Pitch Black & The Chronicles of Riddick

I've always heard a lot of good things about these movies (my brother actually reviewed Pitch Black awhile back) and I have been meaning to check them out at some point. I found the limited edition steelbooks at Walmart on the cheap so I scooped them up on a blind buy to give them a poke.

Pitch Black
(2000) [Trailer]
Director: David Twohy [IMDB]

Synopsis: A space ship crashes on a planet that seems to be soaked in non stop sunlight... the marooned passengers soon realize when night fall comes they're not alone.

I was reluctant to see this movie in the past based on one major factor... Vin Diesel. Unlike my brother, I am not a huge fan of the dude, but I've changed my tune after watching Pitch Black. I thought he did a rather good job with the character and seemed to be really comfortable with the roll.

I was very into the setting and story of this movie. I love sci-fi and horror pressure cookers... where the characters are trapped in a single location and have to escape some ominous force. Pitch Black takes that motif and executes it with great precision.

My main complaint would be with some of the aesthetic choices of the director. At times the editing seemed dated and felt like a cheesy 90's music video.

I'm pretty glad I picked this movie up, it was worth it and I could definitely see rewatching it in the future.

The Chronicles of Riddick
(2004) [Trailer]
Director: David Twohy [IMDB]

Synopsis: The follow up to Pitch Black finds Riddick up against a horde of intergalactic bad guys called the Necromongers.

This film feels completely different from Pitch Black and that's not a bad thing I guess. Where Pitch Black felt like a low budget genre flick, this feels like a huge summer block buster. The look of the film reminds me of Dune in a lot of ways and the Necromongers are very similar to the Borg... only less robotic.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of character development and the story gets to be a bit overloaded at times, but ultimately the end of the ride was worth it.

After rolling through these films I gotta say... I'm really looking forward to Riddick later this year.

Man of Steel

Man of Steel
(2013) [Trailer]
Director: Zack Snyder [IMDB]

Based off the first trailer for Man of Steel I felt confident we were going to get a pretty awesome reboot of Superman. It had Zack Snyder directing, Christopher Nolan producing, a stellar cast and that score by Hans Zimmer moved my arm hairs a little when I first heard it. I finally got a chance to see it today, so let's see if it lived up to my expectations.

Synopsis: Superman AKA The Man of Steel... you know him.... you love him... and he's back to save the day.

Can Hollywood not find another city to blow up besides New York? If Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich came together to make a movie, it might turn out like this. Man of Steel is almost non stop explosions, it's relentless, especially during the last half. I love action, but it just felt like the same thing over and over with nothing behind it to make it impactful. If you're gonna have a 2 ½ hour long movie, throw in some character development. Everyone seemed so stale in this. The performances weren't bad, they just didn't have the writing to back them up. The overly serious tone of Man of Steel gets old and I found myself wanting something a little more human... like more of the parents (Kevin Costner was great) and less of the girl, whose name I didn't even know, trapped under the rubble. Did anyone honestly care what happened to her? I know I didn't, cause I didn't know shit about her except the 1 minute we spent with her in Lois Lane's office.

I know it sounds like I hated this film, I didn't. I thought there were some good things about it. The effects were top notch and for a summer block buster, you're not going to get a better looking film. I liked the intro on Krypton and all the flash backs to Clark's life on Earth as a young boy were cool too.

There were a few things that confused me about Zod's plan, that I might consider plot holes... but to get into it here would take too much time. I also wasn't extremely fond of the ending either, but I won't spoil anything... go see for yourself.