Pandorum is a movie that greatly surprised me. It slipped right underneath the radar and I don’t even remember seeing previews for it before the movie had its theatrical release.
I was perusing the satellite the other day and happened to notice it listed. So I checked out the description and it seemed fairly interesting so I decided to watch it.
It centers around a future in 2173 where humans are at over 24 billion population. Food and water shortages are common place so fighting over resources is intense.
In the 100 years before this they had been preparing. They could see the writing on the wall and so had sent out satellite probes to find any planets that were enough like Earth to support life. One planet called Tanis was found.
A mission was sent aboard a shuttle called Elysium to colonize this planet.
16,000 brave souls were sent on the spaceship. Countless insects, plant life, and animals were sent as well. This was to be a regular Noah’s ark.
We find ourselves on the ship when one of the main characters is coming out of what they call “hyper sleep”.
He awakens to a nightmare though because no one else seems to be present aboard the ship. He’s attempting to find his way around but unfortunately there seems to be no power on the ship. Things are hazy to him which is a side effect of the hyper sleep. Over the next few hours and days his memory will start coming back.
Pretty soon after Dennis Quaid’s character Lieut. Payton wakes up.
They decide to send Bower searching to see what is going on. He remembers stuff about the nuclear reactor so they deduced that he is an engineer. Since both are part of the flight crew they know the reactor must be reset in order to keep working.
When he goes out on the “reset the reactor” mission he meets some terrible things. Neither of them knows how long they have been sleeping but they suspect it’s for eight years. It turns out to be way longer than that.
There are these crazy hunter creatures which they suspect are aliens. They look somewhat humanoid but have these spikes like a stegosaurus coming out of their shoulders and their backs. In addition they don’t really look human.
And they are hunting humans. He discovers a few bodies that have been dangled from a wire almost like bait for a trap.
He meets up with a couple of other humans along the way who wind up attacking him. It’s got a very Lord of the Flies feel to it. With a mix of Aliens thrown in.
The ship is dark and it’s been every human for themselves so far. With the crazy creatures hunting them like a pack of wild ravenous wolves the humans must band together or they will certainly perish.
Finally, Bower convinces the woman and the guy he’s encountered to form a tenuous alliance.
He needs solidarity or they’ll all die.
Their goal is to get to the reactor so now the three of them set off on their way. They encounter the creatures again and then find themselves in this little holding cell area. There’s a human there who claims to be a cook.
He feeds them a little something but then gases them.
When they awaken they are dangling from the ceiling by chains.
The cook intends to eat them one at a time. It’s all about “survival of the fittest” he says.
Bower admits to him that these are crazy times and all he’s doing is surviving. Noone is going to judge him for what he’s done. Just then a fortuitous power surge hits and Bauer captializes on this opportunity.
He reasons with the guy about the power surges and the guy comes to realize that the reactor must be reset. So he lets them down and they all set off to reset the reactor.
There’s a crazy scene where Bower basically walks over an absolute horde of these creepy cannibal creatures to get to the reactor.
You just know it was going to be intense and he was barely going to reset the reactor with only little time left on the clock before it completely shut down.
It was an exciting finish and there was this hazy revelation which happened right at the end.
Earlier in the story we had discovered that Bauer’s wife had left him. She didn’t want to go on the journey on the Elysium with him even though most of the other officers wives and families were there on the ship.
These families had been taken out by the creatures but that was beside the point.
Bower meets the new love of his life and were left believing that they were the leaders of the new colony. This is a must see and I give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.
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Knowing was a movie with Nicolas Cage. I admit to wanting to see it in the theaters but never getting around to doing it. I watched it last night and found out I missed a good one.
The ending was quite strange and unresolved. It led you to certain assumptions but was also very mysterious.
But back to the beginning.
It starts out with Nicolas Cage looking through a telescope talking to his son. He points out Saturn’s rings and asks his son a technical question. His son is quick to report what the answer is so you get the feeling he’s a very precocious kid. We soon find out Nicholas Cage wife and the boy Caleb’s mother died recently.
The back story on this Knowing is about this sheet of numbers.
In 1959 the William Dawes elementary school opened up and there was a student named Lucinda who was probably 10 to 12 years old. She had the idea to do a time capsule which would be opened in 50 years. It’s now 2009 and they’re ready to open this time capsule.
All of the kids are to get 1 sealed envelope from their predecessors 50 years ago. Caleb of course gets the numbers from Lucinda.
Nicholas Cage starts looking at the numbers and finds September 11, 2001 and 2996 which immediately follows. This basically predicted the terrorist attack on 9/11 and the number of people dead which is 2996. He starts to look more closely at this list of numbers.
Through his research he discovers that over the last 50 years Lucinda had predicted all of the major disasters and global tragedies as well as how many people had died in each one.
There are three events that remain. Only the final one is a mystery because there is no number after the date. This means the number of people that are going to die is open ended and unknown to Nicholas Cage.
Since he’s a professor of astrophysics at MIT this is right up his alley.
He starts to become obssessed with his pursuit which scares his sister. He’s been estranged from his parents so really it was just him and Caleb. He does have one friend who’s a professor at MIT in cosmatology.
He starts his search for Lucinda but finds out she’s dead. He ends up talking to her teacher which gives him a little information. He then talks to her daughter Diana and Diana’s daughter who is named Abby.
He uncovers the truth about just what her mother knew. At first she is skeptical of John and stays away but then she ends up on his doorstep.
They go out to Lucinda’s mobile home and discover some startling realizations. There are these crazy black stones under her bed.
Nicolas looks under the bed and sees the words everyone else carved underneath her bed over and over.
He finally realize everyone else means the entire earth and that there’s going to be this massive solar flare that just irradiates the entire planet.
He’s obviously distraught and doesn’t know what to do. He’s asking himself why he was given these messages and predictions if there’s nothing he can do about them.
I won’t give away the mysterious ending. But at the beginning of the movie he and his son are talking about how there are 10 million stars like the sun in the universe and 4 million planets similar to the Earth revolving around these millions of suns.
They’re leading you down the path that life exists on other planets.
The solar flare destruction and computer graphics are absolutely awesome. I definitely recommend checking it out and then we can talk about the surprise ending in the comments.
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This movie stars Zoe Saldana as a cold and calculating kick ass girl.
It centers around this team of five guys who are basically a hit and run squad. The mission they’re on which opens the movie involves them painting a target for an air strike to take out. Some Bolivian drug lord is about to be killed.
After they inform the command of the targets position some kids are bussed in. The drug dealer is using the kids as a human shield.
The guys phone in and say to abort the mission but their commander says no. Max gets on the line and says they are going to proceed with the bombing just get out of there as per their orders.
But Clay is the colonel and team leader.
They also have a tech guy Jensen, weapons and munitions experts with explosives named Pooch, Cougar who’s the sniper, and Roque who’s big into knives and other weapons.
They disobey orders going in there to get the children out.
Col. Clay has a confrontation with Fadeel who is the drug lord. He informs Clay that Max will kill him too.
Clay and the team get the rest of the children out of there on a short special-education schoolbus which is quite hilarious. The bombs drop and the drug dealers entire compound is wiped off the face of the map.
A rousing start to an action-adventure movie.
The team goes to the pickup rendezvous point but the chopper isn’t big enough for all the kids and them. So Col. Clay says the kids go on the chopper and they’ll find their own way back. Then they hear chatter on the radio which sounds like Max.
They hear the order to take out the chopper and then they see a rocket headed right toward it which explodes the chopper.
Max believes he has killed them but instead killed 25 children.
These children’s deaths get back to the media who reports it. The US government backpedals saying it was this rogue team of five who weren’t operating under the orders of the US government. So they have a clean alibi who is dead.
Meanwhile Max, who was behind the whole thing, is an evil CIA operative. Orchestrating wars around the world for his own profit and to reshape the world map. He’s looking to buy these eco-terrorism bombs which have devastating destructive power but don’t leave behind any pollution like a nuclear bomb.
The team hooks up with drug dealer Fadeel’s daughter. Her father’s identity is unbeknownst to them. They think she is just helping them because she wants revenge on Max. They don’t totally trust her ever.
She ends up seducing Col. Clay for her own ends. She seems to be attracted to him but is also using her feminine wiles to achieve her own end result. There’s something more going on beneath the surface with this girl.
She’s got some mad fighting skills and so the team goes about finding and killing Max.
There is a daring Street scene like something out of the movie SWAT. In that movie they grab the head drug dealer Alex Bedell who then offers $100 million for anyone who will break him out. The same caravan scene happens in this movie when the front and back vehicles are exploded trapping them in.
Like something out of the movie Swordfish the team brings in a chopper which has a big magnet attached to it. With this they grab the armored car. This is the armored vehicle they believe Max is in so they chopper him out of there.
They find it’s only a hard drive which he was going to use pay for his bombs and it’s got $400 million worth on it.
So now they have some leverage and they find Max’s home base by tracing the IP addresses which have accessed this hard drive. There’s a daring scene where they go into the goliath building to get the encryption code for the hard drive.
Then they go to his Los Angeles office for revenge. They discover the eco-terror bomb and as you might imagine Col. Clay and evil Max have a confrontation on this high-rise crane.
There is an incredible but unsatisfying finish as Max is not dealt with.
I believe they left it open for a sequel but there’s a funny ending. This guy Max who is so evil ends up getting away on a bus with a bullet hole in the shoulder courtesy of Col. Clay. These two bad ass looking guys come up to him and say “that’s a nice watch homey”. This guy who is so evil and terrible gets his watch jacked.
The movie ends with an uneasy truce between the drug dealer’s daughter Aisha and the team which now consists only of four because of a big time betrayal you’ll have to see to believe.
They agree to work together in the interest of killing Max. But the Aisha tells Col. Clay “It’s not over between us”.
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This was a hokey and somewhat predictable love story. It also seems wildly unrealistic but there were some entertaining parts which were quite funny.
It’s basically the story of a lovesick woman who is tired of the dating scene. She’s gone through tons of guys and no matter what she does has failed to find “the one”. She has now made it into her 40s and the biological clock is calling her name.
She makes the radical decision to go to her backup plan which is just to have a sperm donor and have a baby.
So she gets inseminated hoping for the best.
As you might suspect when she’s leaving the clinic she goes to hail a cab. What we don’t see in the background is there’s also a guy who is hailing a cab as well. They both jump in at the same time.
Each accuses the other of stealing their cab. Jennifer Lopez agrees to get out saying she’s having too good a day to allow him to ruin it. He jumps out too because he felt bad about potentially ruining her good day.
So the “meet cute” has happened.
They start to have a bit of a conversation even though she is very suspicious and closed off. At least for the time being she has closed off her heart to the possibility of meeting a new guy and so doesn’t pay him any attention.
He is oddly persistent though.
The exchange ends on good terms with him picking up a lucky penny that she had turned over from tails to heads. I don’t really understand the superstition but apparently only a penny lying heads up his good luck.
He plans a totally over-the-top and spectacular date for her in this nice botanical Garden. She’s very excited also because she’s bought a new dress and is greatly anticipating the possibilities of the night.
At one point though there’s a fire, he spills all over her new dress, and they end up having a water and mudslinging fight. All in good fun.
Anyway, their romance progresses because he invites her out to his farm. They end up going all the way together and in the post-afterglow she blurts out that she’s pregnant. He says to her he doesn’t believe it can happen that fast.
Then she reveals the truth about the day they actually met and what her life was doing.
He’s obviously thrown and in reality probably less than 1% of guys would actually stay around. No matter how special the woman when this kind of thing happens it’s almost always a dealbreaker.
The rest of the movie chronicles the struggles to adjust to this unfortunate situation as he attempts to stay around. He really likes her. She’s very special to him but he just can’t seem to rectify the fact that these aren’t his babies.
He had been reconciled that he didn’t really want to have children. Now he’s been thrust into this situation.
Mistakes are made along the way and then some words are said. As is her normal MO she attempts to push him away because of this one little misstep in his wording.
Somehow, love ends up conquering all. They get back together toward the end of the movie and it closes with him making a very large and public gesture.
If you’re looking for a good date movie or just a feel-good romance movie then this is for you. Overall I give it 3 stars out of 5.
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Riverworld is a remake or a reimagining of the movie done just a few years ago. Basically when you die you are reincarnated given a second chance in the river world.
This movie opens in reality where a war reporter is set to meet up with his girlfriend at a bar. She is there before him and talking with some friends.
He comes in to meet with her. They talk with their friends have a few laughs and then go to dance for a little alone time. He busts out a ring asking her to marry him.
Before she can muster an answer a look of excitement overtakes her face. You can see the joy in her eyes and the smile creep up on her face.
But then the joy in her eyes turns to absolute horror.
She sees a girl with a bomb strapped to her chest right behind her boyfriend Matthew Ellman. The girl pushes her thumb down on the button which explodes the bar taking Jesse and Matthew with her. The whole bar and all their friends are also dead.
Then we see Matthew lying on this weird table with some water in it. It reminds me of something of the pre-cogs from that movie Minority Report.
There’s this little crystal looking piece of rock jagged like something you would see on asteroid but it’s a pinkish color. It starts to glow and then the restraints holding Matthew disappear. This hooded lady in blue which seems to be some sort of benefactor or goddess releases him.
We believe this to be our hero and next we see him he is exiting this river going onto some dryland. This is the beginning of an adventure. He doesn’t yet know it but he is about to find himself in a great battle between the benefactor who’s watching over him and the so-called salvationists who are the enemies of his benefactor.
Toward the end of the movie we find out it’s not so much a war as it is a chess game. At least from the perspective of the gods and goddesses they view it as a chess game. The salvationists want to end this river world.
The benefactors want to keep it going as a second chance for people and a place for atonement.
Matthew, Mark Twain, and Jesse are the champions of the benefactors. This guy named Sir Richard Francis Burton is the champion of the salvationists. Also the conquistador Francisco Pizarro is the other champion of the salvationists.
The champions of the two sides butt heads almost immediately. Burton and Matthew butt heads for reasons beyond just the war that there caretakers are waging. Burton has had an affair with Matthews’s love interest Jesse.
There is a great adventure which ensues involving a fight between the conquistadors and Matthew’s group. He has this great Samurai female warrior who helps him as well.
They get on to Mark Twain’s riverboat and start heading up the river toward the big “all-powerful source”. It reminds me a lot of the “all seeing eye” from the Lord of the rings trilogy.
As they’re moving up the river they have to make a stop and this is when Burton overtakes and commandeers their ship. Matthew is killed in the exchange and so his Japanese samurai friend also kills herself. They know they will be reincarnated and this is the one way she can find him again.
Matthew and the samurai end up being reincarnated and finding one another. They find their way onto the Hindenburg so now they have a way to catch up to the ship and beat Burton to the source.
It’s an exciting finish as they meet up with some other friends and others are lost along the journey. Like all great adventures not all of the group of heroes can make it to the end.
There’s a big showdown when they reach the source and Richard Burton who is intent the whole movie on destroying this existence decides against it. Instead he leaps toward the benefactors and gods who have been watching from a ship. He lands right at the nose of the ship and thrusts the nuclear reactor which had been overloaded into the ship. There’s a huge explosion and it takes everybody out for miles.
Our hero Matthew wakes up eight years later and is collected by Mark Twain and most of his other friends. They’re on board the ship once again where Mark Twain wishes to go back to the source to find out the history of this place and why things have happened.
Jesse though is nowhere to be found nor is Sir Richard Francis Burton. It’s strange the timetable for when these guys are reincarnated and released back into the river world.
They also find out from Ludvig the creator of the Hindenburg exactly how big river world is. He theorizes based on his calculations it is roughly 100 times the size of Earth. They also believe Earth was destroyed in a catastrophic event.
Matthew, Mark Twain, and the group of friends are steaming toward the source. He’s got his Japanese samurai by his side and we’re left wondering whether he still wants to reunite with Jesse or whether he’s going to instead start to love the Japanese samurai.
They are steaming off into the sunset and toward “the source” as the movie ends. This definitely leaves open the possibility for a sequel.
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Iron Man 2 was a good movie definitely worth seeing. I wish they would’ve brought back Terrence Howard to reprise his role as the air force lieutenant colonel but for whatever reason that didn’t work out.
The movie opens with some audio recapping the first movie. About how Tony’s suit is and the new direction his company is taking.
The opening introduces the main bad guy who is Ivan Vanko. We don’t know at this time but his father had worked closely with Howard Stark who is Tony’s father. There was a bad divorce when Ivan’s dad got fired and he has never forgiven the Stark family. As his dad is lying on his deathbed he tells Ivan all he has to give him is his knowledge.
We then see Ivan building a miniature arc reactor like Tony has in his chest. The one which powers the Iron Man suit. We don’t know what he is building but we suspect it is going to be the electrical arm pieces we’ve seen in the commercial previews.
Tony first enters the game leaping out of a cargo plane.
He soars right in to his own Stark Expo.
It’s an annual event he’s held every year and his dad before him. They present their own new technologies as well as allow other companies and inventors to present their things. They are mainly the conduit gathering the crowd to see the latest wonders. Kind of like tech expos we have here in the real world.
Anyway Tony gives the keynote speech extolling his own value for what the Iron Man has done to maintain world peace.
But we find dark forces are working against him.
The Palladium reactor core is putting toxic stuff into his blood. As the movie progresses his blood toxicity level goes from 19% up to 89%. If he can’t find a way to stop this by discovering a different element to use for powering the reactor than Palladium he’s a dead man.
Right after he gives his keynote speech he is called in with a subpoena to appear at the Senate committee hearings in Washington DC. The good old US of A. is attempting to commandeer his Ironman suits and technology.
Tony puts on a killer performance to convince all watching that it’s his technology, is in good hands, and he’s not giving up his personal property.
There is one main senator who is clamoring the loudest for the US to take over this technology.
Tony is exhibiting some erratic behavior and those closest to him do not know why. He has not told Pepper Potts he is dying nor has he told anyone else in his inner circle.
They’re set to attend the big grand Indy car open wheel race in Monaco. Tony decides he’s going to drive the car he owns instead of his driver. This is when Ivan Vanko makes his move. Just like in the previews he steps out onto the race track and starts cutting through the race cars with his electrical arm pieces.
After a stellar fight the Iron Man suit ends up subduing Ivan.
But Ivan says, “you lose”.
Tony Stark visits him in prison and begins to find out a little bit of the story of his father Howard and Ivan’s father. He finds out that Ivan didn’t intend to kill him he just intended to make him bleed. He only wanted to prove to everyone that Ironman isn’t invincible so they will stop believing in him.
Tony thinks he’s won because Ivan is in jail and going to be dead.
But Tony’s other big rival is named Justin Hammer and he’s a weapons industrialist. He’s tired of losing out to Tony’s superior technology.
So Justin Hammer breaks Ivan out of prison making it look like Ivan was killed. He then teams with Ivan to build his own technology.
Meanwhile, Tony realizes that because of his fading health he’s got to make some changes and he just wants to enjoy his life. To the outside world it seems he’s spiraling out of control and no longer worthy of being the worlds protector, the Iron Man. He cedes his company over to Pepper Potts making her CEO and chairman.
People are further losing confidence in him because of his seemingly irrational decision-making.
He has a crazy blowout birthday party that his good friend the lieutenant colonel simply cannot abide. The lieutenant colonel puts on one of the Ironman suits and they have an up-in-arms ironman face-off.
Tony ends up meeting with the secret group his father created called Shield. They set him on a path to solving his Palladium problem.
He learns a little bit more about himself and that what he thought about his father was untrue. His father loved him and left him more lessons even though he’s long been dead.
It comes down to the final battle scene where Ivan who has built some drones goes head-to-head with Tony and the lieutenant colonel.
Ivan takes over control of the lieutenant colonel’s suit and so it is him and the drones versus only Ironman. Tony manages to maneuver around and evade them.
Tony’s friends at Shield, one of which is Scarlett Johansson, end up taking over Ivan’s computer terminal and rebooting the lieutenant colonel’s suit.
So the two friends take out all the drones but there is one final showdown to be had. Scarlet didn’t get Ivan Vanko so he is still out there on the run.
But he’s not running far because he has built a suit for himself with improved technology. He took Tony’s advice in prison and made a more efficient mousetrap. Now he has an ironman type of suit with the electrical shock arm pieces.
He fights both Tony and the lieutenant colonel but ends up getting beat down.
But like something out of predator when they are defeated his suit as well as all the drones suits has a self-destruct mechanism. Tony and the Lt. Col. have to fly out of there before the things blow. But there’s one final thing Tony must do.
The love of his life Pepper Potts is still in harms way close to some of the drone pieces. He flies in to rescue her just before the explosions take place.
We never saw Ivan Vanko die but we assume that he did. Will he be back in the sequel?
One other point of interest is Justin Hammer Tony Stark’s big industrial rival has been arrested because Pepper Potts called the New York police on him after learning he was working with Vanko. He is taken away in handcuffs.
I believe much like Cobra in the movie G.I. Joe he will rise again. Will he be the main arch enemy in Ironman 3?
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![Cover of "Pandorum [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KhIT6fg2L._SL300_.jpg)
![Cover of "Knowing [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qdG-zQEkL._SL300_.jpg)
