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richard-cullen971
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100 Degrees Below Zero (2013)
Someone give them a budget!
The plot idea was sound enough (after all, it worked well for the blockbuster that inspired it). Sadly the execution was very sloppy - even by The Asylum standards.
The caricatures (you can't say that they were developed enough to be characters) never develop in any way that encourages the audience to care about them at all. As usual there is a mentally underdeveloped son in the family. I'm not sure why The Asylum is so keen on this feature. Surely they could either write the part for an older teen or cast a younger actor? They drive to the Channel Tunnel - which is strangely being guarded by Eastern Europeans in US-style combat gear. Some attempt has been made to show a location - by placing a still photo of a Eurostar sitting in the tunnel mouth. It would be still, of course, as there is no electrical overhead wiring and, as we soon discover, no track in the tunnel either seeing as they drive through it in the Eastern European-registered car that they somehow obtained in the UK.
Also, it seems that the storm is so bad that all the roads in France have vanished.
The RAF also now wear US uniforms and use American ranks (although, at least they used a couple of Brits to play the parts). Really, though, how hard would it have been to use the right uniforms and ranks? Not at all. It just emphasises how lazy the production were being.
Now, they chose to film in Hungary. How much extra would it have cost to film in the UK or France where they could have used actors with appropriate accents and uniforms? There is doing a film on the cheap, and then there is producing something so lazily that it really does not deserve to have been produced.
It is actually annoying that I know of local actors and directors who can produce films of higher standards than this on a four-figure budget, yet their work remains unbroadcast.
Scavengers (2013)
Pretty poor, but not the worst.
I may have been feeling generous towards this film, having just watched something that is far, far worse - but this is a film that had potential. Sadly little of that potential was realised.
The main characters were so cliché that they'd have appeared as such in a 1930s Flash Gordon episode. Sadly the film tried to take itself seriously, and the result was dire. There were some attempts at decent acting from the supporting cast, but these were never allowed to develop or evolve in any way.
The visual effects were not so bad as to be distracting, but were never going to set the world on fire. Quality scripting and directing were needed to make this film work - and they were sadly lacking.
The ending makes it appear as though a follow-up was intended. Maybe this was a pitch pilot for a series? If it is, then better writing and directing could turn the concept into something very good. In fact, it would be great to imagine someone else re-making this film properly, as the idea of a salvage crew working against a properly realised background of a universe at war would be a fantastic film to watch.
Dominion (2015)
Pedestrian, repetitive and almost unwatchable.
I am a sci-fi genre addict and can excuse many failings in a film, but this was one of the slowest, least-engaging films I have ever attempted to watch. I've flagged this up for spoilers, but to be honest so little happens in this film there is almost no plot that can be spoiled! The opening minutes give the impression that you might be in for an interesting science fiction adventure, but then almost nothing happens for the next 40 minutes apart from people talking about exciting events that have taken place off-camera (with infrequent cut scenes of spacecraft possibly doing something interesting away from the narrative and black SUVs driving about).
"We're going to set the world on fire with this" exclaims a character - as we watch film of a guy wandering about in the desert - filmed on, seemingly, a broken smart phone, coupled to snap shots and documents gathered through Google. Exciting music kicks in as they - upload it to the internet...
We're told that the Moon is an artificial base for an invasion, and that NASA are in on events - but then, without showing us anything of the sort, the film immediately moves onto the more important shots of MiB agents disturbing afternoon wine tasting (with their faces suggesting that they are utterly terrified of confronting an unarmed OAP).
After an hour we pay a brief visit to what appears to be the CGI set of Babylon 5. 14 minutes later a voice-over tells us about the (unseen) invasion and later (not shown) space-battle and the end of life on Earth, while we see a few space ships gently flying about on the screen accompanied by Dvorak's New World Symphony - with the film ending by showing us the new human home world (from orbit only).
Bluntly, this film takes itself too seriously, yet delivers far less content to think about than even parody films like Iron Sky. There is no reason for the viewer to care about the fate of the main characters, or even fear the arrival of the alien invasion and it was a real effort to watch this film through to its conclusion. As an actor I try to respect other people's work, and I keep almost all DVDs that I buy to watch again periodically, but this one will be going straight into the nearest charity box.