Every month, Cosmik Debris brings you many CD and record reviews, but the writers manage to find a little time for other pursuits, like reading, going to movies and watching videos. That's where Everything Else In Review comes in. .


Movie: Final Fantasy
Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi And Motonori Sakakibara
Voices By Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Peri Gilpin, Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames
Square Pictures
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

Final Fantasy is beautiful to look at. From the picture perfect computer animation - right down to the heroine's freckles - to the design of the attacking monsters (rather like electron microscope pictures of microbes) Hironobu Sakaguichi has done a magnificent job with the team of animators he directed at his facility in Hawaii. Who cares if the story is based on a video game?

I do. I'm a story-first kind of guy.

The good doctor Aki Ross, played by Ming Na who was the voice of Mulan, has been having dreams. In those dreams she eventually divines the big secret of the monsters attacking the Earth. She must also locate and bring together eight spirits of Earth to save it from the monsters. She is aided in this quest by the good captain of the special forces team, whom of course she already knows. Meanwhile an ambitious general prepares to fire a weapon that may damage Gaia, our planet's mother spirit. And, of course, he refuses to listen to Dr. Ross or her mentor when they tell him to wait until they can gather all the eight spirits. It's a race against time and ignorance to save the Earth.

Final Fantasy suffers from the same "I think I've heard this story somewhere before" syndrome that marked Disney's Atlantis earlier this summer. (Atlantis sank pretty quickly this time, didn't it?) At least as a video game, you have an interactive aspect, but here there wasn't any original plot twist in the whole thing. Dr. Ross doesn't really go through any trial to find out the secret of the monsters and the philosophy of Gaia and ghosts the solution is based on is pretty half baked. It's about the level of a good graphic novel. It's not that I don't like graphic novels, I just expect a little more from a movie.

If you like computer animation, this is worth seeing in all its glory on the big screen. I just don't feel a need to go see it a second time. I guess we'll just have to be satisfied that this is a monumental achievement in animation. Which it truly is; I just wish it was a bigger achievement in storytelling.


(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes



MOVIE: A.I.
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Harley Joel Osment, Jude Law, William Hurt and Frances O'Connor
Dreamworks Pictures
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

Spielberg has done almost every kind of film at least once. In the sci-fi genre this is his third, after Close Encounters and ET, but it's quite unlike either of those. AI is based on "Super Toys Last All Summer Long," a short story by one of the great writers from the classic 50's & 60's era of SF, Brian Aldiss. It was something Stanley Kubrick was working on just before his death and Spielberg took the idea to film it from him. You can see a lot of Kubrick in the interior shots. The exteriors look more like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, but no matter, there's a master at work here. He's made a very cerebral experience, a wonderful respite from this summer's Hollywood vehicles like Hurl Harbor, sorry Pearl Harbor. Instead this is a story about what is humanity and what is unique in each of us. The metaphor that Spielberg uses to convey all this philosophy is a robot that is programmed to love unconditionally, played by Haley Joel Osment.

The robot, David, is sent to a couple whose child is in a coma. The mother, played with significant angst by Frances O'Connor (last seen in Bedazzled doing seven mini roles), is not satisfied with David's basic programming. Soon after delivery she ignores the warnings and invokes his love imprinting. She feels fulfilled only a little while because his human "brother" miraculously revives. And then the fun begins. Only it's not fun for anyone. Not to give too much away but his mom maroons him after an incident where he almost kills his brother. In an innocent way of course. You see David believes unquestioningly in love and just about everything else. He is the very archetype of innocence. Unfortunately, I think this is where the movie falls down a bit. Face it, David would have been turned off after an incident like that. Instead he is able to start off on a journey to find The Blue Fairy. Yes, the same Blue Fairy as in Pinocchio. Did I mention he's the very archetype of innocence?

Most everyone will remember Osment as the kid from The Sixth Sense who saw dead people. As the robot David, he has less range of emotion he can play, so he must spend most of the movie looking lost-puppy befuddled, but he still does a good job with it, especially in the scene where the imprinting takes hold. Robin Williams had a similarly robotic role in Bicentennial Man which was adapted from another classic SF writer, Issac Asmiov. By the way, that was actually a surprisingly good film. The trailers they showed on TV portrayed it as some kind of slapstick farce and it wasn't that at all. In any case, both robots are attached to well-to-do families, only the Williams character is a servant where the Osment character is more like a very life-like doll; a toy. More interesting is Jude Law as the love-machine that befriends him on the trek, but he doesn't stay in the story long. Even shorter is William Hurt's role as David's creator. All the other important characters are computer generated.

I rather expected lots of robot-gone-berserk scenes, but to his credit Spielberg does not indulge in shoot-em-up, gross-em-out or suicidal-exit scenes like many directors would. Ultimately the film is very moving, but doesn't quite measure up to his other larger-than-life work. For anyone else this may have been a crowning achievement but when you've already got Shindler's List, The Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan, Always, Jaws, ET and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in your resume, you are your own toughest act to follow.


(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes