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Reviews
Dark Forest in the Mountains (2000)
Awe Inspiring Movie
Perhaps the best mix of Cinematography and True Story
I must admit that the first time I saw this film, I was too immature to fully grasp its significance. As a student who hadn't even developed his ideas of the world yet, I initially saw this film as another one of those documentaries, depicting some other story that few knew about and fewer cared.
However, as my exposure to cinema and life grew, my perspectives changed as well. I saw that such a film takes much more than a cameraman with a camera to shoot. It takes inspiration and courage. Not just the courage to take part in live gunfire and risk death, but also the boldness to present it in the face of cultural and political adversary.
Similar to the critically acclaimed film like Ararat (2002), starring such greats as Charles Aznavour and Christopher Plummer, where the filming of a documentary is shown to affect a young cameraman, "Dark Forest in the Mountains" allows the spectator to be affected. However, the affect is not of feelings learned in an acting class, but of true association to the deep cultural emotions that are exemplified as the film progresses.
During these days of cultural turmoil and political unrest, this film is one that gives reason to continue to work hard and thrive, since there is indeed a morally superior goal for which to fight.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Too much to handle for Sci-Fi viewers...
I feel like I have an open mind for movies and I try to enjoy them for their strongest qualities. However, as much as I tried, M2M could not provide the qualities that I expected in a big-budget sci-fi flick.
*** WARNING *** SPOILERS AHEAD! *** WARNING ***
First of all, I must applaud the special effects and music in this movie. For the most part, they were the best feature about this movie.
Regarding my disappointments, let me not repeat what many of my peers have previously stated. For the direction and acting talent that this film boasts, much of it is diluted and lost due to cheesy and predictable quotes and scenarios. Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise are two of my favorite actors, and yet the script prevented them from acting their best. And poor Tim, did he have to die such an artificial and contrived death?
As one who appreciates SCIENCE fiction, I expected much more from the science advisors (how much do they get paid, and did they even go to school??). Most of my gripes have been previously addressed, such as the many possible ways to save Tim Robbin's character, or "oxygen rich" tent that is open to the martian atmosphere, or the lack of leak detection on the spacecraft (you'd think that health monitoring would at least detect such a large drop in fuel deliver as it would on our own shuttle), or even the fact that a few DNA base pairs could be "human" (we have around 3 billion pairs to establish humanity).
However, one striking disparity has remained blaringly obvious. The last scenes appear to show a "Contact"-esque explanation of a more supreme being and an explanation of the origin of man. The aliens must have been extremely smart, to the point of predicting all the evolutionary forces and stresses that would allow their microorganismal DNA, which they sent to populate the earth, to eventually evolve into humans. Not to mention that the aliens would know what "human" DNA would look like 4 billion years later (assuming that you can really determine that by a short sequence). It seems very presumptuous that the aliens would expect their DNA to evolve into an organism that looks much like themselves (similar facial features, arms, hands, and limbs). How would they even determine the physiological characteristics of us to provide a breathing atmosphere in the head and let us breath while immersed in water (assuming that it could be done).
Needless to say, M2M is yet another movie that tried to present a connection between humans and a greater species... and has failed.