Mission To Mars

Rating:
Summary: For DePalma-Heads Only
Review: There's only one way to watch this otherwise disposable film: turn the volume off completely, play sweeping classical music and marvel anew at Brian DePalma's truly dazzling camera-work. Has there ever been a modern movie director this visually gifted?

Unfortunately, people tend to talk a great deal in "Mission to Mars," and with it's dreadful patchwork script credited to Jim Thomas & Lowell Cannon, DePalma never stands a chance. Did the busy-busy Disney executives even bother reading the script? The actors, including Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise and Don Cheadle, practically fumble on every word, as if they were attempting to master a brand-new stupid-o language.

If you long for the days of DePalma's best work - and you'll long for practically anything after this - check out "Dressed to Kill," "Casualties of War," or "The Untouchables," all of which showcase this unique director at his best (and none, by the way, available on DVD! That has to change!).

Rating:
Summary: "Mission to Mars" Debate
Review: You know what's funny? Everyone who liked "Mission to Mars" has given ample evidence that the movie entertained them. But those who dislike it do nothing but whine and expect their money back. My god people, do you do this everytime a movie comes out that's lower than your already low expectations?? Get it through your thick skulls, people: not every movie is made for your type of personality (or in some cases, lack thereof). LIVE WITH IT, GET OVER IT, and stop making us defend it.

Rating:
Summary: One Of The Very Worst Movies We've Ever Seen
Review: Hubby sometimes is in the mood for a good action-adventure film. I took out this one on my library card for him and ended up, as usual, watching it with him. We both became more and more slack-jawed as we got further and further into it. I kept saying, "Why don't you put on one of the other movies I got instead?" Jim couldn't believe though that Brian De Palma, Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins were all involved in such a terrible movie. Surely, it would improve, he kept saying. Ha! Normally, we like all three men as directors and Sinise and Robbins as actors too. This is the worst work any of the three have ever done. The dialogue was some of the worst we've ever heard in a script that was absolutely terrible. The words "hackneyed" and "cliched" don't even begin to cover the story problems this film has in abundance. There was only one good part and that was the special effects. Tellingly enough, the DVD "extras" focus considerably on all the talent and money that went into creating those effects. They must have run out of money then and been unable to also commission a script. Rather than appearing to be a film, this looks like a bad improvisation of both a script and a film to showcase the screening of their special effects. De Palma has made favorites of ours, such as "Carlito's Way", "Body Double" and "Blow Out." We even liked his "Bonfire Of The Vanities" and "Scarface", which plenty of viewers didn't like. However, this is the absolute worst film he has ever made and he, Sinise and Robbins should buy up every copy of it and destroy them all so no one ever knows they made it. We would do so if it were (shudder) ours.

Rating:
Summary: MARS ATTACKS
Review: In my opinion, Brian dePalma's MISSION TO MARS is neither a sci-fi masterpiece neither the awfully bad movie depicted by our dear critics. Of course, I'm terribly disappointed by the beginning of MISSION TO MARS so ridiculous and its last 20 minutes which present a theory sci-fi writers of the forties considered already as a cliché. Let's admit that only the screenplay is to blame and not Brian dePalma.

If you forget those moments, MISSION TO MARS delivers three or four superb ideas as the dance in the shuttle or its abandon by the crew. I've also liked very much the scenes on Mars and the apparition of the killer storm, a kind of sand cobra.

Great performances of the actors with a special word for Gary Sinise who, starring in MISSION TO MARS and in John Frankenheimer's REINDEER GAMES, proves that he can play the good guy as well as the bad guy. Excellent sound and images and above-average bonus features.

A -not to be ashamed of- DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Terribly disappointing
Review: I like Tim Robbins. I like Gary Sinise. I like scifi. But this movie was just plain awful. It made me wonder if Robbins and Sinise had hit on hard times.

It started off feeling like it was going one direction, and then they ran out of time and money, so had to tag on a bad, stock ending with some special effects to keep audiences interested.

Character development fell so flat that I was not even phased when, for no particularly good reason, one of the main characters dies in front of his wife! I wanted to like the characters, but never got the chance to.

It might be worth renting just to see how bad it really is, but certainly not worth buying.

Rating:
Summary: Pilfered storyline, spectacular special effects
Review: Imagine building a car completely from used parts of various classicautomobiles without any original equipment and you have a basicunderstanding of the creative process for "Mission to Mars."However, despite being utterly unoriginal with a disturbing amount ofbanal dialogue, it is actually a fairly entertaining film, thanks toBrian De Palma's innovative camera work and some outstanding specialeffects.

The film was panned by the critics and a loser at the boxoffice, but it really didn't deserve quite as much abuse as itreceived. Though the story was a patchwork of ideas pilfered fromother films, they happened to be the greatest sci-fi space adventuresof all time ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Close Encounters OfThe Third Kind", "Apollo 13" to name a few). If we had neverseen any of these films before seeing M2M, we probably would havethought this was a terrific film. However, almost everyone has seenthem, so this film suffers from comparisons with saints.

If there isone area where this film shines, it is the special effects. This filmhas the most realistic space scenes I've ever experienced. Theweightlessness is superbly done and the extravehicular shots areindescribably beautiful and convincing. De Palma's innovative use ofthe lens, filming from various angles with multiple cameras, gives thespace scenes a genuine disorientation where there seems to be no up ordown. The shots of the Mars surface looked eerily like the photosfrom the Pathfinder Rover a couple of years back.

The story itselfwas good while it was focusing on the rescue mission, but once theygot into the alien contact portion, it got very hokey. There werefour writers working on this script and it didn't fit together well.They tried to do too much making it an outer space action-adventuresuspense thriller, a human-interest story, a romance, and aphilosophical mindbender on the nature of the universe.

The actingis of excellent quality as one might expect from the high caliber ofthe cast. Gary Sinise turns in another outstanding dramaticperformance. Tim Robbins is just a bit too syrupy as the lovebird,but he makes up for it in the mission commander scenes. Don Cheadlealso does a bang up job as the stranded astronaut.

There is a lot tocriticize about this film, but there is also a lot to like. I ratedit a 7/10. I would suggest seeing it and keeping an open mind. Ifyou don't compare it too fastidiously to the classics from which it isderived and just enjoy the outstanding visuals and well craftedsuspense, you might find it to be a very entertaining science fictionflick.

Rating:
Summary: Worth seeing
Review: This was a good sci-fi movie, kind of slow at times, but at the end it was cool. Worth seeing, and it's not at all as bad as alot of people are saying it is...

Rating:
Summary: 20% Awsome 80% Awful
Review: I enjoyed the portion of the film that was about them getting to mars, and REALLY enjoyed the scene where they were making the space-walk transfer, but after that, it just got weird and stupid. And I normally like weird and stupid. Brian Depalma is great with suspense and character, but just like SNAKE EYES, this movie all ends up in the "well that was stupid" section.

Rating:
Summary: i liked it, but...
Review: I REFUSE TO BELIVE THAT BRIAN"MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE"DE PALMA MADE THIS FILM ITS GOT TO BE SOME OTHER GUY WITH THE SAME NAME.IF ONLY HITCHCOCK HAD MADE A SCI-FI MOVIE WE WOULD HAVE A FOUR STAR CLASSIC ON OUR HANDS.

Rating:
Summary: A must for students of truly bad cinema
Review: I have honestly enjoyed the greater body of Brian De Palma's film work; he brought us Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, Blow Out, Body Double, and the first Mission Impossible. All visually outstanding, original work. But then there was also Dressed to Kill, Bonfire of the Vanities, and now (hopefully) his dud to end all De Palma duds (bad things happen in threes, right?), Mission to Mars. An earth crew is sent to the red planet to seek out survivors of a disastrous earlier mission, encountering further disaster: this movie. Slow moving, with promises of action sequences that don't quite deliver; a music score that is inappropriate for much of the scenes; pedestrian dialog, characters you can't really care about, a directionless, contrived plot; culminating in a supposedly socially significant history lesson given by a weeping alien that looks like a computer generated balloon animal. After which Gary Sinise decides that he will do the right thing for humanity by taking up residence on Mars. For ....? I guess if I were an actor of his caliber and I had ended up in a film like this that has "contractual obligation" written all over it, I'd want to move to another planet too. Oh well, we all make mistakes .... too bad those of quality actors like Sinise and Tim Robbins are preserved for posterity. There should be a college course in film that covers and analyzes terrible films like this one, the remake of The Haunting, Psycho 2, the Planet of the Apes sequels, so would-be film students can have a shot of avoiding what the movie industry drives directors to every so often. Give us back the Giant Bat-Rat Spider! It's just really unfortunate this film got the DVD special edition treatment, while all the long-awaited release of Cronenberg's The Fly got was the inclusion of its inferior sequel and some cheesy trailers. I guess we're just gonna have to start making our OWN movies .......