Epoch (2001)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Crappy film

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This is one of this movies, that i first saw on TV (in Germany, it was aired with the alternate title "Torus") and awaiting nothing special than that what a movie, produced only for TV or DVD-sales, commonly is: A cheap production, full of errors, a simple and boring story, and a lot of bad special-effects... but "Epoch" aka "Torus" truly surprised me! A captivating and mysterious story with an alien artifact that was discovered. It is not a movie with a huge lot of action. The story is not so weird, tricky and twisted like "Donnie Darko", but well made. The FX are well done, in spite that you can see that it was sometimes CG-animation.IMHO it is far better than, for example, "Sphere", because it set not on cheap shocking-effects, but, more like "2001", on a riddle, that a alien force left behind millions of years ago for mankind to discover. And beside the scientific storyline about the discovering of the artifact, the makers add a political conflict between USA and China too. I recommend it to everyone, who is interested in SF-movies, they are a little bit mysterious. Like "Thrill Seekers" it is one of this little, very good B-picture gems, that are really worth to discover and to own on DVD!

The following review has been written keeping in mind that this is in fact a B-Grade direct to DVD Sci-fi flick and it is often difficult to compare the entertainment value and impossible to compare production of such films to A-Grade films. Especially when it comes to Sci-Fi flicks the disparity in production is even more apparent.Please keep the above in mind before reading this review or watching this movie.I rented this movie expecting an average B-grade movie as i am a fan of b-grade flicks but i prefer ones which have had at least a limited release.Anyway i rented this movie after reading the synopsis as i felt it had massive potential.Alas this movie which started with some great promise (with this great rock rising out of the ground and immediately doing mysterious things right in the beginning of the movie) and held the tension till halfway through the film, but it was all downhill from there.The special effects were again not to bad for a b-grade scifi film also the filmmakers were smart enough not to waste good money on expensive and overdone special effects and concentrate on the plot instead (albiet not to well).The movie is clearly inspired by 2001/2010 a space Odyssey but does little justice to an idea that could have easily been made into a big budget film if it was better written.The acting is not bad at all with only a one scene where a Chinese man gets shot with any actual hamming.The background score is quite nice though unoriginal and adds to to the mood of the film.The visual depictions, save for one good one of the core of the torus were again inspired by other works, but good never the less.The concept of the political drama was indeed the best part of the film and a concept that could have well been exploited for making a great movie, if the makers had done any research they would have found that Bhutan's foreign policy is in the hands of India and adding multiple players in the politics could have indeed made this otherwise humdrum scifi flick into a great one.The fiction itself held some great potential and displayed some brilliance I loved the part where the hero asks the opinion of a religious person so that no angle is left uncovered. The sci-fi centric dialogue itself could have been milked to make this entire movie enjoyable but sadly it was not so.In view of the above the lack of action scenes is sorely missed as the screenplay itself is to weak to make this movie enjoyable without any real action.In all an average B-movie that held some tremendous potential but failed to deliver.Watch this movie if your a Sc-fi buff(there is no action ) and are left with no choices or you have nothing better to do and this is coming on TV.

A half a mile high stone thing appears in the desert in Buthan, 100 miles from the Chinese border don't you know, and their government invite the US to have a look at it. I think it is fair to say that this would be unlikely to happen in real life, but there you go. Is the tower here to destroy mankind or save us? And can we communicate with it and find what it is? The film has fairly reasonable special effects and the CGI are acceptable, but it could have been so much more, but falls flat on it's face as there is no real end to the film - there is no explanation at the end of what the stone tower is or what it's on Earth for. It looks like a good film up until about five minutes into it, when you will start losing interest rapidly. Hurrah for Brian Thompson - (member of the 'bit parters' association and David Warner's right hand man) - he plays yet another meaty soldier with half a brain cell, who starts off as a baddie but becomes a goodie for no reason at all quite frankly halfway through the film and spends the latter quarter reading a bible with his gun pointed at his colonels head. However, in this film he gets to say more than twenty words and shows what a versatile actor he really is. Look, if you like good, well put together sci fi romps, give it a miss. This is truly terrible.

Ahh, the critics who are so quick to dismiss this made for TV movie often make me wonder what they're really looking for.I picked this movie off the shelf of Blockbuster thinking "hey, unknown Sci-Fi movie, must be awful, but I bet there's some sample material for me in it." What a shock when I got it home and found it was actually clever and worth watching!To begin with, the script is actually pretty smart, and filled with surprisingly witty dialog that had me laughing out loud at parts. The CGI effects are as good as they get for a movie of this budget, and are better than I expected them to be. The story, while mildly predictable, keeps you thinking, and is certainly of a bigger scope than the standard "five people trapped in a unknown alien artifact" that I expected. Any story that acknowledges politics and an outside world has to be given more credit than some viewers (and commenters here) would care to admit.Overall, if you've got a rainy day and are looking for a little diamond in the rough, this isn't a bad way to spend two hours. There are faces you'll recognize, some intelligent unfolding of the story, reasonable cinematography and direction, and Epoch is an overall entertaining bit of work. 7.5 out of 10.