Atlantis Down (2010)

I've watched Atlantis Down at a screening at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles and got to confess it was quite a surprise. I was expecting something more "Italian" from an Italian director, but there was nothing typically Italian in Max Bartoli's movie. Italians are not big with the Sci-Fi genre and still Atlantis Down is a very good example of how even Italians can produce a pretty good job. Atlantis Down is an American movie.Cleverly written and directed, beautifully photographed, a believable plot that keeps you nailed to your seat until the end, a good cast lead by a solid Michael Rooker, I enjoyed this film a lot even if it showed in some cases the limitations imposed by the low budget. The special effects are average (an in some case a bit less than that) and some of the casting choices are questionable. Don't know when it'll hit Netflix but I strongly recommend to see it there when it does.

The story is a very original blend of thriller, sci-fi and drama, combining chess and the space shuttle is quite intriguing and it works. As the story unfolds you are taken by surprise by its twists. Things happen to the crew members without a specific reason and you keep wondering why until it all becomes clear at the end.The sound - especially once the characters find themselves zapped on another planet – is terrific. The directing was clean, the acting believable, although some characters veered into one-note territory, like the second in command Mary Bishop. The editing keeps it togetherwith a suspense pacing. Overall, this movie is an entertaining thriller with many potential threads.

I enjoyed it a lot. The director stressed the moments of personal surrender and loss of the characters and focuses on how humans connect with themselves when put through stressful and unexpected scenarios. The ways they deal with their feelings are conveyed beautifully. Nicely acted, beautifully shot and smartly directed. CGI and score are terrific!Greg Travis is the real surprise of the film. His acting is natural, deep and dramatic. I'd seen him in other movies (Showgirls, Starship Troopers and X-Men) but this is so far the best performance I've seen him delivering. The entire film keeps on the edge of your seat until the final five minutes.

Atlantis down is a movie directed by the Italian Max Bartoli. In this movie you can see the trauma of childhood surfacing into consciousness under the form of a bursting Flash Back experiences with the possession of the Ego. The wound gets infected and takes, the one affected, away from the cohesiveness of the group destroying the individual who is unable to connect with the other members who frantically attempt to rescue him/her from the inevitable self-destruction. The individual [ who in turn is affected by the unresolved childhood wound] has an inner battle between the powerful emotional memory from the wound and the impotent Ego. This movie has also placed in evidence the importance of where the series of the events take place: the spaceship in the space symbolized an attempt to escape the Mother Earth while exploring galaxies; the unexpected landing in the nowhere zone in the Earth symbolizes the necessary return to the Earth in order to attempt to heal the wound but as often it can occurs when wound erupts powerfully in the consciousness, the individual and group have lost the connection with the real world. They are lost in the wood, they search for human life, they are separated from civilization while desperately longing for it! This can in the analytic psychology of C.G. JUNG can be seeing as the desperate journey of a single individual with his different parts represented by the others with the immersion in to the unconscious risking the loss of consciousness. The emotions from early wounds are destroying the Ego, which is represented by the main character of the movie who is in a constant dialogue with the other people representing different parts of self. The fragmentation and the weakness of the Ego bring the destruction of the individual and the separation from the world. The story, the visuals, the acting and the sound track are of very good quality and take you into the drama of human kind, where isolation, loss, fragmentation , dissolution, desperation are experienced vividly Erminia Scarcella, MD President of Jung Society of Washington DC