FILM REVIEW OF ''PASSENGERS" (2016)

The adventurous science fiction romance “Passengers” (** OUT OF ****), starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, contains an initially appetizing premise.  An enormous spaceship carrying 5000 passengers and a crew of 250, all of whom are asleep in hibernation pods for the 120-year journey through space to colonize another Earth-like planet, encounters complications with an asteroid field and a malfunction opens one of the pods.   Our unfortunate hero awakens to find himself alone aboard the spacecraft with luxurious accommodations and recreational facilities, but he cannot resume his sleep no matter what he tries.  Imagine being trapped all alone aboard a vessel reminiscent either of Douglas Adams’ novel “Starship Titanic” or Grant Naylor’s novel “Red Dwarf” cruising on auto-pilot through the icy desolation of the galaxy with nobody to turn to for relief and assistance.  No matter what he does, our hero cannot get a response from anybody about his ordeal.  Moreover, he won’t interact with another human until the ship enters orbit around its destination in 90 years!  Indeed, the only thing that he can do is share his anguish with an oblivious android that mixes alcoholic beverages behind the bar and indulge in the recreational outlets aboard the ship.  “Imitation Game” director Morten Tyldum and “Prometheus” scenarist Jon Spaihts synthesize the classic films “Sleeping Beauty” and “Titanic” in this promising ‘what-if’ scenario, but the characters aren’t as compelling as the life and death crisis with which they must contend.  Chiefly, Jennifer Lawrence’s highly-strung, leading lady spends more time screaming than scheming, while the Chris Pratt hero tangles with a fate so tragic that he conducts himself in an ethically compromising manner that haunts him.  Some of the obstacles that they confront are genuinely exciting, but “Passengers” amounts to a thoroughly predictable yarn riddled with plot holes that neither Tyldum and Spaihts nor Lawrence and Pratt can triumph over in this 116-minute, PG-13 rated opus.  Ultimately, when you consider everything that everybody could have done to improve this flawed film, it is really a shame that “Passengers” doesn’t live up to its potential.

Basically, “Passengers” reminded me of those adventures that intrepid pilgrims embarked upon to enter a promised land for a better life.  Jim Preston (Chris Pratt of “Guardians of the Galaxy”) is a middle-class, mechanical engineer who cannot find his fortune on a vastly overpopulated planet Earth, so he books passage aboard the lavishly appointed corporate ferry Avalon for a faraway place designated Homestead II.  There are two things that you should know from the outset about “Passengers.”  First, this sci-fi saga occurs so far into the future that all the guess work in space travel appears to have been accounted for by scientists so that nothing can possibly go wrong.  Second, our hero and heroine don’t contend with menacing alien creatures out to make a meal of them.  Humanity is the only race that inhabits this half-baked escapade that wears out its welcome long before the Avalon reaches its destination.  During the first 30 or so minutes, Jim Preston struggles to amuse himself aboard this spectacular spaceship.  Some things about the craft are really cool.  As it plies its way through the universe, this sophisticated, state-of-the-art spaceship has been designed to travel on auto-pilot with a huge, invisible shield deployed like a huge nose-cone to deflect anything perilous in its path. The asteroid field that it smashes its way through during the first few minutes evokes memories of “Titanic,” but the toll that the asteroid field takes on the Avalon doesn’t create problems right away.  After he awakens, Preston takes advantage of all the opportunities that the ship offers.  As it turns out, the hibernation pods are scheduled to open during the last leg of the voyage, with the crew awakening months prior to the passengers so they can prepare them for disembarkation.  When Jim isn’t floating in alcohol, he tries to break into the bridge where the crew sleeps.  Meantime, Jim browses through the passenger database and finds Aurora and admires her in her translucent hibernation pod.  Eventually, about a year later, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence of “The Hunger Games”) joins Jim, and the fate that they are facing horrifies her.  Jim has done everything that she suggests later to extricate them from their predicament. 

Initially, like all romantic movies, time takes a toll on Jim and Aurora’s relationship, especially the conditions that prompted their rendezvous in space.  We learn Aurora is a writer who wants to experience life first-hand on Homestead II and then return to Earth so she can write the first book about the experience.  Unlike Jim, Aurora purchased a higher priced ticket and enjoys all the features of a first-class passenger. You can see the resemblance between “Passengers” and the Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet “Titanic.” 

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt generate enough charisma to make a sympathetic couple. Nevertheless, they can only do so many things before “Passengers” exhausts its spontaneity. The closest thing to another human is friendly android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen of “TRON: Legacy”) that polishes glasses, mixes drinks, and listens to them.  You can figure out where “Passengers” is bound with its cliché-riddled ‘boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’ plot.  Once Jim and Aurora have broken up, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that something bigger must happen for them to repair the damage to their relationship.  They must reconcile themselves and then figure out how to repair the catastrophic damage to the Avalon as it steadily deteriorates because of the asteroid field encounter.  Lawrence and Pratt are more interesting than the one-dimensional characters that they portray. The arrival of another character to straighten things out doesn’t really help matters in Spaihts’ by-the-numbers screenplay.  For the record, Hollywood has been struggling to develop this project for about a decade.  Initially, Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon were cast to play the two lovers, but scheduling difficulties derailed that enterprise. You won’t get carried away with “Passengers.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''EX MACHINA'' (2015)

Nightmares won’t trouble you after watching the subtle but suspenseful science fiction fright flick “Ex Machina” (***1/2 out of ****) about a sentient robot with enough cunning to escape from its crafty creator.  This cautionary futuristic fable about artificial intelligence dramatizes the quintessential question pondered by all classic robot movies: can man design a robot that is not only conscious of the world around it but also has awareness of itself?  In his dazzling directorial debut, British novelist-turned-scripter Alex Garland refuses to pander to us with a spectacular “Star Wars” universe as a setting.  Instead, he relies rather on the sheer simplicity of a condo lab facility nestled in the middle of a far-flung mountain paradise.  This ultra-literate, atmosphere-laden chiller, with just enough full-frontal female nudity to earn an R-rating, occurs in the near future, not a decade down in the road but right around the corner.  Although it is a foregone conclusion that the sagacious robot will triumph over her creator and break out of captivity, Garland’s staging of the action building up to the escape is just as hypnotic as his gifted cast with Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac as the humans and Alicia Vikander and Sonoya Mizuno as the automatons.  Sci-fi aficionados should know that Garland has disposed of Isaac Asimov’s three rules of robotics for this dystopian tale.  At 107 minutes, “Ex Machina” amounts to a contemplative, indie-style, art film rather than an obnoxious Hollywood blockbuster.  Mind you, “Ex Machina” boasts a wealth of computer-generated special effects, but nobody brandishes outlandish plasma pistols or ducks into a time machine.  Watching this movie is comparable to being mesmerized by a beady-eyed rattlesnake in an immense glass jar and then wondering what will happen if you place your hand on the glass.  Clearly, Garland has seen all the seminal robot movies, such as “Metropolis,” “The Forbidden Planet,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner,” “Short Circuit,” “I, Robot,” and “Her,” and he is familiar with the formula.  Imagine a no-frills version of Steven Spielberg’s “Artificial Intelligence” (2001) transpiring largely in a laboratory setting with two human characters, one more sinister than the other, and you’ve got the gist of “Ex-Machina.” 

Garland’s film unfolds with a brief prologue set in New York City.  Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson of “Unbroken”) is a nerdy, sandy-haired, 24-year old, Internet programmer who works for the global computer search engine company BlueBook.  Comparatively, BlueBook dwarfs Google.  Smith wins a company lottery to spend a week with his eccentric CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac of “Sucker Punch”), who lives alone in a secluded research facility.  Suffering from a hopeless God complex, Nathan seems to be channeling Dr. Frankenstein.  Indeed, he named his company after Frankenstein’s notebooks.  He flies Caleb in by helicopter because his laboratory is basically inaccessible.  One look at Nathan and you’ll know he is villainous.  He sports a bushy beard but wears his hair shorn to the scalp in a gunpowder buzz-cut.  Heavy black horn-rimmed spectacles straddle his nose, and he uses words like “cool” and “dude” to sound like a friendly, ordinary geek.  We learn during the conversations between Nathan and Caleb that Nathan is a teenage progeny who wrote computer code at age thirteen and now owns the biggest search engine company in the world.  Meantime, Nathan implores Caleb to treat him like a pal.  Essentially, Nathan has summoned Caleb to participate in a “Turing” test, named after the real-life Alan Turing, the genius whose life was chronicled recently in the World War II movie “The Imitation Game.”  Nathan has designed a truly sophisticated, female-gendered robot that he calls Ava (Alicia Vikander of “Son of a Gun”) and has even endowed her with appropriate genitalia.  Nathan wants Caleb to determine if Ava is self aware or merely simulating self-awareness.  Ava looks like no other android in cinematic history.  She possesses soft, delicately-sculpted, distaff facial features with slender human hands, while the rest of her body consists of exposed wiring housed in a see-through mesh structure.  Bits and pieces of the exposition from this epic make the story really compelling.  For example, our mad scientist billionaire has drawn on thought patterns appropriated from data generated from computer search engines.  Most search engine corporations content themselves strictly to monetize their information about what consumers want.  On the other hand, our wily villain occupies himself with how people search for their needs rather than the needs and then he exploited this information to enable his robot to behave like a human.

Inevitably, the impressionable Caleb falls in love with Ava, while Nathan is monitoring their every move.  He has surveillance cameras planted in every room so that he misses nothing.  Ava wants so desperately to get away from Nathan’s laboratory that she turns Caleb against his boss.  Eventually, Caleb learns that Ava qualifies as just another prototype in Nathan’s chain of robots.  Indeed, Nathan reveals how he plans to download Ava’s brain into another newer version and scrap her memories.  This seals Nathan’s fate as far as Caleb is concerned, and he decides to help Ava find her freedom.  Before “Ex Machina” fades out, Caleb and Nathan are no longer friends, and Ava has acquired the upper hand, farther up than even her perceptive creator has imagined.  Moreover, Ava has turned Nathan’s personal sex robot Kyoko against him; Kyoko enjoys the freedom to roam around Nathan’s research condo.  When he isn’t satisfying his sexual urges with her, Nathan uses Kyoko as a personal servant.  Most of “Ex Machina” involves apparently monotonous conversations between either Caleb and Nathan or Caleb and Ava.  Nevertheless, Garland insinuates enough fascinating dialogue into those exchanges to make them more than just loquacious chatter.  The performances are robust, with Isaac and Vikander taking top honors respectively as the villainous Nathan and the deceptive Ava.  Sonoya Mizuno deserves honorable mention as the mute robot Kyoko who surprises Nathan in the final quarter-hour.  Don’t mistake “Ex Machina” for a run-of-the-mill female robot actioneer.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ASTRO BOY" (2009)

“Flushed Away” co-director David Bowers makes his stand-alone directing debut on the $65-million, Summit Entertainment, big-screen remake of “Astro Boy,” (**** ot of ****) the first example of anime that Japanese television broadcast in 1963. Initially, “Astro Boy” went by the name Tetsuwan Atomu, or Mighty Atom. Later, when the character made his debut on American television, the fictional robotic protagonist acquired the name of Astro Boy. Naturally, “Kindergarten Cop” scenarist Timothy Harris and Bowers have diverged slightly from the original, but they have kept the essential storyline largely intact. Historically, “Astro Boy” made his literary debut in Japanese comic books back in 1952. Osamu Tezuka, who created “Astro Boy” and has since been hailed as “the God of Manga,” turned his back on a career in medicine to write stories about an android “Pinocchio” whose feats of strength and speed more than match the DC Comics’ hero Superman. The success of the original Japanese television show spurred a remake both in 1983 and in 2003. Essentially, this pint-sized automaton spends its time waging a perpetual war on crime, evil, and injustice. Humans that hate robots, robots-run-amok, and alien invaders constitute Astro Boy’s primary adversaries. Excellent computer-generated animation, charismatic voice performances by Nicholas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Bell, and Nathan Lane, and Bowers’ energetic helming make this 94-minute opus refreshing as well as worth watching.

This fantastic but formulaic Japanese-animated science fiction adventure epic takes place in a futuristic society where robots perform all the menial tasks and are discriminated against because they lack humanity. A father loses his son during a laboratory mishap involving a military robot implanted with a core substance that enables it to defy the three rules of robots as established by sci-fi guru Isaac Asimov. The brilliant but selfish scientist Dr. Tenma (Nicholas Cage) has created ‘the Peacekeeper,’ a hulking cyborg that General Stone (Donald Sutherland of “M.A.S.H.”) has commissioned to solidify his presidency from all contenders. Tenma’s inquisitive whiz-kid son Tobias (Freddie Highmore of "The Spiderwick Chronicles") wants to witness the robot trials. Tenma has Toby locked up for safety, but this smarty pants schoolboy figures a way to escape. Later, he finds himself trapped in the same area with the heavily armed Peacekeeper robot. When the machine tries to penetrate a force shield with awesome array of armaments, the blasts render it useless and atomize Tobias. The grieving Dr. Tenma retrieves the only remnant of his son: a baseball cap. He takes a strand of hair from the cap, extracts the DNA, pulls out all of the memories and inserts them into a cyborg version of his son. The allusion to Pinocchio is clearly obvious. Unfortunately, Tenma tires of his son the robot and pines for the real McCoy. The catch here is the robotic version of the boy does not know that he is a robot.

Eventually, the father cannot stand the sight of the robot because he knows that it is not his son. As it turns out, the robot has a blue-core in its chest that allows it to pull off some pretty amazing stunts. When the evil political leader wants Dr. Tenma to remove the blue core from his son to put into the war robot, the father turns against him. Astro Boy escapes, but is exiled when enough explosions knock him off the floating chunk of earth called Metro City to the ground below where rusting robots lay piled in heaps. Metro City is a solitary island of land that levitates above the polluted earth. Astro Boy discovers new companions, orphaned humans, but he also realizes now that he is a robot. He can understand what robots are saying when they speak. Now, Astro Boy has to keep is identity a secret from his new friends, foremost of whom is a pretty little thing named Cora (Kristen Bell of "Veronica Mars"). These kids scour the earth for robot parts for another scientist, Ham Egg (Nathan Lane of "The Producers") who rebuilds robots and matches them against each other in gladiatorial struggles to the death in a coliseum Roman style. Astro Boy helps rebuild a gigantic robot named ZOG and Ham Egg reveals Astro Boy's secret and forces him to fight ZOG. The only problem is that Astro Boy refuses to kill. Meanwhile, the evil military leader, General Stone (Donald Sutherland of "M.A.S.H") sends forces to retrieve Astro Boy. One of the funniest scenes occurs when Astro Boy is battling a “Transformers” style robot and learns that he is equipped with a pair of machine guns loaded into his buttocks!

Director David Bowers never lets the momentum slow down. The hyperkinetic action scenes are spectacular with our underdog champ Astro Boy pitted against some wicked foes that want him dead. The theme of racial intolerance pervades the action with robots seen as our inferiors until—in the words of one human—Astro Boy emerges with more humanity than most humans. Occasionally, Bowers’ film takes on a grim feeling, particularly when Dr. Tenma turns against his son. What sets “Astro Boy” apart from the usual competition is the subtlety of its storyline. This colorful storytelling is ideal for both children and adults.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SURROGATES'' (2009)

"Terminator 3" director Jonathan Mostow must have seemed like the perfect choice for the Bruce Willis science fiction crime thriller "Surrogates," (** out of ****)about life-like robots serving as the arms and legs of future society. "Terminator: Salvation" scenarists John Brancato and Michael Ferris adapted the five-issue, limited series, Top Shelf Comics graphic novel "The Surrogates" that Robert Venditti wrote and Brett Weldele illustrated. Naturally, Mostow and his writers wound up making some inevitable changes. Nevertheless, the premise of "Surrogates" has lost none of its intrigue. Venditti told "The Graphic Novel Reporter" magazine about the origins of "Surrogates": "It dawned on me that if you were somehow able to create a persona and send it out into the real world—where it could go to work for you, and run your errands, and so on—then you would never have to go back to being yourself."
Consequently, the agoraphobic society of "Surrogates" confines themselves to interacting vicariously with each other through surrogate androids. Often, these humanoid robots are younger and sexier than their operators. Sometimes, a man masquerades as a female android, and Caucasian Americans pose as African-Americans.

After the first 45 minutes, however, this futuristic, Philip K. Dick style saga about the changes that surrogates have wrought on mankind degenerates into a predictable FBI procedural that loses its urgency. Ultimately, Bruce Willis must forsake the flawed justice system, turn into a rogue cop, and defeat corruption at the highest levels. Were this not enough, Brancato and Ferris insert a subplot about our hero's son who died tragically in a car accident and his persistent struggle to pull his wife out of the depression that she suffers as a result of their son's death. Little of this scenario, however, turns out to be thrilling. The villains aren't intimidating enough, and the heroes simply aren't that heroic. Some of the action is interesting, but there is absolutely nothing in the way of suspense until our hero has to venture into the cold, cruel world without a surrogate and even then nothing exciting happens.

"Surrogates" opens with a prologue that covers the origins of these androids and how they became an everyday fact of life. Mostow and his writers do an admirable job of setting up the premise so it seems believable. The year is 2017. Everybody plugs into a life-sized surrogate and conducts their daily business with the use of these
robots. Few people leave their houses. The crime rate plunges. Surrogates are less prone to injury. They can leap over cars to avoid being struck by other vehicles. Finally they are immune to STDs. Imagine living like you were in "The Matrix," where you spend most of your waking hours sprawled on a couch, with sensory headgear attached to your noggin that enables you to carry on your daily activities through
a surrogate robot. Indeed, you cannot walk down the street without seeing surrogates everywhere, and few people own surrogates that don't add glamor to their appearance.

Government Agents Tom Greer (Bruce Willis of "Die Hard") and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell of "Melinda and Melinda") work in the FBI's Surrogate Crime Unit. When two surrogates and their human operators are murdered under mysterious circumstances, Special Agent Andrew Stone Boris Kodjoe)assigns Greer and Peters to investigate what constitutes the first murder in many moons. Somebody has obtained a deadly weapon that fires a jagged blue lightning bolt at a surrogate and kills the operator with the same blast. Later, the killer wipes out five Boston cops on his heels. As it turns out, one of the initial homicide victims was the son of Canter (James Cromwell of "L.A. Confidential"), who invented surrogates for the VSI Corporation. In the beginning, Cantor felt that surrogates would make life easier for people with handicaps who could not get out. As it turns out, the villains were trying to kill Cantor, not his son. Nevertheless, the elder Canter had loaned his surrogate to his university age son (James Francis Ginty of "K-19 Widowmaker") who had planned a night out on the town when the murderer struck. Greer starting snooping and learns that the weapon used to kill Canter's son had been tested by the Pentagon. The military canceled their order when they discovered the lethal side effects of the weapon. Basically, the weapon transmits a virus to the humanoid machines, enters their operator's head and liquefied their brains.

Mostow and his writers have divided "Surrogates" into two movies: the surrogate homicide investigation and Greer's tragic personal home life. The situation hits the fan when the FBI track down a suspect, Strickland (Jack Noseworthy of "Breakdown"), who has the weapon. Strickland flees from the Boston Police while Greer follows him
overhead in an FBI chopper. Certain areas are off limits to surrogates and humans who refuse to use surrogates live in those areas. Strickland heads to a zone where surrogates are not allowed to enter. Greer's helicopter crashes in one of these areas and the humans attack Greer, obliterate him, and hang him in effigy. Now, Greer has to venture out into society as himself without a surrogate and he finds it difficult to negotiate a world overrun by robots.

Unfortunately, "Surrogates" runs out of steam, and the ending is as contrived as they come. This may be the first film to espouse a negative attitude toward futuristic technology that intrudes into our lives. The villains fail to make an impression. Brancato and Ferris spring some surprises, but none are truly alarming. The scene near the end where all the people fall down in the streets was probably a hassle to stage. "Surrogates" is imaginative but rarely exciting thriller. The idea that technology will exact a toll of our humanity and its ramifications is more interesting than it hopped up action scenes. Bruce Willis can do better than this nonsense. "Gamer" was far better than this lame whodunit.