I have a wrist watch, which runs pretty accurately, but for five times a year I have to set back the date one day, because the date dial has 31 positions, and it’s not a very smart watch. That however, doesn’t make me think that each month in the year has in fact 31 days, that there is a conspiracy going on involving the American government, and that anyone who doubts me is an ignorant fool.

I find it odd how Roland Emmerich can produce exactly the same movie over and over again, but still manages to make each one worse than the last one.

I saw 2012 yesterday evening, and I’m starting to see a pattern. A pattern of a scientist who stumbles on something impossible, authorities keeping things under wraps, a heroic American president, a couple finding back their lost love, a moralistic speech toward the end, and an anti-hero or weirdo for comic relieve. First all the characters are introduced, while the danger starts to loom (most of them don’t care/believe/notice yet). Then the danger turns out much worse than expected, cue massive CGI, in which the characters survive or die, and in the end everybody is cheering, despite general destruction.

But in 2012 we are presented with much more off-the-shelf plot elements. We had astronomical alignments in Tomb Raider, The Biggest Solar Flare Ever in Solar Crisis and trouble with the Earth’s core in The Core. Emmerich finds a combination of all three in some bizarre Maya calendar inspired doomsday theory, and produces a movie that, after the aforementioned introductions, presents us with hugely awesome CGI in which entire countries are flipped upside-down, an aircraft-carrier crashes onto the white house and Yellow Stone Park simply explodes. This part of the movie is fun, despite the repetitive nature of the frightening bits.

But as soon as our heroes arrive in the Chinese Himalayas (their plane ran out of fuel, but the mountain was brought to them) the fun is over. From that point onwards the viewer has to sit through tedious arguments about who gets to be saved in the bible-like arks and who doesn’t (apparently the giraffes do). There are a few actions sequences left, but all of them are completely predictable and therefore totally boring.

I could go on and say that the neatest recent planetary alignment occurred already in 1998, that doctor Phlox should know better than to confuse a magnetic pole with a geographic one, or that to repopulate a species you need considerably more than two specimen, but I guess that if this was a good movie, I probably wouldn’t have complained about it being utter crap, science-wise. But as it is, this is a predictable, mostly boring and just plain stupid movie.

Terminator Salvation, though fairly badly acted, is sufficiently entertaining and humorous. Its sets and effects are impressive. The terminators are more creepy, more relentless and way more beautiful than in the previous episodes. The ending of the movie was a bit awkward (not to say predictable), but necessary and in-character for lead character Marcus. It was kept short so it wasn’t annoying.

Salvation is much more an action/voilence movie than its predecessors. There is much less talk. Many things are explained, but you sort of have to pay attention (especially with Marcus’ big revealing scene in the computer room). One thing is a bit odd, though: Marcus is told by Skynet that he’s the only cyborg in existence, but mere minutes later we get to meet Arnie. Was it lying to him? If so, I’m unsure why.

This is also the first Terminator without any reference to time travel. I had hoped that at the ending Connor (or Marcus) would send both Arnie and Reese to the eighties, where they would meet Sarah Connor, thus starting the whole cycle. But apparently they left that for another movie. Just as well, Reese wasn’t old and experienced enough to become Michael Biehn, and now they can use the whole time travel thing as a desperate last move on the part of Skynet.

I am still left with one question though. Skynet wants John Connor. It uses Kyle Reese and Marcus to get to him. But why? Did it monitor his radio transmissions and decide he is dangerous? Or does it fear he will become fatal (to it) because the terminators that had travelled back to the eighties/nineties have told it? Come to think of it, maybe the whole point of John Connor making himself known through radio was to avoid this question altogether.

At last, there is salvation for all of us.

Yesterday evening I saw Slumdog Millionaire, by Danny Boyle. It won eight Academy Awards, and there was quite a hype surrounding it, so I wasn’t expecting too much. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story was perfectly entertaining, at times somewhat dramatic (if not melodramatic), and quite humorous, and the acting was okay. Still, it lacked the depth and insight that the awards seem to suggest. I found the characters flat, much of the music poorly chosen (at times downright annoying), and the ending very predictable. Worse, the theme about love conquers all is very unoriginal.

All in all a nice and entertaining movie, but not a very good one.