From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 23 05:57:58 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news1.ebone.net!news.ebone.net!news-xfer.siscom.net!sn-xit-04!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Joshua Tyler Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 19:53:52 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29229 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 245046 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 178 X-RT-AuthorID: 4328 X-RT-RatingText: 1/5 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29229 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 95 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27398 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2924 GHOSTS OF MARS A film review by Joshua Tyler Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com America loves convenience. After all, we're the culture that invented the cell phone, the 24-hour ATM, and my most beloved, the remote control. Yet perhaps this time, with Ghosts of Mars, we have taken our love of convenience to far. Ghosts of Mars stars Natasha Henstridge as a tough as nails, pill-poppin', Martian cop, sent with her squadron to retrieve "Demolition" Williams (Ice Cube) from a remote mining town for trial back home. When she and her comrades, appropriately dubbed "The Commander," "The Rookies," and the guy with the cool accent discover the town's residents slaughtered, they are forced to team up with Williams to escape from the remaining residents' head-chopping, alien-possessed clutches. Filled with a lovely overuse of storytelling flashbacks, flashes-sideways, and viewpoint changes, Ghosts of Mars is a hapless mishmash of poorly constructed dialogue and ill-conceived action sequences. The only thing keeping this film from becoming an incomprehensible mess is the sheer idiotic simplicity of its story. Ripped straight from the pages of a 1970s zombie movie, Ghosts leaps from one convenient moment to the next, stopping only to kill the characters which are most convenient to lose. Attempts at character interaction and development are rare and forced. Most of these moments come off as Kwik-E-Mart wisdom, dispensed heartily around the Slushee machine of life by the even-tempered streetwise hand of Ice Cube. With a gun in one hand and a dynamite cap in the other, Cube reminisces about his street life, comparing the zombie-stomping fun to "Me and my brother when we was kids." Apparently, crime in the Bronx has gotten so bad that the residents have actually taken to ritually decapitating one another for entertainment. But, even in the film's darkest moments, fate conveniently lends a hand, supplying heavily armored transportation and easily accessible rifles and dynamite. Yes, in the future, man may travel to space and conquer Mars, but nothing beats a good stick of TNT. And as we all know, every police station, past, present, or future, keeps a healthy supply on hand. Characters die, heads are lopped off, but they were only supporting roles anyway, so why should we care? As long as you have plenty of narcotics, immunity is guaranteed. Eventually though, even the most well-trained zombie alien gets a bit uppity and needs to be taught a lesson. What better way than by sacrificing a few minor characters to a convenient nuclear detonation, killing anything the machine guns can't handle. Explosions are fun. And even if the nukes don't get them, the conveniently placed dynamite packs on the train stolen from the set of The Road Warrior certainly will. In the end this film defines itself when our cop's tribunal pronounces, "Is that all you have to tell us?" For, indeed, John Carpenter has run out of things to say, and has instead decided to use whatever is convenient to tell a ridiculously bad story. RATING: * [LOWEST RATING] |------------------------------| \ ***** Perfection \ \ **** Good, memorable film \ \ *** Average, hits and misses \ \ ** Sub-par on many levels \ \ * Unquestionably awful \ |------------------------------| MPAA Rating: R Director: John Carpenter Producer: Sandy King Writer: Larry Sulkis, John Carpenter Starring: Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, Joanna Cassidy, Richard Cetrone http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/ghostsofmars/ --- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=filmcriticcom&path=subst/video/sellers/amazon-top-100-dvd.html Movie Fiends: Check out Amazon.com's Top 100 Hot DVDs! Visit filmcritic.com on the Web at http://www.filmcritic.com ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29229 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 245046 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 178 X-RT-AuthorID: 4328 X-RT-RatingText: 1/5 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 28 06:59:51 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!erinews.ericsson.se!erix.ericsson.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!look.ca!feeder.qis.net!sn-xit-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Robin Clifford Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 02:27:12 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29354 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246486 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1488 X-RT-RatingText: C Summary: r.a.m.r. #29354 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 71 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27513 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2925 "Ghosts of Mars" It's 175 years into the future and Mars is colonized by over ½ million Earthlings. To ensure order on the pioneer planet terrestrial laws apply and are enforced vigorously by the MPF (Mars Police Force). When an unmanned trained arrives from a far flung mining station, the only one aboard, handcuffed, is Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge), and she has a horrifying story to tell her superiors in John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars." The lieutenant was second in command on a team sent to bring in James "Desolation" Williams (Ice Cube), the red planet's most notorious criminal. Desolation is being held at Shining Canyon mining station, but when the cops arrive, they find the place deserted except for those held in the fortified confines of the local jail. Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) splits up her crew, sending Ballard and two troopers, Kincaid and Descanso (Clea Duvall and Liam Waite), to locate Williams. Braddock and smart-mouthed Sergeant Jericho (Jason Statham) reconnoiter the compound and find some of the colony's inhabitants - headless corpses hung upside down in a gruesome, ritualistic display. The cause of the slaughter is soon apparent when Braddock spots the remaining miners, possessed by some force that has rendered them inhuman. Self-mutilation is the norm for these creatures, led by a Marilyn Manson wannabee, Big Daddy Mars (Richard Cetrone), and the creepy critters are out for blood. The beleaguered cops and the few still-human survivors of the colony must battle the vicious monster of Mars until the train that took them into Shining Canyon returns. It's kill or be killed, or worse, be possessed by the ghosts of the distant planet. "Ghost of Mars" is meat and potatoes filmmaking. John Carpenter is known, of late, for some truly hack work, like "Escape from LA" and the presumptuously titles "John Carpenter's Vampires." With "Ghosts" the helmer works from a script co-written with Larry Sulkis and tells a fairly conventional cops against the bad guys. Setting it on Mars gives it ready-made sci-fi status, but it is, still, a routine survival story. Natasha Henstridge is not bad as the veteran Mars copper. She is too pretty and well made up for the character and is too Hollywood looking, but she acquits herself with the physical moves required. Ice Cube has done the same sullen tough guy character too many times and, while likable in a punch-you-in-the-face way, it's a carbon copy perf we've seen before. Jason Statham, with his Cockney accent and insouciant ways, makes himself notable and should get more work after "Ghosts of Mars." Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier is, sadly, used up very quickly and loses her head early on. Almost everyone else is alien fodder, including the aliens. Techs aren't as cheesy as in "Escape from LA," but there is an artificiality to the whole thing that never lets you forget you are watching a movie. The story goes through its paces with the requisite explosions, machine gun fire and alien butt kicked as the steadily dwindling number of humans try to get away from the possessing Martians. The last moments of the end of the film give rise to the possibility of a sequel, if the box office numbers are good. I give it a C. For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreiews.com robin@reelingreiews.com laura@reelingreiews.com ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29354 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246486 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1488 X-RT-RatingText: C From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 28 06:59:52 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.net.uni-c.dk!howland.erols.net!cyclone2.usenetserver.com!usenetserver.com!feed.textport.net!sn-xit-04!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Mark O'Hara Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 02:28:49 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29355 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246497 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-AuthorID: 1335 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29355 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 108 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27514 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2926 Ghosts of Mars (2001) A Review Essay by Mark O'Hara JOHN CARPTENTER’S GHOSTS OF MARS is the full title of this movie. Including his name is the strategy the director has chosen to make his work into a sort of franchise, a recognizable player in a field cluttered with folk who want to make horror flicks. Not that the guy’s a sellout – Carpenter always paints with bold strokes, displaying sides charged with creativity, originality and technical risk-taking. But this director is also not afraid to recycle every cliché you can name from the genres of Western, martial arts, and sci-fi films. A favorite idea of Carpenter’s is possession. In THE THING a creature from outer space, defrosted from its prison in the Antarctic ice, infects the scientists at a remote station. His recent VAMPIRES deals with vampirism as infection – one of the main characters slowly taken over by the force of the title. The ghosts on the Red Planet appear as a storm of red dust, released unwittingly by a team of miners and their doctor. Ruthlessly these ancient spirits seize hosts; the possessed mutilate themselves horribly, regard their human bodies with insane bemusement, even move strangely. Their purpose: to wipe out any foreign invader of Mars, even eons after their own deaths. It’s hard to think of a theme more terrifying than being taken over against your will. It’s the reason the Borg are such good villains in the Star Trek series. Carpenter’s storytelling marks him as a risk-taker. Using multiple flashbacks, some very short and others lengthy, he shows us what happened to the mining outpost in Shining Valley. The opening of this frame tale shows a tribunal gathering to hear the report of Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge). We watch as her tale unfolds: a trip with her fellow police officers to bring back the dangerous felon “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube). Their commander is Helena (Pam Grier) a hard-nosed veteran who is saddled with one of the worst lines of dialogue: “You think you’re all a bunch of tough hombres,” she utters to her squad as they prepare to disembark from the train and step into the apparently deserted mining town. Jason Statham plays Jericho, the lecher with a British accent, but a good cop. The rookie Bashira Kincaid (Clea DuVall) accompanies them, along with a few other officers. Of course much is implied at the beginning, when Ballard tells about returning alone, handcuffed to the train, which arrives via automatic pilot. Has every single one of her entourage perished? Is Williams dead? Instead of a spoiler, this detail turns into a tantalizing lure. Carpenter handles well the implications of exploring a story told by a flawed character. Although the film takes a few minutes to get rolling, we are soon interested in the premise. Jericho discovers the gorge in which the possessed miners rant. We see tidbits of the ancient Martian culture – talismans made of wire, nails, scissors and other weapon-like materials, bundles of teeth and tissue oddly reminiscent of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. The creatures are now zombie-like, having displaced the personalities of the humans. Whenever one of the hosts dies, by the way, we see the world in a distorted frenzy, the floating Martian-eye view of the hated humans, as the spirit seeks a new body to occupy. The police come across several of these tortured souls in the concrete structures that make up the ghost town. But the action really starts when the main body of vengeful Martians discovers the team. By now a subplot has shown us the conflict with Williams – part of which is a contingent bent on springing him from jail. Of course Ballard and her officers are consumed with following their orders to return with Williams so that he might stand trial. How the cops deal with crooks and ghosts takes up the remainder of the story. The action scenes are very bloody and mostly well-choreographed. One sequence goes over the top when the black-clad, ghost-addled bodies keep charging down the corridors, dropping as fast as the black-clad good guys can blow them away. Hand-to-hand skirmishes are punctuated by neat series of kicks and other combinations. Perhaps there is one beheading too many, though, particularly when you can tell the victim is a dummy. A technique that Carpenter uses sparingly cuts from the actors and springs a couple of seconds forward, so we spot them a few steps ahead; these shots are pure stylistic try-outs, it seems, interesting visually but without merit in furthering the story. The acting is solid enough for the vehicle. Henstridge is faced with other actresses who have played strong, silent heroes in modern movies, but she does come off well. Her character falls just short of doing everything by the book. Scenes of her hallucinating during drug use let us glimpse her real self, as well as provide important foreshadowing. Statham’s character, Jericho Butler, becomes likable only after we see he is loyal and competent. This strong actor gives a visceral boost to the tale. The rest of the cast support the story well, particularly the stunt man-turned-actor Richard Cetrone, who plays the leader of the zombie miners, dubbed “Big Daddy Mars.” It’s essentially a non-speaking role, though Cetrone frequently howls and chants, whipping up his frantic followers. I’ve read a few comments about Cetrone’s make up: I was reminded of an enraged member of the rock group KISS, his chest pierced heavily and his mouth drooling blood. And I wanted to ask, “If these human bodies have been so beaten, (self) mutilated and otherwise drained of blood and energy, how can they still attack so savagely? But that’s one disbelief I must suspend. In one over-the-top scene I had to laugh at Big Daddy’s persistence, in the same way that I tend to laugh when I’m getting thrown around by a roller coaster. Some of Carpenter’s shots and lines are plainly silly and worn out; even his original music is just loud and very metallic. But I had fun, and that’s why I go to amusement parks, and to movie theaters showing the work of John Carpenter. ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29355 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246497 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-AuthorID: 1335 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 28 06:59:52 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!erinews.ericsson.se!erix.ericsson.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: David N. Butterworth Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 02:30:36 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29356 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246511 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 878 X-RT-AuthorID: 1393 X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29356 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 91 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27530 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2927 JOHN CARPENTER'S GHOSTS OF MARS A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2001 David N. Butterworth *1/2 (out of ****) John Carpenter makes B-movies. Always has ("Halloween," "Escape from New York," "The Thing") and, by the looks of it ("They Live," "Escape from L.A.," "Vampires"), always will. Carpenter's latest horror opus with a science fiction bent (or science fiction outing with a schlock horror bent) is the aptly-titled "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" (in case, I suppose, you went looking for someone else's "Ghosts of Mars"). Like all those films prefixed by the very possessive "John Carpenter's," "Ghosts of Mars" is an unashamed B-movie punctuated by a B-movie plot, B-movie actors, and B-movie special effects. In category one, above, we have a storyline that borders on idiotic (and, at times, chaotic). Dormant Martians (i.e., swirling red gases) awakened by meddling humans possess the souls of hapless mining colonists rendering them testy Marilyn Manson lookalikes. All this explained (in flashback) to some grand Pooh-Bah counsel by Martian Police official Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge, from the sub-"Species" films), the only returnee on a silly-looking train. Officer Ballard went in to bring back incarcerated felon James "Desolation" Williams; what she found was not a pretty picture. In the second category we have Ms. Henstridge, her blonde hair pulled back tightly and awkwardly into a ponytail, Ice Cube (as the appropriately-named "Desolation"), Pam Grier (briefly, oddly--who wanted to work with whom I wonder?), and a host of extras all assuming that the story and special effects were going to carry this film and therefore they didn't need to try too hard. In category number three we have, in addition to those swirling red gases and the silly-looking train, a couple of bird's-eye-view shots of a sprawling Martian metropolis (reddish also). State-of-the-art special effects have never been a Carpenter trademark and once again the writer/director (who seems to have no problem finding work, however) doesn't waste any of the film's budget in that department. "Ghosts of Mars" is lock, laughing stock, and barrel all your standard Carpenter fare: dingy interiors, cluttered exteriors, inane dialogue, lots of leather, scarred, crazed-looking aliens, and lots and lots of weaponry. The film often and always explodes into warfare without warning--spontaneously, stupidly. Carpenter might like to think he's made a western here but it's a western without any real heroes, villains, or border conflicts. It's just the shootouts minus a hissing Snake Plissken. I never thought I'd miss the guy but I do. It's not *all* the same, however. Dubbed the "one-note wonder" for his minimalist music soundtracks, Carpenter seems to have graduated from simplistic (yet effective) scoring by highlighting his action with loud, screeching guitar work. Fortunately this drowns out a lot of the dialogue. The final exchange between Henstridge and, er, Cube though is both audible *and* priceless. Mars has proven an infertile breeding ground for Hollywood in the last year or so, what with the stillborn "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet" (with Val Kilmer). "Ghosts of Mars" sadly adds to those disappointing returns (in its opening weekend it was overshadowed by a bunch of sequels, among them "American Pie 2" and "Rush Hour 2"). The irony is that the Mars in Carpenter's film feels sadly absent. There are occasional references to the red planet, of course, but the film might as well have been set in Perth Amboys than on earth's closest neighbor. Two things keep "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" from getting a huge slap upside the head. 1. Henstridge keeps her top on (miraculously), and 2. the film doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. What that means, however, is that fans of superior, intelligent, grade A sci-fi/horror are singularly out of luck. -- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29356 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246511 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 878 X-RT-AuthorID: 1393 X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 28 06:59:52 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.net.uni-c.dk!howland.erols.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Mark R. Leeper Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 02:32:06 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29357 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246523 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-AuthorID: 1309 X-RT-RatingText: 4/10 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29357 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 93 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27531 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2928 GHOSTS OF MARS A film review by Mark R. Leeper CAPSULE: In 2176 on the planet Mars police taking into custody an accused murderer face the title menace. There is a lot of fighting and not a whole lot of story otherwise. John Carpenter reprises so many ideas from his previous films, especially ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, that the new film comes off as his homage to himself. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4). John Carpenter apparently believes that action scenes in which people fight something horrible are the same as horror scenes. For a writer and director of horror films, supposedly an expert on horror, it is a very bad mistake to make. GHOSTS OF MARS is called a horror movie, but it is more just a drawn out fight between humans and a surprisingly low-powered alien menace. In addition if anybody but John Carpenter had made GHOSTS OF MARS, Carpenter would have grounds to sue. This film is just chock full of pieces taken from ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, THE THING, and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. It is, in fact, surprising that Carpenter managed to fit so many pieces of his previous work into this film in such an admittedly novel way. But that still does not make for a really good science fiction experience. GHOSTS OF MARS takes place in the year 2176. Mars has been mostly terraformed so that humans can walk on the surface without breathing gear (which is good for the film's budget). It is never mentioned, but the gravity on Mars has been increased somehow to earth-normal, again making it easier to film. Society has changed a bit by that time, but it has advanced surprisingly little. Apparently the culture has changed so that women are much more in positions of control. And from Carpenter's view, women have really made a mess of things. Society has stagnated under female control so that beyond some minor technological advances society has changed less in 175 years than we might expect it to change in ten. The basic plot of GHOSTS OF MARS has much in common with that of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 except that Precinct 9 (yes, Precinct 9) has been replaced by a somewhat tacky looking rundown Martian mining colony. Instead of having the criminal "Napolean" Wilson, this film has the criminal "Desolation" Williams. Instead of facing hoodlums with automatic weapons the police face, well, ghosts of Mars. Because the ghosts are somewhat alien in nature they should behave in some alien manner, but they essentially behave as human savages, in another lapse of imagination. The story is told in flashback, flashback within flashback, and flashback within flashback within flashback. GHOSTS OF MARS takes place entirely at night and is filmed almost entirely in tones of red, yellow, and black. Carpenter manages to give us a powerful opening scene, showing a mining train rushing through the Martian night to the sound of music with a heavy beat. Sadly what follows is not really up to the buildup. The terror he creates looks a little too much like fugitive wannabes from the rock band Kiss. His idea of building suspense is having a bunch of sudden jump scenes that sucker the viewer into thinking something scary is happening and then prove to be just something boring. These are standard haunted house film shock effects that require no great talent to give the audience. Somewhat newer but also unimpressive are the CGI digital decapitations in some of the fights. Within a short stretch of time we have seen the release of MISSION TO MARS, RED PLANET, and GHOSTS OF MARS. After MISSION TO MARS was panned by too many reviewers it looks better and better and better as time goes by. I rate GHOSTS OF MARS a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. Following the movie I showed my wife, who liked GHOSTS OF MARS moderately more than I did, Carpenter's classic ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Her comment is that it was seeing the same film twice. Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper -- Mark R. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/ Or try your search engine on "Mark Leeper" ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29357 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246523 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-AuthorID: 1309 X-RT-RatingText: 4/10 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Sep 14 15:25:38 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Susan Granger Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 20:55:47 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29444 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 249038 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 742 X-RT-AuthorID: 1274 X-RT-RatingText: 1/10 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29444 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 35 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27673 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2935 Susan Granger's review of "GHOSTS OF MARS" (Sony Pictures Entertainment) Horror auteur John Carpenter ("Halloween," "Vampires") strikes out with this sci-fi eco-fable that's so bad it boggles the mind to imagine how the project ever got green-lit. The script by Carpenter and Larry Sulkis appears to have been lifted directly from last year's "Pitch Black," involving a violent prisoner who must be released from bondage so that he can help a small band of humans protect themselves from blood-thirsty, marauding aliens. In the year 2176, there are 640,000 Earthlings on Mars, living in a matriarchal society led by a Commander, played by Pam Grier. Grier, pill-poppin' Natasha Henstridge, and some rookie Mars Police officers (Clea Duvall, Jason Statham) travel to the remote mining town of Shining Canyon to fetch "Desolation" Williams - that's Ice Cube - to bring him back to Chryse City to stand trial for murder. But when they're besieged by demented, zombie-like, body-snatching miners, they readily free the scowling Ice Cube since they need him for protection. It seems a red cloud was released from a Shining Canyon cave and, soon after, most of the miners went bonkers as long-dormant remnants of an ancient Martian civilization took over their minds and bodies, lopping off heads as "vengeance for anything that tries to lay claim to their planet," according to a scientist (Joanna Cassidy). Carpenter uses so many flashbacks to tell the "Night of the Living Dead"-like story that the idiotic plot gets incomprehensibly confusing. But you can easily predict each of the supporting characters who will be killed, along with the order of their elimination. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Ghosts of Mars" thuds to a laborious, bottom-of-the-barrel 1. Perhaps, indeed, there is a curse on Mars films, if you recall two other duds: "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet." ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29444 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 249038 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 742 X-RT-AuthorID: 1274 X-RT-RatingText: 1/10 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Mar 20 16:14:40 2002 From: Jerry Saravia Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 23:15:58 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 31146 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 289731 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 875 X-RT-AuthorID: 1314 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4 Summary: r.a.m.r. #31146 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 64 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.sics.se!uab.ericsson.se!erix.ericsson.se!luth.se!newsfeed.online.be!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:3017 rec.arts.sf.reviews:215 GHOSTS OF MARS (2001) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia February 25th, 2001 RATING: 3 stars The great John Carpenter film awaits a cinema near you. "Halloween," "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Starman" were a few stellar examples but mostly we have been saddled with fascinating experiments like "In The Mouth of Madness," "The Thing" and grave disappointments like "Prince of Darkness" and "Vampires." And like it or not, Carpenter knows how to use his resources to stir and entertain when he does it right. "Ghosts of Mars" is no classic by any stretch of the imagination but it is a marked improvement over "Vampires" and has some nifty ideas and fun performances. Essentially a western taking place on the planet Mars, we have Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) and other members of a police force including Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) and Bashira Kincaid (Clea Duvall) as they travel by train to some mining colony where a supposedly notorious killer, "Destination" Williams, is being held (played by Ice Cube, who continues to surprise me in every film role). Oh, lest we forget there is a male in this small police force played by Jason Statham ("Snatch") who makes sexual remarks to Lt. Ballard at his every convenience. Meanwhile, just as Ballard's force is ready to take Williams and bring him to justice, a force is unleashed that awakens Martian warriors who love to decapitate humans and shout as loudly as Ozzy Osbourne. These ghosts have the ability of taking over the minds of the miners on this colony and all hell breaks loose. Lots of gunfire and karate kicks ensue. "Ghosts of Mars" should not be mistaken for an intellectual sci-fi film but rather an in-your-face action melodrama with lots of special effects. One of the best effects scenes takes place when an archaeologist, Professor Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy), crash lands on the possessed colony in her air balloon. I also love all the train scenes since they are the quietest scenes in the movie, allowing us to explore the characters' personalities and interaction. For a while, the film aims to be a character-oriented update of "Assault on Precinct 13" by way of Howard Hawks's "Rio Bravo" but when the action scenes start, they take over the movie and become the focus. Nothing wrong with that though I never really thought of Carpenter as an action director, despite his "Escape to New York." His talent lies in horror and some scenes inside the mines made me jump. On a fundamental level, "Ghosts of Mars" is lots of fun to watch and has commanding actors at the forefront (though I found it cruel to see Duvall and Grier given such short-shrift in their roles). Henstridge plays a woman of authority and strong will and Ice Cube gets to show what a continuingly strong presence he has on screen - both characters could stand on their own as the leads of a movie. Maybe in the sequel. For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at faustus_08520@yahoo.com or at Faust668@aol.com ========== X-RAMR-ID: 31146 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 289731 X-RT-TitleID: 1109551 X-RT-SourceID: 875 X-RT-AuthorID: 1314 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4