City Of Ember (DVD)

***City of Ember (2008)*** I was looking forward to seeing this film, because I had seen the trailer at the cinema and it seemed quite exiting. I rented it from Lovefilm and it was just the film - no extras. I actually watched it twice as my children weren't able to watch it together. I have to say straight off, it didn't get better. Overall, I was very disappointed, because it had the potential to be good, but I feel it failed to deliver. ***Plot*** The basic idea is that the end of the world as we know it has come and an underground city is created to try to save a selected few, so than mankind can survive. We find out that people ...  Read the complete review

It is an unknown time and an unknown disaster (a plague, atomic warfare, general human entropy - it's never revealed) has struck. To allow at least a portion of the human populous to survive away from the unnamed cataclysm, and then flourish long into the future back on the earth's surface, an underground city is constructed and a host of people inseminated into it. The plan is to house the chosen few for two-hundred years and then, via a brief set of instructions contained within a time-locked box, let them out to start afresh. But with the passage of time the box is lost leaving the inhabitants with the belief that Ember is the grand sum of human ...  Read the complete review

Director: Gil Kenan Rating: PG Running time: 94 minutes City of Ember is a post-apocalyptic story based on a children's book by Jeanne DuPrau. It begins with city leaders locking a box which holds the key to getting out of an underground city, Ember, where they are about to seal the last survivors of the war. The box will be passed down from mayor to mayor, until it automatically opens in 200 years time which is when the scientists estimate it will be safe to go on the surface again. We see a wonderful sequence showing time passing as the box is passed from hand to hand, becoming more battered as time goes on, until finally it is lost. ...  Read the complete review

The thought of complete darkness is a frightening thought for many of us, particularly children. It is strange, then, to find a children's film which centres on that very fear. The City of Ember is a city built deep underground by the citizens of a dystopian future who are escaping from an unspecified disaster that has threatened the future of civilisation. Designed to last for 200 years, a series of mistakes has led to the population still being in residence far beyond the city's sell-by date, any knowledge the creation of the city having been lost many years ago. The city now looks like something from a Roald Dahl film, filled with Heath Robinson devices to make life ...  Read the complete review

~~~~~~~~~~~ INTRODUCTION ~~~~~~~~~~~ Every now and again a film will kind of sneak up on you and take you completely by surprise. I knew my wife had wanted to see "City of Ember" at the cinema, but I had taken one look at the trailer and dismissed it out of hand. However, when it made a recent appearance on the Sky Movies schedule, I relented, thinking that, without the added investment of having to buy cinema tickets, a bucket of popcorn and perhaps more importantly, using up a rare night out, I could always fall asleep on the couch if I wanted to. ~~~~~~~~ SYNOPSIS ~~~~~~~~ The film starts out with a ...  Read the complete review