Some More Reviews - Including The Lastest Alien Movie - Wasn't This Supposed To Be Bad?
Review of Alien Covenant (2017)
Best thing: Michael Fassbender's turn as two different androids is an incredible performance. This interaction also serves tie up the film's themes in a really exciting way.
Worst thing: Some of the CG effects are great, but some has that overly shiny effect. Normally effects artists will get a lighting reference of some kind when filming that they can use to make the lighting on the computer generated elements look more natural and allow them to blend in better. There are particular moments here where that doesn't seem to have worked.
Okay, so I'm a Prometheus supporter. We may not be a majority, but I think more people out there would be willing to say they enjoyed Prometheus than, say, Masters of the Universe (of which I am also a fan).
Prometheus had some gorgeous visuals, some very interesting ideas on religion and on ancient concepts of sacrifice. It also had a fascinating central character in the form of David, the android with daddy issues.
Sure Prometheus has some characters making stupid decisions and some of the dialogue was pretty hokey, but there's always an over-arching theme. When a character decides rather unwisely that he will take his helmet off without doing full safety checks, the film is illustrating faith. When two characters seem to be practically suicidal in their lack of caution as they approach a creepy snake-like creature, these are two scientists and the scene evokes the old adage curiosity-killed-the-cat.
In Covenant I think the characters feel much more like characters in their own right, rather than symbols for themes. As with Prometheus, there are a number of characters who are mainly canon fodder and I had a harder time keeping track of all the crew members on the ship this time. Still while the main players aren't such larger than life figures as Charlize Theron in Prometheus, I found there were a wider range of engaging ordinary-seeming people.
The symbolism and larger-than-life performance is saved for Fassbender's two android characters. David comes back again, but the new ship called Covenant has its own Fassbender droid called Walter.
The themes of creation and responsibility for your creation are quite focused in Covenant. Ridley Scott is exploring some deep philosophical themes in a genuinely interesting way.
One aspect of this film I heard complaints about was the proto-morph. I've heard it questioned why the proto-morph seems to be more deadly than the Alien. Why does the android David call the Alien "the perfect organism", considering its weakness by comparison to the proto-morph?
But it's not all that odd really. The proto-morph doesn't have a life cycle. It takes its form based on the life around it but it is formed from the black substance and does not breed. The purpose of the black substance introduced in Prometheus is to destroy all living organisms. It isn't a spoiler to say that we are moving towards the birth of the Alien which very definitely DOES reproduce. So that is the important difference between them. But that doesn't mean the Alien is more powerful. I actually quite like that the proto-morphs birth quicker, grow quicker and are much more brutal.
The Lovecraftian goo births from organisms a powerful being, that doesn't breed, to destroy the organism from which it was born.
What makes the Alien perfect is that same destructive force breeding and reproducing forever. The proto-morph is the temporary by-product of a biological weapon of mass destruction aimed at destroying the biological life on a planet. The Engineers could use that to destroy a creation of theirs that has gone awry, but they could return a better creation to that planet afterwards. But the aliens are pure destructive horror and perpetually reproduce and destroy. Arguably like humanity, they dominate and destroy at a faster rate than their environment can sustain.
I would have liked to have seen more from the Engineers, but I was pleased to see them appear at all. I hope the next instalment will have the Engineers and the Aliens pitched against one another. (And doesn't the first Alien movie make that inevitable?) A fantastic piece of fan art has me really excited to see this show down on the big screen.
Ridley Scott has decided to take a new direction with this science fiction universe and I, for one, really appreciate his efforts. I've always been a fan of sci-fi first and horror second and the sci-fi aspect of these new Alien films is the bit I think works best.
A+
Review of The Visitor (1979)
Best thing: There are some quite incredible visuals here, but my favourite part of the film is possibly the ice skating fight. (Yes, you read that right.)
Worst thing: I actually think this film suffers from progressing a little too logically. The clues that this is an Italian horror are present, but the dream-like quality that you'd see in a Fulci movie doesn't seem so consistent here. It also doesn't help that this is light on gore too.
This is completely nuts and I love it.
The trailer promised an over the top Italian production that is both bizarre and beautiful. The pacing is a bit weird, but the visuals and the atmosphere do much to make up for it.
In order to enjoy this, you really need to be on board with the Italian movie style. While this doesn't have the extreme gore of the Fulci movies I love, it still has that same captivating style like a waking nightmare.
The Visitor is essentially a version of The Omen where the evil child is the daughter of an evil alien rather than the son of the devil. Also you can have more than one evil alien child, so the daughter is constantly trying to persuade her mother to have another child. (So creepy!)
The Visitor is a gorgeous film and a weird film, but it also drags in places. Some of the dialogue felt a bit odd to me. I had a lot of fun, but the Italian style both enhances and detracts from The Visitor in pretty much equal measure.
I had a lot of fun but, in spite of some beautiful imagery in places, it's trashy fun.
B+
Review of Singh Is King (2008)
Best thing: When a comic character who keeps pretending not to be partially deaf and blind suddenly appears in a Michael Jackson outfit, that was a lot of fun (and a musical sequence that fit much more solidly with the plot)
Worst thing: One of the more romantic songs is not only less fun than the other songs, but doesn't even come close to earning the emotional response it seems to expect to elicit from us.
A foolish figure from a Punjabi village is persuaded to leave his village because he causes so much trouble. The excuse used to get him to leave is that his brother, who is a drug kingpin in Australia, needs to come home to see their sick father. When he tracks down his brother, his brother ends up being incapacitated, so our foolish protagonist becomes the new ‘King’ but encourages his hoodlums to embrace Sikh values and cease their involvement in crime. Meanwhile there is a romantic storyline going on, which is where the focus of the story is really. The romantic plot resolves as you’d expect.
I'm not really terribly familiar with bollywood films. There is much in this film that is very charming, but it's pretty tough to stay engaged when there's so little at stake.
As fun as this film often is, it is all incredibly contrived and goofy. I enjoyed the various sequences, I eventually started to enjoy the musical sequences, but I was never really particularly gripped by the story.
The typical story cliches are here. The heir to a fortune is engaged to a mean and selfish man when she ought to be with the poor but good-hearted man, but this is telegraphed so far in advance that it just feels shallow. Another example is the question of whether bad people are irredeemable or whether they can change, but the bad people are so quickly and easily persuaded to leave their life of crime that the question is practically irrelevant.
Silly and sappy nonsense, but well-performed and quite fun. The performers put their all into this show, but the writing is incredibly shallow.
What the hell is the point of having Snoop Dogg do a version of the theme tune at the end? I mean, listening to his lyrics, I doubt he had any idea what the film was even about.
C-
Review of Anti-Birth (2016)
Best thing: Chloë Sevigny has a really strong screen presence, even moreso than the protagonist. I was convinced that I had seen her in many other films, but I only really seem to know her as the secretary from American Psycho.
Worst thing: The story gets way too dark and convoluted. It's revealed early on that the protagonist's friend is involved in drug dealing and they have a mutilated drug addict being exploited by them. The film seems very relaxed about this and it didn't fit with the fun tone in the rest of the film. (Even the straight-up horror in the final scene seems more sweet and silly than a film with mutilated female drug addicts being casually mistreated.)
This was a less well-known horror film, but I must admit that I was intrigued by the title. Responses to the film weren't wholly negative and I went in ready for anything.
Frankly I found this to be a bit of a mess. I felt the central character was reasonably well rounded, but there wasn't any obvious connection between her situation and her position of being mysteriously impregnated.
Was the intention to say something about drug addiction? The way an addiction gets inside you and takes over your life, or something? Or was this movie actually about sexual assault? I really don't know. It mainly seemed to be about the dangers of having a friend who becomes a drug dealer with her drug dealing boyfriend.
Some good performances and the finale had some pretty cool, albeit goofy, effects. Nevertheless I found this film to be pretty dire.
D-
Best thing: Michael Fassbender's turn as two different androids is an incredible performance. This interaction also serves tie up the film's themes in a really exciting way.
Worst thing: Some of the CG effects are great, but some has that overly shiny effect. Normally effects artists will get a lighting reference of some kind when filming that they can use to make the lighting on the computer generated elements look more natural and allow them to blend in better. There are particular moments here where that doesn't seem to have worked.
Okay, so I'm a Prometheus supporter. We may not be a majority, but I think more people out there would be willing to say they enjoyed Prometheus than, say, Masters of the Universe (of which I am also a fan).
Prometheus had some gorgeous visuals, some very interesting ideas on religion and on ancient concepts of sacrifice. It also had a fascinating central character in the form of David, the android with daddy issues.
Sure Prometheus has some characters making stupid decisions and some of the dialogue was pretty hokey, but there's always an over-arching theme. When a character decides rather unwisely that he will take his helmet off without doing full safety checks, the film is illustrating faith. When two characters seem to be practically suicidal in their lack of caution as they approach a creepy snake-like creature, these are two scientists and the scene evokes the old adage curiosity-killed-the-cat.
In Covenant I think the characters feel much more like characters in their own right, rather than symbols for themes. As with Prometheus, there are a number of characters who are mainly canon fodder and I had a harder time keeping track of all the crew members on the ship this time. Still while the main players aren't such larger than life figures as Charlize Theron in Prometheus, I found there were a wider range of engaging ordinary-seeming people.
The symbolism and larger-than-life performance is saved for Fassbender's two android characters. David comes back again, but the new ship called Covenant has its own Fassbender droid called Walter.
The themes of creation and responsibility for your creation are quite focused in Covenant. Ridley Scott is exploring some deep philosophical themes in a genuinely interesting way.
One aspect of this film I heard complaints about was the proto-morph. I've heard it questioned why the proto-morph seems to be more deadly than the Alien. Why does the android David call the Alien "the perfect organism", considering its weakness by comparison to the proto-morph?
But it's not all that odd really. The proto-morph doesn't have a life cycle. It takes its form based on the life around it but it is formed from the black substance and does not breed. The purpose of the black substance introduced in Prometheus is to destroy all living organisms. It isn't a spoiler to say that we are moving towards the birth of the Alien which very definitely DOES reproduce. So that is the important difference between them. But that doesn't mean the Alien is more powerful. I actually quite like that the proto-morphs birth quicker, grow quicker and are much more brutal.
The Lovecraftian goo births from organisms a powerful being, that doesn't breed, to destroy the organism from which it was born.
What makes the Alien perfect is that same destructive force breeding and reproducing forever. The proto-morph is the temporary by-product of a biological weapon of mass destruction aimed at destroying the biological life on a planet. The Engineers could use that to destroy a creation of theirs that has gone awry, but they could return a better creation to that planet afterwards. But the aliens are pure destructive horror and perpetually reproduce and destroy. Arguably like humanity, they dominate and destroy at a faster rate than their environment can sustain.
I would have liked to have seen more from the Engineers, but I was pleased to see them appear at all. I hope the next instalment will have the Engineers and the Aliens pitched against one another. (And doesn't the first Alien movie make that inevitable?) A fantastic piece of fan art has me really excited to see this show down on the big screen.
Ridley Scott has decided to take a new direction with this science fiction universe and I, for one, really appreciate his efforts. I've always been a fan of sci-fi first and horror second and the sci-fi aspect of these new Alien films is the bit I think works best.
A+
Review of The Visitor (1979)
Best thing: There are some quite incredible visuals here, but my favourite part of the film is possibly the ice skating fight. (Yes, you read that right.)
Worst thing: I actually think this film suffers from progressing a little too logically. The clues that this is an Italian horror are present, but the dream-like quality that you'd see in a Fulci movie doesn't seem so consistent here. It also doesn't help that this is light on gore too.
This is completely nuts and I love it.
The trailer promised an over the top Italian production that is both bizarre and beautiful. The pacing is a bit weird, but the visuals and the atmosphere do much to make up for it.
In order to enjoy this, you really need to be on board with the Italian movie style. While this doesn't have the extreme gore of the Fulci movies I love, it still has that same captivating style like a waking nightmare.
The Visitor is essentially a version of The Omen where the evil child is the daughter of an evil alien rather than the son of the devil. Also you can have more than one evil alien child, so the daughter is constantly trying to persuade her mother to have another child. (So creepy!)
The Visitor is a gorgeous film and a weird film, but it also drags in places. Some of the dialogue felt a bit odd to me. I had a lot of fun, but the Italian style both enhances and detracts from The Visitor in pretty much equal measure.
I had a lot of fun but, in spite of some beautiful imagery in places, it's trashy fun.
B+
Review of Singh Is King (2008)
Best thing: When a comic character who keeps pretending not to be partially deaf and blind suddenly appears in a Michael Jackson outfit, that was a lot of fun (and a musical sequence that fit much more solidly with the plot)
Worst thing: One of the more romantic songs is not only less fun than the other songs, but doesn't even come close to earning the emotional response it seems to expect to elicit from us.
A foolish figure from a Punjabi village is persuaded to leave his village because he causes so much trouble. The excuse used to get him to leave is that his brother, who is a drug kingpin in Australia, needs to come home to see their sick father. When he tracks down his brother, his brother ends up being incapacitated, so our foolish protagonist becomes the new ‘King’ but encourages his hoodlums to embrace Sikh values and cease their involvement in crime. Meanwhile there is a romantic storyline going on, which is where the focus of the story is really. The romantic plot resolves as you’d expect.
I'm not really terribly familiar with bollywood films. There is much in this film that is very charming, but it's pretty tough to stay engaged when there's so little at stake.
As fun as this film often is, it is all incredibly contrived and goofy. I enjoyed the various sequences, I eventually started to enjoy the musical sequences, but I was never really particularly gripped by the story.
The typical story cliches are here. The heir to a fortune is engaged to a mean and selfish man when she ought to be with the poor but good-hearted man, but this is telegraphed so far in advance that it just feels shallow. Another example is the question of whether bad people are irredeemable or whether they can change, but the bad people are so quickly and easily persuaded to leave their life of crime that the question is practically irrelevant.
Silly and sappy nonsense, but well-performed and quite fun. The performers put their all into this show, but the writing is incredibly shallow.
What the hell is the point of having Snoop Dogg do a version of the theme tune at the end? I mean, listening to his lyrics, I doubt he had any idea what the film was even about.
C-
Review of Anti-Birth (2016)
Best thing: Chloë Sevigny has a really strong screen presence, even moreso than the protagonist. I was convinced that I had seen her in many other films, but I only really seem to know her as the secretary from American Psycho.
Worst thing: The story gets way too dark and convoluted. It's revealed early on that the protagonist's friend is involved in drug dealing and they have a mutilated drug addict being exploited by them. The film seems very relaxed about this and it didn't fit with the fun tone in the rest of the film. (Even the straight-up horror in the final scene seems more sweet and silly than a film with mutilated female drug addicts being casually mistreated.)
This was a less well-known horror film, but I must admit that I was intrigued by the title. Responses to the film weren't wholly negative and I went in ready for anything.
Frankly I found this to be a bit of a mess. I felt the central character was reasonably well rounded, but there wasn't any obvious connection between her situation and her position of being mysteriously impregnated.
Was the intention to say something about drug addiction? The way an addiction gets inside you and takes over your life, or something? Or was this movie actually about sexual assault? I really don't know. It mainly seemed to be about the dangers of having a friend who becomes a drug dealer with her drug dealing boyfriend.
Some good performances and the finale had some pretty cool, albeit goofy, effects. Nevertheless I found this film to be pretty dire.
D-