Movies

Humanity's End (2009) I learned of this from looking at the pictures on the front of a dollar-a-night DVD machine at the grocery store and began to wonder what a direct to DVD scifi cheapy looks like these days now that CG effects are probably the least expensive part of a movie. Unfortunately you still need to have a good script, competent direction and a certain amount of just plain making sense, even if you can fill the sky with exploding spaceships. It started with seven minutes of unintelligible narration needlessly explaining the elaborate back-story, illustrated with imagery made "old-timey" looking by the addition of both fake video scanlines and fake film blotches and specks. That's what they used their advanced technology for in this - to simulate film and video effects on their all-CG space model shots - camera motion, blurry jerky in-and-out zooms etc. Nonsensical and needless stylistic muddle. It was great that they could make so many spaceships explode but it seemed at times they just cut them in at random and I kept wondering what was happening, and whose spaceship that was that just blew up. That's not how you want your scifi movie to go, with people wondering what's going on. The dialog was equal parts plot exposition and snappy retorts, and after half an hour I said "I just want to see ONE MINUTE with nothing stupid in it." But I didn't so I quit. I really said that, and that is not what you want people to say about your movie.