The new film Surrogates has now replaced White Out as the latest movie to be adapted from a graphic novel. It tells an interesting tale about a future where people can have themselves replaced by robots that they can fully control by being hooked up to a computer system. By doing this people can live under the impression (or lie) that they look much more younger, prettier, handsomer, and cooler than they really are. Only a small group of people choose to remain separate from the surrogate society. These people, often referred to as "meat bags", live under the guidance an guy called The Prophet (played by Ving Rhames).

All seems to be going great in the surrogate world...until a homicide goes down. The first one in a very long time. And this is where our main character, FBI Agent Greer comes on the scene. He is played by The Willis. Joined by his partner Agent Peters (played by Rhada Mitchell), Greer sets out to investigate the homicide. This investigation leads them into a conspiracy centered around a new high powered computerized weapon that can kill people while they're wired up to their surrogate robot.

Despite the interesting conspiracy plot, the real story of this movie centers around Greer and his wife Maggie (played by Rosamund Pike). Greer has doubts about continuing to live the surrogate lifestyle while Maggie can only feel happy with her surrogate personality. The heart-ache they both feel begins with the death of their son that occured before the movie takes place. It grows with Greer not feeling any real connection with his wife. This is the main conflict to be resolved.

An important question posed by this movie is whether the world would be a better place if we were exempt from all responsibilty. We hear the words of the surrogate commercial: "Do what you want...Be whoever you want to be". Sounds so good. But is it really? This is a similar theme to Gamer (don't see it!). However, whereas Gamer fell on its face, Surrogates takes off.

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Review - Jennifer's Body

From the makers of Juno, comes Jennifer's Body starring Amanda Seyfried as Needy and Megan Fox in the role of Jennifer. The movie is a thriller that takes place in a typical, ordinary high school setting. The story centers on Needy and her life-long friendship with Jen. As is immediately obvious Jen has grown into the pretty girl whereas Needy is a bit more of the average-geeky girl. Through the film the main story is one of how childhood friendships can become strained once adolesence has come around. However, in this story, it goes a step further with the pretty girl becoming a demon that can only survive by eating people (mainly boys).

The main underlining theme in the movie is the relationship of how different high school social roles interact with one another. In the film we see attention drawn to the big football player, the Emo guy, and of course Needy the Geek-girl and Jen the Pretty Girl. It is obvious that this movie was made from a girl perspective for the most part. Even the fact that Jen has become a demon is a metaphor for how evil "pretty girls" are thought of. There is even a brief moment where you have 'city people' relating to 'rural people'.

As always we won't get into any spoilers but I will mention a little bit about how Jen becomes a demon girl. It involves another classic theme: the idea that you can sell your soul to the devil in return for fame and/or a certain ability. It does involve a indie rock band and a sacrifice attempt of a certain girl. You may want to do some research on blues musician Robert Johnson.

From a content stand point this not a very scary movie, although that's always open to interpretation. There alot of funny sequences that are well planned and not over done. The makeup team did a real good job. There are scenes where Jen looks freaky.

I did think this was a very good movie and was impressed with all the themes within it. Also special credit goes to it for a Phil Collins reference...

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Review - White Out

Kate Beckinsale stars in White Out, the latest graphic novel movie adaptation. It is directed by Dominic Sena and tells an atmospheric story of a young female US marshall named Carrie Stetko (played by Kate) who is working in Anartica alongside a large, multi-national group of scientists. Her friend that we see from the beginning is Dr. John Fury (played by Tom Skerritt). He is portrayed as a older man with a grand daughter he has never seen, hoping he can get back to the US soon so he can spend time with her.

Things get interesting when Carrie is sent out to investigate the discovery of a dead man who obviously died under very suspicious circumstances. Things get deeper with a sudden appearance of a guy sent by the UN to investigate. His name is Robert Pryce (played by Gabriel Macht). From here the game of trust begins.

At the start of the movie we don't really know too much about the characters. And in a strong way that's where alot of the plot is. We learn more about Carrie through a gradual sequence of flashbacks of traumatic events that expalin the deepness of her character. We also learn more about the other characters that plays into the ending of the film.

White Out also interestingly shows glimpses of the "masked killer - mystery" genre that originated with Prom Night (1980). It's not the main plot of the movie but it's there and I didn't really expect to see it.

The atmosphere of the movie is very effective. The snow and the wind disguise alot of what's happening similar to being in the dark. It reminds me of the atmosphere in The Thing (1982), 30 Days of Night (2007), and The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008).

Although White Out is a good movie, there are some things I would have liked to have had. Mainly more drama and emotion dedicated to the conclusion. The ending was set up well but didn't really get driven home as powerfully as it could have been. Unfortunately, as Johnny Depp tells us in Secret Window: "The ending is the most important part". The ending of White Out didn't get it all the way done for me. But this is a good movie nonetheless...

...RENT IT

Sorority Row is the latest movie in what has become a long line of remakes of 1980s horror movies. The original movie from which this is based is titled House On Sorority Row and/or Seven Sisters. The original also served as the basis for the 1997 movie I Know What You Did Last Summer (I'm not sure if that's ever been openly acknowledged).

The movie is pretty much what you would expect to see. A prank gone wrong and somebody who knows about it going around and killing the sisters involved. You've seen this before.

There are hardly any scenes in the movie that are original. Most of the acting is bad, atleast in the first 45 minutes. After that it gets a little better. There's alot lame dialogue. Most of the characters act completely dumb. There is two way lame references to Facebook that should have been cut in the editing room. There's alot of lame talk by the sisters about how important their sorority is in life even though people around them are getting taken out. The ending is kinda okay but nothing you haven't seen. I actually figured out who the bad guy was about half way through the movie and predicted the twists at the end.

I'm gonna be kind and rate this movie as an FX/TBS It. It's not the worse movie I've seen but it really serves no purpose.

...FX/TBS IT

Review - 9

9 is the latest computer animated movie produced by Tim Burton. It is directed by Shane Acker who also serves as co-writer alongside Pamela Pettler. The film tells the tale of an alternate reality where humans have been destroyed by machines during what looks like World War II, as evidenced by the technology you see. The only survivors of the holocaust are a small group of strange machines created by a scientist. Each of these individuals are named by the number on their backs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and the title character 9.

The main plot to the movie is the numbered individuals having to hide and fight against this great big machine that possesses the ability to create other machines similar to itself. As the story goes on the viewer is exposed to some of the best animations and visual effects I have ever seen.

Unfortunately the story itself doesn't hold up as well in its effectiveness. The story is a little bit on the thin side and is rushed through rather quickly. I was disappointed that the characters were never fully developed. I know they don't have much of a history but I was never able to get to a point were I could care about them. Throughout the course of the film you see bad situations happen to various characters but I never cared if they lived or died or escaped or whatever. This becomes incredibly unfortunate at the end of the movie. At the conclusion you can sense a potential of it being very powerful. But with the inability to care for the characters it becomes meaningless. But looks really good.

For me 9 lacked a good bit of depth. But I still cannot say that it is a terrible movie. There are some good action sequences in it and some good visualizations. However I don't think that warrants spending any money on this movie. In my opinion it is best to just wait for this one on one the Encore or Starz channels. It also could turn up on FX...

9 - FX/TBS It...

Review: Gamer

Most of you have seen the ads the past couple of weeks for this movie. In one ad I heard that it was the "Last action movie of the summer". If so, the summer ended on a sour note. Gamer is the newest film starring Gerard Butler and yes he does take his shirt off in this movie. All jokes aside, Gamer, follows Kable an inmate on death row who has agreed to play in a real video game called Slayers. Through a process revealed early on in the movie, players are remotely controlled by normal people, who are fully aware that they are controlling real humans. The agreement is that any prisoner that plays 30 rounds and lives gets freed.

I won't go into further detail because there is no much else to go into. Gamer is thin on dialogue and thin on plot. The idea is somewhat borrowed, but that is forgivable. The premise was a good starting point and could have evolved into a great film. Unfortunately, you are thrown into the world of Gamer without even a text introduction. You have little back story of the main character and you find it difficult to care for him. The acting was sub-par and that is a shame. Many of the main characters are very good actors and their talents were not fully utilized.

The graphics are really good, but they cannot make up for the way the movie played out. Basically, you sit and stare at the screen for about 1hr 47min and wonder what's going on. The story is not hard to follow, but the lack of a plot makes you question why some scenes are in the movie. Gamer is a very violent, hard core action movie, but after all that action you sit through, the ending is very anti-climactic.

I'm going to stop dragging this out and give the movie the rating I thought of right when the credits started to roll.

Stand Outside Your Local Theater and Warn People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Review - Moon

Moon is the second movie from director Duncan Jones. It stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, an employee of Lunar Industries who is on a three year contract maintaining a station on the moon that harvests Helium-3, Earth’s answer to the energy crisis. Sam is the only human crew member; however he is accompanied by the ship’s computer/robot HAL 90… I mean GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). All has gone well so far, but with only two weeks to go on his contract, things begin to get a little strange. Sam starts to have visions, bad dreams, and to top it all off, he rescues someone from out on the moon’s surface who looks strangely familiar.

Now I’m going to stop right there because I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but let me just say this: Moon is one of my favorite movies of this year. It may even be my favorite sci-fi movie of the year (sorry District 9). Sam Rockwell’s performance is what this movie is all about (as he is pretty much the only human character), and he knocks it out of the park. Watching him try to find out what is happening to him is really fascinating. The story of the movie develops so well that you are right along with him, but you never feel left behind. I can really go along with a movie that puts you into the shoes of the character. The special effects in the movie are really well done, especially considering how low-budget they are. The scenes that take place outside are really trippy and fun to watch.

I don’t really have a lot of complaints about this movie, and the ones that I do have are really just nit-picking. The only thing that really felt off to me was that there were instances in which the sound didn’t feel right. I’m not sure if it was a bad mix or what, but some spots sounded weird. But again, they were so far and few between that it never got in the way of the experience. The only other thing that I didn’t like was that there were certain elements of the movie that I wanted to hear more about. There were some areas that I would have liked the movie to have explored but didn’t. I guess that’s really more wish fulfillment than an actual complaint. The truth is, I just wanted the movie to keep going.

I don’t think it’s too difficult to figure out what rating I’m going to give this movie. If you can still find it in theaters, since it has a pretty limited release, you should absolutely…

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