Rating: 
Summary: Realmente lamentable
Review: Cuando uno escucha John Carpenter se imagina algo bien logrado, cuando uno ve los actores, los cuales ya cuentan con una experiencia y algunos trabajos aceptables no puede dejar de pensar que esta ante algo al menos "interesante".
Sin embargo desde el comienzo nos encontramos ante algo lamentable, suspenso de risa, efectos especiales hechos con el paint de Windows 3.11, y actuaciones en algunos casos dignos de algun premio a "desastre del año". Creanme no estoy exagerando, si no la han visto por favor no GASTEN dos horas de vida en esto. Realmente no vale la pena, es prefeible mirar los avisos en el cable antes que esto.
Rating:
Summary: Dear John
Review: Oh dear. How could John Carpenter do this to me??? How???I loved "The Thing" & I can even handle the bad ones,you know, but THIS one...my goodness.
Of course I understand th B-movie type of feel, but is it supposed to be bad-funny, like a joke or something? I watched this appalling film, hoping to see some John Carpenter magic & all I got was formula, predictable trash. Too many people liked "Escape from New York" in my view. All the actors are in it because it's J.C. directing, but everyone is miscast & trying to make something out of a bad script. I'm sorry ,but I just can't believe "Ice Cube" is Mars' most notorious criminal no matter how tough he trys to look. Kurt Russell as Snake Pliskin is more believeable.
On a positive note, the audio commentary with John & Natasha is hilarious & beats the movie hands down for entertainment value. So my suggestion is, grab the DVD just for the commentary.
Rating: 
Summary: Ghost of a movie.
Review: I was quite excited as I sat down to watch this for the first time (cause I'm a big fan of Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble and Escape from New York), but I did have a slight worry that it may be one of his more poor quality films (Village of the Damned, Vampires, Escape from LA). Unfortunately, for me it was the latter. It started well, but as it went on I got bored because it all feels very unoriginal and sort of pointless. I thought maybe it would be saved by the action and horror, but it wasn't really. Theres a couple of cool moments, a few cool slow-mo kicks and Ice Cube firing two machine guns at once, but nothing that really makes you root for them. It certainly wasn't tense or scary at any point. The main bad guy (Big Daddy Mars) didn't have any lines (infact I don't think the baddies/ghosts spoke at all), and he felt like he was purely there so they would have someone to fight at the end, as opposed to him serving any real purpose. John Carpenter uses a flash back story structure which helps the film from being too linear, but I didn't feel a real good sense of structure, no distinct acts. It's basicly boring "character development" for 50 mins, then lots of running around and shouting and then its over. Now I know some people would say "why are you being so analytical, it's an action film!". But the problem is even if you look at it on a pure action film level it's not very good by todays standards, hell it's not even as good as Carpenters "Big Trouble in Little China" which came out in the mid-eighties! But I must say I really liked the kills in this film. Flying limbs and heads are always a good laugh. And they really take you by surprise. The other reason I gave this film any stars at all was the very funny commentary by John Carpenter and Natasha Henstridge... It's as if Carpenter himself is aware that it's a [poor]film! Personally I found the Anthrax soundtrack sort of embarassing, but I know alot of people like loud "jigga jig jigga jig" guitar soundtracks. I thought it was kinda dorky. But it was cool to see Carpenter working with Anthrax on the music (he composed it they performed it). You've been warned, only buy Ghosts of Mars if John Carpenter's Vampires did it for you...
Rating: 
Summary: Ghosts of Precinct 13!
Review: John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is basically John Carpenter's
Assault on Precinct 13 updated and moved to Mars, but
writer/director/composer Carpenter still makes it interesting with
his stylish touch. The plot here is your basic Western -- Fort Apache (here a Martian
mining town) is under siege by Indians (here miners possessed by
Martian spirits) and the Cavalry (the cops) must join forces with
the outlaws (Ice Cube and his gang) to fight'em off and survive. The bonus materials on this DVD are not too special. The
commentary by Carpenter and Natasha is rather [bad}, more about
themselves than the movie. But the image quality is very good
and so is the music score. And I like this movie, despite its
familiarity. I recommend it to all Carpenter fans!
Rating: 
Summary: Ghosts of Mars - Hellll Yeah
Review: I'm a huge fan of JC, and I believe that he followed true to his form and delivered a fast paced, adrenaline driven sci-fi/horrow film. I've seen almost all of his movies and people have been hard on him recently. A lot of his films are either you hate it or you love it. He maintained his theme of the movie occuring in either a flashback and over a couple of days. It makes the movie feel as though it just happened and you learn as much as the tribunal is in this case. The editing was crisp and fast and kept the action flowing. Ice Cube played a reluctant hero successfully and Natasha Hendstridge cooled down from an uptight police officer to make a great duo, the last scene of the movie just kicks [behind] ... when Cube runs in and tells Melanie that "The tide is up" ... WOW ... I highly recommend this movie to JC fans or sci-fi fans, you'll love it
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining action/horror mixture.
Review: Natasha Henstridge is a cop on route to Mars colony Shining Canyon to escort dangerous criminal Ice Cube. Unfortunately, trapped Martian spirits have been released, possessing the bodies of most of the colonists, forcing the cops and criminals to team up to find a way out. John Carpenter's latest thriller is surprisingly more comical in tone than his other genre outings, but no less entertaining. Takes a while for the movie to get going, but the second half serves up plenty of good, bloody action and big laughs. The flashbacks kill some momentum and suspense, but Carpenter's solid, high-energy direction keeps this film surging forward. Henstridge makes a strong heroine and Jason Statham is a standout as the sexually agressive cop.
*** 1/2 out of *****
Rating:
Summary: Carpenter and Cubism, a nice mix
Review: I've personally enjoyed many of John Carpenter's older works, and I've hated some of the latter ones. A lot of that had to do with a sloppier, more mainstreamed style he adopted to appease the public, which utterly failed to delivered. When Ghosts on Mars came out, I didn't know what to expect, and was quite bemused by the horror/comedy that Carpenter gave me. This movie seems to be more of a return to some of the basics that have been missing from his work, including that of a nice semi-plot, likable characters, and an enemy to either fear (which these weren't that frightening), or amuse (which they did just fine).
It seems that many reviewers of this movie forget one thing, that being that you shouldn't expect all your horror to stay very serious. Possession doesn't typically bred non-human monstrosities, and you can't expect for fiction to always be believable. When you watch this, simply throw out all your ideas on what John's greats were and you'll enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Ghost of a Movie
Review: The official title of this movie is John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. The flamboyant director has done this in the past. I used to think this practice was entirely due to ego. In this instance, I hope it was just part of an effort to sell the picture. Surely, no sane person would want his or her name closely associated with a movie as bad as this one. My philosophy is that nobody in the movie business bats a thousand. No star has ever made only hit movies. No director, even the most revered, has ever had every single project universally praised. The process is all part of the game of life. Carpenter is no exception. His Assault on Precinct 13 [1976] is a low budget cult classic. In 1978 he made Halloween, one of the most successful independent movies ever made. He went on to make some pretty cool movies, including Escape from New York, The Thing and Starman. Lately, he has been on a losing streak [Vampires, They Live], and Ghosts of Mars is definitely the low point. The time is 2176, We have colonized Mars and have almost completed giving it an Earth-like atmosphere. [I doubt this is a feasible scientific possibility, but it is a way to make the movie without the actors having to run around in space helmets.] The society there is a matriarchal one, although no valid reason for this is ever given. Lt. Melanie Ballard [Natasha Henstridge] is part of a team that has been dispatched to a remote mining town to bring back Desolation Williams [Ice Cube], who has been arrested for robbery and multiple homicide. When the team arrives, the town is strangely quiet. It turns out Williams may be a robber, but he's no killer. The culprits are the unseen entities which are [you guessed it!] the ghosts of Mars. Because audiences have been exposed to so many of them, it is hard to make a sci-fi horror film these days without a huge budget, which is obviously something Mr. Carpenter did not have. To compensate, he uses mainly one set and throws every trick he can afford - fires, explosions, battles, and legions of murderous zombies. The result looks exactly like what it is -- actors running around leaping through the air, grunting and screaming profanities on an orange-lit stage set. As a result, it never casts the illusions necessary to keep an audience interested. Compounding the problem is the use of props that are laughable. We are supposed to be 175 years into the future. We have colonized Mars, changed its atmosphere and set up huge mining operations. Yet the actors run around using big walkie-talkies that rarely work right, ride on a train that uses a human engineer, and peer into TV monitors that would look retro back here in 2001. The cast contains some good actors. You might not know this if you hadn't seen them before because they have little to do except grimace, look concerned and say to each other "Are you okay?" every couple of minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Beware, bad film
Review: Being a HUGE fan of films such as the Evil Dead Trilogy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre I, Blade, Starship Troopers, the 4 Alien films, Phantasm, Dawn of the Dead, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space I think I know my horror and B-horror films and can take a joke. Ghosts of Mars is no horror film and no joke. After seeing this garbage I was compelled to post a comment on this movie for what it is worth. I agree with everyone who pointed out issues with the plot / continuity issues, random and absurd use of firearms, Marilyn Manson looking aliens, and painful acting (are they really trying to act or not - pick a method and stick to it). Not to mention the terrible looking sets / models. What a joke. I too can not believe I wasted my time watching this movie. The reason why I am giving this film 1 star, is for the rocking soundtrack. Otherwise it would not get a star. Either J.C. wanted to make a B-horror movie but tried too hard, or he tried to make a state of the art Si-Fi Horror movie but did not try hard enough. What we are left with is indeed a joke that's not worth watching. Unfortunately I bought this DVD before reading the user reviews, I am throwing my copy away.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time or money
Review: Unfortunatelly this is one of john carpenters bad films. Most of the film is either stupid or predictable. The worst part is that this is one of those films were there is no hope for humanity, everyone in the planet will be slautered or posessed by the mars ghost. I would not recommend seeing, much less buying this movie.
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