Only three releases for us this week as I try to get back into the swing of things after a major operation. Up first is Project Gemini. The film is absolutely nothing we haven’t seen before, but it’s still interesting enough to watch. The Earth is overtaken by a virus and mix in global warming and it is yet another “we must leave Earth and find a place for human survival” plot. They send a group of experts into space with technology they found left on Earth millions of years ago. Something goes wrong and the crew is sent to a different planet not the one they thought could save us from extinction. But this movie also uses a bit of time travel. Add in a creature trying to kill them and it’s like Life and lots of other science fiction films we’ve seen over the past 20 years. It’s watchable, but also forgettable. It’s a foreign film that I watched with the English dub and I shouldn’t have. It’s ok for a one time viewing, but I can’t see myself watching it again.
Second we have The Whaler Boy. It will get praised for showing a group of people you never see on film, but ultimately it’s just the typical coming of age story we’ve seen before. A young Inuit boy grows up in a small village in Russia near the US border where they go whaling. He becomes obsessed with a US-based webcam girl and wants to go to Detroit to meet her. There is an incident with a friend, he steals a boat, but ends up on an island with some bad dudes and ultimately with border patrol. I have no idea if I understood the ending either. Besides the location and whaling lifestyle we’ve seen teens fall in love online before even if she doesn’t know anything about him. She just gets paid while he falls for her. It has a great backdrop and scenery, but it’s not something I’d have a need to see again.
And speaking of seeing, last we have Sight: The Story Of Vision. It is a documentary on our sense of sight, its known history and how the world sees. It is narrated by Sir Elton John and talks about glasses, contacts, surgery, the future of eyesight with technology and everything in between. Glasses have been around much longer than I thought and the numbers they give for worldwide poor eyesight is staggering. They interview all kinds of people from doctors to patients and a soldier who has vision problems because of the war. It’s interesting especially how the world has much different vision coverage in terms of insurance and healthcare. Two of my sisters once worked at a big optometry college so I’ve always been interested in this type of stuff.
The Nerds Templar 