Riddles of the Sphinx (2008)

The movies that are made for the SyFy network are typically very bad, and usually a lot worse if they happen to be made by Canadian filmmakers. "Riddles of the Sphinx" is a Canadian production, and it's awful in almost every department you can think of. The story doesn't make much sense, for one thing, with the screenplay depending on the regular action sequences to grab the audience's attention. The direction is awful - there are several sequences where key linking footage is missing, leading to a number of "Huh?" moments. The movie is extremely cheap as well, trying to pass off the British Columbian landscape as - get this - Iraq and later Egypt! The only saving grace of the production is the CGI creature, which doesn't look that bad for what was a pitifully low budget. Were these filmmakers even TRYING to make a decent time waster?

Is there any way you could just FIRE your writers, directors and casting director? They need to be told they don't have any business being in this business. The actors didn't even seem convincing, so either this is because they are just that bad OR the director doesn't know how to help anything. The beast didn't look good in the least bit either. I really don't understand the continual monies filling the coffers to waste film on these "productions." There are better stories, better heroes and better music.Terrible drudge. Waste of time is what my 13 yr old boy commented to me about this "movie" I am using that term loosely here. Someone needs to seriously get someone new to head up the programming for SciFi, someone with the ability to tell someone no when they hear a bad idea. I've seen B-rated movies that are better than this, B-rated movies that SciFi channel PLAYS on it's channel. Why don't they take some pointers even from those movies and you know... strive for that?

No surprise - about what you would expect from a third rate network. The budget was probably whatever the limit on the producer's credit card was. All of the typical clichés for a poorly written / directed / acted project that looks like it was done by a bunch of film students over a weekend in Vancouver. (Yeah, we noticed that Egypt, Greece, and Iraq all look a lot like British Columbia in the fall, cough, cough)The only real surprise is that someone with the talent of Dina Meyer would agree to participate in this kind of garbage. Yeah she looked great, but come on, put any physically fit 40 year old actress in an outfit inspired by Laura Croft and they will too. Need the work that badly eh - what a shame.A big waste of time and pretty sad considering how many other potentially decent projects didn't get bankrolled so this waste of film could.

The Sci-Fi channel. Despite having some really good original TV series, I always think of the network first and foremost as the "Disaster/Monster B-movie network". Even its documentaries are blatantly science fiction. That may come as a shock to some people, but dude, you CAN'T find a crystal skull with a metal detector...I only watched this movie because I was bored and I have a more than passing fascination with archaeology. I don't normally watch Sci-Fi Saturday.Now, as a writer, I understand that ideas are a dime a dozen, but I also know that we've been out of ideas pretty much since we've had the ability to HAVE ideas. That said, I understand the similarities to The Librarian and Indiana Jones, but COME ON! Don't make the hero of this movie dress IDENTICALLY like Jones! That's just taking the similarity too far!I applaud the idea of a female hero, but don't make her so gung-ho about guns that she admits they're her "security blanket" and continues using them after realizing time and time again the hard way that the monster's completely bulletproof.I can also understand the need to draw in the young adult demographic, but having the tweenaged girl be a complete genius and outthink the adults in almost every scene smacks of badly written Mary Sue fanfiction, especially if the concerned father seriously makes such a stupid decision as to take the kid into the heart of the war in Iraq(wearing bright pink no less), let alone repeatedly exposing the kid to an invulnerable monster when there's a perfectly good hidden sanctuary where she'd be safe. There's a reason why we have satphones, people.As for the writing, the movie was so completely predictable, it's hard to come up with a suitable adjective to describe it.