Jaque a la muerte (Epoch)

This is about a giant rock formation that bursts from the earth somewhere near China. The US sends a team to investigate, while the Chinese send a few divisions of troops, and a US soldier goes insane.

The US team consists of a scientist who's main investigative strategy seems to be pointing out how smart he is and how dumb everyone else is, which is ironic because if you actually pay attention, it turns out he's wrong in the end. Then there's the hard nosed government agent who does everything she can to keep the scientist from doing his job, based on the fact that he made a bad joke and she's mad at him. And then the previously mentioned insane soldier. So, we're in good hands here.

The big problem with the movie is that it sets up a good premise: What is this thing? And then never answers its own question. Your guess is as good as the writer's. Very unsatisfying. A lot of time wasted with subplots that should have been spent coming up with an interesting explanation for the alien object. I felt like they expected me to use my experience with other sci-fi films and just assume that these aliens were pretty much the same. Or not...or, well, just look at all the money we spent on CGI - pretty cool eh?

The action moves along okay, the acting isn't bad, the characters are all somewhat annoying, and the CGI is actually pretty good. Basically it's the writing that sunk this thing.