pcox-mail Reviews

The Line (2009)

Amazing. Just amazing.

[10/10 · 11 January 2010]

If there's anything I love more than a truly well-crafted movie, it is finding one by accident. This is a remarkable piece of art on every level, from casting and script to score, acting and cinematography.

This flick left Traffic in the dust and truly gave Liotta the kind of vehicle he deserves. There are half a dozen other great performances as well. Reading anything other than a great review simply amplifies the mystery of diverse taste. I so don't understand how anybody could not enjoy La linea. I'm buying this movie in multiple copies and giving them as gifts.

Moreover, the script even contains elements of Mexican surrealism, but without taking the plot into fantasy. I'm going to have to look into the screenwriter and the director because they got this one right. Well done. Marvillosa.

Princess of Mars (2009 Video)

Maybe the key to happiness is low expectations

[1 January 2010]

I'd read some pretty brutal stuff about this flick and was happy to find an entirely competent and often clever b-movie. Admittedly, I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan as a kid, but I'm not sure that didn't prime me to dislike the movie.

It wasn't a big budget movie, but I think the money they had was well spent. The special effects were not the center of the film but they didn't detract from the story either. The acting was surprisingly unembarrassing and I personally found the dialog very good. The updating of the story was subtle and funny.

One of the other reviewers said this isn't the film we were waiting for, and I suppose that' right. It is, though, the film we got. All in all, it struck me as a sincere labor of love that did credit to the memory of Burroughs himself, the master of the pulps.

Surrogates (2009)

Entertaining story in technologically inconsistent environment

[3/10 · 26 December 2009]

Don't spend too much time or money on this movie if you are bothered by seriously inconsistent or unrealistic science in a science-fiction movie. Despite great production values and acting, the film is marred by a badly imagined technological world.

A world technologically capable of producing robotic avatars that convey complete sensory experiences to the users would not, as the world in this film does, resemble early 21st century in every other meaningful way. The technology necessary to accomplish such remote direct brain interface control and sensing is so advanced on so many levels; it would, by definition, be accompanied by other equally huge changes in technology.

In Surrogates, the world is basically "ceteris paribus" but for one enormous mind-bogglingly advanced change. We would expect, for example, far more advanced robotics in other areas, such as dangerous occupations such as law enforcement and tedious occupation such as low level sales. Yet there is no evidence of this in the film.

Similarly, the notion that the entire world's robotic avatars would be susceptible to a one-point attack is simply too absurd. The Web today has multiple redundancies in terms of DS servers as well as other protocols. Corporations and governments maintain multiple backups for important functions, with several levels of Internet available only to high level academic and military users. That a similar level of sophistication doesn't exist in Surrogate's world, despite having an economy dependent on the technology, is too implausible.

I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them, but the suspension necessary to enjoy Surrogates comes at too high a cost.