The Anomaly is a 2014 British SF film I found on YouTube. It's directed by Noel Clarke who also co-wrote the script with Simon Lewis and plays the main character. I didn't know him but I see that he's been a regular on the Doctor Who reboot and he'd been in Star Trek Into Darkness. He's been acting since 1999, mostly he's in stuff I hadn't seen before, though I did see him in an episode of A Touch Of Frost and Waking The Dead but didn't know who he was. I hadn't heard of most of the other actors, except for Brian Cox.
The story is about a soldier who wakes up in a van with a kid chained to the wall. They escape and the whole 113 minute movie is spent having Noel try to figure out how he got there. It's a non-stop chase with occasional fights. Turns out some crazy guys, Brian Cox and Ian Somerhalder, have a plan to take over the minds of the all the people with Nano technology. They want to control people's minds for their own reasons and don't see how wrong that is. Knobs, huh.
The movie jumps around in time and space as Noel jumps between two parallel existences. Because of that it takes a while to get to understand what's going on. Eventually the baddies are put in their place. It was ok but I wouldn't need to see it again.
Jupiter Ascending is a 2014 SF film written, produced, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski.
Mila Kunis is a young house cleaner in Chicago. She wants a telescope and her cousin talks her into selling one of her eggs to get some cash. During the egg harvest she's nearly killed by the hospital staff but Channing Tatum comes charging in and kills all the staff who turn out to be aliens in disguise. Channing and Mila run off and he fills her in on the reality of the universe she lives in. It's a populated place and there are all sorts of aliens out there. Earth was set up as a farm, they're going to harvest humans for an immortality drug. Mila is the genetic duplicate of a dead queen who wanted to stop the process. She was killed and her children fight for control of the business and planet. Because Mila is the duplicate of the dead queen she owns the Earth.
The children are a creepy bunch, filled with lies and deception, that care for nothing but their own power and profit. That causes a lot of fighting and running about. Action scenes are big and flashy and noisy. Some of it is hard to see, everything moves fast and the shots are too close up. There's lots of high tech magical shit happening all the time. Mila stakes her claim on the Earth in a scene that you've seen a 100 times already. Bureaucratic runaround it always the same the galaxy over. On the way back to Earth, she's kidnapped by Titus and he gets her to marry him. He's going to kill her but he's keeping it a surprise for after the wedding. Channing comes crashing in and rescues her. There's more fighting and explosions as they battle it out on Jupiter.
They spent a ton of money on the movie and barely made their money back. It got mixed reviews and I can understand. It's a mix of entertaining and exhausting with a slight story that barely fills the 127 minutes. Some of the battle scenes seem to go on a while longer than I liked but I'm old and impatient. I did like some of the space ships and sets but that only goes so far. I wasn't sorry I saw it but probably wouldn't need to go buy the DVD now that I've seen it.
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