Pitch Black

Review - The best thing I can tell you about what you will soon read is that I enjoyed the film enough to recommend it, but I would never call it 'my own'.  A likeable cast, with a tired but workable\ storyline, and a few flashy special effects isn't enough to qualify a film as worthy Sci-fi...Or is it?

It's depressing to acknowledges that few filmmakers seem to be able to make an exceptional Sci-fi film set against the back drop of another world.  The ideas, protagonists, and unrealities seem limitless to me.  I know that I'm not alone, so what the hell is going on?  Pitch Black gave me some insight.

First of all you have to crash your spaceship on a desolate planet inhabited by some mean, hungry alien.  Use the crash to kill all but a single digit number of characters (you'll have fewer people to introduce before you kill them) including the pilot (who manages to level the ship out of a horrible reentry dive, to a flaming flat spin with a newly busted windshield, into a thousand mph skip across the sand, to a slowing slide/trench making debris spreading stop, all without breaking a nail), a drunk antique collector, a cop, his convict (a murder), one sexy welder, a preteen with an identity crisis, and an Islamic father and his 3boys (including turbans, rolls, Allah, and all)...Opps, I forgot the Australian grave digger.

Now I have to tell you that this cast was enjoyable and they deserve a solid $2 of your admission.  Vin Diesel (Saving Private Ryan & Boilerroom), Radha Mitchell (High Art), Cole Hauser(Good Will Hunting &  Higher Learning), Keith David (They Live & Armageddon), and a few entertaining others.

Now you have to have an artsy way of making your Sci-fi movie different; so jerk the shit out of the camera:  "Blair Witch be damned..I want enough movement to make the audience puke cause we're saving the budget for flashy effects".  Next we'll white-wash the prints of the desert landscape:  "Bleach em dry...I want everything and everyone a flat yellow-white.  That's right, the ships, the buildings, the people...all of it."
-Looking real clever...- Now we need to get our audience to identify with our fictional, futuristic characters.  We'll make one a drug addict, give another a heart; give one of the beauty muscles, another brains, and the last one a dick.  Let's make another character an intellectual who lacks common sense and throw in that religious guy to tell em all, "I told you so."

Shall I go on?

Ok, but just a little.  The film left a few other questions unanswered.  These however are debatable in a few ways so if you've had enough just stop reading and the bitchin session will end; if not:  Time; never really discussed but is that so bad when you're stuck on a planet where the sun never sets?  YOU BET!  We understand the water issue but what a bout food?  (even The Matrix discussed food)  I guess food doesn't matter when time is not an issue. Finally, what's up with those creatures killing themselves and
raining their body parts over the survivors?  My ten year old came up with the most plausible answer; "The aliens were hoping to rain their blood and body parts over the survivor's fire to extinguish it and to make it more difficult for them to travel back to shelter. That way the aliens could eat them." -C'mon man! -

I really want to say good things about this film but it's hard to when the audience deserves better.

-m-