Elysium

Good Will Hunting lifts weights in District 9 before making Contact with Jodi Foster channeling Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men..

Europa Report

Ignoring people's paranoia gets everyone killed.

Well done science.  NASA was a consultant and they used actual footage and it was beautiful and amazing and scary.  Interesting premise, good cast, fantastic photography. There were holes in the plot/story, but there always are in movies.  I want to watch this again.

John Carter

Too much CGI


or


actors talking to air




I'm all for sci-fi CGI in moderation,  it's great to show vast spaces (though Hollywood used to paint amazing vistas and background using painters and set designers...) and things flying and to make monsters look massive, etc, but when it replaces people, so that the actors in the film are talking to air, when the actors aren't getting the feedback of the give and take of saying lines to another person, it is noticeable.   The nuances of body language, inflections and tone get lost and make for a wooden film.  The actual live sequences between real actors like Carter and the Princess are full of life, but when they turn to talk to the CGI, their eyes don't match up, their gestures are stilted, and their timing is off.
These are things that viewers notice mostly on an unconscious level, they may not realize that is why they aren't liking the movie.  It's not that the acting is bad, per se, but that the CGI is.

Prometheus

Some questions shouldn't be asked and some people are too stupid to live.

or

Idealism meets reality, a lesson in parasitic biology