Duncan Jones’ Moon is a science fiction story in the purest sense of the term. It concerns the plight of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) working alone on the moon running a facility that mines Helium-3 for an energy company back on Earth. Inside of the first scene the audience is crushed by the sense of isolation shown to us as Sam has only GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) the station Artificial Intelligence with whom to communicate. Through the simple premise of a man alone on the moon, this film explores speculative technology that leads Sam and the viewer on an emotional and introspective journey of what it really means to be human.

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I guess I can excuse the fact that this installment took place in space, since that’s where Critters began. That’s more believable than going from Crystal Lake to space.

Critters 4 opens with an inaccurately re-shot scene from the end of part 3 where Charlie has been advised to wait for a pod sent from the Intergalactic Council. There is a space law that says you cannot kill the last of any species, and a holographic Ug tells Charlie not to destroy the last 2 Krite eggs. As Charlie is loading the eggs in the pod, he gets trapped in it and is taken to space. 53 years later, in the year 2045, the pod is discovered floating around by the crew of a salvage ship, and they take it. They are unable to determine what is in it, but they find the logo of Terracrop. They speak to Ug, who is now Counselor Tetra of  Terracorp. He explains that he will meet the crew at a space station not far from them. While waiting, a jerk crew member opens the pod with a space laser gun and out pops Charlie. Also, the Krite eggs have hatched. And the terror begins!

I don’t know what idiot told the filmmakers of this franchise that the character of Charlie is funny or interesting, but they were wrong. He is possibly the most boring recurring character ever. I will give Critters 4 some compliments. First, it is better than part 3. Not that it is a difficult feat to accomplish, but I do like it when a sequel is better than the previous installment. Second, the acting was much more tolerable. You have Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif, but even the actors I had never heard of were quite competent. Also, the Critters were more sinister and less “funny.” In fact, the overall tone of the movie was more serious than comical, which worked well. What did not work well? For one thing, only seeing the Critters twice in the first hour of the fourth part of a series named CRITTERS. The effects were pretty lame. Ethan freezes a Crite and then tells him to “chill out.”

Things I learned from Critters 4: In 2045, black and white Western movies are not only readily available, but popular with the young folks (I actually think this was used specifically as an excuse to use a slide guitar in the score and it be relevant). Gum is one of the best props ever. Brad Dourif chews gum like an Olympian. You know how really cool people chew gum and somewhat over exaggerate it when they speak to accentuate how cool they are? Brad is a Jedi master of this art. When you have a clear opportunity to escape, it is best to linger around and thus be susceptible to attack. TWICE.

It’s not crap. In fact, it is the second best of the series. Now, who’s ready to reboot?

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The other day, Puck reminded me that I have only reviewed one of the Critters films and that I needed to finish the series out. Damn you, Puck.

At the end of the first installment of Critters, we see a batch of Krite eggs, leaving a gaping opening for a sequel. 2 years later, we have Critters 2: The Main Course. At the beginning of the film, the 2 bounty hunters from the first, Ug and Lee, are in space with Charlie, the town drunk from Grover’s Bend, the town where the Krite attack occurred. They are killing some space creature, when another space creature calls them on their space video phone and tells them that there are still Krites on Earth and they must return. Charlie is somewhat hesitant about this, as he was a nobody and a drunk while he lived on Earth. Ug reassures him that he is one of them now, and this seems to calm Charlie’s nerves. Back in Grover’s Bend, the Krite eggs are discovered by some young punk, and he immediately trades them for beer to a guy named Quigley. Quigley sells some to Brad Brown’s Grandmother claiming that they are eggs from Europe. Brad you will no doubt recall is the son from the first movie. He and his family have since moved to Kansas City and he returns to spend Easter with his Grandmother. She is going to use the eggs that she bought for an egg hunt with some kids. She gives one of the eggs to a little girl. So now there are Krite eggs scattered around various parts of town. Needless to say, they hatch and Grover’s Bend once again falls victim to furry alien creatures that like to bite.

This movie isn’t really that good. The acting is still fine and I mean it is a pretty standard 80’s horror movie, but it just wasn’t as good as the first one. This time around there was way too much time spent getting to know characters that I ultimately didn’t give a shit about. Because of this, the movie was very slow. The pace was all off. The first movie kept going once it started, but this one kept slowing back down. Instead of quickly thinking on their feet and reacting to the situation, the characters, would stop and think of a plan, go seek help from the former sheriff Marv (who in this movie was played by Barry Corbin, instead of the no name actor I am too lazy to look up right now from the first one. Barry played him as he does any character he plays; foul mouthed, smug, tobacco chewing and hilarious). I am not sure why they did that, as Marv was pretty useless in the first film. Also, there was too much stupid comedy in this one. One of the Krites actually says, “Bitchin’.” Even more annoying is that Krites don’t speak English and thus this was translated, meaning that the Krites actually have a word for “bitchin’.”

I wouldn’t really call this crap, because it certainly does sit at the same level and many other 80’s horror movies. It is pretty run of the mill. But I wouldn’t bother with it. If you have seen the first Critters, just stop there and pretend the creatures were never heard from again. I, unfortunately, have two more films to go.

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If you read this site or have watched any of our episodes, you will know the level of respect and … love we have for Chris Nolan. Yes, PBF may have a sick fascination with Weekend at Bernie’s but even he does not particularly laud Robert Klane because WAB does not equal Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Memento, and now Inception on any level. Here we have a rare movie from a gifted filmmaker that is able to transcend multiple genres and their corresponding cliches and deliver one of the most intellectual films to overshadow anything else this year and probably many years’ films to come.

Even after watching the damn thing, the plot of Inception is rather dense but it boils down fairly simply even though it strips out the very nature of the film. Cobb is a theif trained in the art of extracting thoughts and ideas from a person’s head while they dream. However, he is tasked with a job that even many on his team describe as impossible: implanting an idea into one’s head that is conceived to be genuine by the subject. As a much more complex task than simple extraction, Cobb and his team go to great lengths to create multiple landscapes to coerce the subject into accepting the notion and considering it one of his own.

Like Nolan’s previous film, Dark Knight, Inception works on a great number of levels. The casting is spot on with each member of the principals bringing a grounding seriousness which normally is desperately needed in a film as ambitious as this. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Cobb as a man who is both confident and broken, a teacher and yet still a student when it comes to affairs with Mal, his wife played by Marion Cotillard. They have a complicated relationship to say the least but the two exert a fierce chemistry as they mingle in the dreams. Everyone else including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, and Tom Hardy play their respective roles with poise and confidence that truly sell their characters and the skills they bring. The one thing that Nolan can be faulted for here is the utter lack of development that the characters receive other than Cobb and Mal. We see the inner workings of the group and how they react to each other but Cillian Murphy as the main target for their job receives far more heavy-lifting in the way of depth than the rest of the crew.

That does not really matter much as even though the film is billed as a tale of thievery, it is mostly about Cobb and his redemption. Cobb wants nothing more than to be reunited with his remaining family after a terrible incident and planting a seed of thought inside Murphy’s head is the only way to achieve that. DiCaprio superbly manages the barrage of emotions needed to sell this point of the story in his quest. Very subtle lines of dialogue that seem superfluous at first glance become very telling of Cobb and his guilt of the consequences of previous journeys into this world.

Visually it is quite stunning, likely even more so if any of you are lucky enough to see it in IMAX. Though the majority of the movie takes place either in the real world or in a dream state designed similarly, various effects infiltrate the dream world with pretty spectacular results, a good deal of which have been shown in the previews. The grounding of the dreams in reality makes for pretty cool effects as buildings crumble, water rushes through, and Gordon-Levitt has a zero-G fight with a henchman. Each of the stages of dreams are filmed in stark contrast with one another which not only alleviates any confusion that might be had but also gives a stark contrast between a metropolis during a storm, a swank dimly-lit hotel, and a vast snowy outpost, each populated by minions of the subject’s unconscious who act as our disposable bad guys trying to stop the team.

Unless you are in a Nightmare on Elm Street film, moving through the dreamworld does not often pose many risks. This is even acknowledged early on as one of the characters is killed in the dream only to wake up unharmed in reality. However, during the task as the characters are heavily sedated to prevent the destruction of the fragile dreamscape, they face an eternity of solitude in limbo if something bad should befall them. This clever workaround elevates the story from the simple failure of a mission to a lifetime of abstract despair as the unnamed thugs lurk with large caliber weapons. This as well as many other facets of the script show the care in which it was created, not only to create a fantastic sci-fi concept, but to move beyond a simple tale of dreaming to one with a true emotional core for our main protagonist.

I was worried that the narrative would be dense and as hard to crack as your normal David Lynch film called Lost Highway. However, the story is relatively easy to follow throughout with a nice dash of flashbacks and recollections to further develop the Cobb and Mal relationship. This is not however a film that you can check your brain at the door as elements are introduced, observed, and then jettisoned as the complexity of the storytelling increases. Of course, this is one of the smartest high-concept summer blockbusters in years so you should not dare miss a minute for fear that a key element will be shown which will change the outlook of the film.

Is Inception a perfect film? Not at all but Nolan’s biggest strength lies in creating an engrossing tale that will make you forget about any shortcomings during the picture as you are too damn entertained to care. I worry that, just like Dark Knight, subsequent viewings will show the cracks in the foundation and oversights in the story. These things though will not stop you from enjoying the film. Really, Inception really does not need validation of its efforts by random people on the interwebs like myself. The caliber of everyone involved should seal the deal.

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Inception
Straight from the mind of the God, err … Chris Nolan, himself comes this summer’s rescue from the hell of endless sequels and lackluster effects. I am so excited for this movie to the point that I am even considering a 12:01 AM screening on Friday morning. The fact that there is one was baffling but I would presume theater owners know that some people are actually anticipating this as opposed to the next big tweeny-vampire-ish movie.

Based on what I’ve seen, I am pretty sure that Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Ellen Page are just a few of the impressive cast in the film as it relates to the ability to invade people’s dreams. Almost every review I’ve read has been giddily positive and while I don’t know a damn thing about Inception and I couldn’t be happier. Who am I kidding? Midnight screening here I come!

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Here we have another film that I know little of but for very different reasons. Apparently loosely based on a short from the Disney of old, this is a story of Nicolas Cage who is in over his head fighting Alfred Molina so he recruits a young kid with an untapped potential of sorcery. Unlike other somewhat iconic Jerry Bruckheimer/Cage projects, this movie does not appeal to me as it looks like a slightly grittier version of other similar stories that might have Harry in the title (and not Harry and the Hendersons). I haven’t seen any Harry Potter movies to date, that entire sub-genre of whatever holds no appeal to me, and this looks like a watered-down version of a real summer blockbuster movie.

Maybe I’m wrong but I hope Inception beats the pants off of this in the coming days.

Predators
Starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, and Lawrence Fishburne, Predators features a group of humans, referred to as “killers” of varying origins who are being stalked in the forest by a group of rapid elk with laser sights … or predators.

Early reviews have been fairly mixed with one viewers gain being another’s displeasure. It is safe to say that producer Robert Rodriguez has been fairly hit or miss with his offerings over the past decade or so but hopefully this will fall into the hit category as this is not a kid’s movie.

Personally, while the first is a good action film, I can’t say the Predator series really has much going for it. This film is more or less a sequel to the original (possibly the second as well), ignoring the AVP films which apparently are garbage. Check out the trailer below.

Despicable Me
Featured the voice talents of Steve Carrell, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig and many more, Despicable Me is yet another computer animated tale that attempts to appeal to kids with silly shenanigans and to adults with recognizable talents behind the scene.

I wasn’t too impressed with the trailer for the film that was shown before Toy Story 3. It currently has good ratings at both Rotten Tomatoes and at IMDb but it is still early and with a number of reviewers having not published their thoughts, that could change. The trend of these celebrity-voiced kids movies shows no sign of stopping but between Shrek 4 (or Forever After of Requiem or whatever the subtitle was), Toy Story, Marmaduke, How to Train Your Dragon, and all the others, I believe a moratorium should be enacted, not only for my sanity but also for my wallet.

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I must say I am a pretty uninformed movie goer sometimes. Case in point, I knew very little other than the basic premise for Splice going into it. However, I also knew that it received largely positive reviews when it screened at festivals earlier in the year, that it was a surprising pick-up by Warner Brothers, and it was going to be launched into theaters across the country to battle such populist dreck like Shrek and Marmaduke. I was expecting a well-done, but mostly generic sci-fi horror thriller but Splice is much more than that.

Clive and Elsa are scientists under the wing of a pharmaceutical company tasked with synthesizing proteins to combat a gaggle of biological baddies, mostly for commercial uses. After successfully splicing genes from multiple species to create a miniature Starship Troopers brain bug, they want to advance their work and splice human genes. When this is shot down by the greedy bosses, Clive and Elsa forge ahead with the intention to terminate the experiment before it births an organism. This does not go to plan and soon after they have created a being of sorts who starts off looking like a bald, mutated guinea pig before developing human characteristics. Mayhem then ensues.

Or, scratch that. Mayhem really does not ensue after all. Co-writer and director Vincenzo Natali could have taken the picture down the lazy river and had the human-ish thing, affectionately named Dren, escape and go apeshit on society at large. It is shocking that a major studio would allow such a leisurely story as mostly it revolves around Clive and Elsa, their relationship, and their ties to Dren as she develops further. The cast is small, the focus is tight, and the action and carnage is limited to a few scenes here and there. While I tagged this under the category of horror, drama would almost be a more appropriate genre to place Splice under as human relationships and interactions fuel the story more than gore and death scenes.

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are great as the couple, involved both professionally and intimately. As the film progresses, they leave questioning the morality of bringing Dren into the world and instead focus on their responsibilities towards her. Very easily could the two leads have sat around, wringing their hands with guilt and fear over the implications of Dren’s existence but instead the three become a sort of dysfunctional family complete with unspoken anger and underlying hostilities towards one another. Polley has the biggest load here as Elsa is not only fighting the demons of her childhood and her negligent mother but also the urge to become like her as Dren becomes too much to handle as she progresses.

The fortunate thing about Splice is that Dren is at least seventy-five percent human being with a modicum of CGI thrown in to create her four fingered hands and disjointed legs. In the majority of the movie, Delphine Chanéac plays the creature with the same attributes as an infant or young animal with wide eyes of curiosity but a bad attitude when things do not go her way. Chanéac’s acting goes a long way though to sell the subtle head turns of confusion like a dog and learning to dance as a young lady which not only let us invest in the character and her “journey” but also in Clive and Elsa as they struggle to gasp the effects of their short-sidedness.

The only real issue with the film was the climax which not only seems unnecessarily rushed but also shoehorns in random characters that seem to only serve as a way to increase the body count. As it is a fairly intimate movie between the three main characters, I would have rather they be the only parties involved as a way to wrap up the story in the same fashion that it began. That minor quibble aside, Splice is the complete antithesis to what a similar concept would have yielded in the hands of SyFy or The Asylum. It has heart, it has depth, and it is a good movie. Mega Piranha or The Terminators cannot say that.

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I really like it when I revisit a movie that I have not seen in some time and it turns out to be actually good. Not just nostalgic good, but genuinely good. Such is the case with Critters. It was not the cheese ball horror flick I apparently erroneously remembered.

We start off in space where a group of prisoners called Krites are being transported to a prison asteroid. Something goes awry and the Krites steal a ship and escape. Two space bounty hunters are commissioned to find them. The Krites land in rural Kansas and the bounty hunters follow them there. We meet the Browns, your typical family with Dad Jay, Mom Helen, and brother and sister Brad and April. Brad and April get on each others nerves as brothers and sisters usually do, and Brad tends to misbehave a bit. April is a hormone engulfed teen who just wants to bang her boyfriend Steve (a young Billy Zane) in the hay. This invasion of Krites serves as the event that will remind them of how important it is to love each other, and be nice. Aw.

This movie is actually quite well done. There are a lot of things that I really liked about it. Right off, I liked the choice to have Mom, Dad and Brad all meet the Krites at the same time, rather than Brad, the mischievous young boy see them and then have to spend 45 minutes of the movie convincing his parents that they are real. Also, once they do meet them, that’s it. The pace is pretty steady the rest of the film. There isn’t a lot of choppiness and unimportant plot developement. Rather, we see the Krites and the Browns, then we see the bounty hunters trying to track them. The time we spend in each is just long enough; the switch does not get repetitious and yet does not leave you needing to see more of either. In fact, the running time of this film is damn near perfect at 82 minutes. We get in to the action fairly early, so it is a quality 82 minutes.

Also, the acting is decent. Part of a lot of  80’s horror film charm  is the lackluster acting, but I submit that good acting is just as effective. Dee Wallace, 80’s staple, plays Mom. Scott Grimes, who spent 6 years on E.R. was Brad.   Lin Shaye, whom I assume is in some sort of love tryst with Bobby and Peter Farrelly, having appeared in a bunch of their films, is even good as Sally. I also enjoyed that humor was not over used in the film. The tendency to fill a horror movie (and really, horror is used loosely to categorize this film) script with dumb jokes was rampant back in the 80’s. The humor in this was understated and actually clever at times. One of the Krites finds and plays with an E.T. doll, then eats it (Dee Wallace was in E.T. ). Also, I found it hysterical that the Sheriff, a very often used character in these type of films, was absolutely useless and did nothing to help anyone. Not that he was unwilling, he was just inept.

I did have to nitpick a bit and find some things that I felt were odd. For example, the Krites did not speak English and we saw subtitles when they would speak (except when one of them said “Uh oh,” which I guess is spoken the same in any language in the universe). However, the bounty hunters spoke English (even before they got to Earth). Also, the bounty hunters could take the form of any human that they saw. One of them picked Johnny Steele, a popular singer, which in my opinion would be a bad choice for trying to blend in. This may however not have been the intent as they spent their time on Earth in their space clothes and the other bounty hunter would change in to someone that was well known in the town (a cop, the Reverend, the drunk Charlie). Also, the very end was a bit if a stretch. However, these really detracted very little from the overall experience. I was quite pleased in revisiting this film. It is not a typical horror movie that will scare you by any means, but it does not cheapen itself by trying to make it a goofy comedy with elements of horror. It takes itself just seriously enough to be believable. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. Definitely a great little film.

So why is the movie called Critters, and not Krites? As Brad is talking to the bounty hunters (who as far as he knows at that point are Johnny Steele and Charlie) he refers to the Krites as critters. The bounty hunters ask where the Krites are. Brad does not understand, so they use his own term and call them critters.

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I challenge you to find one person who does not enjoy a hot tub. Putting aside the potential health issues from prolonged use or extreme temperatures (thank you Michael Myers for teaching kids about the latter), a hot tub is relaxing and therapeutic and can make a kick-ass time machine. I would argue a Delorean is better as it can also function as a normal automobile, but the titular hot tub is running a close second.

Three friends, Adam, Nick, and Lou have seen better days. Now in their middle ages, they find their lives slipping away from the dreams and ambitions they once had. After Lou has a mishap (or potential suicide attempt) with car exhaust and a sealed garage, the three hit the road with Adam’s nephew Jacob to a winter ski resort that they kicked at in the old days. The first night there as the four are relaxing in the bubbling, heated water containment unit, a mishap with a Russian drink and the hot tub controls results in a transportation back to 1986, a crucial year for the friends at the same resort. They realize with the help of an old, sage hot tub repairman that they must not deviate from their previous actions for fear of a dramatic ripple effect to the rest of the world. As this is a testosterone-filled comedy, that doesn’t happen as the down-trodden men stuck in teenage bodies attempt to right their prior wrongs.

While there are certainly comparisons to be made to the Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips like-minded comedies, Hot Tub doesn’t feel like an Apatow movie or even The Hangover. For starters, the characters are pretty flat. Aside from what we learn in the first ten minutes about their lives, there is not a great deal of development about their current lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the characters are rather stock. Nick is the dreamer, Lou is the asshole, Jacob is the nerd, and Adam is the straight-man to counter the absurdity of the situation. The bulk of the film has the group reliving out their childhood but it might have helped to understand more about the consequences those first actions had on their next few decades and how the deviations would have helped or even hurt.

On the plus side, all of the characters are funny as hell and very aware of the implications for their situation. Several references to the time traveling adventures (and subsequent paradoxes) of The Terminator and the Stargate series help ground the film as the realistic interpretation of what would happen if these guys were actually transported back in time. Even knowing what they do about the butterfly effect (the theory and the movie), they still fuck up the space/time continuum for the sake of their own personal gain. Whereas Back to the Future preached for responsible time travel, Hot Tub throws all of that out the window as Nick and Lou try to hustle a crowd on the outcome of a football game and Adam avoids breaking up with a hot girl because it was a really stupid thing to do and it resulted in him getting stabbed in the eye.

Setting the movie in the 80s is a relative goldmine for the trends and fads from that period which are so laughable now, it is conceivable that someone might set up a retro reunion as one of the characters ponders early on. From the leg warmers, MTV showing music videos, and even good old cassette players, you did not necessarily have to be alive during the 80s to see the humor as this group of iPhone carrying, Google-using, modern men try to wrap their head around a group of people wearing bright neon ski-suits or using the old-fashioned Zack Morris phone. Of course, the soundtrack helps to drive the point home as well with a good heaping of cheese and excess is blaring during a good portion of the film. Having only visited the 80s in my much younger years, I’m sure there were more subtleties that escaped me but it is quite fun to revisit these modern day anachronisms.

If I had any complaints about the movie (other than the previous character issues noted above), it would be that the setting of the bulk hinders what the group can fuck up for the future. Obviously, the ski weekend serves the story well as an important few days for each of the guys but it would have been fun to see that expanded out of the small town, if only for a few more 80s jokes at the expense of Michael Jackson or the Cold War. With the film clocking in at a reasonable 100 minutes length, for some reason this seemed to drag on much longer as I was about ready for it to end about fifteen to twenty minutes before it actually did. While the laughs are bold and frequent, there were some portions that fall flat. This is normal for most comedies but the as the funny parts were quite good, the unfunny seemed to detract even more.

So, admittedly the movie is not as good as The Hangover but for a semi-raunchy male-driven comedy by someone other than Apatow, that is a lofty goal to reach. It does have more class than comedies of its bygone era, better star power and even Crispin Glover in what is likely a career-making role (if we consider he has not had one yet) and I suspect Hot Tub will play even better on repeat viewings with drunken cohorts. I am beginning to think the concept of unrated DVDs were created for movies like this.

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Where were you when you first realized that there was no hope, and never will be any hope, for movies based on video games? For me, well, I was in the movie theater watching Wing Commander. This thing is a huge, steaming pile of weapons grade crap. I will concede that this wasn’t the first video game movie I saw that was utterly terrible. Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, and Double Dragon were all released many years before this and every one of them is completely irredeemable. The difference is that the Wing Commander  franchise actually had a chance to be a pretty good movie for many reasons. First of all, this film was written and directed by Chris Roberts, the same man who produced and directed several of the video game installments. Secondly, the games were famous for their cinematic full motion cut scenes that featured several established Hollywood actors like Mark Hamill, John-Rhys Davies, and Malcolm MacDowell lending their talent to the projects. Thirdly, and finally, a story about fighter pilots in space battling evil aliens should translate very easily to the big screen. This film, at the very least, should have been on the same level of quality and entertainment as The Last Starfighter.

Our story begins in the future, obviously, and humanity has been flexing its manifest destiny muscle for some time by establishing colonies across the galaxy. Through its exploration efforts the human government, known as the Confederation, has managed to piss off a race of giant cat people called the Kilrathi (ten years before Avatar) and we are now neck-deep in a war against them. All of this story is explained in little sound bites as we scroll over a map of the galaxy that appears to have been drawn by 16^th century pirates. Seriously, I think that explorers charting out star systems IN THE FUTURE would have a better means of documenting their discoveries than inking them on stained parchment.

Our first glimpse of spaceship-on-spaceship violence is when the Pegasus base, a station built into the top of an asteroid is bombed, Pearl Harbor style, by about half a billion Kilrathi ships. I’m not sure why a military outpost that seemed so vital to the Confederation’s war efforts didn’t have any scanners or patrols that would warn them of a massive enemy fleet approaching, but, for what ever reason, the station is caught completely off guard. Plot hole aside, this would be a great way to start off a science-fiction action adventure film, except the audience never really gets a good look at the action. Our point of view is either several kilometers above the station looking down with barely visible flashes of what I can only assume are explosions ripping through the base, or inside the station’s tiny command center as a bunch of officers talk in great detail about the extent of the destruction the enemy is raining down upon them. Hey, director, how about showing the audience some of that awesome devastation your characters keep talking about. The cat army eventually boards the station and, in what seems like a good decision, the director does not give us a good look at the terribly fake-looking cat people suits. He’s saving that reveal for later. The Kilrathi manage to get their kitty paws the station’s navigation unit, which looks suspiciously like a car battery, and blow up the rest of the station.

We then cut to the bridge of a space cruiser that might as well be named the USS Exposition. There, Admiral Tolwyn, played by David Warner, lays out the plot of the rest of the movie for us. After receiving the distress call from Pegasus station, we know that the Kilrathi fleet has the coordinates to Earth and can get there in 40 hours. The main Confederation fleet, which seems to be dicking around well outside the major theater of war, won’t be able to reach Earth for 42 hours. So, ticking clock established, the Admiral sends a coded message to a transport vessel en route to the Tiger Claw, the only carrier between Earth and the Kilrathi fleet. So we cut to the transport ship on its way to the Tiger Claw when the terrifying realization suddenly hits that this is, in fact, a Prillard movie. For those of you not familiar with the term, a Prillard movie is one that stars both Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. If there is anything that will turn off the predominately young male demographic that plays the Wing Commander video games or goes to see sci-fi movies, it is a double dose of the most annoying teeny-bopper poster children of the late 1990’s.

On this transport ship, Freddie Prinze Jr. as Lieutenant Blair (the hero from the video games) sits around in some red pajamas fingering his weird necklace while Matt Lillard as Lieutenant Marshall (also from the games) stares off into space with a dopy expression on his face. A dirty space Frenchman, played by Tcheky Karyo, enters the command deck to receive the coded transmission and then changes course to fly through a black hole to get to the Tiger Claw faster. Nothing really happens here except for dirty Tcheky talking to Blair about his bling and how it has something to do with the Pilgrims, whoever those are. Anyway, they make it to the Tiger Claw and Blair manages to piss off his commanding officer ‘Angel’, Saffron Burrows, within three minutes of arriving by sitting in the cockpit of a fighter that belonged to Lt. Chen, a pilot that recently died. Chen must have slipped in the shower or choked on a muffin or something because his starfighter, that still bares his call-sign on the fuselage, is surprisingly undamaged. Blair’s necklace also seems to upset a lot of other people on board the ship including Commander Gerald, Jurgen Prochnow, because it signifies Blair as a Pilgrim. Pilgrim must be space-talk for mutant because not only can Pilgrims navigate through the cosmos with what can only be called super-powers, but everybody hates them because a long time ago Pilgrims were at war with regular people. So, the Commander of the Tiger Claw gets the message that they must find and delay the Kilrathi fleet to buy the Confederation time to set up defenses around Earth. So maybe now we can get to some dogfights or some big ship battles that might be entertaining. No. In fact, we don’t get to see any real starfighter action until the 50 minute mark. Imagine if the people playing the video game had to wait almost an hour to start flying around in space fighting enemies. And where in the hell is Malcolm MacDowell? He was in the game. It’s not like he hasn’t been in bad movies before. The only explanation I can think of is that director Chris Roberts didn’t want him in his film. Even in a supporting role, Malcolm MacDowell would have made this movie ten times more enjoyable. But no, he’d rather have Matthew Lillard chewing scenery and making goofy faces. I cannot stand Matthew Lillard. He is a truly wretched actor, and the way he looks reminds me of Beaker from the Muppets.

So where are we? Half way through the film and we get our first major engagement between the Tiger Claw and the Kilrathi. As far as the special effects are concerned for this part, they aren’t all bad. Sure, they haven’t aged well, but some shots of ships swooping by the camera are convincing enough to get by. The real failure of the visuals here is in art direction. None of the spaceship designs used in the film are distinct or iconic in any way. The Rapiers that our heroes fly around in look like the front half of existing aircraft (the props were, in fact, built from scraps of British jets) and the Tiger Claw itself looks like giant metal almond. Our heroes manage to blow up a few enemy ships and then go hide next to an asteroid to avoid taking more damage from the enemy fleet. Then, we get a hilarious moment where the dirty transport captain, who was actually a military intelligence officer all along, tells everyone on the bridge to be quiet so a Kilrathi destroyer won’t find them. I hate to break it to you, Tcheky, but you’re not on Das Boot. The enemy won’t be able to hear anyone on your ship because SOUND DOES NOT TRAVEL THROUGH SPACE, you moron. The fighting from earlier and a bombardment from the destroyer has damaged the carrier’s life support which they say needs fuel cells to be repaired. A boarding party attacks an enemy ship to secure its fuel cells as Blair, a pilot, is sent in with the marines armed with a rifle to shoot up some badly made and poorly lit Kilrathi puppets. In all honesty, they look more like otters than cats. Blair finds the car battery, I mean, Pegasus Navcom and gets the Intel on where and when the enemy fleet is attacking Earth. So Blair has to fly this info back to the Admiral and uses his Pilgrim powers to navigate through a quasar and save the day. Wow, this movie is just as painful to remember as it is to watch. It has destroyed my expectations that there will ever be a good video game movie and left me with nothing but questions. How come everyone in space aside from Blair and his buddy had a European accent? Why were the Kilrathi so inept that their major offensive is thwarted by one Earth ship? And where in the bleeding hell was Malcolm MacDowell?

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