus

The movie also asks, if we discover extraterrestrial life elsewhere, does that strengthen or weaken religious faith?

Meanwhile, android David is facing another existential crisis – he knows who created him: the head of the Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland. But why was he created?

The screenwriters are Jon Spaihts (The Darkest Hour), and Damon Lindelof (TV series Lost, Cowboys & Aliens, and the upcoming Star Trek sequel).

The visuals on this movie are astonishing, and 3-D certainly adds to it, but isn’t required.

Fans of the Alien series may get into debates about whether this all fits; 33 years of Alien has seen 3 sequels, 2 prequels of questionable lineage (When Alien Met Predator), comic books, video games, etc. It’s a lot of background weight, and some may feel this movie explains too much; others, not enough.

But it’s mindbending science fiction/horror that raises questions, which is more than a lot of recent science fiction films.

And by the way, this planet they visit has an atmosphere, however unbreathable. So in contrast to the old tagline, on this planet, everyone, human or otherwise, can hear you scream.

There’s a variety of viral videos on YouTube (Peter Weyland’s TED Talk 2023 [3 minutes], Happy Birthday, David [2-1/2 minutes], and the movie trailer [2-1/2 minutes]).

PROMETHEUS

Also the website, www.projectprometheus.com.

The John Carpenter one was itself a remake of the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World, which was based on the 1938 John W. Campbell novella “Who Goes There?”

All have the same basic premise: A scientific research base in Antarctica (or the Arctic in the 1938 and 1951 versions) finds a crashed UFO, thaws an alien body entombed in the ice, to everyone’s misfortune.

In the gooey 1982 John Carpenter version, Kurt Russell’s American scientific base finds that something has destroyed a Norwegian scientific base.

Now in this 2011 prequel, from Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen, we get to see what happened at the Norwegian camp.

The Thing (2011)

The same basic cycle of an alien that infiltrates (messily) and can assume the shape of humans, leading to paranoia in an enclosed space (the base camp) in one of the most dangerous places on Earth (Antarctica) ensues.

We get to see a lot more of the crashed UFO from the John Carpenter version.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the American paleontologist flown in to examine the alien remains.

Like in the John Carpenter version, the alien really has a revolting process of consuming humans and assuming their shape. This isn’t done behind a curtain. The transforming process involves a lot of teeth, claws, stalks, viscera, and tentacles sprouting out all over the place.

It’s pretty well done; icky and suspenseful in the spirit of the 1982 version. Of course; I’m very familiar with the John Carpenter version; what I don’t know is what the experience would be like for someone who never saw the first movie.

For the fanboy, the movie is pretty careful in adding little touches to show that this indeed does link up with the John Carpenter version. I’m sure eventually there’ll be webpages with DVD screencaptures detailing each accuracy and inaccuracy. But, this movie obviously has a healthy respect for the original, and takes pains to make itself a consistent period piece.

The Thing (2011)

Then came 3 movie versions. The various versions all have the same basic story: People at an Arctic or Antarctic scientific research base find an alien frozen in the ice, and thaw it, to everyone’s misfortune.

The Thing From Another World (1951)

The Thing (1982)

That movie had an Alan Dean Foster novelization, various Dark Horse comic book sequels, and a 2002 video game sequel (wikipedia).

And a 2010 Hugo-nominated short story by Peter Watts that retells the events of the film from the point of view of the monster (So “The Things” are the humans).

The Thing (2011)

As Julie Andrews would sing, these are a few of my favorite THINGS!

His new movie is SOURCE CODE, another science fiction movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

Here’s the trailer:

Or here.

Opens April 1st (No joke!).

 In an exclusive interview with Adam Green, director and writer of the franchise I got an opportunity to ask him some questions about the Horror genre, what inspired him to make movies, what he thought of the latest trend of torture over terror and much more. Adam was a very likeable guy with an open and honest response to why he does what he does, and what film making means to him. The interview is broken into 3 parts so enjoy… And make sure to go out and see Hatchet 2 this weekend, the first unrated film to be in major theaters in over 25 years. Check your local listings for showtimes… And, if you live in the Atlanta area it will be playing @ Barret Commons in Kennsaw GA.

You can check it out on youtube.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODFdm-MohbQ

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9c_qLnxUaY

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeUGywsFwYk

The world is finally run by hospital bureaucrats, more specifically Liev Schreiber.  The UNION grants new and better organs to anyone, for an impossible price. That’s where Law and Whitaker come into play. When you run up your 90 day grace period they repossess your overdue organs.  But what happens when the man repossessing needs an organ of his own? After a failed collection, Law is forced to use his own artificial organ. From then on our hero runs for his life and the life of his spicy Latina (Braga).  Now, this isn’t a spoiler site so I won’t give away anything, but this movie even though it seems like your run of the mill bloody action movie, creates a twist that would make M.Night Shamalamading-dong blush.

The DVD contains Deleted Scenes, Special UNION commercials (worth a few chuckles of their own) Featurette on the highly advanced visual effects. Commentary with the Director and Writers.

If you love seeing hearts and organs being ripped out of people’s chests, bouncing breasts, and huge explosions (if you’re on this site its assumed that’s your bread and butter), then do yourself a favor and buy the Blu Ray single disk unrated edition.

Don’t make this movie something it’s not. If you’re in the mood for tons of blood and some memorable explosions give Repo Men a peek. You won’t be dissapointed.

Contributing Critic: C.C. Edwards

The movie begins where all great superheroes are born; a comic book store. Where we get to meet Dave (Aaron Johnson), your average, all-American geeky teen. After being used and abused by some “gangsta” boys, decides to act out his fantasy. Not the disturbing sex day dream he has about his english teacher. No, he joins Spiderman, Batman and Superman as Kick Ass (such a more definitive name don’t you think). He sets out to stop the evil of the New York streets (sound familiar?). The movie begins to look like your run of the mill teen drama posing as a superhero movie *cough Spiderman 3 cough*. That is until the 11 year old Hit Girl comes out to play. How many movies have an 11 year old girl swearing more than Tony Montana? She and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) come in and turn the story on it’s head and force it to become one of the most violent comic book movies of all time. Kick Ass more than lives up to it’s name. One of the most in your face, kick your ass, not afraid to create controversy movies of the last 10 years.

The DVD features commentary with Vaughn, Johnson, Cage and Mintz-Plasse.Features scenes that were too much for theaters (as if seeing a man explode in a microwave wasn’t enough). Featurette with the entire cast and crew.

If you’re in the mood to see  an 11 year old girl  mutilate and destroy men much bigger than her (and Orphan is unavailable) look no further.

If you ‘re  a fan of hardcore violence with a tinge of tongue in cheek comic spin pick this movie up… Do yourself a favor and invest in the Kick Ass 3 disc Bluray package it makes it even better.

Contributing Critic……C.C. Edwards

This mockery of a remake takes place yet again in the quiet little town of Springwood Ohio; where the teenagers are attractive and  absolutely stupid. The movie starts in a diner, yes you heard me right, a diner, in a film about a serial killer in your dreams we start in a diner. Anyway in the first five minutes you see Freddy slice and dice his first victim, a depressed and sleep deprived  Thomas Dekker. After the first predictable bloodfest, we get to meet little Nancy Holbrook ( a cheap rip off of Nancy Thompson from the original) played by Rooney Mara, a girl who makes Kristen Stewart look like Ms.Congeniality. From there the plot follows the traditional slasher movie formula the main character and her friends are stalked for 90 minutes by a killer, who gives them no relief. Oh wait in addition to the formula let’s add a gritty subplot that just makes the audience uncomfortable, adding nothing of real value and overall enitrely detracting from the mystique of the original.

Another serious issue with the remake is Freddy himself. Robert Englund (the original Krueger) created a darkly comic killer, that still made the girl sitting next to you squirm in her seat. Jackie Earle Haley, although he dawns the hat, sweater and glove, was not and will never be Freddy Krueger. Haley didn’t deliver a single witty one liner that Krueger has become so famous for. Even the makeup detracts from the true visage of Freddy, the new designers tried to make him more like a true burn victim, and less like a monster from your own nightmares… something the original knew better than to try.

If you want to see Freddy Krueger kill self righteous teens, go watch the original, you’ll save yourself from this lack luster abomination of a  Nightmare!

Contributing Critic… C.C. Edwards

Danny Trejo was in the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators earlier this summer, now he’s back, and Machete is a real film.

He’s called Machete because, well, he carries a machete. He’s a former Mexican Federale, double-crossed and left for dead. He’s fled to Texas, working as a day laborer, and there he’s approached by a rich businessman to kill a U.S. senator for money.

Machete!

Mariachi band:

Mariachi!

Machete himself!

Desperado Femme Fatale!

Mexican Dancer!

Nun of the Above!

Nacho Libre!

The Forbidden Dance!

Atlanta Rollergirls!

Silver Scream Spook Show

Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and Washington, DC.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg will announce the winning city on August 2nd, and will attend the screening in the winning city on August 5th.

The movie has its New York City premiere August 2nd, then this 2nd city premiere August 5th, and it opens in wide release on August 6th.

The Facebook page is here: www.facebook.com/otherguysmovie.

Since I live in Atlanta, I’m voting for Atlanta! Your mileage may differ.

The Other Guys has Ferrell and Wahlberg as second-string NYPD detectives who suddenly find themselves on the proverbial Big Case. You can view the trailer here on YouTube.

You can view the first 5 minutes here:

Or you can watch the video here, or download it here.

Here’s the official site for the film.

If an action-adventure TV series (particularly science fiction) goes on long enough, they usually do “The Most Dangerous Game” episode. This was a 1924 short story by Richard Connell, where an eccentric millionaire kidnaps people to hunt them on his private island.

Here’s a Predator movie that goes along these lines.

Predators

This time around, Tony Stark must deal with an ambitious industrialist (Sam Rockwell) and a Russian bent on revenge (Mickey Roarke, playing Whiplash, although never mentioned by moniker).

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as his secretary-maybe-love-interest, and Scarlett Johannson plays Black Widow (Although again, the character is never named in the movie).

And Don Cheadle has replaced Terence Howard as Tony Stark’s military buddy. Not really necessary, but it works fine.

This is fun stuff, but the movie is a little too busy; there’s too much going on. It lacks the streamlined storytelling of the better original movie.

As usual, stay through the end credits for a Marvel surprise at the end.

Robert Downey, Jr. plays Holmes as a quirky-but-cool eccentric. He doesn’t do a lot of detecting, but he’s ready to box, shoot guns, and generally get into dangerous situations.

Jude Law is Watson, and the two have a funny, bickering, cop-buddy-movie bromance going on.

Lest they’re a little too much into each other, we’ve got Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes, to be the spunky heroine.

This all works pretty well. The mystery seems pretty secondary, but that was sometimes true in the original stories. And there’s a lot of nice touches that show the writers have actually read the stories. And there’s a nice CGI recreation of Victorian London, complete with an under-construction Tower Bridge. As a general rule in movies, if you see a building is under construction, the climax of the movie will usually be there, with heroes and villains dangling off the building in question.

Pandora has an atmosphere, but humans can’t breath it without a mask. There are 9-foot tall blue humanoids in the jungle, the Na’Vi, hunter-gatherers. To interact with them, humans have genetically engineered, in effect, biological puppets of the Na’Vi, called avatars, grown in a vat with a mix of human and Na’Vi DNA. Humans go into a tank and are cybernetically connected to their avatar, which they can then use to explore Pandora. Yes, it’s kind of like an avatar in World of Warcraft or other computer games.

Avatar

Also Michelle Rodrieguez (Lost) is a tough-as-nails hovercraft-warship pilot.

Sully, once he is controlling his avatar, finds himself in a strange alien world. The jungle is a beautiful and dangerous place with life forms of all descriptions; flying creatures, others of dinosaur proportions. Even the grass glows with phosphorescence when you run through it at night.

Now comes the conflict: the corporation, and their mercenary-marines, want to relocate one tribe of Na’Vi from their big tree, because the biggest unobtanium deposit is right under it.

Sully, over time, has gone native. Through his avatar, he’s even fallen in love with one of the Na’Vi, Neytiri (played, through motion capture, by Zoe Saldana, who played Uhura in this summer’s J.J. Abrams Star Trek).

Yes, this is basically Dances With Wolves with blue aliens. Dances With Blue Aliens?

But James Cameron brings those little touches that set his movies apart. Here he’s constructed all sorts of future-tech, and a fully realized alien world. Its jungle planet reminds of the worlds created by science fiction authors I read as a kid, like Joe Haldeman, John Varley, and Alan Dean Foster. And there are a lot of elements of Aliens here (especially in the corporate and military trappings of the humans), as well as The Abyss, and, during one battle scene, even a nod to the conclusion of True Lies.

And I realized how dumbed-down big budget science fiction movies have gotten, with this summer’s Terminator Salvation and Star Trek. Both dumb fun, but not chock full of good science fiction ideas, like Avatar is.

So there’s a lot of exploring of the alien planet, and then an eventual showdown between the human marines and the natives, in the planet’s holy of holies, which oddly looks a bit like the Roger Dean cover artwork on old Yes record albums.

The computer animation is spectacular. Does it look “real?” Well, it looks really neat. It looks like the best computer animation you’ve ever seen, or the best next-generation computer game you’ve never played. There’s still a level of suspension of disbelief required, that’s equal if not more to when they did big-budget science fiction movie special effects with puppets and stop-animation.

But you couldn’t have done this movie any other way, and it creates an alien world unlike anything ever created on film. I wondered briefly, would it have been more seamless if the humans had been animated as well (as in Beowulf, for example). But no, having actors like Sigourney Weaver really there sells it.

It’s playing in some theaters in 3-D, in others in 2-D. Also 3-D IMAX. Is the 3-D worth it? Yes it is, but it’s not mandatory, I expect this will look look good on movie screens without 3-D, and also eventually on DVD and Blue-Ray.

The movie is 2 hours and 42 minutes long, so get comfortable in the theater.

I haven’t read the book, so I have no idea how faithful the movie is to the original material. Wes Anderson tends to make movies that are like intricate model dioramas (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the Darjeeling Limited). So the miniatures-and-stop-animation format is right up his alley.

George Clooney voices Mr. Fox, a dapper vulpine. His wife (Meryl Streep) wants him to change his chicken-stealing ways. But the lure of three nearby farms proves too much for him, and he returns to his gentleman thief ways. Meanwhile, his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) is jealous of his visiting cousin, who seems to succeed in everything he tries effortlessly.

George Clooney here finally makes a good crime caper movie. Maybe he’ll resist doing Ocean’s 14 now.

The humor is aimed at adults as well as kids, but there’s nothing inappropriate for kids.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Pixar has a adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars (from the John Carter of Mars series) in the works, but that’s years away.    However, James Cameron has mentioned that A Princess of Mars served as some of the inspiration for Avatar.  The book is in the public domain, so, voila, here’s an adaptation starring Traci Lords!

It comes out on DVD on December 29th.   The trailer for it is available here on YouTube.

The first direct sequel to a Bond movie, it starts about 15 minutes after Casino Royale ends. Bond’s in a high-speed car chase in Italy. Then we get a rooftop chase scene in Siena, during the Palio horse race.

Quantum of Solace

I point out just for the record that since there are two Palio horse races in Siena a year, each lasting about 90 seconds, the chances of Bond just happening to get into a chase across Siena rooftops at the same time as the horse race are approximately 85,000 to 1, if my back-of-a-napkin calculation is accurate. This isn’t a criticism of the movie, just pointing out how James Bond is some kind of force who affects probability at a quantum level in his universe.

But where was I. Oh yes, Bond gets into a bizarre trapeze-fight with a bad guy in a Siena church in the midst of restoration, killing said bad guy in the process.   Soon there’s a revelation that there’s a new super-secret bad guy organization that MI6 knew nothing about. Some damn thing (maybe an address on a book of matches, who knows) causes Bond to fly to Haiti. There he kills another guy who attacks him when he enters his hotel room.

Bond seems to spend most of the rest of the movie like this, finding random clues that lead him back and forth across the Atlantic, not really knowing who he’s pursuing or why, but pretty confident that if he just keeps racking up frequent flier miles and defending himself against (and killing) whoever attacks him in the next place he visits, he’ll get a clue and another international flight.

Somewhere in there his boss M declares him rogue and cancels his credit cards and passports and such, but this almost seems more like she’s doing it as an incentive to make him work even harder.

Of course, Bond encounters beautiful, damaged women (if they weren’t damaged before he knew them, they soon are). Gemma Arterton as Ms. Fields (and to the movie’s credit, I don’t think they ever reveal her first name on screen, but, if you know Bond girls, and a certain Beatles tune, and her hair color, you can probably figure it out), and Olga Kurylenko as a woman seeking revenge.

Eventually Bond discovers that the main bad guy is a business mogul trying to buy up seemingly useless land in Bolivia, posing as someone championing the environment but actually doing the opposite. It seems like some of the locals might have noticed his scheme, but it takes Bond crashing a plane in the middle of nowhere to figure it out.

Then there’s a showdown in the Bolivian desert at a fancy hotel that seems to be built out of explosive bricks (Actually filmed at the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert).

So, it seems like a plot that even Bond doesn’t so much figure out as just play an elaborate, violent version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.

The movie seems to be trying to emulate the Bourne movies, in the frantic pace to the action sequences and the sprinting from one international location to the next with the main character not really knowing why. So… for Bond 23: Stop!

But, despite all this, the movie is never boring, and it’s very stylish, getting Bond into all sorts of scenic locations for the next chase/fight/etc. And it’s very atmospheric.

A lot of people seemed bewildered by the title, wondering what a Quantum of Solace was. It’s a Modicum of Comfort. Now you know.

DVD extras: There’s a regular edition of this and a 2-disk Special Edition.

Regular:  “Another Way to Die” Music Video,  Theatrical Trailers

Two-disc Special Edition:  The above, plus on the second disk:  “Bond on Location” 24-minute documentary, plus 5 short (5-minutes or less) Making Of bits (Start of Shooting, On Location,  Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase, Director Marc Forster, The Music), and about 50 minutes of Crew Files, basically excerpts from a web video blog during the making of the film.      Unfortunately, there’s no commentary track on the film.

New York, I Love You

Directors include Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, and Natalie Portman.

Unlike Paris je t’aime, there’s more of an effort to tie the stories together, with characters from one segment making appearance in another. So the effect is like one of those Crash gumbos. Whether this was necessary is debatable; if there are 8 million stories in the naked city, 11 of them don’t really need to intersect.

Many of the stories seem to involve alienated people meeting cute; outside a restaurant for a smoke break, or intersecting in unusual jobs, leading to a possible romantic or sexual encounter.

It’s kind of like making a meal of appetizers. But, if one story isn’t to your taste, another will be coming along in a few minutes.

Set in the distant future Zombieland stars Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a young man on a quest to see his family in Ohio after the Zombie apocalypse has ravaged the entire world and he’s desperate to find one thing that feels like home. Columbus has a knack for talking to himself and along the way imparting pearls of wisdom for us the viewing audience should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation. Perfect example, Rule #1 Cardio… Zombies can’t eat what they can’t catch. There are plenty of these and they’re presented throughout the film, and they’re all hysterical.

Anywhoo, back to the point; Columbus encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who’s only purpose in this now F’d up existence is the never ending search for a golden flaky, cream filled slice of heaven known to the common man as the Twinky. Which in case you didn’t know actually does have an expiration date of 25 to 30 days, so sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but contrary to popular belief they do go bad. Our two heroes go from place to place in search of these spongy beauties and through this obsession they encounter the final characters of importance Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin), who constantly gain the upperhand no matter what the situation may be. Con Artists it would seem come in all shapes and ages when the world has turned to sheeot and you only have a life expectancy of the afore mentioned Twinky, so these girls do what they have to do, including stealing the heroes ride… never rub another mans rhubarb. On that note I’ll stop before I accidentally give away a key piece of info and mess it up for everyone.

The plot is pretty simple at the heart of it all; Zombies chase and eat human kind and our 4 heroes kill zombies to stay alive, and along the way have some very hilarious misadventures, and find out that life is worth living even if its just for the little things.

Zombieland is very heavy on the funny and off the charts on the gore but it’s well worth your Friday night and the cash that it takes to see it. My only question to the readers is this… Is it just me or is Jesse Eisenberg a poor man’s Michael Cera? Or is Michael Cera a poor copy of Jesse Eisenberg? A thought to ponder while waiting in line because those two cats are totally interchangeable.

The Hangover

The premise is classic.  Doug, played by Justin Bartha, is getting married.  So, three of his friends are taking him to Vegas for the classic bachelors last stand a couple of days before the wedding.   These guys have a night in Vegas that is for the record books.

But the story is told in a very unique manner.  We do not see the night, we see the aftermath.  The boys wake up in a trashed hotel suite.  The groom is missing, so is one of the guys’ pants and underwear.   But they do have a few additions including a live tiger in the toilet, a chicken and a baby in the bar.   What follows is one absurb hysterical situation after another as they try to unravel what happened and find the missing groom in time to get him home for his wedding the next day.

This is not a huge name cast, nor a big well known director.   And I’ve seen some of the stuffy critics reviews.   Don’t believe any of them, this movie is flat out funny and looks to be one of the largest comedies of all time.   Unfortunately it probably means we’re going to get a run of progressively worse and worse sequels, but hey, enjoy this first one it rocks!

Go see it, grab it on DVD for your collection.  I’m sure we have a uncut unrated version to look forward to.    This gets 5 stars, I can’t recommend it highly enough.   And be sure to stick around for the credits.

Tarantino loves movies. He loves World War II epics, particularly of the Dirty Dozen variety. He loves espionage films. He loves spaghetti westerns. He loves revenge action movies. He even loves Nazi propaganda films; or maybe more specifically, he admires the skill that produced them.

Inglourious Basterds

It’s also a Jewish revenge movie, for those who’ve wistfully thought, it’s too bad we can’t dig some Nazis up and kill ‘em again.

And it’s also a caper movie. This isn’t a science fiction film, except maybe in regards to an alternate timeline where things play out differently from our World War II. But if you discuss time travel too far into the night with friends, somebody will eventually suggest, what if you could go back in time and change the course of World War II? This movie isn’t overly concerned with the results of that, and more concerned with the bloody logistics.

We follow Brad Pitt’s crew of guerilla fighters, deep inside Nazi-occupied France. Among his crew is a former Nazi soldier whom they liberated because he was in prison for killing his Nazi officers. Also various Jews, including “The Jew Bear” (Hostel director Eli Roth) who has a penchant for killing Nazis with a baseball bat.

Meanwhile, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) is a young Jewish woman whose whole family has been killed by Nazis. She’s now incognito in Paris, running a movie theater. Nazis decide to hold the premiere of their new propaganda film, and she concocts a revenge plan.

Tarantino has his trademark elements. Very dangerous people having long, interesting conversations in restaurants about trivial but fascinating topics, which any moment may break into ultra-violence.

And he even manages to indulge his foot fetish with the movie’s other femme fatale, a German movie star turned spy for the Allies, played by Diane Kruger (National Treasure).

Christoph Waltz is a Nazi officer who manages to be terrifying the more polite he gets (Who else could intimate by ordering a glass of milk?).

The movie is two hours and 33 minutes. Some might say, a flaw in well-done historically-accurate movies about World War II (Like the recent Tom Cruise movie Valkerie, for example) is that, the viewer pretty much knows how it’s going to turn out. In Tarantino’s movie, there comes a point where what I felt mainly was wonder. Wondering, since I’d seen that it had slipped into an alternate universe that couldn’t again end up in our timeline, how in the hell is this thing going to turn out?

Here’s more info on it with a list of theaters.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (Trailer on YouTube).
A SPECIAL SURPRISE PSYCHEDELIC WESTERN (I have strong suspicions what this is, but since they seem to want it to be a surprise I won’t say. But they do mention it has Chilean connections).
ZARDOZ (Trailer on YouTube).
FROGS (Trailer on YouTube).
SHANTY TRAMP (Poster on IMDB).

More info at their FaceBook page.

Moon stars Sam Rockwell, and is directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. It’s set in a not-too-distant future where a corporation is mining the Moon for Helium-3 to provide energy back on Earth.

Moon

Sam is a lone astronaut sent to the Moon to oversee one of the automated bases. He has a three-year stint, his only companion the robot GERTY (Voiced by Kevin Spacey), who seems to be a cousin of HAL-9000.

He’s now a short-timer; a couple more weeks and he’ll be sent home. But he starts to observe strange things on the Moon, and he may not be alone up there. Or maybe he’s just going nuts.

This is a neat little movie in its own right, but it’s also a homage to late 1960s/1970s/early 1980s films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Dark Star, Alien, and Outland. And, I suspect, the Moonscapes and miniatures of Space: 1999.

And the Moonscapes and miniatures in this are spectacular, and seem for the most part to be done Old School, with models instead of CGI.

This is a science fiction movie where the story drives the special effects, not the other way around. This is a thoughful film that depicts the Moon as a desolate, hostile, beautiful place. There’s no holes in the space-time continuum, no giant explosions, and the robots don’t transform into sports cars and 18-wheel trucks. It goes where no science fiction film has gone in a long time – up a flight of stairs for your brain to climb.

Lest I be accused of spoilers, this is revealed in the first thirty seconds of the film.

(500) Days of Summer

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt – 3rd Rock From the Sun, the exceptional movies Brick and The Lookout, and strangely enough, Cobra in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie) is a failed architect who works writing copy at a greeting card company. Enter Summer (Zooey Deschanel – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and numerous Indie-films), the cute, ethereal, somewhat spooky new girl at the office. Tom is smitten.

What follows is 500 days of ups and downs in their relationship. We see it out of sequence; it jumps back and forth between the 500 days.

Everyone probably goes through this type of relationship early on; puppy dog love that’s blind to the fact that the object of its affections is actually a slightly different species all together.

One example, after their first sexual encounter, Tom walks through the park and imagines random passersby breaking into a coordinated musical number to celebrate his scoring.

This is a clever, funny movie that has some hard truths about relationships that you don’t always see in a romantic comedy.

And the worst part is, she’s completely honest with him: She doesn’t want a long term relationship, and she’s not seeing somebody else. That said, she is also playing games with him, with a studied obtuseness.

Sometimes the comedy is a little uneven; for a movie that seems to be trying to strike a realistic tone in much of it, it strikes a false note when Tom, in his cups at the nadir of their relationship, is reduced to writing greeting cards like “Rose are red, violets are blue,” (inside card) “Screw you, bitch!” Yeah, it’s kind of funny, but if he’s actually turning these in to his boss, it hints that he’s bipolar or something, not suggested otherwise in the film.

But there’s a lot of good stuff here. It’s a bittersweet comedy, and that’s not a throwaway reference; it’s bitter, and it’s sweet.

I do find myself wondering, if the movie hadn’t tipped us off at the beginning that the romance wasn’t going to work out, how audiences would take it. Disappointed that they didn’t get a typical Hollywood romantic comedy?