Pitch Black

I was oddly surprised how much I liked this. I wasn't expecting a whole lot - like a bunch of other people I ended up seeing Chronicles of Riddick before I saw this. While I'll leave my thoughts on the later for a later date I'll just say it didn't prepare me for Pitch Black. 

This is a tight film. Yes I felt like I new where some of it was going but... and this is the important part... I felt like I knew because other movies I'd seen had either taken from Pitch Black or simply done the same story in much less effective fashion. The film is not all that impressive because of individual performances, or because of the CGI or the production design. In fact it's all rather generic. But what it did do was make me care about the people and believe in the setting and most importantly, in the danger it was selling me. I felt anxiety for the people involved.

 Yes there's more than a tip of the hat to everything from Alien to Blade Runner but I didn't particularly mind. The visuals are well done although the CGI at this point looks a bit dated. Maybe I'm just a sucker for this setting and these kind of characters but I enjoyed it enormously and feel no guilt about saying it.

The Fifth Element

I'll make this short - I love this film. The reason I threw it on this week was because a family member had never seen it and I rather feel everyone should. Under the deft direction of Besson you get a tightly plotted scifi action comedy something or other that's very bright, certainly not stupid and extremely self aware. I also like seeing mask and prosthetic work in places that I'm fairly sure now days would be CGI.

Get a copy, you won't be disappointed. Oh and it has Gary Oldman and Ian Holm, need I say more?

Fringe

Okay so I'm cheating this isn't a movie - I refer of course to the Fox TV series. I recently watched the first episode. I found it mildly interesting but will probably keep watching simply because of John Noble. It's a bit unfair to the others when he's on screen. I don't imagine he's trying to dominate the scenes but... well lets just say he's in a different class and I'm interested in where that will go over the arc of the first season.