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Started by Fearless Freep, January 18, 2003, 03:20:18 PM

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Fearless Freep

Hardware - Post apoc killer android movie about a guy who gets a hold of parts from a disassembled  robot and gives them to his artist girlfriend who uses them in a sculpture.  Only the robot's not quite dead, so it reassembles itself and goes on a killing spree.

What's Good - Production.  The sets, lighting, cinemtography, etc...all work well  to create a really nice atmosphere; dusty dirty, smokey and run down.  Sound track was pretty cool, too.

What's Bad - The script.  The whole pacing of the movie was very awkward.  It took a long time for anything to really start happening.   If you hadn't read the vidoe box, you would've been wondering "where is this going?" I read the box so I know where it was going and I  got impatient for it to get there.  Unfortunately, once it gets going , it seems to end very quickly.     Only seems to, because there is more to come...um...much more.  I can deal with false endings and a little bit afterwards, but this false ending came so soon  (and felt more like a real ending) that the rest of the movie seems awkward, filled with several other little false endings that just seem to drag on.    A little reworking of the script would've helped to better place the events over the span of the running time of the movie .  Also, there are several subplots and character conflicts alluded to but never fully explored that would've made some of the goings-on much more interesting if they'd been developed (such as the true origin of the android in a population control effort)  Tightening up of some of the scenes, especially early on, would've allowed time to better expand that

Special note:  A quick cut scene early on when the characters were wandering through a city shows a small child, alive and crying,  on a leash attached to it's parent, who is lying dead.  Really creeped me out...you know the child will be dead soon, too.

Summary: Well executed post-apoc treatment of an intreresting story let down by a poorly laid out script

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Escape Velocity - The tagline says " In Deep Space, There's Lots of Time to Kill. ", and unfortunately, that's not a good start.  The plot of the movie is that on a deep space research vessel (a *huge* vessel manned by a single man and woman, said woman having brought  along her teenage daughter) they are doing research into a collapsing star.  They find a derelict ship and bring aboard the cyro-frozen survivors, one of which revives (named "Nash").   The guys story is hard to prove so there's a bit of suspicion on the part of the older two scientists.   The-just-turned-18 girl is immediately smitten with him (being she's been trapped on this ship for the last year and a half...what parent would think *that* was healthy for someone that age) and is resentlful of her mom's words of caution.  So eventually, Nash, takes over the ship and revives his frozen buddies, much to the objection of the three original crew.

Patrick Bergen looks *a lot * like I imagine Gil Gerard would at that age.

What's Good - um...it doesn't hurt

What's Bad - a whole lot.  The scene pacing drags.   I don't know what it was but I found myself really bored a lot.  Maybe the super-clean sci-fi sets just seem to sap the life out of it, or maybe too much time between actor's lines.  Another problem is that in an prologue scene, you can see Nash about to be executed for many crimes before a prison break frees him.  You already know he's going to be the baddy on the ship so a lot of the scenes where there is doubt  on the part of the crew just feel like wasted time.  It would've been more suspenseful if they had skipped the prologue and just used flashbacks to slowly put together the back story (which they sorta tried at one point)   The story is very reminiscent of "Sleeping Dogs" and many of the sets reminded me of that or "Assault On Dome 4" or other similar offerings.  However, while Peter Outerbridge does a fine job as Nash, he's not quite as much fun to  watch as C. Thomas Howell (in "Sleeping Dogs").  Many of the plot points were just plain annoying.   Like only two crew members plus daughter on this huge ship for several years.  Makes no sense.  Also, the female scientist  is ex-military, of course,  so she can fight back against Nash, although military savy viewers will be amused at her rank insignia (Air Force A1C and SrA (E-2 and -3) chevrons) and her being called "officer" .  The male scientist kinda disappears early on in the chaos and doesn't make an impact until the end...which isn't really an impact.  The daughter is very annoying and it's hard to have much sympathy for her when things go bad.  The voice-over epilogue talks about her becoming an adult, but it's hard to see where in the story she grew into any maturity; she whines and cries a lot.

Summary: A rather pain-free, boring 'trapped in space with a killer' movie.  Wait for it to make the rounds on sci-fi channel (which it seems to regularly) because it' probably not worth a rental.

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Survivor - Richard Moll plays a maniacal overlord....there's a switch.  This post-apoc offering is actually pretty well done.  It's got a decent back story and some interesting characters with motivations.  An astronaut returned from space after a monumental 'oops' pretty much destroyed the  world seeks to find a supposed utopian society buried somewhere in the sand, only to find that it's been taken over by Kragg (Moll) who seeks to perpetuate only his genetic line by forced sterlization of the men and much mating with the fertile women (good work if yuo can get it).  If you like post-apoc movies with sand and Richard Moll, it's a good way to blow off some time.

Um...the typical sci-fi setting of 'big factory' was a bit hard to swallow given that it was supposed to be all under the sand.  Just who built that thing?


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Nightmare Weekend and Blood Sisters (no IMDB entry I can find) - A couple of very low budget slashers with bad acting.  Blood Sisters at least has a servicable plot.: a couple of new college students investigate a rash of killings on campus that leads them to a sorority of vampires who want to make them then next initiates.  NIghtmare Weekend is from Troma and it suprised me from their reputation how much of a stright horror film this was.  However, the plot makes no sense and the ending was so poorly filmed that I have no idea what happened.  Avoid them both unless you are into very low budget slasher horrors

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting

Scott

Well Fearless Freep, I'm not even sure I could find even one of those titles, but those are  nice reviews.

JohnL

>What's Good - Production. The sets, lighting,

I didn't like the lighting in Hardware, everything seemed to have an orange haze. I hate movies that look like they're filmed though a colored filter. Other than that, I liked the movie itself.

>Wait for it to make the rounds on sci-fi channel (which it seems to regularly)

That's because it's a 'Sci-Fi original' that they bought from someone else.

Brother Ragnarok

I liked Hardware myself, as much as it is your standard killer something on the loose movie, it was one of the first killer robot on the loose movies, if I'm not mistaken.  And you're overlooking the most important part of the whole damn movie...Lemmy's cameo as a cab driver where he cranks up Ace of Spades on the radio and says "This band kicks ass."  It doesn't get any cooler than that.

Brother R

Squishy

"Nightmare Weekend" features, I see, one Dale Midkiff. RUN! FOR ALL THAT IS ALL RIGHT AND TOLERABLE...RUN!!!

Almost all the women in the cast made exactly one movie--but Andrea Thompson went on to become a CNN anchor!

"Follow your dream. You can achieve your goal; I'm living proof. Beefcake! Kickass!"
--Eric Cartman

Fearless Freep

I see, one Dale Midkiff

Yeah, I thought I recognized him from "Time Trax"...

And you're overlooking the most important part of the whole damn movie..

Given I don't know who you are talking about..or the song... :)

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting