Welshrogue

A huge asteroid is going to hit the earth and NASA‘s only hope to avert disaster is to send up a rowdy group of roughnecks to drill into the asteroid and blow it up from the inside. No wait, thats Armageddon, this is Deep Impact about a huge asteroid that is going to hit the earth and NASA has to send up astronauts to blow it up but lots of people are going to die.

Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, and a pre-Hobbit Elijah Woods stars in this asteroid disaster movie. Taking a different tack from the previous asteroid hitting earth movie, Impact focuses on the human impact of the big impact. Rather than building up the fun and tension before the mission Impact gets everyone in space as soon as they can without rushing the story.

Yes, you still have the emotional story lines that are designed to make you care about people who are about to die but half the time its too cheesey for anyone to really care! I should point out that the spaceship design in Impact looks a lot better than the ‘super’ shuttles in Armageddon.

If truth be told, its hard to watch one movie without mentally comparing it to the other, as both came out around the same time. Both are very enjoyable but each movie punches different buttons and therefore one movie might not rock someone as much as the other.

A cop finds himself invited to a Hollywood party and bumps into a small time crook who he had busted in the past. Before you can say Hollywood Nights, the cop is up to his eyebrows in moving making, mafia, a gang war and a new drug on the streets.

A very twisting and unpredictable plot threads its way through the book as the main characters, Shane Scully, detective, his wife, Alexa, boss of the detectives, and his son, Chooch are all well formed and enjoyable. Some of the smaller characters are just as interesting, especially American.

I f0und the name dropping at the start of the book was a little overdone but I guess in setting up the scene of Hollywood, you need a couple of star names.  It also took a little time to get into the book, trying to decide how serious it was supposed to be.

This is a good book, one that sneaks up on your and captures your attention while you are just enjoying the story.

A hibernating dragon is woken and within 20 years the world is being ravaged by hundreds of dragons. A small group of survivors are alive and hiding in a castle until a group of American soldiers threaten to disturb their careful peace.

Starring Matthew McConaughey as the American Van Zan and Christian Bale as Quinn, Reign of Fire is a gritty tale of survival against creatures that appear to be all powerful. If you watch closely you also see Gerard Butler before he became King Leonides in 300.

What more could you ask for than a sci fi movie about a grim future plus dragons. It is such a good idea and thankfully it is brought to fruition carefully and passionately. The dragons are believable, frightening and incredible. They look and act like real dragons, not the lilac creatures that some people think dragons are.

The survivors look like they have been kept alive for the last twenty years by their wits. It hasn’t been easy and they haven’t been sitting around complaining about the weather, they have been working out plans, a system and even teaching the children a prayer on how to survive the dragons.

Reign of Fire is serious as a heart attack and a brilliant alternative future of a world populated with dragons and hearty survivors who refuse to roll over and die.

A ancient circular device found in Egypt and when activated transports people to a distant planet. Then they made a TV series out of it.

Kurt Russell plays a soldier sporting a wild flat top haircut, while James Spader is the Egyptologist who, along with a team venture to walk through the Stargate to the other side. Like so many other movies, Stargate has Col. O’Neil mourning the loss of his kid. While I appreciate that it is a very great way to give a character motivation and moodiness, you still would think they could either become original or not go the same way of so many other movies.

The start is very reminiscent of both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom & The Fifth Element. Special effects are very obviously models which spoils the effect of a giant pyramid landing from space. I am confused as to why a device that was obviously created many many years ago, needs to be controlled by huge computers and lots of scientist when probably three peasants and a goat probably used it back in the day.

Stargate is a fun movie, not a serious look into space travel or other worlds but one that will keep your attention.

A spaceship transporting cargo and a group of civilians crash land on a planet lit by two hot suns. Their only problem is that one of the survivors is a hardened criminal. Oh that and in the dark waits creatures who can’t stand the light but will kill anything in the dark. Oh, and the two suns are about to be eclipsed.

The movie that pretty much introduced Vin Diesel to the movie world, is part sci fi thriller and part horror movie. The great hook of the movie is that you have to have light to survive and yet the two suns that normally overwhelm the planet with light are about to be eclipsed. You also have this great character in Riddick who is so charismatic.

Similar to Alien, Pitch Black will make the viewer jump out of their skin on several occasions and yet still want to see more. The aliens are pretty cool looking and not your normal bi-ped with a silly mask on. They work very well and do their best to eat anything that moves.

A good scary thriller with a great lead character and good effects.

To save the life of the future leader of the resistance against the machines, the rebels send a re-programmed terminator back in time to find and protect him. Shame they didn’t change the face from the first terminator that came last time!

I guess Terminator 1 & 2 are the ultimate in Bad Cop/Good Cop. While the first movie scared the pants off you by the way the Terminator wouldn’t stop, the second movie tries to impress the pants off you by way of the special effects. Yes you have Ahnold back again weather a leather jacket but he is more of character than a machine this time.

The bad machine is played nicely by Robert Patrick. I saw nicely but he probably didn’t have to work too hard since there were so many effects going on with his character. Pretty much the effects overwhelm everything else, story and actors. They look good but that doesn’t mean they improve the story too much, which is good and a turn around from the first movie.

Spectacular pretty much describes Terminator 2:Judgement Day. Eye candy could also be used to describe it. It looks good, isn’t truly bad (for that see Terminator 3) and is fun to watch. What more could you want?

A group of hijackers along with their hired transport board an ocean liner expecting to be steal of lot of expensive things. Instead they find lots of tentacle things trying to consume them.

There is nothing like the old cheesey movie about hijackers and monsters to make you smile. Yes the movie is incredibly cheesey with effects that range from very good to well, cheesey. The acting is over the top but works well for the movie. The dialog is questionable at times but always fun to listen to and at the end of the day, you have an enjoyable movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

With Treat Williams and the delectable Famke Janssen starring, Deep is a good combination of monster movie, heist movie and comedy all rolled into one. In parts very reminiscent of movies such as Deep Blue Sea and even Aliens 4 with the use of water filled sets to create more tension, Deep lets the viewer enjoy the action without having to worry about the plot/effects/silliness of the thing.

A fun movie that shouldn’t be taken too seriously as it doesn’t take itself seriously.

The sole survivor of the Nostromo, Ripley, is joined by a group of marines as they hunt for the reason why a colony on planet LV 426 is not in contact anymore. LV 426 was where Ripley’s original crew found the original alien, but this time they have trained marines so things will be so much easier, won’t they?

Rather than simply remake the original movie again, Aliens is a totally different movie, tied to the original only by Ripley and the aliens. Where as the original had a haunted house feel, this is more of a zombie movie, with the aliens being the relentless, unstoppable zombies. Its fun to see the confident, cocky marines get picked off, destroyed and whittled down one by one by these creatures that are beyond anything they have ever encountered before.

Its debatable which is the better movie, Alien or Aliens because both are very good at what they set out to do. Aliens had a very strong cast, with Sigourney Weaver joined by James Cameron favourites Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton.

While the mainly male crew are picked off one by one, it is Ripley who is stronger and who takes charge. The movie that has an overload of macho-ness, actually ends up with one of the most iconic female leads in recent history.

A great movie, and one that cannot be ignored as one of the most popular science fiction movies of the last 25 years.

The second and probably best Star Wars movie ever, Empire finds the rebels on a not so secret base on the ice planet Hoth. Soon the friends are split up and while one of them faces a cold death, another finds out a secret about family.

Empire Strikes Back is a very untypical movie and sequel. It has an untypical beginning, not following on directly from the previous movie. It has an untypical middle, splitting up the main characters and putting them in very different circumstances and surroundings. It has an untypical ending, one that includes one of the biggest shocks (at the time) in a movie as well as one of the main characters being taken away like an ice cube.

In 1980, movie goers weren’t expecting a movie like Empire. When (OK, this is a SPOILER for the one person who doesn’t know it) Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker that he is his father, it was such a bombshell that people walked out of the theater thinking about it, and not the ending which saw Han Solo whisked away like a frozen Popsicle, which is pretty cool (he he) considering the brilliant opening battle on the ice planet Hoth.

The battle, where we are first introduced to the Imperial Walkers (why have machines that walk when its obvious that wheels are better?) is stunning. My personal favourite part of all the movies, it has these relentless walking death machines that can be tripped up, literally, by a piece of string. Then you have Yoda in the swamp which was good comic relief, making you wonder if Kermit might appear in one of the scenes, while everyone else is having a party in the cloud cities.

Nearly everyone has seen the original Star Wars trilogy and for most, Empire stands out as the most popular of the three. So much so that it is ranked at number 7 on IMDB.com’s top 250 movies, 5 places ahead of Star Wars.

In the future (1997) New York is a maximum security prison, surrounded by a wall guarded day and night. The President of the United States finds himself trapped inside when his plane goes down and its up to an ex-soldier named Snake Plissken to get him out.

John Carpenter has been responsible for some great movies and Escape is one of them. Starring a young, mean Kurt Russell as Plissken and with Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine and Issac Hayes also in the movie, Escape has a great cast that helps set the tone for this futuristic nightmare of a prison.

Made in 1981, the effects have not aged as well as perhaps the film makers would have hoped for but they still do the job. The ‘advanced’ computer graphics of the time are very dated and while they do their job that is all that they do. The music while also being heavy on the synths is instantly recognizable as John Carpenter’s work and as such, rocks!

Kurt Russell does a wonderful job of creating the kick arse character of Snake, who is probably one of the most iconic characters from the early 80s. Escape is a dark tale of the future and how one of the most popular cities in the world becomes the biggest prison in the world.