where: CENTURY 14 VALLEJO in Vallejo, CA
when: Friday, April 19th, 2013
show: 7:20 p.m.
costs: $10.50 Ticket + $1.08 MacDonald's Cookies ( 3 ) + $3.50 1-litre Dasani Water ( promotional price ) = $15.08
auditorium: 7
seat: 4th row ( counting from the front ), 8ht column ( counting from the left )
synopsis/overview: The Tet Offensive
In 2017, an alien race called "Scavs" ( i.e. Scavengers ) invaded the Earth and destroyed its moon. The humans, left with no other choice, used their nuclear stockpiles to achieve a Pyrrhic victory for themselves. Because in the 60 years since the invasion, the Earth had gradually lost its ability to support life.
In 2072, the Earth-bound humans submitted themselves to a "memory wipe" in order to protect the security and the integrity of their Earth resource-extraction project. With Earth left as a dying planet, most of humanity had been relocated to Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
Among those who underwent a "memory wipe" was Tech 49, Jack Harper ( Tom Cruise ) and Victoria ( Andrea Riceborough ). Jack is tasked with the repair and maintenance of drones that patrol and protect the Hydro Rigs designed to extract Earth's remaining resources, especially water, for interplanetary transport to Titan. Victoria is Jack's mission partner and the communications officer that relays information between Jack and Sally ( Melissa Leo ), the head officer of Tet, their tetrahedral orbiting space station.
In 2077, with just two weeks left on their resource extraction mission, Jack becomes haunted by the recurring image of a beautiful young woman ( Olga Kurylenko ) that inhabits his dreams. When an old space module fortuitously falls down to Earth, the woman's importance to Jack gradually unfolds before his very eyes. And he must come to the hard realization that everything is not all it seems.
noteworthy scenes: 1.) Memory wipe; 2.) "Earth's still my home"; 3.) Football arena; 4.) Sinkhole; 5.) Broken cable; 6.) Book; 7.) Flower; 8.) "They were trying to catch me"; 9.) Unknown signal; 10.) Lakefront property; 11.) UFO [ Unidentified Falling Object ]; 12.) "They're human"; 13.) Sixty years; 14.) "Do you have any memories before the mission"; 15.) Flight data recorder; 16.) Captured; 17.) "Another day in paradise"; 18.) "I've been watching you, Jack"; 19.) "We're human"; 20.) "It knows you, Jack"; 21.) "If you're looking for the truth, that's where you'll find it"; 22.) Wife; 23.) "Unfit for service"; 24.) "That's the plan"; 25.) Radiation Zone; 26.) Face to face; 27.) Tower 52; 28.) "You won't believe what's down there"; 29.) "I'm not him"; 30.) "Thousands of you"; 31.) "Welcome back, Commander"; 32.) "We'll go together"; 33.) Flight recorder playback; 34.) "Pattern of insubordinate behavior"; 35.) "F*ck you, Sally"; and 36.) "Because I know him."
audience reaction: The audience liked it but only one person gave it a "Hands Clapper" ending.
recommendation: I liked it enough. Go see this if you're a Sci-Fi Movie fan.
spoiler alert! Sixty years is far too short a time to effect such a drastic geological change! The waterfall with skyscraper walls is a geologic impossibility. Wait a minute ... isn't the flight data recorder always kept in a plane/space ship's cockpit? Actually, a real flight data recorder is very hard to remove from its fixed position, as per strict aviation requirements regarding a flight data recorder's survivability upon impact in the event of a crash and in its exposure to deep water pressure and/or temperature extremes, etc.!!! What was removed was probably some type of quick-access recorder---But this still begs the question, What was a quick-access recorder doing in the ship's Sleep Module when all that it could possibly have recorded was the snoring sounds of the sleeping crew? That interrogation chair, with its restraints, was specifically designed for just such a purpose: Meaning, it was already in all probability used in a number of previous occasions to facilitate the extraction of pertinent information from the likes of Jack--perhaps, the reason for the "memory wipe"! And techs were just expendable "objects". This was inferred when one of the resistance fighters coldly shot Jack at close range and would have executed him had it not been for the presence of the woman in Jack's dreams. Capturing techs for interrogation would only mean that the resistance fighters would have to travel far and wide to do so since each tech covered a wide territory--I wonder where they stopped for gas along the way. Hmmm .... But the longer the distance that the resistance fighters would have to travel just to abduct a tech the more readily the DNA trackers would have been able to hunt them down. The Moon's gravity is only about 1/6th that of Earth's; so, the big chunks of rock blasted off the Moon's body would have either floated off into Deep Space or crashed down to Earth within the 60-year span since the invasion began. A clone is an exact copy of the original organism that it duplicated and would be expected to have the same developmental stages, from somatic cell nuclear transfer and all the way to adulthood, proceeding from a normal--not accelerated--growth rate!!! In other words, the aliens' land invasion happened not in 2017 but years later ( which I would guesstimate as the year 2035, at the earliest ). But the cloning process used by the aliens was done with the use of Adult--not Embryonic--Cells gathered from a human being that was already middle-aged! In other words, the middle-aged DNA strands had shorter Telomeres ( i.e. shorter replication ability ) in their Chromosomes and could only be expected to produce a clone with a very short life span since by the time the organism would be born it would be nearing its old-age ( and would be beginning to experience geriatric disorders/diseases ). I already talked a bit about suspended animation in my blog on G.I. JOE: RETALIATION; but here are other things that would be expected to happen in a long-term suspended animation of 60 years' duration: Care should be taken to make sure that bad microbes ( especially in the mouth ) are neutralized first or they will proliferate in the compromised state of the human body and do serious damage to said human's health; in the absence of gravity and weight-bearing routines, the Skeletal System will become osteoporotic if the body is kept in suspended animation for too long; and without any kind of stimulus to its Muscular System, the body's Skeletal Muscles will atrophy--in other words ( again! ), the woman in suspended animation wouldn't have been able to rise up to a sitting position so quickly!!! Why didn't she say something relevant to the couple who sat at the dining table with her? I didn't see any farm where tobacco was grown, dried and rolled into cigars ( I mean, we're talking 60 years here, folks ). How were the resistance fighters able to survive for so long when food was scarce? And where did he get those matches from? I don't know how any drone could obliterate its target and leave nothing behind but a bunch of burning lumps of flesh and bones. Why weren't the drones and the bubble ships electrically grounded? Why didn't she notice that the number on Jack's jacket had changed when he went back to the station for the first-aid kit? Speaking of the number on the jacket, close-up shots of it showed it partially covered by the rifle sling then uncovered in the next shot--and this happened twice. Why didn't the DNA tracker pick-up two sets of identical Bio-Trail? Why did the bubble ships have a tail propeller when such a propeller was not really needed? The Tet could identify each drone by their numbers but it couldn't identify any of the bubble ships by their designated numbers and areas of operation. The resistance fighters disguised themselves to fool the drones---A lot of good it did them since it didn't work at all yet they persisted in using their disguises! Talk about STUPID!!! Jack shouldn't have been able to outrun the explosion. When drone 198 got shot from the back, it didn't fly around uncontrollably like drone 185, it just dropped to the floor. You don't dream in Deep Delta ( I should know 'cause I've done Delta Brainwave Frequency Sound Meditation many times ). When they where inside the Tet, and the gates opened thereby releasing the atmosphere contained in the inner sanctum, why didn't they show signs of air deprivation? Why didn't the drones fire on the two of them right away even though it was an emergency situation? Why didn't they run for cover when the space station exploded? Clones are like identical twins. A strong bond exists between twins. If a set of twins is highly-attuned to each other, they can experience what the other one experiences even if they're miles apart. In the same way, clones would be expected to do similar things because of their collective consciousness and similar cell memories. In other words, all of the remaining clones would eventually end-up in the same place by the lake--more "fun" ( wink, wink ) for her! Ha, ha, ha.
fyi: This movie was made with a $120 million budget. For an additional $5 million thrown my way for my services as Cine-Man, technical adviser, I would have helped them to come-up with a movie that would be more appealing to the Smart Crowd out there! Take note of that, Hollywood!!!
This movie has some kind of iconoclastic message built-in.
Somebody once made the observation that each of Tom Cruise's movies has a scene which shows him running. What happens once he is a mobility scooter-bound Old Fart, will he use a walker to do his running scene?
I believe that there is a significance to the numbers 49 and 52: Tom Cruise was 49 when this movie was conceived and/or produced; and he is 52 this year, the year that this movie is released.
word of advice: Pay close attention to your recurring dream.
tidbits: I went to Goin' Postal at the Food Maxx Shopping Center on Tuolumne and Redwood Streets, here in Vallejo, to drop-off a bill payment and to buy three 1st-class stamps ( $1.38 ).
Then, I went to Selecta Pilipino Buffet on Springs Road, here in Vallejo, to have lunch and to buy some lottery tickets ( $19.58 ). The owner and I were watching the news about the fugitive suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. He said that the suspects were promised 72 virgins each if they martyred themselves. Virgin what ...? After all, just like all the other peoples of the world ( except the Chinese, perhaps ), Muslims are pretty much 1 to 1 in ratio, gender-wise. I have an idea! Why don't we round-up the radical Muslim fanatics and promise them 73 virgins if they go and kill their leaders for us. The restaurant owner also said that, should the cops capture Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive, they should take him to a remote secluded place, set him on the ground, line themselves up and, one-by-one, shoot him. I like this one, too!
I went to MacDonald's Restaurant to go on-line and to spend $2.17 for a large Sweet Tea and three Cookies ( one Chocolate and two Oatmeal, which I smuggled into the theatre with me ).
When I stepped-out of the restaurant, I saw a black woman cussing in the parking lot because some Dumbass Idiot Driver parked his van too close to her car, making her unable to get into her car. She went into the restaurant to fetch Mr. Dumbass Idiot Driver and get him to move his van out of the way. There are just too many Dumbass Idiot Drivers ( 'must be all related ) on the road these days, I swear!
After the movie, as I stepped out of the auditorium, I saw a black girl say, "Number 7 is OBLIVION. We saw G.I. JOE ( auditorium 1 )---Oooh!"
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