Rating: 
Summary: Totally underrated movie!!
Review: I went to the theater to see this one, as I love Carpenter. And when the movie ended I was not disappointed. It is a cult movie from its very conception. This film doesn't want to be the hit of the season, and that's why it rules so much. The sets are great, the actors could be better, but I think that would be bad for the overall result. Nevertheless, Ice Cube is the best here, and his line "Come on you miners MF!" is the best part of the movie. Also, I think Carpenter made a kind of mixture of his career highlights with some "Assault on Precinct 13", "Prince of Darkness" and "Vampires". The Carpenter fan will love this movie, and those who are not especially fond of Carpenter's legacy should give it a try too. If movies such as "Scream" had a big success and people love them so much, "Ghosts of Mars" is undoubtely a classic. Remember, enjoy when you watch it!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Carpenter's Best, But Still Good
Review: I was one of only 8 people or so who was in the theater for this movie. It was gone from most theaters in less than 2 weeks I think, so I went in thinking it must be pretty bad. I really enjoyed it though, but I'm blindly loyal to John Carpenter's movies. I almost fell off my chair when Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up, that was not at all what I was expecting. Well, the DVD is pretty solid, but I don't understand why a full-screen version would be included on a John Carpenter film. Carpenter uses all of the scope frame, so why anyone would want to watch the movie cropped is beyond me. Had the full-screen been scrapped, the rest of the disc could have been used for more extras or for a higher sampling rate on the transfer. The video is good, but it's not that great. It looked better in the theater I think. The sound is very aggressive in this 5.1 mix, but a lot of sounds you think will be very dynamic end up being sort of flat in my opinion. The higher sampling rates might have helped resolve that. The extras are sort of annoying because the featurettes are all just clips of behind the scenes stuff with music playing in the background. I would have liked to hear interviews with other cast members like the HBO First Look: Ghosts of Mars had. Why wasn't that documentary on the disc? The commentary with Henstridge and Carpenter is good though. Not a bad disc, and not a bad movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny 'Mars'
Review: The premise was pretty funny with a squad going to transfer a criminal in a Mars prison. Ice Cube was hilarious as the innocent James "Desolation" Williams and Natasha Henstridge played Lt. Ballard, a no nonsense woman. The year was 2176 and there was a mysterious smoke that took over human beings. It made them into Marilyn Manson fans and had them piercing themselves. I was appalled with the creatures because they didn't speak any English with their pierced tongues and all they did was get in the way. The transfer was supposed to be routine, but Williams' friends joined him for some comic relief. "Who you calling scumbag? MF!" That was some funny schtick. Criminals and the group of police joined forces and fought the ghastly demons. They carried saw blades and sticks. The crazy Manson fans also knew where to put heads. It was disgusting! There were a lot of flashbacks in this movie that were unnecessary, thus lowering my score for the picture. John Carpenter has made better movies, but this isn't a bad effort. Check out his "Vampires" and "The Thing". Ice Cube's performance was comicality!
Rating: 
Summary: Makes 'Screamers' look like a movie
Review: There's a gruesome bit of stuff where this white faced nutter beheads a few people erroneously making you think that you're in for a tasty bit of Carpenter grand guignol. But oddly, it doesn't happen. It's as if Carpenter gathered his cast round and told them that they didn't have the time or money to employ stunt doubles for all of them so they should just go out there and fight but try not to hurt each other, defeating the whole point of a picture like this. The result is one of the most bizarre chase scenes ever filmed, with actors fighting in almost slow motion. In the middle of the whole sorry melange, the white faced dude keeps stopping and screaming at the camera, presumably in anguish over his thoughtless beheading of the planet's only registered dentist. Does anyone remember 'The Andy Williams Show' from the sixties? It used to have two cavemen that would leap in the air and freeze in mid flight before dropping to the ground. This chase sequence made me feel quite nostalgic for old Andy. You'd get a feeble explosion and up would pop a caveman from behind a rock. I half expected the bear from 'The Andy Williams Show' to swoop down on a jet pack asking for cookies. My God, he would have been welcome company, not to mention probably the only one who could actually land a punch on someone.
Another bright move was to have two of the women have that same silver hair as the kids in 'Village Of The Damned' (a homage to himself?) At one point I thought it was Natasha Henstridge who had her head chopped off but it was a case of mistaken identity.
Carpenter himself seems cheerfully unconcerned at the prospect of his career going down ... and appears to be having a whale of a time in the commentary (what I heard of it.) How bad can it get waking up every morning as a film director and knowing you're about to spend the day with Natasha Henstridge? In one hilarious moment he asks Mrs Henstridge how she approaches her craft. "I...er...it comes er...from within" she dissembles wildly. He needles her about her past as a model and tries to get her to gossip about that scene but she nervously declines, mentioning only some "nice dinner parties". He goes for cynical chuckles over the cheapo train model. Careful about underestimating your fans, John (or fan, after this debacle.) It's not only the set that could find itself in the red.
Rating:
Summary: Oh dear.
Review: It's hard to believe watching this movie that this is the man who brought us The Thing and The Fog. What we have here is a weakly scripted movie that seems to offer no moral, no characters you can care about and no plot to intrigue you. Indeed the one element of mystery (why has everyone gone nuts?) is offhandedly revealed without ever tantalising the audience.
Our 'heroes' are all one-dimensional creations that you hope will fall victim to the savages, so much so that you no longer care that you know from the start who will survive you just wish they would get on with it. Mercifully it is at least short. I'd love to have something positive to say about this film but I was sorely disappointed. It would seem Mr Carpenter's best work is behind him.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie
Review: If you like Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog you will like Ghosts of Mars too. I like all of them.
Rating:
Summary: Hardcore Carpenter fans will dig it, others won't
Review: It seems to me John Carpenter has been getting a bad rep lately. A lot of people didn't like his most recent films Vampires and Village of the Damned, and Ghosts of Mars received a lot of criticism when it was released, and was a box office failure. However, the guts (literally) of Ghosts of Mars is undoubtadly fun pure B-movie cheese John Carpenter style. Natasha Henstridge plays Lt. Melanie Ballard (a role originally slated for Courtney Love, but she bowed out due to an injury), a Mars policewoman sent on a mission with Pam Grier, Jason Statham, and Clea Duvall to find notorius criminal James "Desolation" Williams, played with cheesy menace by Ice Cube. When they arrive however, they learn an ancient long imprisoned Martian spirit has escaped and infested itself into every person mining on Mars, making the movie a cross between Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and Night of the Living Dead. As with every other Carpenter film, there is a lot of gorey violence as well as Carpenter's heavy metal tuned musical score (featuring Anthrax and Buckethead no less), but the special effects are rather lackluster, and I for one expected a lot better. Henstridge and Statham turn out rather good performances, but I felt Ice Cube's character could have used a lot more character development that would have made the film progress more smoothly. All in all, Ghosts of Mars has cult classic written all over it, and while it may not be one of Carpenter's better films, it's still worth a look.
Rating: 
Summary: Carpenter needs to retire...
Review: There is a big difference between a true horror film that knows restraint (i.e. The Shining) and a horror film with nothing more than Marilyn Manson groupie look-a-likes parading around an artificial set of Mars with facial piercings and killer hub-caps.
John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars decided to choose the latter and ultimately fails to generate any scares while taking itself way too seriously to even generate campy entertainment value. It could have been a very cool movie had the budget been raised from the expendature of a Wendy's Kids Meal, because there are a few cool gore and decapitation scenes, not to mention a near ingenious concept (Angry spirits of long-dead martians possess nearby humans etc.) and a killer soundtrack by Anthrax and Buckethead, but those alone can't improve the quality of Carpenter's latest fiasco.
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as it's made out to be
Review: When I first rented this movie, I thought it would be absolute rubbish. I wanted to rent something so that I could just lie down and relax and not have to do much in respect to following the plot. Although not a masterpiece, Ghosts of Mars is a fantastic film. I found the movie to be more interesting than I bargained for, considering that the plot was based on Zombies on Mars. With plenty of action and gore, it's well worth checking out. Ice Cube gives a standard hard man performance and Henstridge plays her part well. John Carpenter can turn any dodgy monster flick into something worth watching. Carpenter has this uncanny nack of making bad films so fantastic that while gasping at the ridiculousness of the films, I can't help but dip my hat to a true master of his craft.
Rating:
Summary: MUCH better than expected
Review: Despite a terrible collection of reviews this is a damn entertaining film and well worth watching. A good "people under siege" film with lots of action and a tongue in cheek style it's great fun. VERY unfairly dismissed it's one of Carpenter's better films and deserves a fresh look. Better than Escape From LA this DVD is a good presentation with a great commentary track and some informative behind the scenes features. Don't listen to the critics, it's a very entertaining movie with comic book characters that are never dull. I think Carpenter was spot on with this film and a lot of people missed the point. It's not meant to be serious, it's a fun-fair ride and works well when viewed on that level. Give it a go. Worth buying for sure.
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