A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Showing posts with label Natasha Henstridge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Natasha Henstridge. Show all posts

Thursday, October 2, 2025

Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter, 2001)

Ice Cube and Natasha Henstridge in Ghosts of Mars

Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, Joanna Cassidy, Richard Cetrone, Rosemary Forsyth, Liam Waite, Duane Davis, Lobo Sebastian, Rodney A. Grant. Screenplay: Larry Sulkis, John Carpenter. Cinematography: Gary B. Kibbe. Production design: William A. Elliott. Film editing: Paul C. Warshilka. Music: Anthrax, John Carpenter. 

It's a space zombie Western, how good could it be? There are those who are willing to overlook the bad acting, the lame dialogue, the lack of plausibility, and the overall cheesiness of design in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, and I understand them. There's a place for this kind of B-movie throwback to sci-fi tropes of the 1950s, and it's in the hearts of many cineastes, especially those who admire the chutzpah of its writer-director-composer. I don't belong to the Carpenter cult myself, but I respect their enthusiasm. Still, if you came across this movie on TV and didn't know anything about its auteur, how long would you keep watching before you looked for something better? 

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