John Carpenter. Ghosts of Mars. 2001.
Somehow Carpenter got decent funding for yet another movie after so many of them not making any back (except perhaps 20 years after on DVD).
And this time it’s a sci-fi movie! Yay! And Carpenter managed to hire some pretty entertaining actors (Pam Grier, Natasha Henstridge, Clea DuVall, Joanna Cassidy) which helps a lot.
This film bombed at the box office, as usual, the critics hated it (21% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes), and people still hate it (4.9 at imdb).
But I think it’s a kinda exciting and fun movie, and it’s easily his best film since They Live.
Perhaps some of the hatred towards the film can be chalked up to sexism? Perhaps it’s the structure (everything is told through flashbacks (and there are flashbacks within the flashbaks))?
This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.