Teleios (2017)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I started off engaged and interested in this movie, initially there was some good pacing and dissemination of information, but as it went along I lost a lot of interest. Part of the movie involves getting vital information from the survivor but I found I got as frustrated at the crew at how slow the plot progressed past the initial phase and tried to resist skipping forward to find out what information they try to beat out of the survivor.The costumes immediately reminded me of ST TNG like others have stated in reviews and the dart seams (thanks smoke0, didn't know what to call those) on the women were distracting, gave the appearance of women having fake 'pokies'. The costumes otherwise were very flattering to the actor's figures and Sunny Mabrey has never looked better than in one of these jumpsuits. She probably was the highlight of the movie for me. The movie also did a decent job with special effects and making the surroundings look good.Plot holes were the unraveling of the movie for me. From the very start you see the spaceship had a rotating outer part but the crew is in the middle but somehow they have gravity. Also, the space station had 2 rotating rings but they do not dock there and the movie takes place in the main body that is not rotating and again they have gravity somehow. I was like OK, whatever and moved on but then more things like that kept pecking away.I was really put off about how they deal with the survivor and the companion bot. Why would you leave them on the compromised station instead of taking them back to the ship???The biggest "hole" is allowing the modified bot to just roam around the station...that is just too great of a liability and never would happen , it would have to be deactivated or contained. They were attacked by some small bots from the very beginning, why wouldn't they fear the same or worse from the survivor's modified robot companion? very big hole that destroyed any coherence.I really wanted to like this movie more and wished there were some more hooks or breadcrumbs or even plot misdirects along the way to keep me engaged but it takes the whole movie to get any information at all about what happened and by then I just wasn't interested. I found I wanted to beat it out of whoever wrote the screenplay as much as the crew wanted to get it out of the survivor.

It is obvious that this is a low budget film and for many that almost automatically means not what they are looking for. Still despite some bad acting from some of the cast in roles where they are playing emotionless Vulcan-like characters it's still pretty good.It's a slow burning story that reminds me of Event Horizon, Gattaca, Sphere and Sunshine with a 1980's B-Sci-Fi kind of feel updated for today. At first I found myself thinking they were Blade Runner androids nearing their expiration dates. The Beyond The Trek title seems as appropriate as Teleios/Perfection here as they may as well be some of Kahn's genetically enhanced people along with emotion controlling Vulcan training. It's hard enough for an actor to take on a Vulcan role let alone then experiencing emotions or insanity for the first time ever. Sunny Mabrey pulls it off, no one else does.Beyond the acting of the other GT's nearly everything else here was acceptable or even quite good. For me this is a little gem of a low budget film, but it's not for anyone who expects action or can't handle some poor acting. If you like Star Trek fan films, 1980's Sci-Fi B-movies, a lot of those original films on the Syfy network or those knock offs that The Asylum cranks out this may be for you, but if you are looking for anything approaching the polished fare of Star Wars or Star Trek blockbusters forget about it. It's more like the slow moving thinking Indy movies I mentioned above without the budget they had and the plot is not even as sophisticated as those and even predictable at times. It's an uneven film where they tried some things that sometimes hit and sometimes missed.

"Teleios" is a new sci-fi film from Ian Truitner and what makes it worth seeing is its budget. Until recently, independent filmmakers would rarely touch sci-fi as the films were quite expensive to make… mostly due to the special effects. However, recent advances with software have allowed gorgeous cinematic quality CGI at a relatively small cost. This would explain why a film with only a million dollar budget would look this good! For that reason alone, the movie is well worth seeing.The film is set in the mid-21st century. Genetically modified humans are proliferating on the planet and they are stronger, smarter and more capable in many ways compares to 'normals'. A space ship, the Teleios, with five of these super humans is about to make contact with a vessel that's been stranded in space for some time…and no one is sure whether anyone is left alive on this stricken ship. The crew's orders are, first and foremost, to recover the cargo from the ship. But there mission is soon complicated by many things. The crew of the stricken vessel has all been killed…with only one remaining as well as a robot and neither seem willing or able to explain what happened. The other problem is that these super men and women are beginning to show signs of weakness…weaknesses they supposedly have overcome. Their emotions are running amok and soon they begin preying on each other. Why and what's to become of their mission?The best things about the film are the CGI, costumes and music. All of these look very professional and caught my attention. As for the story, it's only fair and is, at times, a tad confusing. Because of this, it's a movie that might just improve with repeated viewing. Overall, a mixed bag but a lesson on economical and effective filmmaking…and a decent sci-fi flick as well.

This seems to have started out as a thought-provoking script and devolved into a thoughtless movie, mainly due to the ridiculous costumes that looked like they were created by Project Runway rejects - the poorly sewn dart seams on the voluptuous actresses' costumes were distracting, and the shoulder pads were ill-fitted on the hunky guys' costumes, and let's not forget those high heel booties so necessary on space missions. This looked as if someone decided the acting was going to be so bad that they may as well make a porn, and then forgot the porn.