"Pandorum" Tries to Be Different and Succeeds... in a Very Bad Way

Imagine an Alien rip-off. (You don't really need to- there are tons.) Now, imagine that the rip-off has the plot of Fight Club, the camera work of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, and the strange and convoluted editing of Memento. Sound unique? It is. This film had two possible directions it could go: revitalization of the Sci-Fi thriller or total ruin. Guess what? It took the latter approach.

The plot is this: the destruction of the planet earth has driven the last humans to insanity, forcing them to lock each other up in rooms and cannibalize each other until they evolve into bloodthirsty monsters. Some of the last members of the crew wake up in hypersleep to discover the process and try to stop it.

The problem here isn't with the script, which was rather well written by Travis Milloy, a newcomer to the big Hollywood scene. The problem lies instead in just about everything else.

Director Christian Alvart is new to big-budget Hollywood as well, and he brings many of his low budget tricks here with him. One of these tricks, a classic in the horror and action genres, is quick cutting between extreme camera angles. This makes the action seem more furious and chaotic, when in reality it is quite tame. Here's the problem: the action isn't quite tame. The action in this film is furiously paced, and the monsters could be genuinely frightening if we could see them for more than a tenth of a second at a time. I realize that this is a ship and the corridors are tight and cramped, but that shouldn't change the fact that this is the 21st century, where we have CGI that can make anything look real enough with a big enough budget. This film certainly had a big enough budget to use a simple tracking camera or at least make the action easily followable. In fact, the action sequences were so difficult to comprehend that I found myself skipping to the next chapter and skipping back to the action in order to understand who survived. This was a frustrating and painful process.

The next problem that the film suffers from is really bad editing, whenever a scene gets truly interesting, we're whisked away with a "meanwhile" type scene, usually one that doesn't even matter to the story. I believe that this is a great example of a film  that was ruined in post-production, as even the camera work wouldn't have been as annoying had some thought been put into the editing.

Overall, Pandorum is a tragedy. It is a surprisingly unique script that was ruined by everything else. Only see this if you want to be depressed, as this is bad, but not bad enough to be funny.

Overall Grade: D

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

All right, confession time. If you had written this movie off as another stupid "middle school stinks" John Hughes wannabe film, raise your hand.

Now that all our hands are asleep, it's time to get to the review. This film was a pleasure. Unlike the aforementioned John Hughes films, this film contains little to no sexual innuendo. This can be seen as good and bad. In this case, that would have done nothing to further the film. So if the film is not like John Hughes, what is it like?

My fellow theater-goers were surprised here me compare it to the 1993 film The Sandlot. However, they do share some similarities. To begin with, the main characters in both of these films are characters you want to love, but have difficulty doing so. In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, this character takes the form of Greg Heffley -a role played very well by Zachary Gordon, who demonstrated some serious chops in his first starring role. Greg is a contemptibly arrogant and haughty, particularly towards his best friend (Robert Capron), but he also has terrible luck. He moves from one scene to the next, either insulting someone or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gets yelled at for stuff he doesn't do, and gets away with stuff he does. Of course, by the end of the film he learns his lesson becomes a good person, but the clichés of this film are hardly important.

What is important is the cunning and incisive portrayal of childhood innocence and the vapidness of middle school. Being a relatively recent alumnus of the place myself, I can say that, without a doubt, this portrayal is accurate. This is where the most important similarity to The Sandlot lies: they both portrayed adolescence in a new and interesting light. That's why they both have high marks in my grade book.

Final Grade: A

The Grading Scale

It seems pertinent to provide a scale from which films are graded, for future reference.

A+ : Easily in the top 100 films I have ever seen.
A : Well done! Perfect in nearly every way.
A- : Very nice, but not perfect.
B+ : Very good.
B: Good
B- : Getting good.
C+ : Slightly better than standard
C: Standard
C-: Substandard
D: Very Substandard
F: Booooo. Couldn't be any worse.

Pile of Poo Pick: Finn on the Fly

Just so everyone knows, this is the first of a recurring column titled "Pile of Poo". These are the worst of the worst films I have seen and reviewed. Enjoy!

This film is poorly acted, poorly thought out, poorly directed, and poorly written. It's a real shame, since the concept could be really fun. At times, the film shows its true potential by providing us with catchy one- liners, but this is a potential it never fulfills. The villains are cheesy and cliché, and the sidekicks of the hero are enough to offend anyone that has ever touched an iPod, Game Boy, or Frisbee.

What could have been done to salvage this atrocious piece of film? Well, let's start with the writing. Give less time to the dog acting like a dog and more time to the dog expressing his feelings to his human comrade. As for direction, I don't think it can be helped. The actors could be good if they had interesting lines. Editing is slow paced and could stand a pick-up.

Overall, this is a crappy children's film the wreaks of low budget and exploitation cinema. I wouldn't recommend this film for anyone; no matter how much you love dogs, this film will make you hate them.

Overall Grade: F