post-apocalyptic movie rentals

[prgrmr]

I rented some movies Friday night. Tonight I watched Children of Men. It's an odd movie. The acting highlight by far was Michael Caine, just brilliant. Clive Owen was conflicted enough at the start to sell his finally-settled-upon-determination, but Caine stole every scene he was in. The plot was interesting--it's 2027 and humanity is infertile--but the rest of the movie struck me as an exercise in "and now watch while we substitute a moral crisis for this man's daily routine, and see if he notices". There were dramatic scenes, but there wasn't much drama about the plot, and the ending left me with that feeling of "so what?".

Last night I watched The Last Sentinel. I didn't know it at the time I got it, but it was a Sci-Fi made-for-TV movie. And it was painful. The premise was very cool: cyborg drone cop replacements take-over in a combination Orwellian-Terminator nightmare. However, the plot was slow and obvious, the dialog sounded like a jr. high school production, and the special effects were hardly that special. The highlight was Katee Sackhoff, but she was so completely under-utilized I don't know why they bothered. And if someone is going to make a movie where the main character is a special forces soldier, you'd think they'd do some research about small unit tactics, basic escape-and-evasion, or even just how to shoot properly. Apparently there wasn't money in the budget for that, because Don Wilson's character walked around standing straight up, down the middle of the streets, using his weapon on full-auto the entire time.

Had I been watching this on cable, I'm sure I would have turned it off before the half-way point. But having paid to rent this disaster flick, and with nothing better to watch, I let it play.