Movies: The Island of Doctor Moreau | Chain Reaction | Solo
Anime: Super Atragon

Animal Farm III

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• The Island of Dr. Moreau
• PG-13
• Starring David Thewlis, Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer

his is the third film adaptation of H.G. Well's 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau -- a cautionary tale of a scientist who examines the differences between humans and animals, and through his experiments upends taboo and scientific ethics like a heavyweight raccoon toppling garbage cans. In this current incarnation, Marlon Brando is the enigmatic and brilliant, but loopy, Dr. Moreau, who carries out genetic experiments on his private island in the South Pacific.

Douglas (Thewlis) is the unlucky survivor of a plane crash who is rescued by Moreau's enforcer-assistant, Montgomery (Kilmer), and is taken to the island. Douglas quickly encounters the island's irregulars, the part-human, part-beast creatures that are the results of Moreau's experimentation. Repulsed, but trapped, he learns the simple, savage laws of the children of Moreau: 1) Walk on two legs, not on four. 2) No killing of any kind. 3) Moreau is the father/god, and savage punisher of all who break the Law.

Douglas has little time to react to his predicament as the shaky and brutal order of the island bursts and degrades into rapidly cascading chaos. A cheetah-human accidentally witnesses Montgomery's purposeful killing of a rabbit. Seeing the Law broken, the cheetah-beast breaks it himself, which sparks other animal-creatures to test authority, then overthrow it. After that, everything is fodder for the fire.

The questions of this film are as old as DNA: What is human? What is animal? What is the difference? The film's quality also mirrors the action: As Moreau's world disintegrates, so do the themes and plot of the film, leveling off in a jumble of incoherent violence and garbled messages. However, enough of the provocative stuff remains to deliver the goods.

As for the performances, they are cut from good cloth. Brando plays the eccentric island khan well (not much of a stretch) and Thewlis offers a competent, passive witness in a role that is not clearly defined, and not his fault. Kilmer is fine, humorous, but uneven, and sometimes skids perilously close to channeling Puck of MTV's Real World. Most of the assemblage of creature-humans are notable as well, surpassing the handicap of their heavy prosthetics.

It seems that Director John Frankenheimer's aim is to show that the seeds of nobility and depravity are inherent in all creatures, limited only by intelligence and opportunity. Unfortunately, nobility is barely hinted at, although there are some very strong scenes in which the audience is compelled to grieve with, and bond with, the misshapen beings who piteously yearn to be like their creator, and have his love.

Ultimately, the father/god is undone, but then so is divine hope and redemption. Pragmatically, if not upliftingly, the responsibility for humanity is left squarely with each individual. Not a cheery message, but a realistic one.

In a trite, stereotyped, thankless role as the feline-human Aissa, Fairuza Balk is not only convincing, but shyly solid. She plays more to her humanity than her felinity (which as a component of femininity has been done to death). Good show. -- Tamara

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If you solved the world's energy crisis, would anyone care?

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Chain Reaction
• Rated R
• Starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz

upposedly, every glass of water holds enough hydrogen fuel to power a city the size of Chicago for weeks. Cheap, efficient, clean-burning energy is just a short conceptual leap away -- it's all a matter of working out the audio frequencies that will turn an ordinary tub of water into a bouncing, glowing special effect.

The theory becomes a reality in Chain Reaction as University of Chicago machinist Eddie Kasalivich (Reeves) stumbles across the correct combination. His research team celebrates with champagne and prepares to distribute the information all over the Internet later that night. Unfortunately, not everyone wants the secret readily available to the world. When Kasalivich unexpectedly returns to the lab, he finds the project's mastermind murdered, his partner missing, and the project spitting out hydrogen -- surrounded by detonators.

The resulting explosion turns a square mile of Chicago into rubble. Kasalivich promptly tells the FBI what he saw in the lab, but finds himself discredited as someone makes a concerted effort to frame him and wide-eyed physicist Lilly Sinclair (Weisz) as mercenary saboteurs. Inevitably -- this is, after all, the latest film from The Fugitive director Andrew Davis -- Kasalivich and Sinclair end up on a cross-country quest to evade arrest, avenge their mentor and clear their names. Sound familiar?

The main differences between the annoyingly similar plots of Chain Reaction and The Fugitive lie in Reaction's genuinely intriguing science and its global implications. Unfortunately, both are given short shrift, leaving more room for shots of Kasalivich fleeing explosions, climbing drawbridges, wrestling black-clad baddies, etc. In short, this is a typical action movie, light on story and heavy on the chase sequences.

What plot Reaction does have hinges on one organization's belief that the new discovery will cripple the world rather than save it. Oddly, the film presents no real evidence that this is wrong. Virtually the only debate on the subject comes from researcher Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), whose intelligent, articulate soliloquies about the dangers of free energy are never seriously countered. He makes it difficult to cheer too assiduously for Kasalivich and Sinclair -- especially since they're already such underdeveloped, blandly uninteresting characters.

Without a driving force in terms of plot or protagonists, Chain Reaction is left to stagger along on raw excitement value alone, and this it does poorly at best. Despite a few surprises and some notably interesting special effects, the film's plot twists are generally either predicable or ludicrous beyond the realm of possible belief. And without a motive, even the biggest explosions lack force.

You know there's a problem when a film's Web site holds more surprises than its plot. -- Tasha

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Mario Van Peebles tries to become the next Terminator

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Solo
• Rated PG-13
• Starring Mario Van Peebles, William Sadler
• 93 minutes

olo (Peebles) is an android who is 15 times stronger and 10 times faster than the average man. He doesn't feel pain. He will obey commands without question. His body is bulletproof. If he gets damaged, he can be thrown away. In other words, he is the perfect soldier. Unfortunately for the U.S. military and General Clyde Haynes (Barry Corbin), the Solo prototype has a glitch. While Solo is unbeatable in battle, he seems to have a heart. He just can't bring himself to kill innocent people or "unarmed non-combatants."

After an unsatisfactory test, Haynes decides to pull Solo's plug and has him sent back to the lab for reprogramming. When Solo detects the general's plan, his programming for self-preservation overrides his programming to follow orders, and he hijacks a helicopter.

With a crazy colonel (Sadler) in hot pursuit, Solo's helicopter crashes and he escapes into a Latin American jungle. Damaged and badly in need of a recharge, Solo is befriended by a boy from a small village. Solo strikes a bargain with the villagers. He'll help teach them how to fight against the nasty rebels who've been using them for slave labor, and they will let him use their creaky old generator to recharge. Unfortunately, the rebels aren't scared off so easily, and now the military has figured out where Solo is.

Solo is just another knockoff of the robot-with-a-heart theme that's been done to death in both fiction and film. Based on the novel Weapon by Robert Mason, there is absolutely nothing new here. Solo wants to learn what humor is, why people laugh and why a human would risk his life for another. Perhaps 20 years ago, this would have been new movie territory. Today, it's boring.

A film like this might have been saved with special effects, but Solo looks like it was filmed on a shoestring budget. Except for some explosions and some impressive stunt work, there aren't any special effects.

The only thing impressive about Solo is Peebles' physique. And it is extremely impressive. Peebles has pumped in the style of Sylvester Stallone -- ironic, since Solo was written with Stallone in mind. Unfortunately, Solo was also written as though it were supposed to be one of Stallone's really bad movies, and not even an extremely talented actor like Peebles can bring much life to the film. Of the rest of the cast, only Adrien Brody, who plays Solo's creator, stands out as a unique character, and only Sadler, the insanely crazy colonel, has any fun.

Peebles may look impressive, but without humor, special effects or a story, Solo isn't much of a Terminator. -- Kathie

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Confusing, compelling and very complex

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Super Atragon
• A.D. Vision
• $29.95, subtitled / dubbed
• 60 minutes

he year is 1945, the setting somewhere in the Pacific. An experimental Japanese "Ra" ship -- a battle submarine with a giant, conical drill for a nose -- is making its maiden voyage. But before it can engage the fleet pursuing it, its crew gets the word that Hiroshima has been annihilated. A grief-stricken gunnery officer ignores his captain's orders and fires on a similarly experimental American ship. As the ensuing battle rages, both boats seem destined for the ocean floor.

The real fight, however, apparently isn't between the ships. Each vessel holds a beautiful young woman wearing an odd ceremonial robe and headdress. They seem to be psychically connected, and as they both collapse during the battle, the captain of the Japanese vessel orders a friend to get the woman off their ship and take her to safety. As it happens, she's pregnant with the captain's child.

Fifty years later, the woman and her rescuer seem to be the only people who understand why the polar ice caps are suddenly melting. A U.N. expedition, which includes Go Arisaka, the woman's grandson, sets out to investigate and finds the area is being bombarded by microwaves from a gigantic black cylinder that proves impervious to even a nuclear strike. It all has something to do with the "Ra" ships, the cloaked women, and Go's girlfriend Ann, but it's definitely going to take more than Super Atragon's hour-long run time to explain what's going on.

A.D. Vision doesn't indicate anywhere on Super Atragon's packaging that this is only the first of two episodes. Viewers who lay down their money expecting a complete story are going to be worse than baffled. This tape barely begins the introduction to an extremely complex network of people related by blood, adoption, circumstance and ties not yet revealed.

In particular, there are the two women, Annette and Avatar. Why are they fighting? Did they draw two opposing nations into their fight, or did they just happen to side with opposing factions? Why, five decades later, is Annette an old woman while Avatar is unchanged? What's the real relationship between Annette and Go's lookalike girlfriend Ann? What does Go's missing father have to do with all this? Exactly what's going on?

Obviously, the story can be difficult to follow, since so much is happening so rapidly over such a condensed period of time. It's even more difficult to judge how successful the complete work will be. But on its own, Super Atragon does do a number of things effectively. It firmly establishes a realistic world and a slew of interesting characters. It showcases some gorgeously bright, intense animation. And it teases viewers in a way guaranteed to keep a lot of people on the edges of their seats until episode two hits the shelves.

I really hate cliffhanger endings ... but I have to admit, they work. I want the rest of the series! -- Tasha

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