This is simply a book that couldn’t be filmed. Not because of ?special effects or anything, but simply because of the tons of inner dialogues. This film is more or less a series of bland characters walking around in a bland background with a too simple storyline that doesn’t pay off until the very end. Although this ending is well-made and clever, it’s simply not worth two hours of bore before that.?

Unfortunately, I kind of expected more of the ending. What begins as a wonderful story of a lunatic girl who just doesn’t suit her own time, turns into the story that has been told too many times: Child of our time finds a gate into another world, who has choosen him/her as the one with ancient prophecies, and although our hero first hesitates, he/she finds courage, saves the kingdom and returns home with this newfound character. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland simply falls a little too much as The Matrix meets Narnia, and although these are all great stories, he could have pulled something better off.

One final praise must go to Mia Wasikowska – this unknown but wonderful actress who simply is the perfect Alice – naïve, dreamy, and really cute. And managing being so childlike even though her boobs just almost shows in every scenes (due to her clothes being to big) is just amazing.

The film first seemed like yet another boring filming of the classic Jules Verne novel, but I was surprised. This film is, I dare to utter, one of the best adventure films created so far in the 21th century. It wasn’t since the first times I saw classic adventure epics like The Raiders of the Lost Arc or Jurassic Park I – II (not as epic, yet great films) my heart pumped this fast. The film held me a fascinated prisoner, constantly jumping in my chair, yelling “no, don’t go that way!” “Don’t fall!” “No, run faster, the dinosaur’s after you!”

The film was originally produced as a 3D release, and this was extremely obvious even though I downloaded it. The sound effects and the filming was… fenomenal. It takes a genious to create a scene such as the one with Sean and the “floating” rocks (caused by a magnetic field). I barely moved during the entire scene, simply because it felt as if I was there.

The film also surprised me by actually semi-masking the obvious inspiration of Jules Verne, making it not a filming of the book but more of a sequel, or a film with constant reference to it. In the film, they constantly talk about the book and it also suggests that the book actually is non-fiction by seeing the corpse of the main character in the center of the earth as they reach it.

I know it’s normal for me to write such things about all films I review, but I can say that “Journey to the Center of the Earth” actually is one of the best films of 2008, as well as of the 21st century.

eight stars

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 ********eight stars

 The Twilight Zone was a series of  free-standing episodes of horror, fantasy and science-fiction, and lots of the episodes are afterwards copied by film directors, authors etcetera, and are referenced for example by The Simpsons (where I actually heard of the show at first).What I love about my family is how I’ve been raised with all these classic films, shows, comics, etcetera; my mother has renewed on a monthly Donald Duck comic since the late 1960′s and still renews on it (although at first it was in her father’s name while she lived there, and now it’s in her name while she lives here), and she’s learned me to love the Monty Python gang, and movies from the 1970′s and 1980′s, such as Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Back to the Future etcetera. Thus, I’m surprised my mother hasn’t even mentioned The Twilight Zone earlier. However, when I first told her that I had downloaded and watched it, her respons was that she was happy for me, since it’s among the greatest series ever, that she followed when she was younger (even though it ended a year before her birth it started airing in Sweden several years later).Anyway, a great show, recommended to EVERYONE! Watch it! 

 * * * * * * *seven stars

“Ah! A bomb!”"Stop screaming! That’s exactly what the bomb wants us to do!” 

Ever since I first saw the Futurama animated TV series as they aired on Swedish TV in the first half of the 00′s, I’ve loved the shows. As Matt Groening more or less created a new genre of animated sitcoms for adults with The Simpsons, no-one believed that other shows could follow without plagiarizing, and shows like Family Guy and American Dad was the perfect example of this. But then Futurama came, from the pen of Matt Groening himself, and it managed to follow in this great genre without any trace of plagiarizing. I’ve watched each Futurama episode at least three times, and I own seasons 3-4 on DVD. And every day I have cursed Fox for shutting the show down after its fourth season. So when they decided to produce a brand new direct-to-DVD-film and released it in November 2007, there was no question whether to buy it.The main story of the film is simple, and could easily just have been a normal episode (about 23 minutes) instead of a feature film at 1:25 hours, but as the story folds out and goes back to seemingly all the previous episodes, including for example the famous pilot, the Globe Trotters episode (The Time Keeps Slipping), and the one in which Fry tries cloning his 1000 years old pet (Jurassic Bark). The Planet Express crew as well as entire Earth falls for Internet spam by nudists of a nude beach planet, and gives away all their belongings, including Bender as he while downloading porn happens to download a virus making him their eternal slave. While having to work for the nudists, they realise that Fry has a tattoe of Bender on his butt, including a code that makes it possible to travel back in time – something the nudists starts to use to steal all famous objects until they own the entire universe.Meanwhile, Leela starts seeing Carl, a handsome man who she realises is the love of her life. They are to be married, but after he leaves her by the altar (after the decapitation of Hermes), the story starts unfolding with a surprising twist and sad story when Fry travels back in time as he can’t find happiness in the future.

A really complicated story, but everything folds out perfect and most of it actually makes sense. Even though some things are quite hard to understand, and some things are quite cheap; for example Bender has to leave a place for a time, and to create this situation the writers have put in that he had to go to the bathroom. As Bender is a robot, they put in the line “damn, for the first time ever I have to go to the bathroom!”.It’s quite cool to see how Futurama always – ALWAYS – manages to create so many original jokes, smarter and bigger ones as well as the minor texts they put in the background and so on. For example, on a phonebook Bender reads in the 21th century the cover says “now with 20 % more Josés!”, and while flipping through the book there are lots of names ending with José. Such things are so simple yet wonderful for the die hard fans watching the show over and over again – such details help making Futurama one of the best shows ever.The film also included unusually many “dirty” jokes (sex, naked, etcetera), especially cheap but still great ones such as “I’ve wiped Fry’s butt clean.” / “We’ll see about that!” and “Hm, okay, you’re clean. I meant that metaphorically!”. I would presume it was easier to put in dirtier jokes in a direct-to-video than in a TV series on Fox.And as always, Futurama has a great choice of music, especially in the part when Fry goes back to the 21th century. But I really hate the music in the scenes where they try their best to say “this is a film, not a TV series”. It destroys all the feelings in the film.And cartoon characters really should stop saying “things can’t any worse now”

 ******six stars