neumu [ cinematronic ]




	John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars
	John Carpenter Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Pam Grier 2001 Special edition — widescreen; French, English subtitles; audio commentary by director John Carpenter and star Natasha Henstridge; video diary; special effects deconstruction; "Scoring Ghosts of Mars" featurette.		By putting his name above the title, director/co-writer John Carpenter unwisely begs comparisons to his earlier, better work. But his slapped-together sci-fi "thriller" — noisy, cliché-laden tedium about angry native spirits that possess unwary human colonists in a Martian mining town of the future — is quite a bringdown from the squirm-in-your-seat horror and white-knuckle excitement of his 1982 update of "The Thing." And the satiric wit of his watershed, post-apocalyptic adventure "Escape From New York" is nowhere in evidence. Instead, we have an all-too-familiar situation wherein a group of police officers, including leggy Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge), are assigned to transport an infamous criminal (Ice Cube) from a holding cell in a distant outpost to the capitol city of Mars. When the cops reach their isolated destination, the place is overrun with violently psychotic refugees from a Marilyn Manson concert. Talk about phony. Pam Grier, who co-stars, deserves better.