What would you do if you knew you only had 8 seconds to live? 8 minutes? Jake Gyllenhall stars alongside Michelle Monaghan in Duncan Jones’s new sci-fi thriller: Source Code. I’m a software engineer at heart and hearing about a movie called Source Code easily grabs my attention and gets me as giddy as a schoolgirl. I knew the movie would have nothing to do with actual code, a documentary about programming just wouldn’t be very entertaining…even though The Social Network did very well. Anyway, Source Code is an exciting action-packed sci-fi thriller instead! Source Code isn’t about time travel. The creators made up a concept that plays on the idea that the brain keeps active for 8 minutes after you die. But don’t get caught up in the science…Source Code is really about something else.
A secret government agency put soldier Colter Stevens (Gyllenhall) into somewhat of a simulation tasked to solve a mysterious mission under a strict 8 minute deadline. Colter, however, doesn’t think it’s a simulation and every time he relives these 8 minutes, he has to be reminded that he’s on a mission to save lives. Confused? It’s kind of like the movie Groundhog Day but instead of reliving the same day over and over, he is reliving the same 8 minutes…the last 8 minutes before a bomb explodes on a Chicago commuter train. Colter must find the terrorist who planted the bomb so that the authorities can catch him before he can kill more innocent people.
What am I doing here?
Source Code had so much potential and the creators could have taken it in many different directions. The writer, Ben Ripley, came up with a great concept and wrote an interesting story but the finished product just wasn’t as cool as it could have been. You have to go into this movie knowing it doesn’t make sense and ignore all the parts that *really* don’t make any sense. It is pretty entertaining and enjoyable if you just sit back and go along for the train ride. You can tell that the actors and crew had a lot of fun making this movie but at some points it seemed like they were having too much fun. Jake Gyllenhall has to carry most of the movie on his own (Director Duncan likes the isolated man vs himself theme like in his last sci-fi hit, Moon) and at some points he does really well but at other points, he drops the ball. Luckily, Michelle Monaghan and Russell Peters are there to pick it up. There is plenty of comedy and cast chemistry that move the story along.
Coleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) in Source Code
Each time Colter is sent back, Coleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) suggest to him to try something new and remind him that he’s wasting precious time that could save thousands, if not millions of American lives. These two characters watch over him and try to hold back as much information as possible and only give Colter enough to complete his mission. This opens up a lot more questions for the audience: Who is Colter Stevens? What is this government agency? And what is the Source Code really about? It’s great how Duncan Jones unfolds the story and slowly answers the questions for the audience while adding more along the way. However, The middle of the film really loses its momentum and the simulation scenario gets repetitive and boring. The movie tries to quickly show Colter returning to the 8 minutes countless times but the way they did it just didn’t seem polished to me. Obviously he has to keep going in and tyring different things to find the terrorist, but some of the actions he takes are pointless and just wastes time.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan in Source Code with Russell Peters in the back!
Source Code feels like it ends 10 times over (repetition really is a key theme of the movie). I actually really liked one of the endings and felt like it wrapped the movie up in a pretty little bow while letting the audience still interpret things in their own way. You realize the movie isn’t really about finding the terrorist and saving more lives, but unlocking the mystery of the Source Code and soldier Colter Stephens himself. Sometimes people don’t understand the potential of what they create and need an outside mind to really break the code. Once the movie ends, you realize the themes of religion, fate, and determination are hidden throughout this twisted storyline. If only the movie could have stayed on track the entire time and not go off the rails in the middle, it could have been something special. Instead, it’s a pretty basic action flick that gets the job done and will be forgotten with time.
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Edward Zwick introduced his film to my screening. You can tell he was ready to watch it with a real audience instead of the studio at 20th Century Fox. He didn’t want to say too much about the film since he believes movies should speak for themselves but he explained that the time of this film was the point before drugs were heavily advertised on TV. In his words, he described those commercials as a “bathtub in the middle of the field ready to have sex.” He praised his cast including the leads Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway saying that “you might know them but you really don’t.” These were definitely different rolls for them and the 20th Century Fox representative described the movie as the “sexiest” movie you’ll see this year.
When I saw footage for this movie at WonderCon a few months back, I wasn’t impressed so I skipped the advance screening and saw the film, “The Kids Are Alright” instead (review of The Kids Are Alright will be posted in a couple weeks with some Q&A from the writer/director). I heard a lot of bad things about Prince of Persia (it only has 39% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of me writing this review and I’m sure it will go down) so I knew I made the right decision. Either way, I did end up watching it and in the beginning, I was really surprised – I liked it. However, as the movie continued, I saw what everyone was talking about.
Disney started their showcase with a first look at Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time starring Jake Gyllenhaal, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and directed by Mike Newell…all three were in attendance to talk about the movie. Prince of Persia is based on the popular video game of the same name. It follows the adventures of a prince who stumbles upon a mythical object which can affect time itself. He teams up with the princess of his rivals to stop a sandstorm which would end of the world. From what they showed and said, it’s definitely an action-packed summer blockbuster but Jerry kept highlighting the points that it would have lots of comedy and romance. Pretty much, it’s trying to have mass appeal and target the largest market possible. It was filmed in Morocco where it was said to be over a hundred degrees every day. Additionally, they sent teams around the world to take authentic pictures and bring back the images to build unique sets. But even with that backdrop, a lot of the movie will be computer generated. The footage they showed looked very common and bland. Granted, it’s still early and the scenes weren’t polished up yet. However, the time travel affects with the sand looked awesome as well as the scenes with snakes…they did some really cool things there. It’s reminiscent of the director, Mike Newell’s work in Harry Potter, very magical. You can expect a lot of free running/parkour type stuff from Jake who literally runs up walls.
Jerry Bruckheimer stayed in his seat as the panels changed because he was presenting his 2nd upcoming film with Disney, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel and is directed by Jon Turteltaub. Set in modern-day, a college student in New York City finds himself in a magical battle between good and evil. He is destined to become a great and powerful sorcerer trained by an old wizard by the name of Balthazar. On the plot, Jon Turteltaub commented on how fundamental this plot is to Disney and that it originated from a segment in Fantasia. He comically said that obviously they’re not doing a cartoon for two hours of a mop (even though the iconic sequence of the mop is in the film). To me, the footage looked amazing. This is going to be a homerun for Disney and regain them some lost fans while gaining them a lot of new ones from the younger generation who has no idea what Fantasia is and would definitely not sit through it today. You can tell it’s still geared towards kids, but it looks really funny and entertaining…kind of a Harry Potter like feel. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice looks at magic a different way than Harry Potter though. Turteltaub said he wanted to create a very realistic and modern weird feeling as if you were in this world with the characters on the screen and then the magic would enter all of our lives.
Finally, Disney’s last film showcased was a continuation of a little known franchise from Disney Pixar called Toy Story 3. The third film in this series follows the characters as they are abandoned in a day care while their owner, Andy, goes away to college. At first, to all of the toys except Woody, it looks like a paradise but kids love new toys…The director, Lee Unkrich, said that it took two days in a cabin to come up with the story but over two and half years of storyboarding and fine tuning. He felt the pressure of taking this huge franchise and creating a third feature length film every day of the process of making it but it doesn’t look like he failed…every time a new character was shown to the audience, there was a collective “awww.” There’s no doubt in my mind that this film will resonate with the new generation of kids and that the old fans will flock back to see the new instalment. When an audience member asked Jeff Garlin about improvising in the movie he said that when the script is good, he doesn’t like to improvise. He likes to improvise in order to help a movie out but with Wall-E and Toy Story 3, he felt that the scripts were great so that should give you an idea of how good this one is going to be.
WonderCon is one of the country’s best comics conventions featuring guests and events for comics, movies, video games, and other popular media. This year, WonderCon had presentations by such Hollywood studios as Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, and Lionsgate.
