1970: Das Millionenspiel

Despite identifiable weaknesses such as a poor leading actor and some implausibilities, the German TV classic, about a game show in which a candidate can win a million if a bunch of killers does not manage to get him within seven days, manages to entertain thoroughly. (7)

1965: Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

Godard's take on the Lemmy Caution character is a science fiction film in which the agent comes to Alphaville, the place where logic rules. Lemmy meets a woman, and you can guess the rest. Though a lot is made of the fact that Godard didn't build any sets but rather filmed the most modern-looking parts of Paris he could find, but given that the film is set in the mid-1970s (if I interpret the dialogue correctly), this seems fair enough. The film's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but charmingly quaint. Recommended for fans of b/w shadow-/lightplay. (7)

2009: Surrogates

The Bruce Willis flick about a future in which people mind-control human-looking robots that they send out into the streets so they (the humans) can safely stay at home is professionally done all around, but no Blade Runner (6.5).

2007: I Am Legend

After a supposed cure for cancer went all wrong, Will Smith appears to be the only human survivor who was not zombiefied. Being, in large part, responsible for the mess, he is trying to find a cure while staying alive in the face of zombie attacks. - Yeah, you could say it's all a bit disjointed in terms of plot and isn't really going anywhere, but the general athmosphere, driven by the excellent production design and cinematography, does enough for me to make this thoroughly enjoyable. (7)

2009: Star Treck

Though somewhat unengaging in terms of plot (guess what, they have a planet to save), the film about Kirk, Spock et al. coming of age offers enough little injokes and eye candy to be nonboring. (6)

2006: Children of Men

In 2027, everyone in the world is infertile (everyone?) and Britain has closed its borders, trying to stem a tide of illegal immigrants who want to come despite England looking like a shithole - apparently the rest of the world is even worse off, the film's a bit vague on this. The screenwriters, keeping the basic dystopian setup, but substantially altering the plot of the novel the book is based on, remembered that in a screenplay the main characters need a task and came up with the lamest one in the book: the characters have to get from A to B, despite obstacles. It takes a lot of hard work to make that interesting, and this film doesn't deliver. Also, pretty much all of the film is shot in a grey-green-blue shade, which is a bit like someone shouting "DYSTOPIA!" in your face for two hours. On the plus side: Michael Caine sporting really long grey hair. (5.5)

As for dystopian Britain, didn't Mark E. Smith remark something to the effect that if you want to see humanity at its worst, you should go to central Manchester around closing time? Now, there's an idea for a film for you: Showdown at the taxi stand.

2009: Moon

Debutant Duncan Jones's film about an employee of an energy company who discovers he is not the only person on his lunar base after all has often been compared to 2001 because it has a talking computer in it but is actually more akin to The Shining as it exploits the setting of a large, sparsely populated building to eerie effect. The film's devoid of weaknesses, but doesn't manage to cross the threshold to greatness either. (7) Given that I blame the regrettable fact of so few films that are set in space coming out on their production being expensive, maybe the best thing about this one is that it was made for only five million dollars, but is entirely convincing in terms of special effects. Let's hope this makes some of the money men rethink their views on funding this kind of film.

2009: Avatar (in 3-D)

The main thing most people are going to watch this for is the new 3-D technology and this works really well. I didn't find it as impressive as I thought I would (presumably because I've seen a lot of 3-D in the real world), but it looks realistic and is quite a bit of fun to behold.

Apart from that it is really not a good movie. Early on, we learn that the humans/Americans (often the same thing in this kind of movies) are on that planet because there's a precious resource to harvest (some stone). If in the process of getting it you have to kill some of the natives, so be it. But throwing bombs on their heads is maybe not the most clever way of making the natives voluntarily letting us harvest their planet, someone opines. Hmm, is it just me or is the screenwriter trying to make a comment on recent US foreign policy? (In general, the dialogues all sound like they were written by a fourteen-year-old boy, which may or may not be a deliberate choice by Cameron.)

The natives, however, aren't all that much like Afghans. Burqas? No, sir! Just think of the first five clichés that come to mind when I say "noble savage" and you know everything about them. They are so in touch with nature that while an animal the throat of which they've just slashed is bleeding to death, they inform it that its life-energy will be preserved. They keep a straight face, too. And their trees? They're not just trees; under the surface, all of their roots are interconnected and the memories of dead natives are stored there. (Regrettably, this is not referred to as the greenternet.) Cameron has really taken this whole Gaia idea in. And he lets it out!

But at least he has taken something in from the nonscreen world. A rare case. Almost all of the scenes seem second-hand. She at first wants to kill him and is furious when she is ordered to spend time with him. Hmmm, wonder whether they'll end up together? Like that. All of the time.

The screenplay also has structural problems, or, to put it differently, it doesn't have a single twist in it - you can predict the way the story will go after about ten minutes. Come to think of it, I thought that there would be a twist (concerning one specific character) that did not happen. On the other hand, between the two of us Heidi and I exactly predicted what would happen to the Sigourney Weaver character.

But let's not be picky about such things: Where the movie's really got to shine is the visuals. Well, I already mentioned the 3-D and the film's got some really nice shots of valleys, etc. But: The natives (and hence the avatars, which or who are designed to resemble them) look crap. So do the sort-of-horses. So do the sort-of-dinosaurs. In fact, every nonhuman animal in this film looks shite. (The plants look o.k.) What's worse: The film is basically set in two places; the military base and the forests. The military base is shot is shot in grey and blue. The forest is shot in green and blue. After half an hour I found myself longing for red, yellow and brown. And it's a long film.

I'm giving the movie 5/10 because the 3-D thing, as I may have mentioned, works really well. I strongly advise you, however, to see it in 2-D, irrespective of the size of the screen.

1962: La jetée (The Pier)

Is this even a film? Well, it's a 27-minute sequence of nonmoving b/w pictures with an omniscient narrator's voiceover and a little classical music, dealing with a man that, after the nuclear war is over, is a prisoner in a POW camp and is sent back and forth in time by the Germans, who finally managed to win a world war.

Does it work? I'll quote someone else: "This is experimentalism how it should be done, not as a chore for the viewer but as something that the viewer can enjoy at least as much as its creator. So the visual style is challenging? Put some interesting plot in it. The plot is strange, mundane or cryptic? Do it in a visually interesting way."

Though a critic's favourite, today La jetée is probably best known as the film that inspired 12 Monkeys. Both films are about equally good (8) and would make a nice double feature.