Tag: warren daske

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: The Front Room (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2.5 out of 5

This was a weird one, but not in a Cronenberg way. Personal sidebar: a close friend wants to start going to church. This is not someone who myself, nor any of our mutual friends, thought they would do, but we support their decision. One suggested that they try out different denominations, because if it were up to my friend, they would just continue going to the closest church in walking distance for the sermons and leave at the worship. This particular church’s worship is singing, but it’s different with each and in turn the religion they promote.

While it would be easy for viewers without faith or theological interest to see the speaking-in-tongues and sacred treatment at play in “The Front Room” as ‘crazy’ behaviour, this dramatic revery is typical of Pentecostalism. However, the film doesn’t say this, and while a dichotomy could have existed between Brandy’s Belinda’s study of the Goddess versus the veneration of Kathryn Hunter’s Solange, the central conflict is very vanilla due to this lack of contextualization. On one end it’s problematic, as audiences on the outside shouldn’t be put in a situation where they assume the worst about a belief without all the facts.

On the other end, without seeing Solange as the enemy, there’s no conflict, and ergo no movie. And Front Room would be far different if it didn’t suggest a kind of spiritual deviancy at play, and just concentrated on Solange’s incontinence.

Yes, there is lots of poop and pee in the movie. Front Room seems content hopping genres so I wasn’t sure whether to take this ‘scatalogiquement’ seriously but – having cared for the elderly myself before – it’s no laughing matter when they’re in bed all day, refusing to wear a diaper & covered in C.diff. Front Room puts this front-and-centre, and I have to give props to a film that pans down to surprise diarrhea like Larry Clark to heavy petting, or that properly pays off a shot of a toilet in a care montage, or that brings out those rarely-used squishy sound effects. Speaking of cinematography, the film does look really nice overall, with a dinner scene that jumps the 180 rule most brazenly & a slow zoom-in to a mirror standing out the most.

But audiences will leave remembering the acting, the prominent theremin on the bizarre soundtrack, and the diarrhea.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Could an entertainment property exist in the West where religions with ‘extremist’ worship are given fair treatment (unlike the satire of “Four Lions”), or do you think it isn’t possible for sanitized North American audiences to look passed historical & current context with open-mindedness? Is it fair, then, to compare the far-right Christian beliefs presented in The Front Room with fanaticism? Have a stab at the comments below!

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Dub’s Take: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

5 out of 5

Sidebar: when “Blair Witch 3” came out in 2016, there was an article from ‘reputable’ site Bloody Disgusting claiming it would “leave viewers shaking to their core”, in the opinion of its author. Certainly one could make that distinction about the original, but there was no way audiences were getting an out-of-the-blue sequel, sixteen years after the last, without any kind of prerelease hype, was there? Especially not after the wealth of viral marketing that went into pumping the first & second pictures.

Turns out, that review was the hype, because Blair Witch 3 was forgettable. Why spend the kind of money the original producers did in the late-nineties, making whole fake behind-the-scenes documentaries about the fake myths behind the fakery, when you just need to post something online that sounds credible? That review was probably my inaugural experience getting fooled by clickbait, other than being sixteen-years-old and watching Kevin Trudeau informercials for the first time.

But I really wanted to believe 3 was going to be good. The original is good. Great, even: often cloned but never imitated. Surely if you’re from that generation, you will have already formed your own opinion. My wife’s is that the handheld camerawork is stomach-churning, although I’ve never had that problem (I wish my stomach was in 4DX, not).

But what struck me on this recent viewing wasn’t how little Burkittsville lore is actually featured in the opening act (although what ‘facts’ are, all have payoffs) or how well-paced the film’s brief 80-minute runtime is as I imprudently watched on a work night. It was how relatable all three of its main characters are, and how the film never goes out of its way – nor needs – to textually individualize any of them, despite how much background the supplemental material may contain. The movie itself is delightfully uncluttered: Heather is believably headstrong; Mike is believably cautious; Josh is believably aggravated; and there isn’t one choice made by the characters stemming from these traits – not even Mike’s fragmented decision-making at the midway point – that didn’t feel convincing under the narrative circumstances.

And it’s scary. Maybe not as scary as it was when I was twelve, watching it for the first time, but unnerving, with a splendidly abrupt ending devoid of the time-stretching tactics of contemporaries like “Paranormal Activity”. Mwah! Chef’s Kiss!

Poster sourced from impawards.com. An upcoming 25th anniversary Blu-ray edition, supervised by the filmmakers & purported to present the film without the post-production processing from original distributor Lionsgate, is available through Second Sight Films (unsponsored).

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Dub’s Take: Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

NO STAR RATING *

Actor-turned-filmmaker Viggo Mortensen says, “More and more…what passes for critical thinking in terms of reviews… having some understanding of film history, how movies are made—the level is really low. … It matters to me more…than as an actor because the fate of the movie…hangs in the balance as to how it’s received critically.”

On one hand I agree: modern accessibility in media production means that anyone with a passing interest in cinema & an opinion can produce a TikTok video, or free website (ditto), or novel-length Facebook post to showcase it. Film Criticism may be a category of Pulitzer, but Roger Ebert never bragged about his salary like Dan Bilzerian. On the other hand, even if I have the training (I’m a dropout), why would I want to apply Film Theory to a movie that doesn’t justify it?

I could not take one word of “Deadpool 3” seriously, to the extent I feel a shot-by-shot analysis is not necessary – nor do I think homaging “Intolerence” ever crossed the minds of Ryan Reynolds et al while they made it. I could be wrong, but you don’t get more High Concept than a superhero spoof: they’ve been making spoof movies for years, and Marvel needs one now more than ever.

But Deadpool 3 isn’t a spoof. This is a full-fledged Marvel Studios & Disney production, unlike its pre-merger forerunners. And – despite appearances from Jon Favreau’s Happy and the TVA, firmly mounting this instalment in the same canon – it’s so disconnected thematically from the rest, with it’s incessant fourth-wall breaking & non-sequitur humour, sickening violence (the fight in the Honda Odyssey), and litany of profanities, that I have trouble picturing the upcoming “Secret Wars” even using Deadpool at all, unless he’s toned-down by executive order.

Everyone else seems to love this one: “it’s just for fun, Warren”; “it’s some jokes & cameos, stop taking things so seriously.” I’m not a fan of Reynolds’ deadpan improv and that may be part of my problem. But I’m a fan of Hugh Jackman’s, and his appearance here screams a divorce-inspired desire for future financial security. One cameo was fantastic and another appeared stoned the whole time. As a motion picture, it looked, moved, and sounded fine.

No one cares what I think. Deadpool 3 and its box-office success is the contemporary poster-child of ‘critic-proof’.

*this is a reflection of my feelings towards the film’s posterity, and not the film itself. If I were to give D&W a star rating, it’d be a 1.

Poster sourced from impawards.com.

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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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