Rating: 
Summary: hammerhead flying raptors!
Review: This was possibly the worst movie I have ever rented for a dollar. The title should have been 'escape from the velociraptors'. oh, but wait. The raptors can fly too and have hammerheads?! On a desert planet? No way! Try very, very boring. copyright 2000? That's a shame. I'd rather watch 'The lathe of heaven' on dvd with a hot dog up my can for bad low budget sci-fi entertainment. Vin Diesel's worst movie ever.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Modern B-movie
Review: Vin Diesel stars as Richard B. Riddick, a potentially amoral and dangerous criminal being transported through space to prison. When the spacecraft crashes on an isolated planet, only a few survive, including Claudia Black (Farscape), Cole Hauser, and Radha Mitchell. During the day, the planet is a barren dessert, and the survivors worry that they will die of thirst; as night falls, they find that they are prey to a terrifying foe. The survivors find themselves relying on Riddick, despite their hesitation. Pitch Black is a solid sci-fi thriller, despite its relatively low budget (23 million). The director, David Twohy (writer of "The Fugitive"), manages to maintain a genuinely creepy atmosphere throughout the movie and keeps the movie unpredictable. Ultimately, it's the type of well-crafted B-movie that is rarely made today, and it helped make Vin Diesel a star. Pitch Black is likely to become a cult classic, helped immeasurably by the forthcoming planned sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick." Extras: The DVD features an excellent director commentary track, which sustains a nice balance between technical description of special effects and more general aspects of how the movie was created.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific thriller not big diff between previous DVD version
Review: Watching "Pitch Black" for the first time was like trying a new ice cream flavor; you're not sure until the second or third bite what you really think. The original film got zero publicity and a limited release but served to introduce Vin Diesel to an audience in his first true starring role. A passenger spacecraft ends up crashing on a desolate planet. The only survivor from the crew co-pilot Carylon Fry (Radha Mitchell) takes command and directs her surviving passengers (including Claudia Black from "Farscape") to find food and water. While there appears to be no indigeous life forms, a human survey team did briefly occupy the planet. Curiously, there's no indication as to where they went or why they left much of their material behind. Also on the flight is a what appears to be an interstellar police officer (Cole Hauser) escorting a convicted criminal by the name of Riddick (Diesel). Riddick has the unique ability to see better in the dark than the light. While he's no hero, he does make suggestions to the survivors to help their chances for survival. Unfortunately, they're soon to discover that some life form forced the survey team to consider leaving once night arrives. A suspenseful "B" movie premise that works primarily due to Twohy's sharp, taunt direction and crisp dialogue, "Pitch Black" immediately graps your attention with its inventive visuals and intense performances from the superb Mitchell, Deisel, Hauser and Black. Actally, the entire cast gives strong performances throughout the film and Twohy throws in plenty of unexpected twists and turns to keep the audience on the edge of its seat. This "new" unrated director's edition was available previously on DVD a couple of years ago. It appears that the transfer here is the same one as before and all the extras are the same with the exception of those created for the sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick". We get a brief introduction by director/screenwriter Twohy that focuses on the sequel and a glimpse at the making of the video game. If you're fan of the original film, be aware that a couple of extra bells and whistles were added to this two disc edition to entice fans of the new Riddick movie and the original audience for "Pitch Black". Unless you want the meager extras about the sequel (some of which will probably be available when the sequel hits DVD anyway), I'd suggest holding on to your money. The packaging has been revamped to capitalize on the sequel as well with an emphasis more on Riddick than before. "Pitch Black" is a terrific thriller (as is the unexpected minor classic "Below" and "The Arrival" also by Twohy). If you don't have this on DVD yet, by all means purchase it. If you have it already, don't feel the need to upgrade and become a victim of the LOTR double-dip (despite what one reviewer said, New Line has always released the expanded edition six months after the original LOTR films on DVD thus suckering fans into purchasing product twice).
Rating: 
Summary: muddled and dark.........
Review: When I saw the previews recently of The Chronicles of Riddick,
I thought it might be interesting to see Pitch Black. Wrong.
From the first part of it, it looked cheap. That was my first
clue and from there it goes downhill. I frankly think Diesel
was much better in Fast and Furious than he was in this.
But I must say that he alone was the incentive to last as long
as I did. As far as the monsters, that go bump in the night,
anybody who compares them to those in Alien must be blind and
deaf......I found them interesting but definitely not scary, or maybe you needed to be there to see them in person? They reminded me in a way of the raptors from Jarassic Park particularly when they are congregating on the launch pad at the end of the film.
Total waste of time.
Perhaps 'Chronicles' will be different?
It definitely looks a bit more polished.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be afraid of the dark, be afraid of what's in the dark
Review: With the release of The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) aka Pitch Black 2, Universal Home Video has decided to try and squeeze a bit more juice from the original film, releasing a Special Wide Screen Unrated Director's Cut edition. Is it worth it, for all of you out there who've already bought one of the numerous previous releases? I'll answer this question later. Pitch Black (2000) was directed by David Twohy, better known to me for his writing credits, specifically the Kevin Costner suck fest Waterworld (1995). Despite that particular credit, he did write and direct The Arrival (1996), which I did enjoy, but when the hole you're trying to exhume yourself from of is Waterworld, you have a lot of digging ahead of you. The most notable star in the film is Vin Diesel as Riddick, and, while not his first film, this is probably the one that really got him and his bald head noticed by the public. The film also stars Cole Hauser as William Johns, an actor I most recall from the 1993 film Dazed and Confused and sometimes get confused with Ben Affleck, who was also in that movie. Also appearing in the film is the delicious Claudia Black, a woman that any sci-fi aficionado would recognize as Aeryn Sun from the popular Farscape television series and Keith David, popular character actor I recognize mostly from John Carpenter films like The Thing (1982) and They Live (1988). Anyhow, the film opens on a giant ship traveling through space. We see a number of people in cryo sleep, as since we all know, space travel takes a long time, so in order to pass the extended periods of time, people must be partially frozen, like green peas, and then thawed out when needed. Well, something goes wrong with the ship, and various peoples begin popping out of cryo sleep, as the computer, who probably screwed things up in the first place, now needs people to fix matters. But there's no fixing these particular matters as the ship makes a crash landing on a pretty crummy desert-like planet. As the surviving members of the ill-fated cruise extricate themselves from the wreckage, soon begin to learn more of these individuals. There's the Skipper, Mary Ann, the Professor...wait, that's not right...ah skip it...anyway, we do get to meet Riddick, the only passenger chained and bound during cryo sleep, who manages to escape his bonds, to which Johns begins to run around looking for him. As the others begin looking for water, a couple stay behind, one in particular to begin burying those who didn't survive the landing. As he's digging, he finds a hole, decides to stick his head inside, and poof, he's gone, leaving an awful lot of blood behind...where did he go? We see Riddick standing over the hole, to which everyone assumes he killed the man, but we learn pretty shortly afterwards that's not the case. An investigation turns up some pretty hideous (and hungry) creatures that can only venture out when the sun (or suns, as there's three of them on this world) is down. The stranded individuals eventually find water, in the form of a deserted mining camp. Also in the camp is a space skiff, a small ship capable of getting them off the planet and into space shipping lanes where they would most likely be picked up by a passing freighter. Only problem is the skiff needs power to operate, so heavy power cells from the crashed vessel must be transported to the skiff, and the distance is more than a hop, skip and a jump. Oh yeah, night is falling, causing the indigenous inhabitants to stir, and stir they do...by the millions...by the way, did I mention Riddick has some strange modification to his eyes that allow him to see in the dark? You can see where this might come in handy in the darkness of a planet inhabited by big, hungry, scary, carnivorous nocturnal creatures... So, is this film any good? Being so inundated by B-movie flicks over the many years of my movie viewing existence, I was pleasantly surprised to find this was actually a very good film with better than average special effects. Okay, originality isn't its' strong point, but certain elements within the story makes it better than most, the key being that there is a coherent story throughout. And real, honest to goodness character development, to the point where I became unsure who was actually going to make it to the end of the film. The presentation of the character of Riddick, the anti-hero, was fun, and the notion of fighting evil with evil, as the tag line states seems a misrepresentation, as I really didn't see the creatures as being evil, only doing what they would normally do...the one character I found most annoying was that of Jack, given his whining and such, and sacrifices made to accommodate him. The element about the story I enjoyed most was that very little seemed to be what it appeared to be, specifically with the major characters and plot lines. Things get a bit topsy-turvy as revelations are made. So, is it worth buying this version if you've already bought a previous DVD release of the film? Probably not...the special features included are commentaries by the director and stars Diesel and Hauser, additional commentaries by the director, the producer, and the guy in charge of the special effects, which were available on previous releases. The list of new features is listed on this website, but I found very little of them really worth my time, so if you already own a previous version (I didn't), you're not missing much. There was a free movie pass included in the DVD case, one for the new movie The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), so that's pretty sweet, give that going to the theater to see a new film has gotten so expensive. Cookieman108
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