That was an excellent one.

Excellent but underrated film

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Before Jon Favreau became a big time Hollywood director (Zathura, Iron Man 1&2) he acted in small movies with names that hint at what the movie is about like this one. Favreau plays this wannabe actor who can't get work and gets a sidejob to bring a blue suitcase to cowboy Bob in the desert. There are some quirky characters he meets along the way, some vague suggestions of UFO and alien abductions and whatnot and plenty of nothing happening. Apparently big name actors were jumping up and down to get their faces in the picture coz Daryl Hannah, Rachael Leigh Cook, Kelsey Grammar and Sean Bean have small cameo-like roles. It's not all bad per se but there are a million movies like this out there: low budget empty pretentious nonsense. See it if you still want to. But surely you have better thing to do.

If you're into the typically self-indulgent (and often too self-conscious) Australian movies, then you might like this -- especially so if you're an Australian, as they do so crowd around their own.Once you get beyond that, you get that 'let's show 'em what we're about mate' production -- sometimes this can be a good thing, but often it seems it's a peculiar side effect of a film produced downunder.There have been lots of great low-budget Australian films, but this one seems to carry on that nuevo mañana película tradición: 'We're from another BETTER planet because Baz Luhrmann says so...' -- even though Luhrmann has been the only Australian to have ever pulled that off.Summed up -- over-the-top weirdness when it could have been better if it had been just plain weird. Acting is entertaining in some spots but the actors seem bemused, uninspired and inattentive (perhaps they didn't know what they were supposed to pay attention to?).Tedious and in spots, predictably unpredictable (if you can grok that). I'd have enjoyed the evening more if I'd have chosen to see a repeat of "Strictly Ballroom" or maybe even "Kangaroo Jack".Cheers

The two dozen or so people who liked it have given their comments and said not to listen to the critics, who didn't.I say, "Listen to those critics!" I watched it with my daughter's boyfriend. At the end, we looked at each other and went, "Huh?" There are many things wrong with it. None of these things are fatal individually: taken together, doom is inevitable. They include confusing plot, unresolved plot points, lack of exposition, slow story telling, irrelevant subplots, and lack of credibility (which is quite something given the subject matter - imagine how utterly unconvincing a film must be if you start out being prepared to suspend your disbelief about aliens, and you end up thinking the whole film is a bunch of preposterous claptrap).A wonderfully eclectic cast is wasted on this mess. What on earth did they think they were doing? If the pitch reflected the finished article, I can't imagine how anyone was persuaded to put up the money to make it.

This is a nice film, a sort of "stationary road movie". As such it is something for fans of the genre: something for those who believe that in a film - as in a journey - the way is the goal. It is not something for people who expect closure from a film.The film presents the "hero" (and the viewer) with a nice bunch of "crazy locals". And it throws in some nods to, and mockeries of, alien and conspiracy themed films.There's not much else to say about this film. The list of cast-members is impressive, and their performances are brilliant - or "stellar", as one should rather say in this case.