Tag: movies

Double-U’s Double-Take: Alien Romulus

A spoiler-lite mini movie re-review.

Leave it to “Alien 2” director-cum-marine biologist James Cameron to tell it like it is: “The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit … then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, okay, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.’ ”

He was, of course, referencing his first “Avatar”. Some will say that Avatar’s purpose was/is entertainment and, yes, millions of people can’t be wrong. But I’ve reluctantly seen the first film three times, and re-watching it twice over didn’t make me value what Cameron had accomplished any more: it just made me numb to it. I can’t appreciate the pretty picture if it serves a vapid purpose.

While Cameron has the privilege of an unlimited budget & complete creative control, the “Alien” franchise has consistently reinvented itself over the decades, accented by shrinking returns under different directors who, largely, have all have brought something new to the table – but to no lasting conformist appeal.

I have now digested “Alien 7” twice. I used to think seeing any movie more than once at full-price was a sign of constancy (“The Island“) – now I’ve apparently entered the life phase of keeping my mouth shut while I tolerate an afternoon with my curmudgeonly dad and he says he wants to see something.

My greatest detachment this second spell came from how we are seven movies in to this series – not including the various spin-offs – and producers still haven’t indulged audiences with a more thorough study of the xenomorph social structure, or how they go about plastering all that sticky gunk to the walls. Director Fede Alvarez’s team introduces cocooning, but how the Hell was it forged in the span of a few minutes? I would have even taken a cheesy shot of the baby xenomorph spitting black goo at the wall and just have the whole thing appear out of nowhere. A slimy new bit of set-dec of its own accord is not compelling anymore – not in this series.

Rather than existing as its own entity within the ‘Alien cinematic universe’, Romulus is Alvarez pulling a de Sade, using his own blood to scribble all the things he loved about the films that came before onto toilet paper, and all the ways he thought he could make them better.

Click here for the original review.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. Despite trying to go in with no expectations this time around, I still couldn’t help hypothesizing alternate scenarios to the reanimation of Ian Holm: couldn’t they have used Lance Henriksen instead? Wouldn’t Bishop have been the ‘hot, new’ synthetic, going off Romulus’ place in the series chronology? Wouldn’t Henriksen – who’s made a career playing literally anyone in anything – have jumped at the opportunity to approach the role from a more maniacal angle, such as his own Weiland from “AVP”? Could you help picturing the ‘Dream Team’ of Fassbender & Henriksen instead of Jonsson & Not-Holm, or did you even care? Let me know in the comments!

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Jay’s Quick Take: Underworld Blood Wars

A spoiler-free movie review (not that it matters).

Which “Underworld” are we on now? Six? Seven? Seventeen? No no no, it isn’t that bad – we’re only on number Five, which for some is four too many. I personally never connected with any of the Underworld movies, except the third. My issue was always with the backstory: why is there such a complex lore for what is essentially vampires & werewolves shooting guns at each-other? I never really knew what was going on in those movies and that’s probably my fault for not paying more attention (a lot of “this character knows this other character from hundreds of years ago, and there’s a relic that does this-and-that but only under certain conditions and blah blah blah”), but I always had one-foot out the door with these sorts of things anyway. Sure, I’ve read my share of vampire stories and watched my share of monster movies, but anything tinged with a touch of magic, or involving children with superpowers, or “the fate of the world rests on this motley crew of pale attractive twenty-somethings” is more my wife’s department.

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Jay’s Quick Take: High Tension

A spoiler-free revisionist movie review.

Did you know Philippe Nahon died during COVID? Too bad. “High Tension” from 2003 is one of the original entries in the New French Extremity movement, and its reputation therein would not be as solidified weren’t it for the committed turn by the late Mr. Nahon. It made me check his IMDB page to see if there were any other movies of his I was missing out on, only to find the ones I knew were what I expected to be his highlights: his early Gaspar Noé contributions and “Calvaire”. Hey, if I was a professional actor, I’d probably be satiated with the kind of marquee Nahon got from this and “I Stand Alone” – inevitable typecasting aside. Some people like playing the villain, and some were born to play villains. Nahon falls squarely into the second category, and his methodical killer at the heart of director Alexandre Aja’s first feature (who went on to make the “Hills Have Eyes” & “Piranha” remakes) rescues what is unfortunately a very opuscule “college girls trapped at a secluded location while being hunted for unknown reasons” genre ride.

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Jay’s Quick Take: The Invitation

A movie review with minor spoilers (but nothing the advertising hasn’t given away already).

I’m not sure if this is even going to fill your elementary-school quota of three paragraphs but we’ll try. “The Invitation” was not a bad movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one concentrating on the “brides” of Dracula before – lots where ol’ Drac has his bevvy of buxom & consenting babes already turned and who approve of his polygamist & non-monogamous ways, but not one where we see the actual process of acquiring said-babes, or how said-babes approve-or-disapprove of their seduction (followed by forced spiritual-and-physical confinement). The Invitation is not about Dracula himself, thankfully, as that Transylvanian dude has been done to death: this time it’s some random rich British guy with the suggestive last name of De Ville (the script is content with peppering Easter Eggs from the Bram Stoker novel though, such as the creepy castle named New Carfax, or Renfield the Butler). The acting is earnest from an odd collection of you-know-them-or-you-don’t folk who are all happy to be working post-COVID, the production design is expectedly opulent & gothic (it’s clear from that big dragon statue in the castle lobby that the majority of the budget went there), and – despite 90% of the plot’s mystery being spoiled in the trailer – I was genuinely interested to see how everything ended. It was worth the half-price “last week of Summer because there’s nothing new for general audiences” ticket the movie theatre was flogging.

BUT! I can’t help but think of how much better it would have been if they had made some small changes… take note, Sony-owned Screen Gems! Two-time film-school dropout Jason is here to teach you a thing or two:

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Jay’s Take: The Thing Called Love

A revisionist movie review.

“You have a room where you go inside and you lock the door, and I’m not even allowed in! How come you get a room like that?”
“Well, I’ve lived here for a while, and I enjoy the space, I pay the rent…”

– Samantha Mathis, getting nowhere with River Phoenix about the whole “room” issue

How many of you knew there existed a River Phoenix “gotta be a country music star” movie? That was the primary reason I chose to watch “The Thing Called Love”, controversies aside: it’s a nightmare to find anything I would consider “general viewing” in my house (ie. my wife hogs the TV & often complains about my movie choices). She was a ranch-hand in another life, so to say my spouse is a fan of country music is like saying bananas have potassium. And for the first half of “The Thing Called Love”, I thought I had found a winner: a making-it-big-in-Nashville odyssey with Samantha Mathis (Daisy from the “Super Mario Bros” movie) directed by the “Don of the Down & Dirty” Mr. Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show”), with music that my wife actually knew the words to? To say, then, that finishing the movie was disillusioning is pre-emptive, since no one really talks about the film: either as a Phoenix movie (even though it was his last-completed before his death) or a Bogdanovich movie. But I’ll tell you why anyway. It’s hot outside.

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