City of Ember is a kids’ movie, first and foremost. It feels like it’s targeted at pre-teens, the age that needs to feel like they can outsmart the adults, like they can do anything, especially what the adults can’t.

The concept behind the story is what made me want to see it. Pseudo-steampunk, art-deco, salvation-of-humanity city tucked away from the rest of a destroyed world. Pretty sure there was a horror FPS video game that had a similar idea behind it, but I didn’t have a machine to run it at the time. Anyway, the acting by the kids was good, and the adults played their sterotypical establishment roles well. Three stars.

I’m not sure if Caprica is a better stand-alone science fiction movie in the BSG universe, or a pilot episode of another complex and we’re-not-going-to-sugarcoat-this BSG series. I want to know more about this virtual world, and how it exists without being networked, if it’s contained within each individual computer sheet, or what. I want to know more about the monotheistic movement, and how far back it’s been developing. I want to know more about the racial and political tensions between the Twelve Colonies. All in all, I want to know more, which makes it a good work of fiction. I cared about the characters, which makes it a great one. It didn’t have the dramatic tension that BSG does (did?), but that’s because the poop hasn’t hit the fan yet. Four stars.