The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

It is hard to know where the homage to pulpy science fiction of the paranoid cold war era ends and where this starts simply being an over- or badly acted and largely logic-free Hollywood bastardisation of a 1951 sci-fi classic, but somehow this is enjoyable, albeit in an immediately forgettable way, perhaps because Keanu Reeves dons his suit and is supposed to be wooden as he plays a visitor from outerspace whose appearance on Earth heralds the arrival of enormous robot machines and nano-sized (robot?) insects that seem to be hellbent on taking over or destroying the planet.

★★☆☆☆

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After Earth (2013)

Delivered with such import that it is no fun at all, this scifi has Will Smith remotely guiding his son through a series of uninteresting challenges on an abandoned Earth, most of them resolved before you've even thought to care and even Jayden Smith, the son, shakes off some of the life-threatening encounters (with monkeys, extreme cold, poison leeches...) with glib lines like, "That sucked," which in the end was my sentiment exactly. 

★☆☆☆☆

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The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

A man hits rock bottom trying to onsell the luxury medical items he has unwisely invested in, splitting with his wife in the process and ending up sleeping rough in subway toilets with his young son, but none of these social horrors is enough to dent the film's faith in the American Dream and the idea that determined men (for example, Will Smith) achieve happyness so long as they eventually gain employment in the corporate world.

★★★☆☆

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