Fiona G.

What a neat premise this movie came up with at the beginning: show us what turns life can take if a machine becomes truly intelligent and able to bear emotions.

But then the movie almost immediately starts to stomp on its own feet. Our hero, David, the first of the new robot generation able to handle emotions, is apparently not the first. Otherwise his predecessors would not be able to fear death, develop cynism beyond their limited programming or forget their programming at all. Best example here the lovebot "Gigolo Joe," who tries to go undercover when he finds a dead woman in his apartment and later befriends David - all this goes far beyond "programmed reactions" as explained in the movie (why would the manufacturer program these into a lovebot at all?). Oh, and if you wonder how much thicker the plotline became due to "Gigolo Joe" imagine his role being deleted and try to think hard if he delivered anything useful.

(Ok, I will *not* argue about the question why David gets shortfused when he eats spinach but can fall into a pool and nothing happens or why with all the elaborate technology to mimic humans none of the bots blink.)

Then we see David getting left by his mother (or the person he was programmed to love) and his endless quest to find the "Blue Fairy" from "Pinocchio" who he thinks can make him a real boy and win him the love of his mother. Did I say endless? Yes, because all of us past age 8 know that this quest will be futile. You may feel sorry for David, but you will also feel like watching an accident happen and you can do nothing about it.

But then enter Mr. Spielberg. When you watch the last 30 minutes of the movie you will know what I mean. You can almost tell where Kubrick's notes ended for sure and where Spielberg took what he described as "his own intellectual freedom." At this point you will feel like watching "E.T." and "2001" at the same time - on an LSD trip. Spielberg tried so hard to reach the heights of Kubrick (and had Williams throw in some "2001"-like tunes for the final) it is almost pitiful how he ruins his own ambitions with his pink popcorn attitude to sooth the viewer. Spielberg just can't let us go without a pat on the shoulder and a reassuring "everything will be fine!"

How swell would everything have been, if the movie ended right there with David staring and begging and Teddy eternally sitting with him. Audiences would have left the theaters wondering "are we aware of what a responsibility we are getting ourselves into there?" I would have even forgotten about the above mentioned implausibility of the emotional reactions the earlier robots had, which most likely were delivered to pull us onto the sides of the robots.

Which brings me to the one character I liked the best and felt genuinely sorry for: patient, enduring and quiet Teddy.

Based on a Phillip K. Dick story (the writer of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," which was the background for "Blade Runner") this movie delivers, but suffers because of the apparently tight budget. Some scenes in here reminded me of the original "Star Trek" episodes, where the production crew had to become quite inventive to get effects on an almost non-existing budget.

So movies low on money have to rely on their scripts and on good actors, and "Screamers" has them both. The story and its subplots could serve for three movies and especially Peter Weller showed a superb performance here. Generally there are some weaknesses, but they can be forgiven, if you allow yourself to get into the story.

If you have enough of FX loaded movies that cover their thin plot with a multitude of explosions, then give it a try.

Whew, with the hype that went around this movie, you got the feeling that you miss out on elemental cinematic history if you don't see it. Unfortunately, that's not true.

"The Sixth Sense" tries hard to be a good psycho-thriller and in fact the idea behind it was good. But as the script was written, someone must have had the idea to put the real big bang in there, something no viewer can guess to happen, the totally total of all story twists there ever were. But, bad luck, the grand idea has to fit into the rest of the script, so you have to modify it and make compromises.

And really, I was disappointed with the end. Not because of it, but because everything else was set up for it. I didn't guess the twist because it was so sneaky, but because it was completely implausible. To clarify that I will try hard not to give anything away, in case you didn't see "Sixth Sense" yet, so I will ask only one question, which you'll understand later: how do you get into someones apartment without ringing the doorbell or knocking? There are numerous more points like that but by stating them I would give away the surprise. It's too bad the whole film had to suffer just to get that in.

And then there are horror scenes, not too many, but I guess the writers figured that the movie had to give some more than the general idea and the last big bang. And again, they just serve the purpose and are badly integrated: young Cole, they boy who can see ghosts, later finds out that they want him to help them. I think even a ghost can anticipate that scaring someone to death isn't a good start for getting help.

Probably the best asset of the movie is Haley Joel Osment, who played "Cole." Marvelous what this young boy could do with his role. Bruce Willis stays a little unbelievable as a psychologist, but that could be the script as well. So far I yet have to encounter a psychologist who handles therapy that way.

Well, nice idea, nice movie, but nothing overly sensational. Horror movies greatly benefit from taking part in our world and incorporating the horror into it. But then they have to stay true to rules we all are familiar with and to those they need to set up to make us bite our nails. If "Sixth Sense" would have mastered both, I'd be yelling "great one!"