We had a couple of alien invasion movies with young people learning to use their super powers on the menu tonight. Joe brought I Am Number Four and we watched that first. I have to admit, I was curious and I'm always interested in seeing a science fiction film I haven't seen before. I could just barely remember the ads for the movie from early in the year. Alex Pettyfer, whom we thought looked pretty old but turned out to be about 19 when the movie was made, plays John Smith. He's an alien from Lorien and he's hiding out on our Earth with Timothy Oliphant. Tim is a warrior entrusted to protect the boy from the Mogadorians. They are the aliens, led by Kevin Durant, who destroyed Lorien. Kevin has all the best lines, all the funnest scenes, and some nice tiny pointy teeth. He's got two big monsters he keeps in a truck. They leap like jack rabbits, fly through the air like flying squirrels, and their arms end in sharp pointy spikes that are good for stabbin'. Alex has a glowy leg problem that blows his cover. Tim and Alex run from their home in Florida. Instead of laying low in their new place in Paradise Ohio, Alex goes to school and starts making friends, and enemies. It all goes bad, one thing after another, and people start to get murdered. It's a pretty dower movie, not too much fun, people gettin' all emoty. It seems longer than it's 109 minutes, mostly because nothing much happens for long stretches, and the characters do all the wrong things, which is very annoying. Not keeping a low profile gets a lot of people killed. Alex has some sort of super powers that Tim doesn't tell him enough about before he's killed by one of the Mogadorians. Now Alex is on his own, except for the human's he's made friends with. He wins the day and the movie ends with a bit about how he's got to find the rest of the Loriens. Director D C Caruso did an ok job though I thought some of it is pretty cliched and predictable. Mostly it's an action thriller with science fiction trappings. We spent a lot of time talking and complaining about the story elements and the plot holes and inconsistencies. It's a movie that I won't bother to pick up now that I've seen it.
Gantz is a Japanese science fiction movie based on a Manga. A couple of young guys get hit by a subway train and they wake up in a white room with a few other people and a huge black ball. The ball tells them their old life is gone, the ball will tell them what to do, and that's the way the cookie crumbles. All the people in the room have died. Now they are here. There's a lot of that staring into space and stoic face time like you expect to see in a Japanese film. The ball pops open. It's got a human hooked up to some wires and a shit load of guns. There are fancy leather body suits to wear. The ball sends them on a mission to kill an alien that eats onions. They kill the alien but sadly it turns out to be the possible son of their real target. Many of the team are slaughtered. It's mostly their own fault for not working together and not shooting their guns. That was an annoying thing about the people, they wouldn't fire their weapons even when they were in danger. Not sure who is responsible for that plot element but it's highly annoying. They kill the alien eventually and return to the white room. There's a lot of teleporting, using a nice effect, and most of the CGI wasn't too bad. The suits and weapons are all fun. It's just way too long and dull. More people are introduced to the white room and they get sent to the slaughter. It seems an inefficient way to fight the aliens but on the other hand there's a never ending supply of dead people. During the teams hang time between missions they get to freely wander the city. Mostly that's all boring. There are points rewarded for killing the aliens. If you get 100 points you can get ressurected and leave the game or return a dead player to the team. It ends with a To Be Continued. I somehow don't think I'll be seeing the sequel Gantz: Perfect Answer anytime too soon. It would have been a much better show if they cut about about a half hour of overdone character development but that's the way it goes. The movie isn't out here yet but Amazon lists a dvd/BluRay set coming out the end of August. There's a 26 episode Anime series that gets a pretty negative description on Amazon. I'm certainly not going to pick those up.
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