3:10 to Yuma

I am not the biggest fan of wild west films. I don't particularly care for Russel Crowe (although I can appreciate that he is a good actor) and I am just so over Christian Bale. Still, I ended up watching 3:10 to Yuma (Alan Tudyk! Peter Fonda! Kevin Durand!) and enjoying it throughout.

Russel Crowe plays the outlaw Ben Wade, who gets himself caught and is set to be brought to the train going to Yuma prison. Yes, yes, it leaves at 3:10. The raga tag band of unlikely characters to get him there include the Doc (a vet, actually), a bounty hunter and farmer Dan Evans, who really needs the money promised him for getting Wade on that train.

Evans' motives go beyond that as he also wants his young son William to respect him (he doesn't). William himself wants in on the trail because he believes himself to be a great shot, even at 14, and also considers his father to be a wimp. Hot on their trail (after a cleverly devised delay) is Wade's gang of outlaws, now led by the trusted Charlie, who wants desperately to fee his boss and keep the gang together.

Many a shootout and several casualties later (Alan Tudyk! Peter Fonda! Kevin Durand!) the good guys almost made it. They are hiding out in a hotel room, having recently obtained the assistants of the local marshal and his two best men. They hightail it soon enough though, because Charlie offers anyone a reward of $ 200,-- if he just shoot and kill one of his boss' captors. Quite effective in making things way harder for Evans, who is the only one left that really wants to put Wade on that train. This not only wins him the respect of young William, but that of Wade, as well.

The final shootout is quite exciting, with only very few survivors.

Not bad at all.

7/10

Pandorum

I'm not sure what happened but it was awesome!

Corporal Bower (Ben Foster, looking raggedly handsome) wakes up in one of those hyper-sleep pods that we have seen in many science fiction films. Initially he can't remember anything (a side effect of very long hibernation). An hour later his lieutenant Peyton (Dennis Quaid, looking as raggedly handsome as always) is also awake and together they are trying to figure out what their mission could be.

The space ship they are on appears to be running on limited power and the door to the bridge is therefore impregnable. While Peyton stays behind to try and open the door, Bower sets out to find the reactor and reboot it.

For dramatic purposes the reactor is situated as far away from where they started as possible. While stumbling through the half lit ship, Bower encounters long dead bodies, some hanging from the ceiling. He also encounters monstrosities. They may or may not be mutant travelers and they look like zombies with thorns. Also they are very, very tenacious. You can chop of bits and they will still come at you.

One of the bodies hanging from the ceiling is called Shepard (Norman Reedus, you guessed it, looking raggedly handsome) and is still alive. But not for long. Bower cuts him down but he is quickly re-hung by the monsters, killed and gutted. And then they feed on him. Shepard, we hardly knew thee.

Bower encounters a few more people on his way to the reactor. All of them appear to be from different missions and have woken up at different times. Since then they have been merely surviving the steady raids for food of the monsters.

Peyton, meanwhile, is going insane. Or maybe everyone is. I dunno.

In the end, the reactor is restarted, Bower and Peyton are reunited and then there is a big twist.

Very exciting, this.

8/10