Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

garethrleyshon Another foray into the science fiction horror genre for Horror maestro John Carpenter, sees a group of 22nd Century police officers lead by Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) and Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) head to Shining Canyon, a mining town on Mars, to collect and transport a dangerous criminal to stand trial. Upon their arrival, they find Shining Canyon deserted, aside from a group of self mutilated, homicidal beings, who turn out to be the townsfolk who have been taken over by the titular ghosts. Cue lots of guns, running and decapitation.There is no two ways about it, Ghosts of Mars is a mixed bag. On the whole it is very entertaining, but has moments of pure ridiculousness and stupidity.A lot is crammed into the 94 minute run time, and it is a lot considering the action takes place over a relatively short space of time. Told in flashback, and containing flashbacks within said flashback, the story is kept sharp and simple, never feeling over complicated and nothing is superfluous. The action is fast and furious; the fight sequences are compelling and the deaths of our police officers are thoroughly enjoyable. Decapitation and dismemberment agogo; a little extra gore wouldn't have gone amiss though.However good the fight sequences are, one does wonder our heroes keep shooting at our ghost hosts? The deaths of the hosts releases the spirits so they can go find another host to inhabit. Truly moronic. And their solution to the destroying the alien race? Blowing up the town. Which would release all the ghosts. Um, slightly flawed...Anyway, the production of Ghosts of Mars is great. The planetary aspects are done well, everything is steeped in red and the barren, dust filled landscapes around Shining Canyon only add to the isolation. It feel like the Mars one would expect. Also, the town of Shining Canyon itself seems plausibly tiny, giving a wonderfully claustrophobic feel to the main body of the film. Perhaps the best thing about the film is the make up and costumes of the mutilated hosts; they are grotesque, interesting, creative and a lot fun. The heavy metal soundtrack compliments our pierced, painted and sliced monsters beautifully.Our other characters, despite being developed well enough, are a mixture of stereotypes and extremes. Jericho Butler (Jason Statham), the womanising alpha male; Arlene Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy) the bumbling scientist; Desolation Williams (Ice Cube), the no nonsense serial killer criminal type; Bashira Kinkaid (Clea DuVall), the naive rookie... There is nothing new here in terms of disposable characters. Sadly our two female leads are the most disappointing. Pam Grier is unconvincing as the tough, lesbian commanding officer; a role which apparently just requires an ample cleavage and no acting skills whatsoever. Thankfully she is dispatched relatively quickly. Even Henstridge falls a little flat most of the time as our drug fueled Lieutenant, bordering on dull and wooden. Perhaps the vacant look that occupies her face for the majority is a side effect of the hallucinogenic pills she pops at frequent intervals. The disappointing female characters are a surprise seeing as Carpenters forte is the slasher genre, a genre where female characters are usually strong, engaging and sympathetic. Not so much here...BOTTOM LINE: An extra star for Pam Griers head on a stick. Fabulous.

Evildad I just watched this on Starz, so it was uncut, and before I got very far into it, I had to come here and see what others thought of it. I'm surprised at all the apologists for John Carpenter. "It will be a classic in another decade." Um, no.First, the plot (something out of Mars' past has been released and is affecting the human colonists) is actually a very good idea. Heck, the general story itself wasn't bad. But the implementation, from the exposition (having the LT describe what happened) to the dialog to the silly battle scenes (the individual fight scenes in close quarters were actually quite good) was just mediocre. It doesn't help that Ice Cube can NOT act. When he runs into the fight randomly firing machine pistols out to each side with no attempt to aim or conserve ammo, I groaned audibly.The idea that the LT's drugs could help fight off the "ghosts" was pretty good, and should have been explored. As a Jason Statham fan, I was disappointed at how wasted he was in his role in "Ghosts."This could have been another "The Thing" if Carpenter hadn't wanted to have a fighting free-for-all. No, Carpenter has never had a hit movie, but he has made a few films that are very worthy of re-watches. This isn't one of them.

a_chinn John Carpenters second to last theatrical film is an entertaining sci-fi remake of his early classic film "Assault of Predict 13," but is sadly nowhere as thrilling or as original as his best films. The film's story was originally going to be a third Snake Plissken film titled "Escape from Mars" with the exact same story and Plissken in the Desolation Williams role, but with the box office failure of "Escape from L.A." that plan was scrapped. Instead, this film features a terraformed Mars run by women in a matriarchal society when dangerous criminal Desolation Williams, Ice Cube, is supposed to be transported out of the mining colony by tough cop Natasha Henstridge. What goes wrong is that the ghosts of dead martians are accidentally released, who then possess the colony's miners, leading them to lay siege to the few surviving humans, which includes cops Henstridge, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, and Pam Grier, who have put trust in master criminal Ice Cube in order to survive. In the miss column for the film, the special effects are disappointingly cheap, it's missing director Carpenter's trademark suspense and instead focuses on action, and the film in general seems to have too ambitious of a scope for it's limited budget. However, in the plus column, the film does feature a cool cast, music by Carpenter and Anthrax, and does feature Carpenter's trademark Howard Hawksian storytelling callbacks. Although this is certainly one of Carpenter's weaker films, it's still not all that bad of a film and is still entertaining.

sol- Set in a future in which humankind has colonised and terraformed Mars, a Martian police officer recalls the supernatural circumstances by which her entire squad disappeared, leaving her handcuffed, after a mission to escort a criminal went sour in this John Carpenter movie. The film has a reputation as one of Carpenter's weakest efforts, but it is a step up from 'The Ward' and, as usual, Carpenter establishes mood and atmosphere well. The central mystery is decent too and the abandoned Martian village that the policeman and her unit encounter is quite spooky. It has been compared to an Old West ghost town and there is an added tinge of danger in the air with all the unearthly red dust/dirt and gloomy Martian skies. Unfortunately the film does little beyond this to maximise the awe and wonder of the setting; the planet is so massively terraformed that gravity, air and water do not pose any restrictions. As such, it often feels like the story could have been easily set on Earth without losing anything. The narrative structure is also irksome. Not only is 90% of the film told in flashback, but there are also flashbacks within the flashbacks, which leads to the film feeling massively dragged out despite an under 100 minute length. The action scenes are pretty one-note too. And yet, there are still moments when Carpenter's genius shines through; the first person point-of-view possession scenes are very well done, for instance. This is not a great film by any means, but neither is it quite the turkey one that might expect for a film that put its director off movie-making for nearly a decade.