My cable bill is enormous.  It’s just so easy to start adding services a little at a time.  Especially as you get older and going out just isn’t as appealing as it used to be.  When you’re younger, going out consisted of a list of things you wanted to do.  And you did whatever you had to in order to make it happen.  As you age, that list of things you want to do is the same.  It’s the list of things you are unwilling to do in order to make that happen that gets long.

Rhona Mitra in Doomsday

“I’d like to go to dinner tonight,” you say.  “But I don’t want to wait in line for 30 minutes to get a table.  And if I go I can’t eat anything anyway since I’m on this new blood pressure medication.”  And so on.  Eventually, the list itself is avoided and instead of acting like a filter, it becomes a dam.  So you stay home.

Television then becomes important.  Either that or reading.  But TV is better suited for laundry breaks, so it wins out during the week.  This is when 79 channels starts to seem like a slim menu.  So you add the digital tier.  Then HBO.  Showtime.  Cinemax.  The Movie Channel.  HD.  And now we have them all.

The best part in all of this is that in order to charge you an arm and a leg for each movie channel, they have to give you 14 variations of said channel.  Plus, there’s the “On-Demand” feature.  Movies are spending less and less time in the theater as most of the money for them is made within the first month.  Then, the studios can capitalize on all the recent marketing and awareness and turn that over into DVD sales rather quickly.  There’s the Pay-per-View rentals from your cable provider that have made going to the video store obsolete.  But, then, after all of that, you get them, in relatively short order, on the movie channels “On-Demand” menu.  It’s great.

I’m convinced that On-Demand viewing, in some incarnation, will become the way we all watch television and movies in the future.  Like a Netflix box, it allows you to watch what you want immediately, and with no volume restrictions or extra fees.  It is revolutionary.  We’ve enjoyed this feature over the years, but only recently has it actually become our primary source of film viewing.  Let me share with you what I’ve watched in the last couple of weeks.

Doomsday (2008)

Directed by: Neil Marshall
Starring: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell

Doomsday takes place in a dystopian future U.K. when mass plagues have killed most of Scotland.  The border is sealed and a powerful central government is forced to declare martial law.  As is the case in most movies when this happens, the government never relinquishes the power that it gained during crisis.

Rhona Mitra plays Eden Sinclair, a major in the state’s paramilitary/police organization.  She, of course, is the best and brightest and is chosen for a special mission to see why there are some now unaffected in the quarantined zone.  She and her crack squad of commandos infilitrates the hot zone and chaos ensues.

If you’re looking for an escape and would like to see some blood and guts fighting, you can’t go wrong here.  Doomsday is a crazy fun mix of Resident Evil and Mad Max, with a more cohesive plot.  I highly recommend this for shaking off the work week.

Sunshine (2007)

Directed by: Danny Boyle
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans

Sunshine takes place well into the future and its premise is simple: the Sun is expiring (we never learn why, but it doesn’t matter) and a spacecraft is sent with eight astronauts and a special device that is designed to make the Sun last (we never learn what it is or how it works, but it doesn’t matter either).

Things go wrong, as would be expected of a task (and film idea) of this magnitude.  What’s more important however is the focus on the human element rather than the technical plot devices.  Sunshine is a blood splatter of moral decisions and errant responses and makes for a thought-provoking exercise under such a unique hypothetical.

Sunshine also has the benefit of employing three of my favorite and most underrated actors Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, and Hiroyuki Sanada.  I’ve been wanting to see Sunshine since the trailer was first released, and I’m so glad I did.  If you like good science-fiction and philosophical depth to your films, you’ll want to switch this one on.

Hitman (2007)

Directed by: Xavier Gens
Starring: Timothy Olyphant

Hitman is based on the successful game series about a, uh, Hitman who is super good at what he does.  He was “manufactured” by an organization to be exactly the best.  Agent 47, as he is known, is especially good and performs high-risk contracts on some very important people.  This time, it goes bad.

I first saw this trailer and avoided the film because it looked stupid.  I thought it would be formulaic, inauthentic, and drab.  We’ve seen plenty of bad assassin movies in the past, and the Bourne series was just so good that the timing was wrong.  I also thought Timothy Olyphant was the absolute worse choice possible for the role of Agent 47.  Well, I was right about it being formulaic.  It is.  But I was wrong about its authenticity.  The point of view is true enough to forget the formula.  And the production and writing are sound enough to get into the story.  Oh, and I was completely wrong about Olyphant.  He’s fantastic.  Again, the movie isn’t life-changing, but like Doomsday, it is a fun get-away film.

The Invasion (2007)

Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Danial Craig

This was another film I had no intention of seeing.  Like I remarked in this review, what’s the point of remaking a classic science fiction film?  It was done right the first time for crying out loud!  Well, they did anyway.  If you didn’t know already, this is a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Well, somehow, I wandered on the menu and selected this because I had the day off and there was nothing else on.  It managed to keep my interest through sheer productive professionalism.  That is to say, I have no complaints about any technical aspect of the film.  Everything was great.  The story was decent and I actually had a good time watching it.  It received fewer marks because, unlike the selections above, I’m less likely to see The Invasion ever again.

What have you been watching On-Demand?