THE INVASION (2007)

Yet another reboot of the body snatcher story.  This time around the alien life form is a fungus that's brought to Earth on the space shuttle.  Nicole Kidman is a psychiatrist who keeps hearing people talk about relatives/friends who are acting strange and not being themselves.  At first Nicole dismisses it, but then when her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) starts acting weird and barfing up nasty alien yack all over her face, she starts to see there's definitely something going on.  Turns out that once you're infected (like she is now) the spore can only take over once you fall asleep...kinda like Freddy Krueger.  So, this means that she has to stay awake long enough to save her son who has been kidnapped by the aliens because he is immune to the alien spore due to a childhood illness.  Whatever.

I liked THE INVASION alright.  The story veered away further from the original than the other two remakes, so that was interesting, and the acting was good.  Still though I can't ever see myself wanting to watch it again.  It took too long to get to the action and once it did, it was just your standard fare of cars crashing and people running around.  Also, the ending was weak as hell.  Worth a watch if it comes on TV, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.  Although, Daniel Craig's Goo Goo Dolls haircut was pretty dope.

Honestly, after watching all four of the body snatchers films I don't think any of them did the idea justice.

Original - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Remake 1 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Reboot 1 - Body Snatchers (1993)

SOURCE CODE (2011)

The last thing Army helicopter pilot Jake Gyllenhaal remembers is being on a mission in the Middle East. Suddenly he wakes up on a commuter train in America and there's some hot chick sitting across from him talking about life and shit. He understandably freaks out. Then the train blows the fuck up and he instantly wakes up in a strange pod like thing that kinda looks like a cockpit. A woman in military clothing appears on a screen and starts asking him about the details of the mission. Jake has no idea what the f is going on and she explains to him that he is on a mission to identify the person who planted a bomb on a train this morning, in order to prevent an even larger explosion that is going to maybe happen very soon. With this in mind Jake is thrust back into the mission over and over while at the same time trying to figure out what exactly is happening to him. Most likely you've already guessed the twist ending and you would be correct. The "twist" is about as shocking as when George Michael announced that he was gay.

I saw SOURCE CODE at the theater, but when I sat down earlier to rewatch it for this review I couldn't even remember what it was about. Director Duncan Jones seems to be a mildly talented young director, good at creating interesting visuals but I wish he would really try to beef up his character development skills. Both this film and MOON had very interesting premises and visually looked really good, but both films lacked the kind of strong character investment of say the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Worth watching, but after the initial viewing I cannot imagine wanting to watch it over and over.