Tag: sci fi

Dub’s Take: Subservience (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

4 out of 5

My 2007 grip & gaffing instructor Dave Gordon used the term “Golden Topping Land” (after the artificial popcorn butter) to denote a cinema audience’s suspension of disbelief, so long as nothing dumb happens in the story, or a microphone dips into the shot. It’s to “Subservience’s” credit that it had me in Golden Topping Land its whole duration, save two key points: trying to pass a black Tesla off as an electric Mustang, and Megan Fox’s lack of neck make-up.

I’m a chauvinist: there I was the morning after watching, recommending it to someone as “the Megan Fox sex-bot movie on Netflix”. Yes, Megan pretty-much shows as much of her body here that a R-rating & no-nipple clause will allow. But Subservience has more up its sleeve than mere sleeze, not the least of which its three leads: all of whom put out intense performances like they’re out to prove something.

It’s been easy to write off Megan’s acting career as ostentatious, but she does try serious work when & where the industry will allow (“Passion Play”; “Midnight in the Switchgrass”) and she presents great value to the role here, despite it being a robot, and another vessel in a filmography defined by transfixing the male gaze. Her gender-swapped body double Michele Morrone (“365 Days”) is here as well, playing Megan’s stooge, and Madeline Zima as Mike’s terminally-ill wife. Madeline shocked me since, growing up with “The Nanny,” I wasn’t prepared to see little Gracie fully grown & fully naked. She puts on a persuasive show, though, and could find work in more erotic thrillers moving forward, if that’s what she decides.

The most pronounced flaw is in the film’s otherwise-strong script, which introduces dynamic world-building that plays a passive second to the movie’s main focus, which is Megan usurping the family. A subplot about a construction crew being replaced raises valid questions about the world’s future labour force, but it doesn’t go anywhere narratively except to illustrate that Megan has murderous tendencies, when the same point is already proven in her attempts to kill Madeline.

Subservience’s on-the-nose dialogue about modern relationships is compelling enough without being overcomplicated by empty lore, or its two endings. Producers could have saved some money, too, had they just concentrated on the sex-bot in the house. That part of the movie is good, for reasons other than solely Megan, Michele, or Madeline’s smokey stares.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. I never thought I would say this, but Subservience’s broader strokes may have played better had the film been a limited series instead. What do you think? Why are the surgeons’ mouths sealed shut? What is the social structure of a society where all labour is replaced by automation? Just ‘what’ were those things on the soles of Megan’s shoes? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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Dub’s Take: Venom The Last Dance (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2 out of 5

Celebrityism sucks – when you ignore the money, the fame, and the opposite sex throwing themselves at you.

There’s no privacy. People Magazine’s website dedicates entire articles to single quotes, ensuring that everything you say stays digitally preserved. Pundits will scrutinize your choice of work as it correlates to your personal life like they’re connected or something.

And any old creepazoid will make unsolicited comments about your appearance. The most riveting thing about “Venom 3” is the disconnect of seeing actress Juno Temple as an adult: she looks completely different from the little chubby-cheeked girl I remember from 2009’s “Year One” & 2011’s “Killer Joe”. But time moves perpetually forward for everyone and, eventually, we’ll all look the same in a box.

Nope, V3 isn’t great. As much as I was entertained by the other movies in the series (particularly Andy Serkis’ blisteringly-paced second instalment), it was contemptuous of the filmmakers here to assume viewers remember the mythos without a recap, or binge-watching both entries again beforehand.

In this way, V3’s values align more with the MCU than either of Sony’s other entries: a canon-heavy plot is inched along without adding anything significant to the continuity, and – while actor Tom Hardy’s time with the series is indeed over – things are left open for a fourth film, possibly with a female lead. That also means there’s ‘sexy’ symbiotes with boobs here, if you care. I didn’t.

Speaking of Hardy, I don’t remember his Eddie Brock being so stiff. As he’s a co-writer (along with writer/director Kelly Marcel, who penned the other two films), Hardy is probably just visually communicating how ‘in charge’ Venom is over Brock’s body. However, when paired with Eddie’s disquietude, Hardy’s live-action work in V3 degenerates into a mumbling, shuffling mess: he sounds like he’s having more fun with his Venom voice than he looks acting as Eddie. It’s probably the worst performance Tom has ever given.

I like V3’s comedy sidebar in Vegas, and the pacing is surprisingly good here also, mercifully ending at the perfect point – though it’s not as jet-propulsioned as V2. And Juno Temple is a treasure at any age.

But here’s a more-kosher critical opinion: Venom 3 was pulled out of the oven too early, or maybe shouldn’t have been made at all. How many times have I said that this year? Too many.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you a fan of Sony’s “Venom” series, or do you, too, think it’s a series of diminishing returns? Would you buy tickets to a fourth film led by live-action Juno Temple & Clark Backo? Are you disappointed there’s no word yet whether Venom will make an appearance alongside the MCU’s Spider-Man? Let us know in the comments below!

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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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Dub’s Take: Alien Romulus (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

The trailer for “Alien 7” supplied plenty of expectations: that it would be another hackneyed interpretation of a beloved franchise’s Greatest Hits from “Evil Dead 2013” director Fede Alvarez (News Flash: it is); that it would have yet another underdeveloped White female character as the lead – unrelated to the others – who grows from meek to mighty by the credits (it does); and that it would favour fan service & exponential antecedence (not just one Facehugger, but a bushel!) over action scenes that last longer than a finger snap, and taking narrative risks like predecessors “Prometheus” & “Covenant” (you betcha).

But never in my wildest dreams could I have predicted what Fede did here with the teased returning (and deceased) legacy actor, brought back with the help of computers (and I’m sure a healthy donation to their late estate) only to serve as a literal talking head, “Futurama”-style. Even after running through all the major players from all six prior Alien movies in my head to guess who it could have been, I never considered the one it ended up being.

However, the real sin of this decision – aside from its contemptuousness – is that, without knocking David Jonsson’s turn as resident ‘synthetic’ Andy, Alvarez missed a huge opportunity in not bringing back Michael Fassbender’s David. The ‘black goo’ from Covenant plays such a crucial part of the story here that this one casting change could have given fans a cross-generational interpolation of both eras of the franchise, as well as a proper placeholder for the true “Covenant” sequel we never got.

Optimism-bias aside, I found Romulus boring. It’s such a pastiche of the prior films that it has no identity of its own, even copying its finale from “Resurrection”. Cailee Spaeny’s heroine Rain is another identical sibling to Katherine Waterston & Noomi Rapace, and just as superficial. New ideas – such as the cocoon sack and Facehugger evasion tactics – are invalidated by the movie’s nonsensical timeline (when did it make the cocoon?) and continuity cock-ups (the Facehugger swarm disappears from one shot to another). And the best summation of the film’s lack of action is that there’s an entire sequence inspired by the Sentry Gun from the inferior, meandering Special Edition of “Aliens”.

Romulus is short on thrills and heavy on dead, reanimated actors. Forget John Krasinski’s Rogers ad: AI will be replacing all y’all soon enough.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Were you baptized into Alien series snobbery by one of your parents, too? Do you hold out hope for Noah Hawley’s upcoming Alien TV series, even though I thought his “Fargo” show fizzled-out with that time-jump halfway through its first season? Have you also seen the first Alien film an excessive amount of times that you never want to see it again? Let us know in the comments, why don’cha?

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Dub’s Take: The Island (2005)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

The best performance, in a film full of convincing performances, comes from Djimon Hounsou as Laurent, the morally-conflicted mercenary sent after our heroes Scarlett Johansson & Ewan McGregor. While it’s a character that easily could have been played by any generic macho movie touch guy on-reserve like Christos Vasilopoulos or Michael Jai White, Laurent – as played by Hounsou – has conviction, and commands attention. It’s probably the role I’ll remember him most for, even if he’s woefully sidelined in the third act – the film’s only real disappointment.

Anyone who wonders whether director Michael Bay (yes, THAT Michael Bay, love him or hate him) is capable of making something serious should look no further than “The Island”. Sure, Bay can’t resist himself in the handful of action scenes that are here – including a mid-movie showstopper that escalates from launching giant steel train wheels off a moving flat-deck, to hanging precariously off the edge of a giant logo at the top of a skyscraper – but they aren’t the film’s focus. Be that as it may, don’t think that because you aren’t getting the intensity level of “Transformers 4” that The Island isn’t consistently thrilling, because it is: Bay’s bombastic technique keeps the pacing kinetic for the 2 hour+ runtime.

The film’s secret standout is its script – co-written by TV showrunners Kurtzman & Orci – and the less said the better. Okay, so you might guess what’s going on before the cut-and-dry reveal by Steve Buscemi, and it isn’t necessarily the freshest story off the line, but the production finds new ways, right up until its climax, to raise the stakes – however predictable. It’s fun. It’s one of only a handful of films I’ve seen in theatres more than once by choice, and almost 20-years-later this most recent viewing was just as entertaining: my older, wiser mind was keen to catch all the tricks in the film’s first half to keep the viewer at arm’s length. Good Job!

4.5 out of 5

Poster sourced from impawards.com. Do you think such a high mark is justified? Can you not get passed Michael Bay’s involvement? Is he the guy Olivia Munn was referring to? Will we reach a point with A.I. when Ewan McGreggor’s forehead mole gets scrubbed from every film he made before 2008? Comment, why don’t ‘cha!

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