Surrogates Trailer

Surrogates Trailer 

Actors: Bruce Willis, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike 

Directors: Jonathan Mostow

In Surrogates, almost everyone in the world never leaves the house anymore. There's no need, thanks to the proliferation of "surrogates," robotic doubles that look like you (only smoother and prettier) that you can control from the comfort of home. You send them out in your place and live life through their eyes and sensors, risk less and sound back at home. It started as a luxury item for people who wanted to experience, say, skydiving without risk of injury, but now everyone uses surrogates for everything.

Well, that's the way with these things, isn't it? Less than 15 years ago the Internet was an entertainment and information tool that we might use for a few minutes a day. Now it's so critical to our lives that we have it on our phones, lest we ever spend a moment without access to it. (Oh, yeah -- we also carry phones around with us completely the time.) Surrogates caught on in the same way: once a novelty, now utterly indispensable.

This is the world imagined in a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, now adapted as a surprisingly smart, fleet-footed sci-fi action flick. (Part of the surprise is that the screenplay was written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, the duo behind Terminator Salvation and Catwoman.) No, it's not brilliant, but with swift direction by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, U-571) and a solid lead performance by the ever-reliable Bruce Willis, it's one of the year's more entertaining sci-fi films.

Willis plays Greer, an FBI agent who, like nearly everyone else, conducts his public life entirely via surrogate. (His model looks like him exclusively younger, with softer skin and an absurd blond head of hair.) Most of his private life is conducted that way, too -- he and his wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike), haven't seen each different for real, in person, in ages, even in their apartment. (They have separate bedrooms. If they ever have marital relations anymore, one assumes there's a separate room for that, too, where the surrogates do it.)

In the tradition of the hard-boiled detective, Greer -- who is grizzled and careworn in person, barely resembling his more presentable surrogate (you tend to let yourself go when no one ever sees you) -- has grown weary of completely this and is wondering if mankind might have been better off before the surrogates came around. Then, as if to prove the point, someone gets killed. A mystery man deploys a strange weapon against a surrogate, frying its motherboard and somehow sending a charge back to the user and melting his brain. Needless to say, this goes against the whole point of surrogates, which is to protect the user from harm. And anyone who can melt your brain via remote control is obviously not to be trifled with.

Greer and his partner, Peters (Radha Mitchell), are assigned to the case, which grows more interesting when they learn the victim was the son of Lionel Canter (James Cromwell), the billionaire who invented surrogates and was subsequently forced out of the company that makes them. Is someone trying to get back at the inventor? Maybe one of the rising number of people who oppose surrogacy and have started living in machine-free communes on the outskirts of major cities? Maybe their leader, an enigmatic fire-and-brimstone fellow who calls himself the Prophet (Ving Rhames)?

Like most good sci-fi, the story considers the human ramifications of advanced technology while still doling out plenty of just-for-kicks entertainment and nifty "what if?" scenarios. (What if you connected to someone else's surrogate?) Greer and his wife lost a son a while back, which helps account for their desire to draw inward. There is more than one shot of a character disconnecting from his or her surrogate and crying over what he or she has seen through its eyes. (When someone disconnects, of course, the surrogate just stands there, blank-faced. If a conversation gets too intense, you can escape by literally shutting yourself down.) It's a very sad idea, this notion of trying to undergo life safely, without truly interacting with anyone.

Greer and Maggie's fractured marriage could have been explored better than it is, and Radha Mitchell's performance as Greer's FBI partner is rather wooden. (Yes, she's a robot most of the time. But so is everyone else, and they don't act like that.) Like I said, this isn't groundbreaking stuff. But it's smart and enjoyable, and the message is "go outside, nerds!," which is always nice to hear.

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Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief HD Movie Trailer

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief HD Movie
Christopher Columbus' vision of the first Percy Jackson book seems to miss out slightly on the subtleties the books contain. Part of the magic of the Percy Jackson book series is the retelling of ancient Greek mythology gods, monsters, and parables within the confines of a modern Western society.

The gods, as in the ancient days, are promiscuous, creating many children with mortals. For reasons unclear, even at the end of the film when it's somewhat explained, Zeus has decreed that the gods must not visit their demigod offspring. Percy (Logan Lerman) is a young dyslexic boy who only feels at home in the water. This is fitting due to he's a demigod, son of the god Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), only he doesn't cognize it yet. His mother conceived Percy with Poseidon, but Poseidon had to leave due to of the law. On Mount Olympus, the entrance of which is atop the Empire State Building, Zeus' lightning bolt has been stolen. Zeus (Sean Bean) thinks Poseidon's son, Percy, has taken it. Why Zeus thinks this is never explained, but no matter it's what brings Percy into the picture.

It isn't long into the movie when Percy finds out his true nature. A winged beast, called a Fury, attacks him in a museum. It wants the lightning bolt. Soon Percy is whisked away by his friend Grover and his teacher Mr. Brunner (Pierce Brosnan) a Centaur in disguise. Camp Half Blood is where the sons and daughters of the gods train to become warriors, and to deal with their powers. It all seems alike a hybrid of the X-Men and Harry Potter.

The idea behind the story is an interesting one. What would the Greek gods be alike if they moved along with time? What would they look and act alike in the modern day? In the book the entrance to hell is located in a music studio in L.A.; in the movie it's just a hidden doorway in a mountainside. These are the subtleties missed out on in the film. The tiny details in the books that make them memorable are substituted by extended, and oft times hokey, CG sequences of Percy and his friends fighting monsters alike a Hydra and Minotaur.

The film is peppered with humor written for, and delivered like, a Disney Channel teeny-bopper sitcom. Many of the jokes in the film fall flat, as the lines are delivered by the actors as if there's a laughtrack coming up. The plot contains so many holes that a sponge is more solid, but many things just have to be put aside and not thought about. Percy has 14 days to learn he's a demigod, train at Camp Half Blood, then go on a journey that involves traversing the country (seriously, from Nashville to Hollywood) in a dilapidated truck to get to the Underworld. The trek that Dennis Quaid takes in The Day After Tomorrow is more believable.

Percy Jackson and his exploits will no doubt be compared over and over again to Harry Potter. Yes, at times it seems alike a cash-in on the Harry Potter hype --- Camp Half Blood, really? Putting that aside, it ends up being a fresh take on the ancient stories we grew up learning in school. I remember thinking as a kid how cool it would be if these gods actually existed and if these stories were true. It's fascinating to think of ancient gods in modern day civilization doing the same types of things they used to do in ancient times. While this movie about Percy's adventures indeed caters to a younger audience, it isn't without its charms. It will hold up with fans of the books, and with people just looking to take their children to a family-friendly film.

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