Alert the amphibious squadron!

[andygates]

Yay for Film4 being free and running a sci-fi season.  But on re-watching some of these movies, the following conclusions remain exactly the same as they were the first time:

• The Core's science is still so bad that it causes me physical pain.  I quite like the ensemble cliché cast's performance, but dear gods, the stuff they had to deliver was pure undiluted globster seepage.  You know it's a bad disaster movie when the Mission Control Cheer scene doesn't move you so much as make you think, "thank hell it's over."  How did DJ Qualls deliver the line, "The planet is healing itself!" without choking on his own vomit? 
  
• The Planet of the Apes series still, after all these years, have awesome makeup.  Way to go, guys!  Especially Peter Vincent, Fearless Vampire Killer, who is under that rubber somewhere.  The Statue of Liberty shot is an all-time classic.
  
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is still pretty, clever, but totally anodyne and unmoving.  And it's not the visuals: I think it's the editing and soundtrack, which too-slavishly follow the Universal serial style.  It has a slightly-wrong visual grammar that doesn't engage.  Still, Angelina chews up her ten minutes of film with such gloriously hypercompetent monocular dominatrix glee that I can't really dislike it.  

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I blamed it on Jude Law at the time, since I don't think I've ever seen him play anything other than 'weirdly silicone-coated-looking and disengaging' but you may well be right. It's worth it for Angelina Jolie, though. :)

[andygates.livejournal.com]

He's a contributing factor, for sure. He almost always falls into a sort of uncanny valley of his own, doesn't he?