MONDOmagazine

TRON: Legacy
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Walt Disney Pictures, 2010

By Sean Kelly

It has been exactly one year since Avatar was released and pretty much revolutionized 3D films. However, the entire year since has seen studios go the cheap route and make post-converted cash-ins, instead of taking advantage of James Cameron’s camera technology and making original 3D films. I can confidently say that TRON: Legacy is the best 3D film to come out since Avatar. It also takes full advantage of IMAX (with many scenes shot in the format), so the film is definitely best seen on an IMAX screen.

The original 1982 TRON (which I have yet to see) is nearly as old as I am. At the time, the film had state of the art CGI effects, though by today’s standards it looks quite dated. How appropriate then that nearly 30 years later, a sequel has been made that can now more credibly show a world inside a computer. Read the rest of this entry »

Resident Evil: Afterlife
Directed by Paul WS Anderson
Sony Pictures, Sept 2010

By Caesar Martini

Why do I keep going to see Resident Evil movies?  They’re so consistently terrible.  The first one was adequate, the second one (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) was as close to a crime against humanity as a motion picture can come, and the third one’s (RE: Extinction) main virtue was that it wasn’t as bad as the second.  Sigh.  Well here we go. Read the rest of this entry »

Monsters
Directed by Gareth Edwards
UK
Part of the Vanguard Programme

By Sean Kelly

When I first heard of the independent sci-fi film Monsters, it almost sounded like District 9 meets Cloverfield. After seeing the film, I also found myself recalling the sense of isolation felt in 28 Days Later.

The set-up is quite simple, six years ago a space probe carrying alien samples crashed in Mexico. The area of the crash site was quarantined, and in the present day of the film, attacks from giant squid-like alien monsters have become a part of life. Read the rest of this entry »

Losers always win (our hearts)

By Denise Liu

Five graphic novels to remind you about the booger hanging out of your nose

Hello there readers of the MONDOverse! Welcome to the first instalment of Reader’s Advisory. This column is dedicated exclusively making you drop buckets of cash on delicious hard cover beauties (or, just as good, borrow from the public library — you won’t believe the range of books you can get your hands on these days).

This week we’re going to kick things off with a summer reading list of some of my favourite graphic novels. Self-deprecating characters, whether depressingly suburban or fighting an apocalypse tooth and nail; people against the odds are MY people. What odds, you might ask? Oh, y’know, finding that hot guitarist from that underground show the other night while fighting for your very existence amidst a deadly plague. Or trying to reconcile the idea of a private life (and your sex addiction) in a crushing city of millions. What makes these heroes human are their foibles, and we’d like nothing better than to see them get the girl/boy/scholarship in the end because, dammit, Enid should go to art school and grow the eff up like I wanted to. So anyway, if you’re heading off to the shops on Wednesday, you should definitely ask for any of these titles to help keep your habit at bay. You depraved little person, you.

Ball Peen Hammer
Adam Rapp (w), George O’Connor (i). First Second, 2009.

Read if you like: science fiction, teen fiction, survival drama.

Citizens kill, pillage and nurse one another in a city torn to shreds by an unstoppable plague. The only sense of order comes from being enlisted as a Dragger or Sacker – hired help to “dispose” of infected bodies. And you thought your job sucked. What sets this apart from most apocalyptic virus stories I’ve read is that obtaining the cure is hardly the focus. The characters are living their lives as normally as possible, going about daily routines (bleaching one’s spreading sores, foraging for food, going to rock concerts) and taking care of family (as defined by a few trustworthy individuals). Read the rest of this entry »

Predators
Director: Nimrod Antal
Twentieth Century Fox, July 2010

By Caesar Martini

You know, this film is not getting the attention it deserves, and I don’t understand why, because if you’re a fan of the 1987 Predator film, you should be a fan of this one too. And if you’re a fan of the Alien vs Predator films that we’ve been punished with in the past few years, then what the hell is wrong with you? Those films were terrible disgraces to their original properties. Instead of treating us to an awesome alien-killing-machine throwdown, they decided to shoot fight scenes that you could recreate by tossing Alien and Predator action figures at each other in a dark room.

One of the criticisms of Predators is that it’s not terribly new or inventive. Well Christ, the antagonist of the movie is an alien being whose sole purpose is to hunt and kill people, what more do you want? Read the rest of this entry »

The Book of Eli
Directed by The Hughes Brothers
Warner Brothers, 2010

By Miles Baker

The future is sad because it’s grey and brown, but — if it’s any consolation — it’s also really well lit.

The nukes have landed and society has gone to shit. Gangs roam ruined highways, preying on passersby; others have sought shelter in the bombed out remains of small towns; food and water are scarce. But, worst of all for people like myself who work in publishing, books are rare and there are only a few people left who can read. In roams Denzel Washington, a post-apocalypic samurai who caries the most rare book of all, a King James Bible.

Enter slumlord Gary Oldman, who seeks the unifying/controlling power of the sacred text; and cue fight scenes. Mila Kunis and Ray Stevenson round out the cast (with a super sweet cameo from Tom Waits). Read the rest of this entry »

Cube
Directed by Vincenzo Natali
Alliance Atlantis, 1997

By Sean Kelly

With the release of his latest film, Splice, I thought I would go back and take a look at Cube – Vincenzo Natali’s first and most well-known film, and  something of a cult classic. The story is simple: a group of strangers find themselves in a maze of cubical rooms. Some of these rooms feature deadly traps and the group scrambles to find an exit.

This is essentially a one-set film, and it would have been impossible to pull off if it wasn’t for the quality of the character development. There are six main characters: Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint) – a cop, Holloway (Nicky Guadagni) – a doctor, Leaven (Nicole de Boer) – a student, Worth (David Hewlett) – an architect, Rennes (Wayne Robson) – an escape artist, and Kazan (Andrew Miller) – an autistic man. Each of these characters seem to represent a certain archetype, but as the film progresses their true roles are revealed.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Caesar Martini, Leo K. Moncel, Sean Kelly and Shane McNeil

Shane McNeil’s Picks

5. Inglourious Basterds (Dir. Quentin Tarantino)
The Nazi revenge premise seemed doomed from the get-go, thankfully Quentin found some incredible performers to execute his trademark dialogue. Watch out for it to be a best picture sleeper.

4. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Dir. Wes Anderson)
When Anderson made The Darjeeling Limited, my biggest complaint was that, as much as I love Wes Anderson’s formula of witty dialogue, great soundtracks and intricately done interiors, he had to stop making movies about young men with daddy issues. It turns out all he needed to do was change his medium and I’d be ok with another one. Tremendously enjoyable.

3. A Serious Man (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)
I almost think they made the first 10 minutes of this film a test to see how many people would wait out the exposition to see the actual film they made. The Coens’ best comedy since Raising Arizona (sorry, Dude).
Read the rest of this entry »

The Box
Directed by Richard Kelly
Warner Bros, 2009

By Sean Kelly (no relation)

It would be a bit of an understatement to say that Richard Kelly has had a bit of a bumpy ride on the road to making his first major studio film. His first film Donnie Darko had a nearly non-existent theatrical release (it probably didn’t help that the film was released about a month after 9/11 and involved a plane engine falling onto a house). However, the film went on to become one of the first cult hits of the decade, and my personal favourite, and I wasn’t alone in looking forward to a follow-up.

The follow-up didn’t come fast enough. For the longest time Kelly was set to write and direct last year’s Knowing as his second film, before it moved to Alex Proyas. After five years (and taking a screenwriting job for 2005’s Domino), Kelly finally returned with his second film Southland Tales. The general consensus is that Southland marked a sophomore slump for Kelly, though I dug the film. Read the rest of this entry »

District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Key Creatives / Sony Pictures, 2009

By Caesar Martini

All right. All right, all right, all right. I used to send out movie reviews like it was my job (although the lack of compensation I received for doing this proved that it definitely wasn’t). Perhaps it was the love I had of the sound of my own voice, or my desire to crush everyone in my path under the weight of my magnificent and flawless opinion, but whatever “IT” was that compelled me to pump out movie reviews like Kate Gosselin pumps out children shrivelled up and died inside me some time ago (which would explain the smell). To my surprise, some people actually missed my reviews, which is odd considering that they rarely said anything about them whilst I was putting them out, the tossers. But I digress.

So here I find myself hacking at my keyboard once again, trying to verbalize a frothy-mouthed opinion on the most recent moving picture-show that has flickered across my dull, soulless eyes. What could have prompted me to take up a thankless past-time that I had previously shunned, you ask? Why, District 9, I answer, perhaps the bestest and awesomest movie I have seen this year (possibly until Zombieland comes out). I’ll warn my readers now (all six of you): if you’re uncomfortable with the mental image of a grown man trying his best to fellate a movie, you might want to skip to the end.

District 9 is a film written and directed by South African born Neill Blomkamp, who you have not heard of and indeed shouldn’t have, because he’s literally done nothing else except some special effects on Smallville and other piddly crap. You may have heard Read the rest of this entry »

District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Key Creatives/Sony Pictures 2009

By Brian Last

Due to a scrapping of the Halo film, Peter Jackson gave director Neill Blomkamp financing to make whatever he wanted. The result is District 9, and while Halo fans may be upset, I couldn’t be happier because it gave us this great film. While Blomkamp is no stranger to the biz (he has been in VFX on major Hollywood projects), this does mark his first sit in the director’s chair for a feature.

What starts out as a simple documentary turns into a story of struggle, for both man and alien kind. In this film, a race of extra terrestrials arrives on earth. They hover above Johannesburg and after three months of zero activity, the humans decide to take action by cutting into the ship. It is here that they find the aliens, who appear to be malnourished. The aliens are pulled from the ship and forced to live in a camp. Read the rest of this entry »

Moon
Directed by Duncan Jones
Sony Pictures Classics, 2009

By Sean Kelly

I’m going out on a limb here, but Moon was probably one of the finest science fiction films I’ve seen in years, and even though we are only halfway through 2009, it’ll probably end up being one of my top films of the year.

While I think it obligatory to mention that director Duncan Jones is David Bowie’s son, I will not waste any time trying to compare the film to Bowie’s song, “Space Oddity”.

In the near future, the moon is used to mine Helium-3, a key element to solving Earth’s energy crisis. The entire operation is overlooked by a single crew member, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), under the guidance of the on-ship computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey).

Sam lives a lonely existence, and in between checking the harvesters he goes through a routine of running Read the rest of this entry »