Movie Reviews with Karl: Seventh Jupiter Rising
Karl Taro Greenfeld reviews movies without seeing them. He watches trailers, or parts of the trailers. (If the movie is a sequel, he has not seen any earlier films in the series. He basically doesn’t watch any movies. Any plot similarities between his reviews and the actual movies are coincidental.)
Jupiter Rising
Written and directed by the guy and the gal who did The Matrix (and Speed Racer and the David Mitchell novel adaptation of Bone Clocks)
Starring Mila Kunis and the guy from Game of Thrones
Mila Kunis is a typical, young, American woman who, she gradually realizes, is actually descended from a race of aliens who inhabit one of the moons of Jupiter. Tens of thousands of years ago, they seeded human-kind just in case they needed another planet because they ran out of water. Well, they’ve used up all their water, and now they are coming for our planet and activating their sleeper cell aliens, who will be a Fifth-column against human kind. But Mila Kunis, despite her strong alien ties and DNA, realizes she is more human than alien—and is falling in love with some handsome male human—and joins up with human kind in fighting against this “extinction event,” as the Game of Thrones guy puts it.
Mila Kunis pretends to be a loyal alien, and goes aboard the alien space ship to gather crucial data that will allow the humans to disable alien weaponry. The aliens realize that Mila Kunis has betrayed them, and there is a long chase sequence through a futuristic city in very cool space ships. Mila Kunis escapes, but it may already be too late, because the battle is underway, and the humans are losing.
The battle is huge, with many, many explosions, martial arts moves and CGI affects, but it is also very confusing, and it is impossible to follow what is going on or even to understand the logistics of who is fighting who and where they are and who some of these characters are. But the humans almost lose!
Then Mila Kunis arrives with the crucial data, and they use that to disable the alien weaponry, and the humans blow up the alien space ships and they crash in these spectacular fireballs, falling from the sky like the Hindenburg. Mila and her human lover embrace.
I think this is an important film in that it shows the desperation of a race of aliens—could they be us?—when they (we?) run out of water.
Seventh Son
From the production company that brought you 300: Rise of Empire and someone who worked on Godzilla
Starring Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, and a familiar looking young male actor who may have been in A Fault in Our Stars, but I’m not sure
Julianne Moore plays a powerful, evil witch who yearns to control a continent that is woodsy and damp. She needs allies, and the Seventh Son, the boy who may have been in A Fault in Our Stars, would make a fine addition to her evil cabal. The Seventh Son has amazing powers, can stop swords with his bare hands and kill anyone in hand-to-hand combat. But he is torn, he is drawn by the powers of multiple Academy Award-nominee Julianne Moore, who tempts him with visions of the two of them ruling the entire Vermont-in-Autumn like world they inhabit. Together, they can eat whatever fine foods they prefer, and have literally millions of servants because they will rule the entire continent. It seems like a pretty good deal.
But the Seventh Son is in love with a young princess, and that love is so powerful that he almost doesn’t join the evil witch, but then he does, because she casts a spell over him.
Jeff Bridges plays a gravelly-voiced, benevolent wizard warrior, and knows an African-American actor who was in Amistad, and he can turn into a dragon, and he does, but that doesn’t terrify Jeff Bridges, who convinces the African-American actor/dragon to fight for the side of good. Together, they have to go and find the Seventh Son, who is really just a shell of himself now that he is living in this spell. Just in time, Jeff Brides breaks the spell with his own wizardry, and they go and demolish the armies of the evil witch, who never really had a chance.
Seventh Son is a film for those who always wished their Dungeons & Dragons’ campaigns were a little more MILF-y and multi-racial.
Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of eight books, including the novel The Subprimes, to be published in May. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories (2009, 2013) and O. Henry Prize Stories (2012). Follow him @karltaro.
Latest posts by Karl Taro Greenfeld (see all)
- Movie Reviews with Karl: Furious, Going Clear - April 3, 2015
- Movie Reviews with Karl: Get Hard Gunmen - March 27, 2015
- Movie Reviews with Karl: Accidental Insurgent - March 20, 2015
