The Last Days on Mars (2013)

The very title of “The Last Days on Mars” is erroneous as it all takes place within one day on the Red Planet, but, hey, somehow it recalls a ’70s Brit prog rock concept album. Never mind that. This is “Alien” meets “Night of the Living Dead,” with Liev Schreiber as a scientist on a Mars research gig with a motley crew (Elias Koteas and Olivia Williams among them) who are all gung-ho to finish up until that one last errand goes bad bad bad oh so wrong. And then people start turning into zombies and start attacking each other. Why? No idea. I don’t need to know. “Alien” didn’t explain a thing. But I peered in too deep because there has to be something else here other than zombies attacking people on Mars, with no escape. But there’s just not. Oh, I dug Schreiber’s messed up astronaut, with his fear of closed spaces, and space ships (huh?), and some accident that struck before the film, but that’s not enough to carry this story. Not when the best character –- Williams’ cold officer -– is tossed off with a shrug. C+

Event Horizon (1997)

I saw “Event Horizon” back in 1997 and thought it an ugly, silly mess with good actors – Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne star – mucking about in a spaceship so familiar one keeps waiting for John Hurt to lose his lunch. (Hurt does not appear.) The plot: Neill is a scientist leading the salvage of the spacecraft Event Horizon that went missing seven years prior with no clear explanation. The ship appears as if every ’80s slasher villain has run through it: Blood smears and grisly bodies abound, floating in micro-gravity. Why? How? I won’t spoil it. Naturally, though, the crew ditch the buddy system and split up because in 2047 no one has seen “Alien.” Made by Paul Anderson (not Thomas, but W.S.), “Event” smacks of a film that’s dead certain that pouring on guts, gore, eyeballs, and blood all means horror and scares, not aware that the opposite is true. The paces Neill is put through makeup-wise brings my truest pity. The scenes with men holding on by fingers to bending, twisting iron brought my continuous, unpitying laughter. Time has not been kind at all. D

Ender’s Game (2013)

I have not read “Ender’s Game,” but I imagined it a sci-fi “All Quiet on the Western Front,” with children pushed into war, facing the horror of taking another life or forfeiting one’s own. 

That was my thinking going into this epic with Harrison Ford as a ruthless military commander and Asa Butterfield (“Hugo”) as the young hero nicknamed Ender pushed into action, his talent resting on war game tactics. 

The war is in outer space against arachnid-like creatures that seem a staple of sci-fi, and SyFy. Years ago -– the movie’s past, our future -– the beings attacked Earth. We beat them, barely, but now they’re back. All of humanity rests on young warriors -– rough age 15 -- sent into space to do battle. Why no adults? Youth play better outside the rules. 

Imagine the weight of that. I mean the emotional weight. Horror. Fear. Awe. Being 15 and in outer space. “Ender’s” has none of that. It’s inert, unable to fully comprehend its moral quandary -– child soldiers –- that is, sadly, not uncommon even today. 

The supposed shocking left hook that ends Ender never fully lands because director Gavin Hood (“X-men: Wolverine”) has never lets us see the stakes of these kids’ lives, or those of their families, or Earth. There is no threat. (And any faux threat is poorly faked.)

Everything is implied (badly) as these brainy youth practice Zero G laser tag for a battle they’ll never encounter. The enemy is only encountered in simulations or dreams, and how can we understand *that*. 

Oh, Butterfield is a great actor, and you can see how the boy is not faking playing the smartest kid in the room. But as a character, Ender never hooked me. Ditto Hailee Steinfeld as fellow warrior. She has little to go on, but Supportive Female, and the intensity she brought to “True Grit” evaporates. 

Scenes involving Ender being bullied, once in a shower, fail to bring the least hint of danger. Because the bully is a foot shorter and a blockhead. 

“Game” has no strategy except perfect CGI and important Actors (Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, and Ford, the latter looking as if he’d just rather retire) standing about to remind us we are watching Something Important. No. 

A film, even YA-targeted, tackling *this* subject matter should leave one horrified, not set up for a spiffy sequel that feels laughably like, well, Spaceman Spiff. “Hunger Games” plays far harder. C-

Gravity (2013)

“Gravity” is exhilarating, the most damn entertaining, breathless film this year. The promos promise an outer space-set drama about two astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) caught adrift in space after a freak debris incident, their shuttle destroyed and crew members dead. It is that and a survivalist-horror film drenched in the gut-punch notion that surviving in space means having to continue to face life’s cruelties on Earth. The lean plot is near required as director Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”) plunges us into a 90-minute shocker that could break with too much filler. Among his sharpest onscreen moves: Simultaneously pitching “Gravity” as a near-wordless silent film of old, but shining new and large with spectacular, game-changing CGI, cinematography, and sound. He casts us adrift above the Earth, awed with wonder at our home and shocked by the absolute black void of space, and then miraculously takes us inside our hero’s space helmet with not a single edit. Bullock rips into her role -– raw, wounded, and shell-shocked –- deserves every award coming her way. As does Cuaron and co-writer/son Jonas who spin a perfect final scene uplifting in every sense of the word as it literally inverts the title. A+