I think that's what happens to those who grow up watching things like "Armageddon"!

LOL!!

The only let down was, of course, the resolution. I'm saying all that cheezy-fussy sequence with the CGI Martian and all the voice-over explanations... Geez! I hate this. Why they need to explain what we are seing on screen?

I think that's why, in the end, "M2M" ended just as an entertaining flick, while "2001" is a classic.

Like Terry Gilliam once said: "The difference between 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and '2001' is that the end of Kubrick's film is a question, while the end of 'Close Encounters' is an answer - and it's a really silly answer - little kids in latex suites".

THE MUSIC

Morricone has always been a very on/off composer for me. I adore his THE MISSION and spaghetti scores (as does everyone else) but do not agree with his "contemporary" approach to several films (HAMLET, thrillers etc.). M2M falls somewhere inbetween. I certainly agree with joan that the organ music became grating in several sequences and that the music overemphasized certain scenes. On the album (and that's what we should be reviewing), the music was alright, but had a hard time "resoluting" if there is such a term - it builded and builded but never materialized into anything. A mediocre score.

THE FILM

Just as John Maher, I love De Palma. Luckily, and as opposed to him, I ALSO love "outer space movies", so this was a double treat for me. The opening scene was terrific - one, long shot to establish the characters, their relations and a general mood, a silence before the (sand) storm.

The film, just as the music, was plagued by the fact that there was so much POTENTIAL there that never materialized. In other words, there was something wrong with the exposition. Whereas certain scenes and locations seemed rushed and flashed by (such as the spinning space station), others took too long to develop (the mars station). Furthermore, I still feel we should have been WITH THE PROTAGONISTS when we first saw Mars. I sort of felt cheated that there was no JURASSIC PARK-like awe when we first encountered people on Mars. But that's just me and not a critique of the film as such.

I also found the "alien scenes" rather silly - another case of overstating something onscreen. The audience actually laughed at this. And the CGI wasn't that good to begin with either.

But all in all, a good film that pleased both the entertainment side of me and the more challenging, intellectual side (to a lesser degree, though).

SPECIAL NOTE ***incl. SPOILER****: