shruew's Reviews

Pandorum is one of those movies you know what you’re getting when you go see it.  You know it’s not going to be that great, there’s going to be some loud noises that pass for horror and there’s going to be some horribly designed ship interiors (apparently, in the future, spaceship interiors are designed by the same folks who design CostCo warehouses).  At least the spaceship designers knew they were creating a crap ship and had the foresight to include hand crank generators for everything as well as conveniently located crow bars every five feet of the ship.

Problem is, people who are going to see a movie like Pandorum have already seen it in other movies.

Directed by a German who isn’t Uwe Boll and nearly as good and starring, somehow, Dennis Quaid, the dude who played Angel in the X-Men movies and Milla Jovovich stand in Antje Traue; Pandorum tells the story of people waking up from hyperspace sleep and wondering where everyone went and who these hardcore Raider fans are and why are they trying to eat people.

Let’s start with the phrase “Pandorum.”  It’s slang way to see hyperspace sleep induced craziness.  Who came up with that name?  It sounds nothing like scientific name they give it nor does it sound like something the ship’s crew would come up with.  It’s like the writer came up with the name first and had to write it into the script because, well, it’s the title of the movie.

It’s also unclear why everyone isn’t dead.  (Yes, spoilers coming in this paragraph).  If the flight was supposed to take 130 years or so, how are the Raider nation people still finding people to eat 900+ years later?

Oh well, back to the original point that you’ve seen this movie before.  Take the water drenched scenes of Leviathon, throw in the apocalypse explanation scene lifted directly from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (and forget that the guy who is explaining it has no way to knowing what he’s explaining), add in the Reavers from Serenity / Firefly and yes, of course, crawling through air ducts like Alien.  Add in the directing prowess of a Uwe Boll wannabe and you have a recipe for crap cakes.  But, hey, if you like sci-fi crap cakes, you’ll probably rent it anyway.

I give it:
-131378905.1351789135 Balls of Fury

I have a fairly good knowledge of the Marvel Universe.  So, I know all the script writing process of these X-Men movies has been to chop up the source material, put it in some chili, let the chili sit out in the sun for a few days, add in some broken glass.  Eat said chili and have explosive, bloody, diarrhea on some paper to make the script.

Still, overall, I enjoyed the X-Men movies overall…so what about the first of the many solo movies – Wolverine?

Hugh Jackman stars as Wolverine’s dad, and then, later, as the titular character.  In a tramatic incident, he finds out he has claws and runs away with his brother to fulfill their dream of leaving the cursed land of Canada and go to America to fight in every war from the Civil War through the Vietnam war for good old U.S.A.!

He decides he doesn’t want to kill people anymore and decide to go back to the cursed land of Canada to help destroy the environment by over lumbering the forest.  He also finds a sexy teacher to have sex with and they need to buy new sheets at an alarming rate.

So far, I’m thinking, this has all the pieces of the classic Canada bashing film and I’m all on board.

Then sexy wife dies, Wolverine gets pissed and a bunch of crap blows up and his old secret war buddies come in and out of frame as they try to piece together some semblance of plot.

Unfortunantly, once the movie moves away from overt Canada bashing it goes downhill fast.

Finally a twist happens and Wolverine gets even madder and causes the Three Mile Island incident.  Gambit would’ve helped more, but he took a loooong time to find a good landing spot for his plane.

In between, the character cyclops is introduced, but kept blind folded through out the events as to not ruin continuity for the previous movies that really happen in the future.  All because they needed an excuse for a decapitated head to further pollute the environment by ruining a perfectly clean running nuclear reactor.

Finally Wolverine loses his memory and some kids are rescued by a mannequin who has a helicopter.

All in all, not a very good film despite it’s Canada bashing ambitions.

I give it -13057891370931.315135135 Balls of Fury