stuart_a_mack

Where to start, OK when I first heard the rumours that Ridley Scott was going back to the Alien franchise I was so excited I could nearly explode. The potential of one of the greatest film directors re-visiting a genre defining film but with the advantages of 30 years of experience and modern techniques and equipment could be one of the greatest films ever.

So to say the least my expectations where high.

The trailers and speculation online and in print had whetted my appetite and the marketing machine in full swing had built my desire for this film to be good like few films before.

I found myself reflecting during the screening on what made Alien such a good film, and also films like Aliens and Jaws. Directors I think work best when they have real restrictions in place with budgets and the equipment and technologies available to them. When you have to build tension through style and cinematography, when it's more about what you don't see than it is about what you can show the REAL directors step up to the plate and can deliver stories of real impact.

This like so many other films lacks originality, spends far too much time celebrating how good CGI can be and doesn't bother to imbue its villain with any kind of personality or character.

The basic plot is covered in the trailers, discovered all over Earth across multiple sites and throughout all history there is a common recurring theme of a star map, a location, an invitation?? So of they go, a rag tag group of scientist and industrialists with one Android looking after them in hyper sleep. From there you already know the story because it is exactly what you think it will be, only unlike the original Alien there is no tension and little conflict, no horror, no suspense and nothing original. It would be hard to invent a film language like he did in the original, but here he has followed the conventions of sci-fi like a paint by numbers film, lazy story telling but beautifully put together.

The premise of the film is simple, what if by taking a magic pill you could increase your brains ability to the extent that you become a genius at whatever you put your mind too?

This has been explored in a lot of movies in various different ways and follows the simple German folklore tale of Faust a man who makes a deal with Mephistopheles (the Devil) to gain access to the divine knowledge, once the pact is made his soul is damned for eternity.

That is where this film falls down, although the set up is good and the characters and acting interesting it doesn't really explore anything with any real depth. The moral ambiguities of this gift or the repercussions of using it for either personal gain or to the benefit of mankind are never really thought of or considered. They appear as passing thoughts with no reflection or comment.

You do get to see different types of people take the drug to explore how different people would use it, but this opportunity is lost really as the contrasts are broadly drawn and quickly stepped over.

The central character seems to be rather one dimensional even with his gift and strands to the narrative are simply left open or unresolved.

Having said all that, if you shut down your active mind and just look at the beautiful people and don't go looking to deep into the story what passes is a couple of hours of good fun, with some neat camera techniques, amazing visuals and an interesting premise that will get you thinking, if not really exploring the potential of the source material to the full itself.

Sadly the team behind the trailer have created an immense sense of false expectation for a documentary that had real potential.

The premise is simple, a photographer (Yaniv) from New York starts a friendship online with a young girl from small town America who has created some paintings from the photographs he has had published.

He begins to correspond with her extended family first her mother, then an older sister. As these relationships develop the stories they tell begin to unravel leaving a lot of unanswered questions, moving inevitably to Yaniv travelling to visit and find out exactly what is going on.

If you set your expectations at zero, better still (too late now if you are reading this, but if you are going to watch with a friend give them this advice) read nothing about this in advance and don't expect much.