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Doctor Who – Sleep No More

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Doctor Who – Sleep No More
  • wiki: link

Doctor Who - Sleep No More

Over the years Doctor Who‘s forays from sci-fi into horror have led to mixed results. While creating my favorite episode of the current run in “Blink” which introduced audiences to the Weeping Angels, other attempts have been far less successful. Sadly, “Sleep No More” falls into the later category as the audience is thrown into a found-footage style horror tale about monsters from your sleep made up of dream dust who devour people because… um, not sure about that part. There’s an intriguing idea at the center of the episode about the need for sleep and the repercussions of bypassing the natural order for greed, but the story itself delivers rather lackluster creatures and fails to make the scientist (Reece Shearsmith) responsible for creating them interesting in the slightest.

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Aloha

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Aloha
  • IMDb: link

AlohaWriter/director Cameron Crowe wastes both the likable stars and their strong performances in an ill-conceived cinematic misadventure about a military contractor (Bradley Cooper) returning to Hawaii at the crossroads of his life. A half-assed attempt to tap into the same themes that Crowe used nearly a decade before with Jerry Maguire, Aloha lacks both the heart and brains of the filmmaker’s earlier work.

What’s sad is Crowe gets strong performances across the board. Cooper is well cast as are Rachel McAdams, as his ex with a secret, and Emma Stone, as the younger soldier he will inevitably fall for. Sadly, it’s Crowe’s story telling that’s the downfall here (and his choice to largely ignore any Hawaiian actors in pivotal roles doesn’t help the staging of the film which, for the most part, could have been done completely on a Hollywood sound stage). It’s been 15 years since Crowe crafted a film I’ve loved, and a decade since he’s made one I even like. Aloha is simply the latest misfire of a once promising career.

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Superman: Doomsday

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Superman: Doomsday
  • IMDB: link

When I heard that Bruce Timm and the folks who brought us Justice League were planning a DVD movie of “Death of Superman” I was stoked. Sadly what emerged was more than a little disappointing and foreshadowed other such entries to DC Animation’s line-up. 

”The Death of Superman,” “World Without a Superman,” and “Reign of Supermen,” storylines which spanned issues and years, are all condensed into 75 minutes.  We get Doomsday, Superman and Lois’s tearful goodbye, and Superman’s return in a black suit.  We don’t get Steel, Suberboy, Cyborg Superman, or the Eradicator.

There are several things which bug me about this movie.  First off, rather than use actors who had been used for Justice League or Superman: The Animated Series, every part is recast, most unnecessarily.  Some come off okay, Adam Baldwin is a passable Clark/Superman and Swoosie Kurtz is not too shabby as Martha Kent, but others, including Anne Heche as Lois Lane, come off just short of disaster.

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Mission: Impossible

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Mission: Impossible
  • IMDb: link

Mission: ImpossibleAlthough it began a series of increasingly good summer blockbuster over the course of two decades, 1996’s relaunch of the television series of the same name as a theatrical film (which introduced the world to Tom Cruise‘s most successful ongoing character in IMF Agent Ethan Hunt) is problematic at best. Poorly plotted, including a huge fuck you to fans of the original series by turning the television show’s central hero (Peter Graves) into a greedy villain (Jon Voight) selling CIA secrets to the highest bidder, the film hasn’t aged well. Turning Jim Phelps into a villain would be like rebooting Superman into a coldblooded killer. What kind of an asshole would do that?

Opening with the death of an IMF team (Kristin Scott Thomas, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Emilio Estevez) and Ethan on the run from his former bosses who believe he is responsible, the film climaxes early on with a break-in at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It’s this sequence, and really only this sequence, that’s worth noting from the otherwise forgettable tale.

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Stitchers – Fire in the Hole

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Stitchers – Fire in the Hole
  • wiki: link

Stitchers - Fire in the Hole

The poorly-planned procedures and questionable decision making that has been a staple of the Stitchers program since it was introduced in the show’s first episode nearly gets everyone in the lab killed when the group decides to stitch into a recently-deceased scientist carrying a deadly virus that their systems were unable to detect. Quarantined and cut-off from the outside world attempt to make peace with their circumstances while studying the scientist’s final moments in hopes of discovering a cure. Far less tense than it should be, “Fire in the Hole” never sells us on the idea that any of the characters are in any real danger (even with the added number of lab stand-ins in the episode).

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