Stargate: Ark of Truth

Put simply, if you enjoyed Stargate SG-1, you’ll enjoy this movie. If you were not a fan of SG-1, you won’t even understand what’s going on in this movie (even if you enjoyed the original Stargate movie, so much has changed in the 10 seasons of the show that that movie inspired, and this movie starts where the show left off). This wasn’t as much a “movie based on a tv show” as it was a TV episode of Stargate SG-1 that was too long to play on the air. I enjoyed it, and it nicely finished the Orai plot line that was left fairly open at end of the final episode of the series.

Jerome Bixby’s Man from Earth

I’d never heard of this when TheBoyfriend™ handed it to me in Blockbuster. I flipped it over and read the back which essentially described the plot as a college professor has quit his job and is leaving town when is friends (other professors) show up unexpectedly to see him off and question why he is leaving. He decides to tell them his secret; that he is a 14,000 year old cro-magnon man who has to move on every so often when people begin to notice that he isn’t aging.

How freaking corny does that sound?!?! Well, don’t let it fool you, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite awhile. Modern movies (especially in the SciFi genre) seem ready to spend their big budgets on visually dazzling special effects that are all too often designed mostly to divert your attention from the apparent lack of money they spent on writers. This movie doesn’t take that route at all, and in fact, the entire movie takes place in a rustic cabin packed and ready to be moved out of, devoid even of most of its furniture. Beginning to end the “action” is nothing more than a conversation between colleagues. Yet it keeps you intensely engaged beginning to end. It has the feeling of being based on a book, and I was unhappy to find that it was not. Seems to me that they could have explored the plot much deeper than they did and was hoping a book would have done so. Even still, it was definitely a worthwhile movie.

Highlander: The Source

TheBoyfriend™ bought this as an impulse buy. After watching it, even he was wishing he could go get his money back. Probably because the first movies came out when i was too young to be interested in them, I’ve always thought of Adrian Paul as the real Duncan MacLeod, so I was glad that he was cast in the role in this film. That was where my enjoyment of it ended. “The Source” utterly butchered the original highlander mythology and the mythology it attempted to replace it with was poorly thought out, underdeveloped and inconsistent. Even ignoring the fact that the film seemed oblivious to the entire Highlander story up to that point, as a standalone movie it was poorly done. Seriously don’t see this movie if you enjoyed the Highlander movies and tv series. I’m trying my best to forget this movie so as not to tarnish my memories of the rest of the Highlander franchise.