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Rating: 
Summary: Good story, bad acting
Review: I picked up this poor excuse for a movie at Blockbuster, craving a sci-fi flick. I'm glad it was cheap, because it is without a doubt a waste of money.
The story is decent, if a bit contrived. It is about a mysterious item called the Torus, that was able to conceive a very stupid engineers son without the act of sexual intercourse (bummer, engineers don't get enough sex as it is). Anyway the Torus has reappeared with new features. It can now heal people. However a another Torus appears in the Eastern part of the world, near Russia, and it has the power of destruction. If the two Torus meat, then the earth will go through a destruction/reconstruction phase, and teraform the earth. The problem is, that humanity will be dismissed during the earth restructuring phase, and we can't have that. So we have to find a key or whatever. Ah forget it.
The plot is pretty good, but too convoluted and very cliched. But that is not the worse of it, as the characters truly bring any redeeming quality this movie had plummeting downward. Plotholes are here left and right. The character development is non existent. The bad guys, who work for some new age anti alien reglious nutso occult, are goofy. And stuff that they are regurgitating is someones twisted interpretation of acting. But the protagonist are equally bland. No one should care about David Keith or his assistant, or his son. The thing is you will no root for the bad guys either. Who is an overly streotypical religous fanatic, with a bad southern baptist-TV evangelical accent to boot.
As a matter of fact nothing is appealing in this movie. The "Army" in the future are run by a bunch of incompetent nit wits, who can actually be killed by an unarmed assasin. An assasin who seriously needs to take acting lessons. That is not surprising since the Sergent is a complete moron. In the future, I guess the army becomes alot less selective in who they let in.
I got this movie expecting a sci-fi, but what I got was a comedy. There is no way anyone could reasonably take these actors seriously. They didn't even look they were trying. So this must have been a comedy, and whoever wrote the plot summary on the back of the DVD must have just forgot to mention it. A movie where Billie D. Williams is the best performer is definitely a joke. You can skip this if you feel guilty about laughing AT people. The plot is full of brain dead philosophy and catch phrases. Even the geopolitical stuff involving China is just plain funny. And everyone fits seemlessly into streotypes. It fails as a sci-fi, but it excels as a comedy. 2 stars
Rating: 
Summary: So-so SF
Review: All the pieces are good. A Mysterious Object appears in central Asia. Our Hero is recruited (under duress) to analyze it. He has no special qualifications, except for being generally good at figuring things out. He tries desperately to do the job he was ordered to do, but the ever-present military does what the military usually seems to do: get confused, issue contradictory orders as a result, and get more confused. Governments do what governments do: squabble over who owns something that no human agency could possibly own.The end of the world begins, Our Hero is destroyed at ground zero in a nuclear explosion, he recovers nicely, and we get a happy ending. The pieces are good, but come together as an ordinary story. There is some originality here. The mysterious inverted cone was highly original when Roger Dean used it on album covers in the 1970s. The white-on-white inner sanctum was very original; at least it was in Kubrick's 2001 (also from the 70s). The inexplicable healing forces may have been original in the movie E.T. Yes, there was lots of originality here. Unfortunately, it was mostly other people's originality. It's a safe, watchable SF movie. There's not a lot of violence, and adult themes appear only as hints off screen. There are lots of better movies out there, but lots worse too.
Rating:
Summary: THE BEGINNING OR THE END
Review: Deeply steeped in pseudo-mystical and religious undertones, EPOCH is not a bad sci-fi movie. The effects are fair to middlin, so to speak, but it captures the awesome "rock" that rises out of the earth. There are some cliche characterizations, particularly in the roles played by Craig Wasson and Ryan O'Neal, but David Keith and Stephanie Niznik do well in their hero/heroine roles. I Particularly enjoyed Brian Thompson, who played Captain Towers. Initially a stereotypical Rambo type, he reveals a side unexpected, and he turns into kind of a hero. This reversal is refreshing, and Thompson (Buffalo Bob in Joe Dirt) gives a good performance.
The movie has a nice message; it's pace is a little slow at times, but it's a pleasant enough diversion.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh My God?
Review: Epoch Evolution has something (no, make that everything) for the male, pimple-faced, Sci-Fi buff. It has heavy duty Religion, resurrections from the dead, spontaneous healing and even the "second coming, I think. "Lazarus" comes back from the dead and "Abraham" offers to sacrifice his son. It also has thermonuclear war, exploding space stations, exploding missiles, exploding submarines, exploding aircraft, exploding buildings, exploding cars, exploding people and a nude scene. It has aliens (or is it God?) and their space crafts. Mountains explode and buildings crumble. Thousands are killed and numerous running gun battles. It has more Armageddon than the Book of Revelations. OK special effects. If the "actors" would have been computer generated too, it would have improved the film. It is a "deep" movie for a "shallow" mind. The best part of the movie .... it is only 1:33 minutes long.
Rating:
Summary: Not terrible...not good either
Review: In this movie, a gaint rock formation bursts out of the ground near China. Apparently of alien origin, a US team is sent to investigate. The head scientist (played by David Keith) specializes in pointing out how stupid everyone else is, though this isn't contrasted with any particular brilliance on his own part. In fact, if you bother to pay attention (unlike the writers), you'll notice he's actually wrong and everyone else is right. The lead government agent (played by Stephanie Niznik) refuses to let the scientist do his job because he made a bad joke and she's mad at him. There's also a military guy along who specializes in disobeying orders and generally acting insane while quoting from the Bible. So, the fate of the world is in good hands.
The biggest problem is that the movie never answers its own question: What is the grand purpose of this thing? The scientist comes up with some theories, but considering he's been wrong about everything up to that point, and his theories don't answer the main question: Why? It's very unsatisfying.
But, if you can swallow all that, it's a watchable movie. The action moves along fairly well, the acting is good enough though the characters aren't especially likable, and the CGI is better than average. Or maybe there's just more of it than average. Though the movie lacks any substance, it scores at least a few points for style.
Rating:
Summary: A bad case of "sequel slump"
Review: This continues ten years after the end of the original (Epoch 2000). Rand, our hero, has a son. The two are on the run from the assassins who killed his wife years ago. Hold on to that fact, since it's the last one for a good long while that makes any sense.
As in Epoch, we have the giant, mysterious, stone cone-thingie. We learn that it's called a Torus, possibly because it's unlike a torus in just about every way. Since this is a sequel, we need something more: two Toruses! Also, we have the secret, well-funded, trans-national cult of nutcases, the ones out to kill Our Hero for reasons oddly devoid of reason. Somehow, the cult manages to gain entry to one Torus before the good guys, and hide an inept killer inside. Also, the cult gets into the second Torus just behind the good guys. We watch as our ingenious scriptwriters convince the highly trained military team not to guard their escape route, allowing the somewhat less inept killers to sneak up behind and stage a merry shootout. Along the way, we have a rogue Chinese general launching nuclear missiles and whatnot, and a monastery filled with centuries-old clues. Since the monks spent centuries not caring, one is left wondering how anyone thought to look there for The Key. We also have some special effects emanating from the two Toruses. If the two SPFX touch each other, then kablooie! It will be the end of all life on earth, followed by a thorough remodeling of the place and a new set of life forms as tenants - presumably, ones that will take better care of the property. I am in awe of the mind that could deduce all that from a green light on one Torus and a red light on the other.
Of course, there's a happy ending filled with sequel-bait - the only other thing in the movie I could understand. The son is actually a Mysterious Being and walking first aid kit, with an incredible future ahead of him (coming soon to DVD, one may assume). It also turns out that the stone thingies aren't stone at all, they were something even cooler, just dressed up as stone!
It's fair grade-D (for Direct to DVD) science fiction action flick. If you're looking to kill an evening this might do the job, or at least leave it with some nasty bruises.
//wiredweird
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