Another World - Sci-Fi/Fantasy

The last time that the Hughes Brothers ventured into moviemaking was 2001, when Johnny Depp played a cockney opium enthusiast in the underrated From Hell. They kept a low profile afterwards, until a script titled The Book of Eli showed up and attracted studio interest.

The twins were brought on board, and their ability to tackle the visual and the emotional would be key to the film’s successful transition from script to screen.

Denzel Washington plays Eli, a man heading west through a post-apocalyptic wasteland; he has nothing more than a backpack, a mysterious book and some Matrix-style combat skills. When a gang attempt to trap him, he dispatches them in an extraordinary fashion. One assailant is warned by Eli, “If that hand touches me again, you will lose it”. Needless to say the man calls Eli’s bluff, and does not fare too well.

Eli’s travels bring him to a town that is operating as a primitive society, with an aggressive but educated man called Carnegie (Gary Oldman) running the show. Eli’s dogged persistence to travel west with his book is matched by Carnegie’s desire to find the exact same item. Carnegie, unaware of Eli’s possession, bears witness to his incredible combat skills, and attempts to recruit him, offering a luxury lifestyle and constant clean water. But Eli is unflinching and resolute in his mission, and he declines, although agreeing to a single night’s stay.

Carnegie offers his step-daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) as a further temptation for the skilled fighter to remain in the town, but Eli is not forthcoming. However, during their meeting Eli reads from the book and Solara picks up a few words. The following day, she unwittingly recites them back in Carnegie’s presence and he realises that the book he seeks is in the town, and in the possession of Eli.

Aware of a potentially precarious situation, Eli escapes the town and continues his quest, with a hot-headed Carnegie on his trail.

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1963 saw the release of a controversial children’s picture book called Where The Wild Things Are. It was written and illustrated by American Maurice Sendak, and contained little more than ten sentences. It was, arguably, an allegorical piece, cleverly portraying the difficulties and strains on parent and child. It was a huge hit with children, and has gained legendary status as a groundbreaking piece of children’s literature.

It is hard to believe that something so short, aimed at kids, could metaphorically encompass the complexities of childhood, aggression, loneliness and love; but a picture paints a thousand words.

Almost 50 years later, quasi-loon and creative genius Spike Jonze has brought the story to the big screen with a lavish adaptation. You may remember him as the lead street dancer in the video for Praise You, by Fatboy Slim. He directed this video, as well as countless others including Weapon of Choice (Slim, again), Buddy Holly (Weezer) and surreal Kaufman movies Adaptation and Being John Malkovic.

Where The Wild Things Are would be a new challenge, but he certainly possesses the imagination to bring it to life.

Eight-year-old Max is a lonely boy with an active imagination, and once he becomes frustrated with his perceived lack of attention from his sister Claire and divorcee mother Connie, he decides to do a runner dressed as a wolf.

Max keeps running until he finds a small unattended boat at a nearby riverbank, and sets off into unknown territory. The seas take him to a strange land of sand and forest, and the home of 7 large surprises.

He meets the ‘Wild Things’; a collection of 7-foot creatures with a penchant for eating new arrivals. Max stares them down and tells them that he has great powers from another land – he can ‘explode heads’. He tells them that he is a great king, and will punish them if they try to devour him.

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Cormac McCarthy is one of the finest writers in modern literature; he has produced instant classics with Blood Meridian and All The Pretty Horses, not to mention a certain novel titled No Country For Old Men.

The latter is a truly brilliant and breathtaking book, and many who did not appreciate the film would have done well to check out the source material first, in order to gain a better understanding of the story, its purpose and the reasons behind the opinion-splitting ending.

McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with The Road, a literary work that is magnificent beyond words. It is the story of a man and his son as they attempt to survive an arduous journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The film version, directed by The Proposition helmer John Hillcoat, faithfully adapts the book into a stark, vivid and harrowing piece of cinema.

The two embark on an emotionally and physically draining quest to stay alive in a barren, cold and savage environment where vicious cannibals are a constant threat, and thieves would not think twice about stealing a blanket from a sleeping child.

Man and boy are heading south, out of hope more than anything else. We do not know their names, we do not know what happened to the world and we certainly do not know if they can survive this bleak, unforgiving hell.

A moment of weakness and fatigue sees them investigate a house where they find something truly horrifying in the basement, whilst the man’s own savage survival instincts cause him to defy his son’s desperate request of leniency towards a thief they hold at gunpoint.

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Earlier this year, Paranormal Activity became the most profitable film in history by making over $200 million on a budget of $15,000. Around the same time, a movie with a budget that actually eclipses Paranormal Activity’s total gross went on to become the highest grossing film of all time, raking in over $2 billion.

Whilst Paranormal Activity provides a potent reminder of how much a film can make with little or no financing, the enormous team behind James Cameron’s Avatar will have no concerns about being shown up thanks to a return on their movie that is enough to fund the purchase of an island.

Avatar is driven by a tried and tested story which has been unrelentingly rehashed beat-for-beat. However, it is likely that master storyteller Cameron has shamelessly and purposefully sought out a classically standard story framework, so as to avoid detracting from the main focal point - his groundbreaking visual extravaganza; an aesthetic masterpiece that he has been planning since he sunk the Titanic.

Paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully is given the opportunity to live vicariously through a bio-engineered alien body, whilst learning to live with a secretive forest-dwelling race known as the Na’vi. With a minimum amount of arm-twisting, he takes up the offer and works undercover, acting as a hired gun to protect the exploring scientists from the variety of colourful surprises offered up by planet Pandora’s lush eco-system. He is also acting as an informant for trigger-happy nutcase Colonel Quaritch, a soldier who wants to flatten the locals and their glorious surroundings.

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The Mesoamerican civilization of the Mayans, those crazy chaps from Apocalypto, used a non-repeating calendar to measure and record time. This basically means that they viewed the world exclusively in separate, differing cycles. Brushing past the details of the complicated and ingenious system these guys used, the most relevant piece of information is that the Mayans ‘may’ have thought that 2012 would bring about a new cycle.

A global Chinese whisper ensued, rendering 2012 as a potential doomsday date, something akin to January 1st, 2000. The media, and people in general, love a good panic, as was demonstrated so succinctly by the Y2K bug that didn’t happen…

There we were, horribly inebriated on New Year’s Eve and counting down (or up, depending on alcoholic consumption); patiently waiting for the nearest cash machine to suddenly liberate itself from the brick and mortar confines of a bank wall, and demonstrate its newfound status as head species by beating us and ironically stabbing us in the face with our own credit cards.

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The Twilight Saga: New Moon sees vampire wannabe Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) return for a second bite of the Twilight cherry, as ever-thoughtful-looking Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) decides to do a runner in the interests of her safety.

Bella hits 18, and becomes increasingly concerned about the potential age gap that will inevitably exist between her and Edward. He is Bella’s eternally youthful lover and saviour from Twilight, and a morally-astute vampire, with an equally ethical vampiric family (aside from the odd moment of human-bloodlust). Bella repeatedly requests a good chomp on the neck from Edward, so that she can become part of his undead, flying, fang-family.

Naturally, Edward is opposed; he believes that the life of a vampire is a curse, and cannot bring himself to turn Bella, no matter how intensely she desires the twisted transformation. On Bella’s 18th birthday, a slight paper cut to her tender human skin ignites the fire in Edward’s brother, resulting in a minor scrap, and some Matrix-style jumping around.

Whilst Bella is essentially unharmed, Edward believes that their relationship is a danger to her safety. Cue a break-up in a forest (how, er, romantic?), and one devastated teenager. After all the hullaballoo in the first film, Edward bizarrely calls it a day and his family disappear with him to an unknown destination.

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A man sporting a horrible disfigurement turns up at your door with an offer. He tells you that your money worries could be over; you can have one million dollars in cash, but you have to press a button that will initiate the death of someone that you do not know. What would you do?

The Box introduces us to happily married couple Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden) Lewis living their lives in a quiet suburban area in the late 70s. Arthur works for NASA and is awaiting approval to enter the astronaut program, whilst Norma is a school teacher.

She has a disfigurement relating to her foot that hinders her ability to walk, but her loving husband is secretly working on some technology that could permanently fix this. Their touching relationship is magnified by the presence of their bright and happy young son, Walter.

Norma’s school tells her that the staff discount she receives for her own son’s tuition is to be scrapped. This is coupled with further bad news; Arthur is turned down for the astronaut program despite his absolute confidence that he strolled through every test without any problems.

The couple turn to each other, vowing to soldier on in the face of adversity. But a peculiar box, containing a red button within a locked dome, is delivered to their door in the early hours, and an accompanying note states that Arlington Stewart (Frank Langella) will be visiting the next day at 5pm. True to the words of the note, burn-victim Arlington Stewart knocks at the door and presents his bizarre and morally questionable offer. Norma and Arthur can use the key to open the dome and press the red button, leaving themselves one million dollars richer. But someone, somewhere, whom they do not know, will die. They have 24 hours to decide, and once that time has elapsed Arlington Stewart will return and reclaim the box.

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Pandorum can best be described as the box-office bomb that is actually a satisfying sci-fi horror treat. If you have been fortunate enough to catch the remake of 3:10 To Yuma, you may recall Russell Crowe’s right-hand man, played by the excellent Ben Foster. Foster continues his good form in Pandorum, a freaky horror combining The Descent and Event Horizon to immensely satisfying effect.

Foster plays the astronaut Bower, accompanied by the ever-reliable Dennis Quaid as Payton. The two confused space-dwellers wake up from a long sleep aboard the ship Elysium with no knowledge of their mission, and no recollection of any prior events. There are no signs of any crew, and power to the vessel appears to be lost. The ship itself offers nothing but a mysterious, sporadic, hellish rumble; a sound akin to some kind of otherworldly monster in great distress.

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It’s 700 years in the future and earth has become a toxic wasteland. Centuries earlier humans were forced to leave the planet and move to outer space, because copious amounts of rubbish created through mass consumerism had made the place uninhabitable. The dusty cityscape shows the remnants of a civilisation: old billboards advertising cola and holidays, an empty bank, an engagement ring sparkling in the gutter.

Looking more closely, we notice that the tall skyscrapers aren’t buildings at all, but giant cubes of waste, compacted and stacked on top of each other. Save a lone cockroach just one thing stirs. This is WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a small, rusty robot who diligently trundles through the barren, dusty streets, scooping up rubbish into his belly, compressing it and stacking it. Occasionally he finds small gems among the trash - an old boot, a Rubik cube, a video of the musical Hello, Dolly! which he watches again and again on his ancient VCR. He is fascinated by a scene of a boy and girl holding hands and dancing.

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As a sworn non-Trekkie who generally detests science fiction, I was awaiting Star Trek with some trepidation. Could I take a story seriously which claimed that the evolution of languages on other planets had so exactly matched our own that their inhabitants spoke a perfect North American vernacular? Could a film about non-existent creatures with squashed-up faces who seem bent on destruction for destruction’s sake really hold my attention for a whole two hours and seven minutes?

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