First, to my frequent readers, all seven of you, Thank you for your patience on the horror reviews. I promise I will finish them by the end of January but a lot of things in life have made it tough for me to write. So to try and keep the content going I figured I'd post this special review. Those that didn't already know, I reside in Seattle Washington, and recently my state legalized marijuana. As of the 6th of December, it is now legal to carry and use for the most part and thus I felt that I should honor the occasion with a review of one of the most infamous anti pot movies ever made, Reefer Madness.
Reefer Madness is a rather interesting film, at least in social context. It was made in the 30's and it features an insane amount of paranoia and propaganda that has made it infamous among the more versed in the stoic discipline of Bad Movie Watching. Not to mention stoners that love to watch it ironically because, hey they're high and what else are they going to watch? (I'll come back to that.)
Originally titled Tell You Children, Madness was the brain child of a church group working to show the horrors of drug use, but was quickly picked up and re-edited for the exploitation circuit where it was basically forgotten until the 70's when it became an ironic "so bad it's good" cult classic.
All that back ground incidentally, is much more interesting than the movie. I like to go into things like this open minded. I knew going in the fact were going to be skewed, I knew that it was propaganda, I knew not to expect the best acting, or writing, or anything like that. Hell I knew half the point of watching Reefer Madness the day pot was legalized in my state was to ironically look back at the past and see how far we've come in terms of culture, science and just how much public opinion can change given the years. Historically, it's kind of like watching Birth of a Nation while studying the Civil Rights movement, right?
But that comparison ends when you remember that for all its numerous fault socially, Birth of a Nation is basically where a lot of the most essential techniques of editing and shot design came from, where as all Reefer Madness has going for it is just the context of a substance that was illegal at the time, but now legal to a degree. It's more like watching Cocktail after prohibition was repelled if we want to be honest. Seriously, this movie isn't bad because it's just from a less "enlightened" time. This movie is bad because, and I know this is a shocker, it's bad. The main problem is that it doesn't seem to have been written by someone that knew how structure worked. It has too many characters, with too many motives, too many relationships and you never really know who's doing what, why and how everyone knows each other. It's main narrative device is that the whole story is actually a flashback via a "true" story being shared by a public speaker against the menace of marihuana (yes that is how they spell it through out.)
The big problem is that the idea that all the bad things that are supposed to be the fault of people smoking pot (hit and run, murder, attempted rape, etc.) never really feel like that was why because the whole shift from good people to bad weed smokers is jarring and also so quick that you miss it if you blink and may have to rewind to just try and understand what's going on again. The big third act twist happens in the form of an accidental shooting that the guilty party blame on the main (I think) character who thinks he's killed his girl friend because he smoked that evil evil grass and can't remember anything because he passed out and why oh why didn't he just stick to his good old fashioned cigarettes. (yes, it was back then.) Of course this is all resolved by story's end because one of the guilt party can't live with themselves if the innocent party goes to jail and confesses the truth, but then the story ends and it comes back to this infamous clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqwwCvPtDhY
Yes, for the most part Reefer Madness is kind of a bore. You might chalk this up to just my social context of weed being mostly seen as a harmless thing provided it isn't abused, or that the movie is propaganda, and both of those things are true, but at the same time the idea of this as some ironic classic baffles me. It's not it isn't easy to make fun of, or that its acting "talent" isn't laughable, I just found it incredibly boring. Those of you that like to watch the movie while smoking and making fun of it should feel proud to do so in your small act of retroactive social defiance, but if I'm smoking some of what is now a legal substance, I'm sticking to these:
-Pink Floyd The Wall (though it's not a requirement despite popular opinion, but still great.)
-Abbott and Costello (don't ask me to pick, you pick one.)
-Star Trek The Original Series.
-Gremlins 2
-Dune (the theatrical film.)
-Godzilla movies
-Fantasia
-The Fall
or hell even things like:
-Die Hard
-Commando
-Kung Fu Hustle
Monday, December 10, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Lunatic's Favorite Horror Movies Of All Time
9. Cape Fear (1991)
I know, I know, I’ve gone off on blasting horror remakes on here often, but with good reason, it’s most of the current horror movie remakes that really really suck. Besides, this is a remake from Martin Scorsese who is one of the few directors out there that I would honestly say hasn’t made a movie NOT worth watching. It has a great cast feature Robert De Niro pre-career suicide, Nick Nolte Pre-famous mug shot, and Jessica Lange. Plus, and I know that I will probably lose some movie buff cred here... but the original Cape Fear wasn’t as good as everyone wants to say it is. It’s a classic! Don’t misread what I’m saying here, but I feel that there are a lot of things in the 60’s movie that the remake did better.
Those that don’t know the plot, Cape Fear is the story of a lawyer, Samuel Bowden (Gergory Peck in the original, Nolte in the remake.) that is living a pretty nice life with his wife and teenage daughter when a man named Max Cady (Robert Mitchum/Robert De Niro) shows up. Cady had been a client of Bowden’s while he was a public defender, and Bowden buried evidence that might have saved him from jail time. Well, naturally the reason that Cady is new in town is that he’s figured this out and is looking for revenge.
The major difference that causes me to prefer the remake to the original is how Cady’s revenge plays out. In the original it’s implied, but most of the action and terror happens when they get themselves isolated on the river in the house boat. Now in the remake, most of what he does is about how he can terrorize this family without being caught up to being able to weasel in and out of their house completely unseen. Cady comes off as more cunning and scary because of it, despite the fact that De Niro’s over the top performance IS still blown out of the water but the chilling one given by Mitchum.
Another thing that I prefer is that Scorsese’s style of directing makes for a more interesting movie. The original may have cribbed more than a few notes from Hitchcock, but the remake just had this mood and creepy energy going through it. It felt more creepy to me.
BUt I’m not going to lie, the main reason I like this movie so much is because it’s clearly using a mesh of contemporary and old school film techniques, but it actually kept the original score from the first, something I think is unique to this movie. I may someday put together a list of film composers that are the greatest in my opinion, and I know for a fact Bernard Herrman will be on that list. This score is intense and in a weird way works perfectly in the new movie.
Basically if you want a movie that will just weird you out about how easily a guy can wreck someone’s life, you should see both but I give my preference to this one. It just works better for me.
5 out of 5
I know, I know, I’ve gone off on blasting horror remakes on here often, but with good reason, it’s most of the current horror movie remakes that really really suck. Besides, this is a remake from Martin Scorsese who is one of the few directors out there that I would honestly say hasn’t made a movie NOT worth watching. It has a great cast feature Robert De Niro pre-career suicide, Nick Nolte Pre-famous mug shot, and Jessica Lange. Plus, and I know that I will probably lose some movie buff cred here... but the original Cape Fear wasn’t as good as everyone wants to say it is. It’s a classic! Don’t misread what I’m saying here, but I feel that there are a lot of things in the 60’s movie that the remake did better.
Those that don’t know the plot, Cape Fear is the story of a lawyer, Samuel Bowden (Gergory Peck in the original, Nolte in the remake.) that is living a pretty nice life with his wife and teenage daughter when a man named Max Cady (Robert Mitchum/Robert De Niro) shows up. Cady had been a client of Bowden’s while he was a public defender, and Bowden buried evidence that might have saved him from jail time. Well, naturally the reason that Cady is new in town is that he’s figured this out and is looking for revenge.
The major difference that causes me to prefer the remake to the original is how Cady’s revenge plays out. In the original it’s implied, but most of the action and terror happens when they get themselves isolated on the river in the house boat. Now in the remake, most of what he does is about how he can terrorize this family without being caught up to being able to weasel in and out of their house completely unseen. Cady comes off as more cunning and scary because of it, despite the fact that De Niro’s over the top performance IS still blown out of the water but the chilling one given by Mitchum.
Another thing that I prefer is that Scorsese’s style of directing makes for a more interesting movie. The original may have cribbed more than a few notes from Hitchcock, but the remake just had this mood and creepy energy going through it. It felt more creepy to me.
BUt I’m not going to lie, the main reason I like this movie so much is because it’s clearly using a mesh of contemporary and old school film techniques, but it actually kept the original score from the first, something I think is unique to this movie. I may someday put together a list of film composers that are the greatest in my opinion, and I know for a fact Bernard Herrman will be on that list. This score is intense and in a weird way works perfectly in the new movie.
Basically if you want a movie that will just weird you out about how easily a guy can wreck someone’s life, you should see both but I give my preference to this one. It just works better for me.
5 out of 5
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Lunatic's Top 10 Best Horror Movies
Number 9:
The Haunting (1963) AND Poltergeist
Yes. In a way I’m cheating with this one, but I honestly tried to pick just ONE of these movies. The problem was I couldn’t decide between the two. One of the things that I’ve been trying to do sort of with this list is not let one kind of horror movie over take too much of this list. You know, only limiting myself to one werewolf movie, one vampire movie etc. However, I know that I wanted to put one of these haunted house movies on here, but I just could not figure out which was the superior film.
Both movies are classics, and both have a lot going for them on the script, direction and scares level, but they are so vastly different that I just had to include both of them. The Haunting is a classic because it’s an entire movie that shows you absolutely nothing and can still scare the hell out of you. With a great premise of a bunch of people that are have decided to stay in one of the most haunted houses in the country to investigate the supernatural, how could this not make for a great horror movie? (or Darwin Award.) Director Robert Wise has been famously quoted as saying that he made the film because while reading the book it is based on (Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House) in his office and nearly hitting the ceiling when someone knocked on his door. He seem to take this to heart because this is a movie all about how effective it uses its sound to build the suspense. Be it the loud, ominous banging our characters hear throughout, or the protagonists terrified voice over, this movie is one of the scariest things you will ever see because of it. Sadly I don’t have much to add to the movie’s praises because it would involve plot spoilers, and since I actually want you to seek this movie out I’m not going there. But I will say this, if I ever make a list of the 10 worst horror movie remakes (and god knows I have given this serious consideration.), I know that the 1999 remake of this film will make it on there. The one you want is the black and white one. It’s a moody, atmospheric, and damn tense flick that still works even after almost 50 years.
But what, say you about Poltergeist? Why is that film here when The Haunting is clearly the older and more classic film? Well, Poltergeist is a classic of another kind. First, back story:
The movie came out in 1982 and while this was a movie that Steven Spielberg (yes, that guy) pitched, came up with the story, helped write the screenplay and actually wanted to direct, but since he was working on E.T. couldn’t due to contract restrictions, thus The Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper was hired with the understanding that there was a chance to Spielberg to unofficially co-direct while on set observing in his role as a producer. Because of this, I feel that Poltergeist has this odd touch that no other horror movie has.
Firstly, the fact that for once the house that is haunted actually looks like a house someone is living in, granted because of this movie’s success there has been a massive surge in THESE kinds of haunting movies (looking at you Paranormal “Why the fuck am I a franchise?!” Activity), but still when you first see this setup it really ups the stakes in a way The Haunting, no matter how will it does with what it has, just never could because you know that it’s just some house these people are in that no one in their right mind would actually live in. The house in Poltergeist on the other hand looks like YOUR house. Not exactly, but it has enough touches to it that it feels like a home that does exist in the suburbs. Something the creators specifically have stated was the point. Hell, some of the movie’s most memorable scares are based on the childhood fears of the creators.
The performances are all very good, particularly Jobeth Williams as a mother desperate to get her young daughter back. The actors all feel like they are genuinely terrified, and not just screaming because that’s all their characters were required to do.
The point is that both of the movies scared the hell out of me when I first saw them, and then still held up fantastically as films when I went back over them. Well worth a look this year if you haven’t seen them yet. Check them out.
both films:
5 out of 5
The Haunting (1963) AND Poltergeist
Yes. In a way I’m cheating with this one, but I honestly tried to pick just ONE of these movies. The problem was I couldn’t decide between the two. One of the things that I’ve been trying to do sort of with this list is not let one kind of horror movie over take too much of this list. You know, only limiting myself to one werewolf movie, one vampire movie etc. However, I know that I wanted to put one of these haunted house movies on here, but I just could not figure out which was the superior film.
Both movies are classics, and both have a lot going for them on the script, direction and scares level, but they are so vastly different that I just had to include both of them. The Haunting is a classic because it’s an entire movie that shows you absolutely nothing and can still scare the hell out of you. With a great premise of a bunch of people that are have decided to stay in one of the most haunted houses in the country to investigate the supernatural, how could this not make for a great horror movie? (or Darwin Award.) Director Robert Wise has been famously quoted as saying that he made the film because while reading the book it is based on (Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House) in his office and nearly hitting the ceiling when someone knocked on his door. He seem to take this to heart because this is a movie all about how effective it uses its sound to build the suspense. Be it the loud, ominous banging our characters hear throughout, or the protagonists terrified voice over, this movie is one of the scariest things you will ever see because of it. Sadly I don’t have much to add to the movie’s praises because it would involve plot spoilers, and since I actually want you to seek this movie out I’m not going there. But I will say this, if I ever make a list of the 10 worst horror movie remakes (and god knows I have given this serious consideration.), I know that the 1999 remake of this film will make it on there. The one you want is the black and white one. It’s a moody, atmospheric, and damn tense flick that still works even after almost 50 years.
But what, say you about Poltergeist? Why is that film here when The Haunting is clearly the older and more classic film? Well, Poltergeist is a classic of another kind. First, back story:
The movie came out in 1982 and while this was a movie that Steven Spielberg (yes, that guy) pitched, came up with the story, helped write the screenplay and actually wanted to direct, but since he was working on E.T. couldn’t due to contract restrictions, thus The Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper was hired with the understanding that there was a chance to Spielberg to unofficially co-direct while on set observing in his role as a producer. Because of this, I feel that Poltergeist has this odd touch that no other horror movie has.
Firstly, the fact that for once the house that is haunted actually looks like a house someone is living in, granted because of this movie’s success there has been a massive surge in THESE kinds of haunting movies (looking at you Paranormal “Why the fuck am I a franchise?!” Activity), but still when you first see this setup it really ups the stakes in a way The Haunting, no matter how will it does with what it has, just never could because you know that it’s just some house these people are in that no one in their right mind would actually live in. The house in Poltergeist on the other hand looks like YOUR house. Not exactly, but it has enough touches to it that it feels like a home that does exist in the suburbs. Something the creators specifically have stated was the point. Hell, some of the movie’s most memorable scares are based on the childhood fears of the creators.
The performances are all very good, particularly Jobeth Williams as a mother desperate to get her young daughter back. The actors all feel like they are genuinely terrified, and not just screaming because that’s all their characters were required to do.
The point is that both of the movies scared the hell out of me when I first saw them, and then still held up fantastically as films when I went back over them. Well worth a look this year if you haven’t seen them yet. Check them out.
both films:
5 out of 5
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Lunatic's Top 10 Favorite Horror Movies Of All Time
And now for the other list I’ll be updating in october. The horror movies that I personally have the most fun watching. These can be movies that are truly great films, but I for one reason or another just couldn’t fit on the other list, or they can be outright crap that I just enjoy for the make up effects or the cheesy plot/acting. I’ve stated before that if I was to pick a favorite genre it would be horror, and I stand by that. To me watching a horror movie is some of the most fun a film watcher can have. Either it’s a legit good horror movie and you get the piss scared out of you, or it’s just hilarious. To me these are the ones that I like to go back and watch every October, and without further ado, here it goes:
Number 10:
The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (1920)
Yeah, I am a person born in 1986 that loves one of the oldest surviving horror films. But at the same time, how could I not? I won’t even bother asking if you’ve seen it, I’m sure most of you haven’t unless you’ve had to take an International Film Studies class, but you really should. It’s a movie that told in flashback, describing the event that happened around a carnival involving a man named Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his attraction, A somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt, better known in geek circles as titular Man Who Laughs [the inspiration for The Joker] but best known for being the Nazi Major in Casablanca). Cesare is said to be in a trance and can predict the future, and when the friend of our main character asks when he’s going to die, it’s not the most pleasant answer. That night he is murdered and all the suspicion starts to be cast on Caligari and Cesare, leading to one of the most iconic chases that has been repeated and homaged for decades upon decades as well as one of the first jaw dropping twist endings that you’ll ever see.
The big thing that must be noted, and often is cited as one of the film’s strengths is that the set look slightly off. Things are all at an angle, they don’t look all that natural. The movie has a very dream like quality to it that many Tim Burton fans may have become all too familiar with. Added to this is haunting atmosphere that it permeates throughout which is even more impressive since this movie is silent.
This is a movie where the camera is there to take in the scope of everything, and everything in view is a twisted nightmare. So many great techniques for horror films started here, and while I do think that this one does suffer a little from antiquity, it is still a great watch.
Since this is mostly about the visuals there isn’t much to say, but I will go on this tangent because I feel it is important to discuss: This movie is in the public domain, like many other films from the slient era, as such this movie is very easy to find. However, I’m giving a shout out for people to seek out the version released by Kino Video. It keeps the film’s original tinting and toning to help add to the overall effective nice and has a great option to either view it with a traditional silent score or a contemporary orchestral score (this for the record, is my recommended score.) It’s not super cheap, but it’s well worth the money if you want to take a look at it.
5 nightmarish horror out of 5
Number 10:
The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (1920)
Yeah, I am a person born in 1986 that loves one of the oldest surviving horror films. But at the same time, how could I not? I won’t even bother asking if you’ve seen it, I’m sure most of you haven’t unless you’ve had to take an International Film Studies class, but you really should. It’s a movie that told in flashback, describing the event that happened around a carnival involving a man named Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his attraction, A somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt, better known in geek circles as titular Man Who Laughs [the inspiration for The Joker] but best known for being the Nazi Major in Casablanca). Cesare is said to be in a trance and can predict the future, and when the friend of our main character asks when he’s going to die, it’s not the most pleasant answer. That night he is murdered and all the suspicion starts to be cast on Caligari and Cesare, leading to one of the most iconic chases that has been repeated and homaged for decades upon decades as well as one of the first jaw dropping twist endings that you’ll ever see.
The big thing that must be noted, and often is cited as one of the film’s strengths is that the set look slightly off. Things are all at an angle, they don’t look all that natural. The movie has a very dream like quality to it that many Tim Burton fans may have become all too familiar with. Added to this is haunting atmosphere that it permeates throughout which is even more impressive since this movie is silent.
This is a movie where the camera is there to take in the scope of everything, and everything in view is a twisted nightmare. So many great techniques for horror films started here, and while I do think that this one does suffer a little from antiquity, it is still a great watch.
Since this is mostly about the visuals there isn’t much to say, but I will go on this tangent because I feel it is important to discuss: This movie is in the public domain, like many other films from the slient era, as such this movie is very easy to find. However, I’m giving a shout out for people to seek out the version released by Kino Video. It keeps the film’s original tinting and toning to help add to the overall effective nice and has a great option to either view it with a traditional silent score or a contemporary orchestral score (this for the record, is my recommended score.) It’s not super cheap, but it’s well worth the money if you want to take a look at it.
5 nightmarish horror out of 5
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Lunatic's Pick For Top 10 Best Horror Films
So October is finally upon us and here I am filling out my promise to give you 20 good solid horror movie recommendations based on 10 films that I hold dear to my heart as favorites, and 10 that as a connoisseur of film find to be the most shining examples of the genre. This is going to be tough as finding where both of these fall on the scale is like asking to pick which leg I’d leg to have severed first, but I shall try. So let’s start this one with number 10 on the best list!
Number 10:
Ginger Snaps
I’ve covered this ground a bit already in my review of it’s threequel Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, but I still have more to say about this film. It’s an amazing work of horror fiction. Just to save you from going back at my previous review, allow me to first give you the skinny on the plot. Ginger Fitzgerald (Katherine Isabelle) and her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are very close. They have a bond as sisters that has lasted through their whole lives, which has partly lead them to being the weirdos of their high school. Ginger and Brigitte are typical goth girls and frequently stage death scenes for photography projects, and both are bordering on nihilism when the film starts. Then one full moon while they are trying to pull a prank on one of the preppy kids, Ginger has her first period (yes, this actually is important.) and is promptly attacked by a werewolf. As Ginger begins to turn, slowly her relationship with Brigitte crumbles as she goes out more and begins to give into more of her baser, more animalistic urges and it’s up to Brigitte to find a cure before the next full moon.
The first thing that should be said is despite a couple performances here and there, this movie is solidly cast with the standouts being the two sisters and their mother (played by Mimi Rogers). Isabelle and Perkins have such a great chemistry with each other that it really sells the bond that the two sisters are supposed to have. In fact some of the most gut wrenching moments of the movie are them arguing because they were shown as so believably close before things went sour, and that’s before Ginger grows a tail.
Speaking of which, the films makeup effects are superb slowing showing Ginger’s gradual transformation with subtle augmentations until the film’s climax where things get real and the final form of Ginger’s inner beast is revealed with a creative and haunting design giving this particular werewolf a nice individual look.
All this is backed up by the fact that the movie is working with a screenplay that really wants to use the werewolf as metaphor for puberty angle to its fullest. At its core the film is more about the growing divide between the two sisters and using those great makeup effects to visually show how different the girls have become.
If this film has any shortcomings, it’s that some of the goth aspect of the girls feels a little haphazardly crammed in for the sake of appeal to potential demographics, and I do feel like pointing those out is more nitpicking than anything. They are obsessed with death and all that but it never feels intrusive. And also I do feel that certain aspects of the movie feel a bit rushed, especially during the third act where the movie really is in a hurry to get to the final transformation.
However I still maintain that this film should be recognized by taking a risk to make the horror of the piece come from something that is more thematic than just “oh this is supposed to be scary” kind that wears out it’s welcome far too soon. It’s a solid movie with a well done story and great acting with some great scares and make up effects. What more could you ask for? I also said before that it has a very very good sequel Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. Give them both a watch this halloween.
Ginger Snaps rating:
4.5 mysterious animal attacks out of 5.
Number 10:
Ginger Snaps
I’ve covered this ground a bit already in my review of it’s threequel Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, but I still have more to say about this film. It’s an amazing work of horror fiction. Just to save you from going back at my previous review, allow me to first give you the skinny on the plot. Ginger Fitzgerald (Katherine Isabelle) and her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are very close. They have a bond as sisters that has lasted through their whole lives, which has partly lead them to being the weirdos of their high school. Ginger and Brigitte are typical goth girls and frequently stage death scenes for photography projects, and both are bordering on nihilism when the film starts. Then one full moon while they are trying to pull a prank on one of the preppy kids, Ginger has her first period (yes, this actually is important.) and is promptly attacked by a werewolf. As Ginger begins to turn, slowly her relationship with Brigitte crumbles as she goes out more and begins to give into more of her baser, more animalistic urges and it’s up to Brigitte to find a cure before the next full moon.
The first thing that should be said is despite a couple performances here and there, this movie is solidly cast with the standouts being the two sisters and their mother (played by Mimi Rogers). Isabelle and Perkins have such a great chemistry with each other that it really sells the bond that the two sisters are supposed to have. In fact some of the most gut wrenching moments of the movie are them arguing because they were shown as so believably close before things went sour, and that’s before Ginger grows a tail.
Speaking of which, the films makeup effects are superb slowing showing Ginger’s gradual transformation with subtle augmentations until the film’s climax where things get real and the final form of Ginger’s inner beast is revealed with a creative and haunting design giving this particular werewolf a nice individual look.
All this is backed up by the fact that the movie is working with a screenplay that really wants to use the werewolf as metaphor for puberty angle to its fullest. At its core the film is more about the growing divide between the two sisters and using those great makeup effects to visually show how different the girls have become.
If this film has any shortcomings, it’s that some of the goth aspect of the girls feels a little haphazardly crammed in for the sake of appeal to potential demographics, and I do feel like pointing those out is more nitpicking than anything. They are obsessed with death and all that but it never feels intrusive. And also I do feel that certain aspects of the movie feel a bit rushed, especially during the third act where the movie really is in a hurry to get to the final transformation.
However I still maintain that this film should be recognized by taking a risk to make the horror of the piece come from something that is more thematic than just “oh this is supposed to be scary” kind that wears out it’s welcome far too soon. It’s a solid movie with a well done story and great acting with some great scares and make up effects. What more could you ask for? I also said before that it has a very very good sequel Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. Give them both a watch this halloween.
Ginger Snaps rating:
4.5 mysterious animal attacks out of 5.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Alien Retrospective Finale: Alien Resurrection
And thus we have arrived at the end, closing the door on one of science fiction’s prominent film franchises. In a way this comes as a relief. Don’t get me wrong, talking about movies is what I love to do, but at the same time the last two movies of this franchise can really take it out of me as both a reviewer and a fan. Alien 3 was a bad movie but a lot of that can be blamed on studio interference, Alien Resurrection on the other hand has no excuse. It’s terrible simply because it’s a terrible movie.
I’m going to break a little bit of the trend here and actually not talk about the production history of this one because it’s unremarkable. Joss Whedon (we’ll get back to him.) wrote a script, then they hired Jean Pierre Jeunet 9the guy that directed Amelie, The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, all of which are highly recommended.) and the movie went into production without any major problems. Honestly of the movies in the series, the making of documentary for this installment was the most dull to slog through. It was all run of the mill and the only interesting part was learning how they pulled off some of the model shots in the movie because I’m always interested in that.
So why is this one a terrible movie? I mean the last one was really REALLY bad but how could this one be any worse? It’s not nearly as bleak, and it’s got a more solid narrative than the last movie, so what’s the big deal?
Mostly it boils down to one major factor: no one was really all that interested in making this one. The director says in interviews how baffled he was that he was chosen, the producers weren’t too hot on the script, and even a lot of the actors seem to only be in this one for the paycheck. A lot of this apathy comes across on the screen as the characters slog from one location to the other with the only instances staying on the mind being weird, random moments that mostly seem to come from Jeunet’s odd style trying to fit in.
However being dull isn’t the main killing point for this one. No for that I have to say something that will probably get me some death threats, but I have to say it because it was a huge flaw with the movie: Joss Whedon’s script was not very good. Whedon’s fans have tried to defend this movie, and some with very well thought out arguments, but a bad script is still a bad script. The main issue I have is how it starts the plot and puts the xenomorphs back into the mix.
It is revealed that the actions of Alien 3 happened 200 years in the movie’s past, and a team of military scientist have cloned Ripley to try and retrieve the queen embryo that she was carrying at the time of her death. Now, for those that haven’t rolled their eyes yet, genetics don’t work that way. First of all let’s ignore the fact that Ripley jumped into a vat of molten lead wiping out all trace of the creature due to the extremely high temperatures, after all the film does. This idea of cloning Ripley to get the alien queen is patently absurd. Why? A: Ripley’s DNA does not include the alien queen embryo. B: Why didn’t they just clone the alien queen embryo? No, don’t just point out that this is science fiction, that I need to just allow my suspension of disbelief to take hold, none of that excuses this. Cloning Ripley would not net you the queen because when you clone something you’re starting with a based genetic code and duplicating it. The xenomorph is a parasite, and thus is just an invader to the body that has no real effect other than when it bursts out of the chest. It does not alter your DNA. However, if you can get the DNA of Ripley to make a clone, then just keep sifting that molten pit of lead and find all the pieces for the alien queen. One of the things that they bring up about the RIpley clone is that they are worried that she is regaining her memories and that she might remember that the last part of her life was a quest to completely destroy the xenomorphs... So why did you bring HER back again? They try to hand wave this away with a whole “the samples were corrupted” BS exposition dump, but again genetics don’t work that way. And I’m not some crazy biologist or anything, they brought this damn idea up in Jurassic Park. A crucial part of that movie was that the dinosaurs were cloned, but the scientists needed to use the DNA of a frog to fill in the holes in the genetic sequences left by, you know, being in the ground for 65 million years.
Now, you might say that part of the xenomorph physiology has them take traits from their host to shape their final form. Fine, I’ll play. Yes, this COULD potentially lead to an alien/human hybrid, but that’s it. Yes, this is something that happens in the movie, but it still doesn’t hold water. YOU STILL WOULD NOT GET THE QUEEN EMBRYO!
And it’s not like I’m ragging on Joss Whedon to bait his rabid fan base, I happen to like a lot of the things he’s done. But the man is not perfect, no one is. Hell I have several filmmakers that I love even more than him and they’ve all made some things that are less than stellar. I’m not even ragging on the rest of the people behind this film. Jeunet is a very talented visual storyteller, and his director of photography Darius Khondji does give the film a lot in the looking really cool department. But all in all this movie just never works.
It just can’t settle on a tone. It bounces between dry humor one minute, intense action the next, mind fuck horror after that and then back to wry one liners. It makes it hard to take anything in the movie seriously. Even the actors don’t seem to be all that concerned about what’s going on, mostly there to just have fun being in an Alien movie. No one’s really bad or anything, just not taking things seriously and when you’ve built an entire franchise on serious horror, playing up the camp is not a good idea.
If there’s any entertainment to be had in this movie it’s to marvel at the sheer amount of WTF moments and basically just the fact that this movie gets as bad as it does. Both version are the same kind of terrible and I again can’t really give any points to this movie because it’s just awful.
0 out of 5
But what of the franchise’s future? The xenomorphs made it back onto the big screen in the Alien Versus Predator films, why shouldn’t I talk about them? Because there’s not terribly much to say. Both films are awful, the first for being both too tame and because it plays fast and loose with the continuity and the second for being stupid, really stupid. Prometheus was probably the best idea to go with at this point seeing how the franchise had gone down the crapper. Hopefully its reasonable numbers at the box office will keep steering the franchise out of the nose dive it has been in for a long time. Fingers crossed over here.
I’m going to break a little bit of the trend here and actually not talk about the production history of this one because it’s unremarkable. Joss Whedon (we’ll get back to him.) wrote a script, then they hired Jean Pierre Jeunet 9the guy that directed Amelie, The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, all of which are highly recommended.) and the movie went into production without any major problems. Honestly of the movies in the series, the making of documentary for this installment was the most dull to slog through. It was all run of the mill and the only interesting part was learning how they pulled off some of the model shots in the movie because I’m always interested in that.
So why is this one a terrible movie? I mean the last one was really REALLY bad but how could this one be any worse? It’s not nearly as bleak, and it’s got a more solid narrative than the last movie, so what’s the big deal?
Mostly it boils down to one major factor: no one was really all that interested in making this one. The director says in interviews how baffled he was that he was chosen, the producers weren’t too hot on the script, and even a lot of the actors seem to only be in this one for the paycheck. A lot of this apathy comes across on the screen as the characters slog from one location to the other with the only instances staying on the mind being weird, random moments that mostly seem to come from Jeunet’s odd style trying to fit in.
However being dull isn’t the main killing point for this one. No for that I have to say something that will probably get me some death threats, but I have to say it because it was a huge flaw with the movie: Joss Whedon’s script was not very good. Whedon’s fans have tried to defend this movie, and some with very well thought out arguments, but a bad script is still a bad script. The main issue I have is how it starts the plot and puts the xenomorphs back into the mix.
It is revealed that the actions of Alien 3 happened 200 years in the movie’s past, and a team of military scientist have cloned Ripley to try and retrieve the queen embryo that she was carrying at the time of her death. Now, for those that haven’t rolled their eyes yet, genetics don’t work that way. First of all let’s ignore the fact that Ripley jumped into a vat of molten lead wiping out all trace of the creature due to the extremely high temperatures, after all the film does. This idea of cloning Ripley to get the alien queen is patently absurd. Why? A: Ripley’s DNA does not include the alien queen embryo. B: Why didn’t they just clone the alien queen embryo? No, don’t just point out that this is science fiction, that I need to just allow my suspension of disbelief to take hold, none of that excuses this. Cloning Ripley would not net you the queen because when you clone something you’re starting with a based genetic code and duplicating it. The xenomorph is a parasite, and thus is just an invader to the body that has no real effect other than when it bursts out of the chest. It does not alter your DNA. However, if you can get the DNA of Ripley to make a clone, then just keep sifting that molten pit of lead and find all the pieces for the alien queen. One of the things that they bring up about the RIpley clone is that they are worried that she is regaining her memories and that she might remember that the last part of her life was a quest to completely destroy the xenomorphs... So why did you bring HER back again? They try to hand wave this away with a whole “the samples were corrupted” BS exposition dump, but again genetics don’t work that way. And I’m not some crazy biologist or anything, they brought this damn idea up in Jurassic Park. A crucial part of that movie was that the dinosaurs were cloned, but the scientists needed to use the DNA of a frog to fill in the holes in the genetic sequences left by, you know, being in the ground for 65 million years.
Now, you might say that part of the xenomorph physiology has them take traits from their host to shape their final form. Fine, I’ll play. Yes, this COULD potentially lead to an alien/human hybrid, but that’s it. Yes, this is something that happens in the movie, but it still doesn’t hold water. YOU STILL WOULD NOT GET THE QUEEN EMBRYO!
And it’s not like I’m ragging on Joss Whedon to bait his rabid fan base, I happen to like a lot of the things he’s done. But the man is not perfect, no one is. Hell I have several filmmakers that I love even more than him and they’ve all made some things that are less than stellar. I’m not even ragging on the rest of the people behind this film. Jeunet is a very talented visual storyteller, and his director of photography Darius Khondji does give the film a lot in the looking really cool department. But all in all this movie just never works.
It just can’t settle on a tone. It bounces between dry humor one minute, intense action the next, mind fuck horror after that and then back to wry one liners. It makes it hard to take anything in the movie seriously. Even the actors don’t seem to be all that concerned about what’s going on, mostly there to just have fun being in an Alien movie. No one’s really bad or anything, just not taking things seriously and when you’ve built an entire franchise on serious horror, playing up the camp is not a good idea.
If there’s any entertainment to be had in this movie it’s to marvel at the sheer amount of WTF moments and basically just the fact that this movie gets as bad as it does. Both version are the same kind of terrible and I again can’t really give any points to this movie because it’s just awful.
0 out of 5
But what of the franchise’s future? The xenomorphs made it back onto the big screen in the Alien Versus Predator films, why shouldn’t I talk about them? Because there’s not terribly much to say. Both films are awful, the first for being both too tame and because it plays fast and loose with the continuity and the second for being stupid, really stupid. Prometheus was probably the best idea to go with at this point seeing how the franchise had gone down the crapper. Hopefully its reasonable numbers at the box office will keep steering the franchise out of the nose dive it has been in for a long time. Fingers crossed over here.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Alien Retrospective Part 3: Alien 3
UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH! It’s sad, but well known rule of fandom that no matter how much you love something, be it a movie, comic, TV show, etc., no matter how rabid or unhealthy (and boy does it sometimes get REAL unhealthy.) that love affair is, it will inevitably fuck you in someway. And I’m talking the hardcore sweaty pound your ass with no lube prison rape type of fucking here. With Star Trek it was (Debatably) movie 5, (or 1, or 7, or 9 or 10, or the reboot, or Voyager, or Enterprise, OR anything that came with TNG like i said, it’s debatable and down to the individual nerd.), with James Cameron’s Terminator franchise it was the unneeded third film (Which IS flawed, but by no means terrible, just useless.), Spider man fans got to suffer through both the disastrous Clone Saga (4+ years of confusing plot twists and tiresome marketing ploys.) AND the heinous One More Day (unless you like whining, selfish character actions, and outright immoral decisions, you probably shouldn’t read comics and just go back to your Jersey Shore DVDs) and us movies lovers have had to to deal with things like Michael Bay. (so clearly our pain is the greatest!) This is getting convoluted, the point is that there is always a point where the great and awesome starts to decompose, leaving so much crap. And boy is there no better word to describe this movie.
Alien 3 is one of those movies that for a long time held a certain infamy in sci fi fandom not just because of how bad it was, but also because of how it (to that point at least) ended the series. Those claiming to like it were either stoned on sight or acknowledged as 12 year olds that just didn’t know any better. Ok, not really but this movie was basically the Highlander 2 of the Alien franchise when it hit, and it’s not hard to see why: On fundamental level, this movie doesn’t, nay outright CAN’T work. Why is that?
A lot of that has to do with the studio seeing dollar signs in the wake of Aliens buying them all new yachts, they wanted more and they wanted it now. However, this time there wasn’t the amazing story of the young talent out of obscurity like the first two films. This time there wasn’t the good idea spark to drive the story, there wasn’t a story at all. This was a studio rushing to get another sequel out to pay for the helipad add on they wanted for their yachts. How naked was this cash grab? They didn’t have a script, hadn’t confirmed that SIgourney Weaver was returning, they had no director, or really anything other than a vague idea probably written on a cocktail napkin; but they put out a trailer, with a proposed release date. I mentioned Aliens had a troubled production due to James Cameron’s frustrations working with a non-american crew for the first time, but that was a four second slap fight compared to what happened to this movie’s PRE-PRODUCTION alone. There are so many reject scripts for this that some of them have actually been turn into other movies. You want an example? Pitch Black. Yes, writer director David Twohy took a script he was hired to write for this sequel, re-dressed and tweaked it, and thus we had Pitch Black. People like Near Dark co-writer Eric Red wrote a few drafts, acclaimed sci fi author William Gibson wrote a few drafts, there were drafts that had Ripley, drafts that didn’t, drafts that had Hicks and Bishop going to the xenomorph home world, some that focused on entirely new characters, and I’m sure there’s probably a trashed draft of just the words ‘fuck you!’ written over and over by some poor writer having to go back and rewrite his script again because the studio couldn’t make up its mind. They also hired directors, as in plural because both quit at some point, and again, THEY STILL HAD NO SOLID SCRIPT! Ok, that’s not quite true of second director Vincent Ward. He had an idea that the studio apparently at some point liked, and to be fair, a fair amount of the plot elements from it remain in the final film. However, at some point while they were dealing with him, and they were starting to build sets by this point, the studio wanted all kinds of changes and thus in frustration Ward quit and they had to find someone else to handle this crazy train that was fast derailing. That was David Fincher. Fincher, if you haven’t heard, is a truly amazing talent and is one of the best filmmakers we have currently working in the world with amazing works like Se7en, Fight Club and The Social Network. This was his feature film debut, and why he still makes films baffles me. The studio was hounding him the whole time, they were always asking for changes, to get the film finished faster despite that, and they were sending producers in to reinforce these other things, all because they needed the neon lit helipad for their... ok, I’m done with the yacht metaphor, but the point is they weren’t out to make a film, they were out to make a profit. As you can imagine, David Fincher’s job was nothing short an act of masochism just by showing up for work everyday having to deal with the new notes from the producers. And what was the result? A domestic gross that only gave them five million dollars in profit, and the only big money coming from overseas to make up for it. Those that want comparison: Alien grossed around 70 million in pure profit DOMESTICALLY and Aliens grossed about the same, despite the budget being twice the size of movie one. That’s BEFORE you add the overseas numbers to get HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS.
This brings up a point that I’d like to talk about for movies in general, but I’d rather save that for an editorial and just briefly discuss the major bullet points. A lot of the times, hindsight makes us a lot angrier than we should probably be, especially on things like studio decisions that affect entire films. It usually comes up with people that have seen a far superior director’s cut and are raging about why it was changed for theatrical release and all that jazz. And you know what? It makes me angry too, I firmly believe that the studio choice to add a useless voice over to Blade Runner was a terrible idea and probably hurt that movie’s chances to succeed, or that the Love Conquers All Version of Brazil is a boil from the darkest corner of Satan’s ass, but when I really look at some of these things I have to sigh and shake my head because I see that in a way the producers were sort of right. Hollywood is a business, sleek awesome looking movies cost money, and the bigger the production, the bigger the risk. Were these people creatively right? No! These were terrible ideas! But at the same time, were they completely wrong for thinking something might not play well and they may end up in financial ruin? Yes. Hell, Terry Gilliam actually won a campaign to keep the studio from releasing that version of Brazil and his cut STILL flopped on arrival and only became profitable thanks to a cult following of fans that adore it. However, this wasn’t just a studio imposing a change on something part way through, or wanting the ending reshot. (Both of which happened anyway.) This was a studio that was micro managing the thing every step of the way, when they had no idea what they actually wanted to do in the first place.
And it shows in the finished product. I may have rambled about the studio interference but it is at the core of a lot of the problems with this movie. The story is basically non-existent being merely a retread of the first film with a new cast and a different location. The characters, save Ripley, are all thin and flat only ever standing out thanks to the disturbingly high caliber of the actors involved (Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Pete Postlethwaite, Charles S Dutton). The alien really has no menace due to being seen far more than before. The opening is insulting to the fans that grew to love the characters from the previous movies that were killed.
This is all a shame because a lot of the actual components that make up the film are good by themselves. For example, I think some of the sound design is very well done. Elliot Goldenthal’s score is appropriately morose fitting the movie’s attempted tone (and overall feeling it leaves you with so I guess mission accomplished there.) Terry Rawlings returned to edit the movie, and probably needed a stiff drink while doing so, and while the overall film is still a turd, it’s a well put together turd in spots. And Fincher’s choices as a director indicate the talent he later proved in far less torturous productions.
But to me most criminal of all things done in this movie, it’s the ruination of Ripley’s character development from the previous movie. Part of the point of Newt’s character was that she and Ripley were both orphans in a way thanks to the xenomorphs, Ripley because it caused her to be lost in the vacuum of space and Newt because they killed her parents. Through the course of the film they both grow a bond with each other resulting Ripley basically adopting her and because of this they were able to together put the nightmare behind them. It was a good piece of character development because Ripley still had her chances to be badass, but also got to have more depth added with essentially being a single mother by movie’s end. Then in this movie, all that is pretty much ruined by killing newt in the opening credits. Yes, it is carried over sort of by having Ripley mourn her death but it’s basically tossed aside afterwards and Newt may as well have not existed. Hell, Michael Biehn hated the idea of killing everyone right away so much he refused to give them rights to use his likeness unless they paid him just as much for that as he had for being in Aliens.
I get it, it’s meant to take Ripley into a new state of mind and take away everything she had left to make it easier for her to commit suicide to get rid of the xenomorph and thematically for the sake of the film’s apocalyptic theme. That doesn’t change the fact that it comes off as a middle finger to the fans of the franchise that liked the end of the last movie. It makes it hardly worth it to talk about RIpley’s character because all they have her do the whole movie is want to die, and by the end so do a lot of the audience.
This movie isn’t scary it’s just depressing. It had some moments of worth but it never comes together and it does so much about ruining things from the last movie that as a fan I just can’t deal with it. The re-edited version is a bit of an improvement thanks to a couple things but the big problems are still there. The movie is a meandering mess and it should come as no surprise that David Fincher has done everything he can to separate himself from it, refusing any involvement in the DVD special edition. And I honestly can’t recommend this outside general curiosity, and next time things are only going to get worse.
Both versions:
1 out of 5
Alien 3 is one of those movies that for a long time held a certain infamy in sci fi fandom not just because of how bad it was, but also because of how it (to that point at least) ended the series. Those claiming to like it were either stoned on sight or acknowledged as 12 year olds that just didn’t know any better. Ok, not really but this movie was basically the Highlander 2 of the Alien franchise when it hit, and it’s not hard to see why: On fundamental level, this movie doesn’t, nay outright CAN’T work. Why is that?
A lot of that has to do with the studio seeing dollar signs in the wake of Aliens buying them all new yachts, they wanted more and they wanted it now. However, this time there wasn’t the amazing story of the young talent out of obscurity like the first two films. This time there wasn’t the good idea spark to drive the story, there wasn’t a story at all. This was a studio rushing to get another sequel out to pay for the helipad add on they wanted for their yachts. How naked was this cash grab? They didn’t have a script, hadn’t confirmed that SIgourney Weaver was returning, they had no director, or really anything other than a vague idea probably written on a cocktail napkin; but they put out a trailer, with a proposed release date. I mentioned Aliens had a troubled production due to James Cameron’s frustrations working with a non-american crew for the first time, but that was a four second slap fight compared to what happened to this movie’s PRE-PRODUCTION alone. There are so many reject scripts for this that some of them have actually been turn into other movies. You want an example? Pitch Black. Yes, writer director David Twohy took a script he was hired to write for this sequel, re-dressed and tweaked it, and thus we had Pitch Black. People like Near Dark co-writer Eric Red wrote a few drafts, acclaimed sci fi author William Gibson wrote a few drafts, there were drafts that had Ripley, drafts that didn’t, drafts that had Hicks and Bishop going to the xenomorph home world, some that focused on entirely new characters, and I’m sure there’s probably a trashed draft of just the words ‘fuck you!’ written over and over by some poor writer having to go back and rewrite his script again because the studio couldn’t make up its mind. They also hired directors, as in plural because both quit at some point, and again, THEY STILL HAD NO SOLID SCRIPT! Ok, that’s not quite true of second director Vincent Ward. He had an idea that the studio apparently at some point liked, and to be fair, a fair amount of the plot elements from it remain in the final film. However, at some point while they were dealing with him, and they were starting to build sets by this point, the studio wanted all kinds of changes and thus in frustration Ward quit and they had to find someone else to handle this crazy train that was fast derailing. That was David Fincher. Fincher, if you haven’t heard, is a truly amazing talent and is one of the best filmmakers we have currently working in the world with amazing works like Se7en, Fight Club and The Social Network. This was his feature film debut, and why he still makes films baffles me. The studio was hounding him the whole time, they were always asking for changes, to get the film finished faster despite that, and they were sending producers in to reinforce these other things, all because they needed the neon lit helipad for their... ok, I’m done with the yacht metaphor, but the point is they weren’t out to make a film, they were out to make a profit. As you can imagine, David Fincher’s job was nothing short an act of masochism just by showing up for work everyday having to deal with the new notes from the producers. And what was the result? A domestic gross that only gave them five million dollars in profit, and the only big money coming from overseas to make up for it. Those that want comparison: Alien grossed around 70 million in pure profit DOMESTICALLY and Aliens grossed about the same, despite the budget being twice the size of movie one. That’s BEFORE you add the overseas numbers to get HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS.
This brings up a point that I’d like to talk about for movies in general, but I’d rather save that for an editorial and just briefly discuss the major bullet points. A lot of the times, hindsight makes us a lot angrier than we should probably be, especially on things like studio decisions that affect entire films. It usually comes up with people that have seen a far superior director’s cut and are raging about why it was changed for theatrical release and all that jazz. And you know what? It makes me angry too, I firmly believe that the studio choice to add a useless voice over to Blade Runner was a terrible idea and probably hurt that movie’s chances to succeed, or that the Love Conquers All Version of Brazil is a boil from the darkest corner of Satan’s ass, but when I really look at some of these things I have to sigh and shake my head because I see that in a way the producers were sort of right. Hollywood is a business, sleek awesome looking movies cost money, and the bigger the production, the bigger the risk. Were these people creatively right? No! These were terrible ideas! But at the same time, were they completely wrong for thinking something might not play well and they may end up in financial ruin? Yes. Hell, Terry Gilliam actually won a campaign to keep the studio from releasing that version of Brazil and his cut STILL flopped on arrival and only became profitable thanks to a cult following of fans that adore it. However, this wasn’t just a studio imposing a change on something part way through, or wanting the ending reshot. (Both of which happened anyway.) This was a studio that was micro managing the thing every step of the way, when they had no idea what they actually wanted to do in the first place.
And it shows in the finished product. I may have rambled about the studio interference but it is at the core of a lot of the problems with this movie. The story is basically non-existent being merely a retread of the first film with a new cast and a different location. The characters, save Ripley, are all thin and flat only ever standing out thanks to the disturbingly high caliber of the actors involved (Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Pete Postlethwaite, Charles S Dutton). The alien really has no menace due to being seen far more than before. The opening is insulting to the fans that grew to love the characters from the previous movies that were killed.
This is all a shame because a lot of the actual components that make up the film are good by themselves. For example, I think some of the sound design is very well done. Elliot Goldenthal’s score is appropriately morose fitting the movie’s attempted tone (and overall feeling it leaves you with so I guess mission accomplished there.) Terry Rawlings returned to edit the movie, and probably needed a stiff drink while doing so, and while the overall film is still a turd, it’s a well put together turd in spots. And Fincher’s choices as a director indicate the talent he later proved in far less torturous productions.
But to me most criminal of all things done in this movie, it’s the ruination of Ripley’s character development from the previous movie. Part of the point of Newt’s character was that she and Ripley were both orphans in a way thanks to the xenomorphs, Ripley because it caused her to be lost in the vacuum of space and Newt because they killed her parents. Through the course of the film they both grow a bond with each other resulting Ripley basically adopting her and because of this they were able to together put the nightmare behind them. It was a good piece of character development because Ripley still had her chances to be badass, but also got to have more depth added with essentially being a single mother by movie’s end. Then in this movie, all that is pretty much ruined by killing newt in the opening credits. Yes, it is carried over sort of by having Ripley mourn her death but it’s basically tossed aside afterwards and Newt may as well have not existed. Hell, Michael Biehn hated the idea of killing everyone right away so much he refused to give them rights to use his likeness unless they paid him just as much for that as he had for being in Aliens.
I get it, it’s meant to take Ripley into a new state of mind and take away everything she had left to make it easier for her to commit suicide to get rid of the xenomorph and thematically for the sake of the film’s apocalyptic theme. That doesn’t change the fact that it comes off as a middle finger to the fans of the franchise that liked the end of the last movie. It makes it hardly worth it to talk about RIpley’s character because all they have her do the whole movie is want to die, and by the end so do a lot of the audience.
This movie isn’t scary it’s just depressing. It had some moments of worth but it never comes together and it does so much about ruining things from the last movie that as a fan I just can’t deal with it. The re-edited version is a bit of an improvement thanks to a couple things but the big problems are still there. The movie is a meandering mess and it should come as no surprise that David Fincher has done everything he can to separate himself from it, refusing any involvement in the DVD special edition. And I honestly can’t recommend this outside general curiosity, and next time things are only going to get worse.
Both versions:
1 out of 5
Friday, September 7, 2012
Alien Retrospective Part 2: Aliens
Sequels are a very very muddy territory to walk into. I mean really think about this, how many different kinds of sequels are there out there? You have the most obvious in direct sequels, (Back to the Future 2, Star Trek 2 [KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!] etc.) and then you have spiritual sequels (Casino). But let’s not forget things like sequels that are only sequels because they take place in the same universe (Soldier, the new Marvel movie universe, and pretty much all of Kevin Smith’s filmography.) and then you have sequels that have nothing to do with the original save maybe a character or something like that (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.) After all that, you then have the terrible, though sadly mostly true stereotype that sequels at most are meh-ish versions of the previous movies or just outright suck. The problem with that is that you then also have those sequels that aren’t only good, but they leave the first one in the dust with how great they are. Terminator 2:Judgment Day, The Dark Knight, the above mentioned Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan and of course the grand kahuna of all great sequels The Empire Strikes Back. The point of all this rambling is that sequels are tricky tricky things to pull off, and basically as a viewer, a sequel is like playing the movie version of russian roulette. You have five chances of it being great, good, ok, meh or bad, but there is still that one chance that it will shoot you in the face with terrible.
Thus we come to Aliens. Surprising no one now, but a bit of a shocker then, the first Alien was vastly successful, and almost immediately sequel talks began. Ridley Scott was offered the reigns once again, but he was already working on Blade Runner, and for a long time the project pretty much languished until 1983ish where it first started to take off, and it was all thanks to Dino De Laurentiis being a bit of a dick. No really, here’s the story: James Cameron was finished with and had been shopping around the script for his film The Terminator. It was getting a lot of buzz around it and the movie was about to go into production, the cast was chosen and ready, everything. But then De laurentiis halted it by using a clause in Schwarzenegger’s contract to pre-empt the massive Austrian to star in the mostly abysmal Conan The Destroyer, all because he knew that The Terminator would likely launch Arnold into the stratosphere (you know, like it ended up doing.) and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try to do it first with another Conan movie. So for about six months Cameron was all set to go on a movie, that had lost the title character, and he didn’t have the time to even film another small project in the meantime, so what was he to do? He took a writing assignment, for the sequel to Alien. Yes, before he was even shooting his second movie (First movie was Piranha 2:The Spawning, but he doesn’t want you to know that.) he was already writing his third. By the time that draft was finished, he was able to go and shoot his super awesome sci fi action piece, and then one of the most unheard of things in hollywood happened: The producers loved his script so much, they sat on it until they could see how he stacked up as a director with The Terminator, and if that was a hit he’d direct their project too. Guess what happened? So Cameron and company headed to London and brought Terminator effects guru Stan Winston with them, for what was from most accounts a trying shoot due to the cultural differences between the American director and the British crew, mostly relating to things like the schedule for breaks, apparently tea time became the bane of Cameron’s life at this point, and the fact that a lot of the crew had a lot of loyalty to Ridley Scott’s film and they weren’t interested in the sequel. The interviews on the two disk special edition DVD go into much more detail, but all in all the shoot was an endurance test of massive proportions. But the love and care is on the screen, not the anger and frustration.
Yes Aliens falls into that sequel category of “just as good, if not better than the original”. The reason relies a lot in the angle Cameron took with his script. His thought was that we’d seen how some random spaceship crew had handled this menacing creature, but now we know what to expect from them, we can plan for it and oh I don’t know, send in a squad of space marines armed to the teeth? I mean, this would be like a cakewalk for them, with time afterward for a few drinks and a round of poker to go with. But that’s the beauty of it, he knows going in that the only way to terrify you again, while not being a retread is to up the ante, and then have the aliens, now known as xenomorphs, call the bluff. Things go horribly wrong and most of the squad is wiped out and the drop ship to the main vessel is destroyed, and our heroes are stuck on a planet where LITERALLY EVERY LIVING THING WANTS TO KILL THEM.
But let’s backtrack a bit, what about tying things up from the first movie? Well, it’s 57 years in the future and Ripley (ok, this is the last chance to avoid spoilers for the first film) as the sole survivor of the Nostromo was stranded in space on the ships life boat, is now utterly alone and everything she knew is long gone. The planet that they explored in the first movie has actually been colonized for crying out loud. No one believes her about the xenomorph, and it pretty much feels like life is one endless pile of “I hate you!” for Lt. Ellen Ripley. (... hmmm, well given how the other sequels turned out....) But then something strange happens, the communications with the colony stop, and they don’t want to rule out the possibility of Ripley’s story, asking her to go along as a consultant if that ends up being the case.
The movie has numerous strengths. Much like it’s predecessor it’s a master of atmosphere, giving us a much brighter view of the colony before the xenomorphs show up, and then turning the lights out to reveal ominous shadows and twisted metal corridors. The different perspective given when we go into the marine’s personal cameras two adds a jarring tension due to the drop in picture quality. And once we go into the alien lair, all bets are off. Most surprising about this atmosphere is how well it’s kept when we need to be pulled out and let the marines unload on things, even in those situations we’re on the edge of our seat because Cameron knows where to put the camera, the monsters, and where to have the marine firing to build the suspense, without diminishing the action.
Not to mention that all the actors involved are so game for this. Of course everyone talks about how well Sigourney Weaver returns to the role of Ripley (she was nominated for an oscar for this performance after all.) but I know I’m not alone in naming my favorite character as Bill Paxton’s Hudson, because he’s hilarious and badass at the same time. Michael Biehn’s Hicks is also great as the corporal turned squad leader, and of course you have Jenette Goldstein as the baddest of the badass Vasquez. All rounded out by first timer Carrie Henn as the reminder that sometimes child actors CAN be good.
Plus, while aspects of the original alien concept are removed or simplified for the sake of there being too many needed to do all the finer work they could do on just one, it still keeps enough of the design to be instantly familiar and also adds a nice aspect to their life cycle in the form of the alien queen, who was a technical marvel in and of herself, giving us one of the greatest fight scenes ever committed to film in the film’s climax. Stan Winston really went above and beyond as he normally does to give us great work and it really shines on screen with all the different elements and actions we never got to see the various stages of the xenomorph do in the first film (face huggers walking across the floor, more animated chest burster etc.) adding more intrigue and depth to the creatures without having to bog us down with exposition dialogue.
But the big question here is which version should you watch? Well, I honestly think both version of the film are great, they’re solid 5 out of 5 material, but the special edition version is the better one. It adds a couple subplot that were cut for time, and especially a crucial scene where we see Ripley react to news that her daughter had died of old age while she was drifting in the void of space. It’s honestly a much more solid film, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the theatrical film was still great.
Overall Aliens is what I would love all sequels to be. It’s a great continuation of the story, without suffering the staleness of a retread. It goes bigger, but not in an obvious or half hearted way. And it remembers that nostalgia for the first film can only get you so far, you still have to be a GOOD movie too.
Both Versions: 5 out of 5
Next time, the dark times begin with Alien 3
Thus we come to Aliens. Surprising no one now, but a bit of a shocker then, the first Alien was vastly successful, and almost immediately sequel talks began. Ridley Scott was offered the reigns once again, but he was already working on Blade Runner, and for a long time the project pretty much languished until 1983ish where it first started to take off, and it was all thanks to Dino De Laurentiis being a bit of a dick. No really, here’s the story: James Cameron was finished with and had been shopping around the script for his film The Terminator. It was getting a lot of buzz around it and the movie was about to go into production, the cast was chosen and ready, everything. But then De laurentiis halted it by using a clause in Schwarzenegger’s contract to pre-empt the massive Austrian to star in the mostly abysmal Conan The Destroyer, all because he knew that The Terminator would likely launch Arnold into the stratosphere (you know, like it ended up doing.) and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try to do it first with another Conan movie. So for about six months Cameron was all set to go on a movie, that had lost the title character, and he didn’t have the time to even film another small project in the meantime, so what was he to do? He took a writing assignment, for the sequel to Alien. Yes, before he was even shooting his second movie (First movie was Piranha 2:The Spawning, but he doesn’t want you to know that.) he was already writing his third. By the time that draft was finished, he was able to go and shoot his super awesome sci fi action piece, and then one of the most unheard of things in hollywood happened: The producers loved his script so much, they sat on it until they could see how he stacked up as a director with The Terminator, and if that was a hit he’d direct their project too. Guess what happened? So Cameron and company headed to London and brought Terminator effects guru Stan Winston with them, for what was from most accounts a trying shoot due to the cultural differences between the American director and the British crew, mostly relating to things like the schedule for breaks, apparently tea time became the bane of Cameron’s life at this point, and the fact that a lot of the crew had a lot of loyalty to Ridley Scott’s film and they weren’t interested in the sequel. The interviews on the two disk special edition DVD go into much more detail, but all in all the shoot was an endurance test of massive proportions. But the love and care is on the screen, not the anger and frustration.
Yes Aliens falls into that sequel category of “just as good, if not better than the original”. The reason relies a lot in the angle Cameron took with his script. His thought was that we’d seen how some random spaceship crew had handled this menacing creature, but now we know what to expect from them, we can plan for it and oh I don’t know, send in a squad of space marines armed to the teeth? I mean, this would be like a cakewalk for them, with time afterward for a few drinks and a round of poker to go with. But that’s the beauty of it, he knows going in that the only way to terrify you again, while not being a retread is to up the ante, and then have the aliens, now known as xenomorphs, call the bluff. Things go horribly wrong and most of the squad is wiped out and the drop ship to the main vessel is destroyed, and our heroes are stuck on a planet where LITERALLY EVERY LIVING THING WANTS TO KILL THEM.
But let’s backtrack a bit, what about tying things up from the first movie? Well, it’s 57 years in the future and Ripley (ok, this is the last chance to avoid spoilers for the first film) as the sole survivor of the Nostromo was stranded in space on the ships life boat, is now utterly alone and everything she knew is long gone. The planet that they explored in the first movie has actually been colonized for crying out loud. No one believes her about the xenomorph, and it pretty much feels like life is one endless pile of “I hate you!” for Lt. Ellen Ripley. (... hmmm, well given how the other sequels turned out....) But then something strange happens, the communications with the colony stop, and they don’t want to rule out the possibility of Ripley’s story, asking her to go along as a consultant if that ends up being the case.
The movie has numerous strengths. Much like it’s predecessor it’s a master of atmosphere, giving us a much brighter view of the colony before the xenomorphs show up, and then turning the lights out to reveal ominous shadows and twisted metal corridors. The different perspective given when we go into the marine’s personal cameras two adds a jarring tension due to the drop in picture quality. And once we go into the alien lair, all bets are off. Most surprising about this atmosphere is how well it’s kept when we need to be pulled out and let the marines unload on things, even in those situations we’re on the edge of our seat because Cameron knows where to put the camera, the monsters, and where to have the marine firing to build the suspense, without diminishing the action.
Not to mention that all the actors involved are so game for this. Of course everyone talks about how well Sigourney Weaver returns to the role of Ripley (she was nominated for an oscar for this performance after all.) but I know I’m not alone in naming my favorite character as Bill Paxton’s Hudson, because he’s hilarious and badass at the same time. Michael Biehn’s Hicks is also great as the corporal turned squad leader, and of course you have Jenette Goldstein as the baddest of the badass Vasquez. All rounded out by first timer Carrie Henn as the reminder that sometimes child actors CAN be good.
Plus, while aspects of the original alien concept are removed or simplified for the sake of there being too many needed to do all the finer work they could do on just one, it still keeps enough of the design to be instantly familiar and also adds a nice aspect to their life cycle in the form of the alien queen, who was a technical marvel in and of herself, giving us one of the greatest fight scenes ever committed to film in the film’s climax. Stan Winston really went above and beyond as he normally does to give us great work and it really shines on screen with all the different elements and actions we never got to see the various stages of the xenomorph do in the first film (face huggers walking across the floor, more animated chest burster etc.) adding more intrigue and depth to the creatures without having to bog us down with exposition dialogue.
But the big question here is which version should you watch? Well, I honestly think both version of the film are great, they’re solid 5 out of 5 material, but the special edition version is the better one. It adds a couple subplot that were cut for time, and especially a crucial scene where we see Ripley react to news that her daughter had died of old age while she was drifting in the void of space. It’s honestly a much more solid film, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the theatrical film was still great.
Overall Aliens is what I would love all sequels to be. It’s a great continuation of the story, without suffering the staleness of a retread. It goes bigger, but not in an obvious or half hearted way. And it remembers that nostalgia for the first film can only get you so far, you still have to be a GOOD movie too.
Both Versions: 5 out of 5
Next time, the dark times begin with Alien 3
Friday, August 17, 2012
Alien Saga Retrospective Part 1: Alien
Writing a traditional review of Alien seems almost pointless. This is one of the biggest franchises in not just science fiction, but movies in general. I don’t think there is anyone that hasn’t at least heard of it, if not seen at least one of the films. The accolades this movie has achieved from oscars and slews of other awards, numerous shining reviews at the time of its release and today, not to mention many sci fi fans naming it as one of their all time favorites. So what can i add? I mean, when I write a review here, I try to at least make it something that represents my specific feelings towards something and if you should go see it. But this? This is a movie that’s been reviewed, analyzed and studied for 30+ years, and it creates a certain challenge when I’m trying to review it and not sound redundant.
Thankfully, there’s an answer. What I plan to do is not only give my thought on the film, I will talk a bit about its history and as well as compare and contrast the different versions of it. Yes, thanks to the 2003 quadrilogy boxed set, each film has two versions; The regular theatrical cut and a special extended or director’s cut. I will look at both and give my thoughts and give each a separate score and which gets my overall recommendation. While I realize that this is a movie most people have already seen, I am still working off the principle of not wanting to spoil good movies, and so I will try not to give too many things away if I can avoid it. (bad movies can suck it though.) So now, with all this aside, let’s look at the movie that started it all back in 1979: Alien
Alien’s behind the scenes history is some of the most intriguing when you actually hear it, and the fact that it even got made in the capacity that it did is almost a miracle. It first started as an idea by screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. O’Bannon had made a film during his last year at USC with John Carpenter called Dark Star, it was pretty much their final project but sparked some interest from a distributor so they expanded it into a full movie. It was not a very successful film, but it was something to get them noticed, but O’Bannon wasn’t quite satisfied with it. He had a whole sequence where an astronaut, (played by himself) had to chase after and fight off a goofy looking alien creature in the form of a painted beach ball. This worked fine in Dark Star which was a bit of a dark comedy, but he always felt like the movie would have worked better as a horror film, that scene in particular. So he started writing Alien with his friend Ron Shusett, who gave him the idea for the film’s infamous chest-burster scene. The idea was that a group of astronauts would wake up from hyper sleep to find a distress signal of a ship that was long ago destroyed and in there investigation an alien lifeform gets on board, killing the crew off one by one. It was a good enough idea for a young film school graduate, it’s a solid enough idea and could make for a fun movie.
However, O’Bannon was then briefly involved with one of movie history’s most notoriously failed projects, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. While it was a rather wasted trip with that project finally imploded, O’Bannon did meet up with one Hans Rudulof (H.R.) Giger, whose art work he felt was the perfect thing for the creature in the movie he was writing and at that point planning on directing.
So, once back in the states he finally polished off the last of the script for the film and he and Shusett started handing the script around to various studios and actually almost started rolling cameras on the movie with Roger Corman, the king of the low budget, and his studio. However, the script ended up in the hands of David Giler, Gordon Carroll and Walter Hill of Brandywine films who liked it, through some re-writes and pushing along got it into the hands of 20th century fox, who after the success of Star Wars were putting the green light on anything they had that involve outer space in some way. Eventually it ended up in the hands of RIdley Scott which was where the movie finally had cameras roll and the rest is history.
Ok, that out of the way how did this not uncommon and yet strangely round about origin end up as a finished film? Well, to bring up the obvious, the movie is great. It has a solid enough premise, and went with the bold choice of having the film’s main hero be a woman, something that is far more common today thanks to this film’s success. So where do I start? What is it that makes this movie work so well and still hold up today? Atmosphere, this movie is dripping in it.
There is never a single moment in this movie that doesn’t have something going on for it. From its cold and unnerving opening where the ship looks almost abandoned, to the heart pounding climax. It’s a hard thing to do in a movie at all, let alone in a thriller where you have to keep the movie going while at the same time keeping the urgency up, but damned if Alien doesn’t do it amazingly well. That’s the movie’s major strength, and a lot of it I feel comes from the fact that it was a movie that didn’t have a single central voice calling the shots. Yes, a lot of the thanks needs to go to Ridley Scott for numerous touches that give the movie it’s pulse, but just as much needs to go to cinematographer Derek Vanlint who lights and frames the movie in such a pitch perfect way it seems almost like breathing for him and of course editor Terry Rawlings who seriously makes the movie.
I feel that’s the film’s greatest technical strengths. None of the scene never outwear their welcome, nor does the movie itself ever feel like it’s lagging. Rather slowly sucking the audience in and slowly building the intensity with how fast paced the final moments of the movie are. Rawlings skillfully handles everything with the touch of a master. Which is even more surprising when you find out that this was one of his earliest credits in the position.
And of course the cast must be mentioned for all they add. Everyone does a great job, and this is no big surprise since it’s entirely a cast of up and coming future A listers. But of course the big star launched that we should look at is Sigourney Weaver. This was not exactly Weaver’s first movie, but it was her first starring role and one of the things that everyone likes to talk about is how badass the character of Ripley is, which I think is a little odd if we just go by the first movie.
One of the things I always found most interesting about the movie is that Ripley just feels like a natural character. In fact it’s not even clear that she’s the heroine until the end of the second act when she has to take command. The performance is very natural, and it a performance of a person that is in serious danger that only keeps getting worse with each passing moment. Weaver imparts so much to the character with minimal dialogue and give this character a great amount of presence. Even while the movie was giving off a more ensemble feel at the start, Ripley has something about her that makes her stand out, all thanks to Weaver.
But what’s a hero without a villain? In this movie we are first introduced to the vicious xenomorphs. The design is fantastic, it’s one of the few alien monster designs that truly feel like something totally foreign, but at the same time feels hauntingly familiar. It’s elongated head and gnashing teeth with the inner mouth are just creepy and made even more so by the fact that the main body actually resembles a humanoid, giving us the unease of the idea of a body perverted. Each of the creature’s various life cycle stages all feel unique and complement each other as they never feel like clash.
I could write a book about this movie, I really do love it quite dearly, but at the same time I know that there are already so many already written and I don’t want to ramble too much. But I said there were two versions, and I’ve been talking about the theatrical cut. So how’s the director’s cut? Well to be honest, it hardly feel worth mentioning. It’s not that it makes the movie terrible, but when the movie was already so good, and so well balanced that it should have just been left as is. The movie had clearly left those scenes out for a reason, they weren’t needed and added to that the amount of retooling required to make them fit makes a lot of the film feel forced, which is sad. It’s nice to see how these scenes would have been in the movie, but that’s it. Now some may say that I’m being harsh and that I shouldn’t rain on the fact that a director got to have his version finally released, but that’s the joke, Scott prefered cut is the 1979 theatrical cut. Not kidding, in the insert included with the special edition dvd in the boxed set, he flat out says so:
“... I felt the original cut of Alien was perfect. I still feel that way.”
So to state the blatantly obvious, Alien get a big hell yes watch it from me. It’s a great piece of filmmaking and science fiction, and not very many of those seem to come out anymore. If you haven’t seen and think you’d want to, go for it.
Theatrical cut: 5 out of 5
Extended/Director’s cut: 4 out of 5
Next time, we look at how the franchise took off like a wild fire with the 1986 sequel, Aliens.
Thankfully, there’s an answer. What I plan to do is not only give my thought on the film, I will talk a bit about its history and as well as compare and contrast the different versions of it. Yes, thanks to the 2003 quadrilogy boxed set, each film has two versions; The regular theatrical cut and a special extended or director’s cut. I will look at both and give my thoughts and give each a separate score and which gets my overall recommendation. While I realize that this is a movie most people have already seen, I am still working off the principle of not wanting to spoil good movies, and so I will try not to give too many things away if I can avoid it. (bad movies can suck it though.) So now, with all this aside, let’s look at the movie that started it all back in 1979: Alien
Alien’s behind the scenes history is some of the most intriguing when you actually hear it, and the fact that it even got made in the capacity that it did is almost a miracle. It first started as an idea by screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. O’Bannon had made a film during his last year at USC with John Carpenter called Dark Star, it was pretty much their final project but sparked some interest from a distributor so they expanded it into a full movie. It was not a very successful film, but it was something to get them noticed, but O’Bannon wasn’t quite satisfied with it. He had a whole sequence where an astronaut, (played by himself) had to chase after and fight off a goofy looking alien creature in the form of a painted beach ball. This worked fine in Dark Star which was a bit of a dark comedy, but he always felt like the movie would have worked better as a horror film, that scene in particular. So he started writing Alien with his friend Ron Shusett, who gave him the idea for the film’s infamous chest-burster scene. The idea was that a group of astronauts would wake up from hyper sleep to find a distress signal of a ship that was long ago destroyed and in there investigation an alien lifeform gets on board, killing the crew off one by one. It was a good enough idea for a young film school graduate, it’s a solid enough idea and could make for a fun movie.
However, O’Bannon was then briefly involved with one of movie history’s most notoriously failed projects, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. While it was a rather wasted trip with that project finally imploded, O’Bannon did meet up with one Hans Rudulof (H.R.) Giger, whose art work he felt was the perfect thing for the creature in the movie he was writing and at that point planning on directing.
So, once back in the states he finally polished off the last of the script for the film and he and Shusett started handing the script around to various studios and actually almost started rolling cameras on the movie with Roger Corman, the king of the low budget, and his studio. However, the script ended up in the hands of David Giler, Gordon Carroll and Walter Hill of Brandywine films who liked it, through some re-writes and pushing along got it into the hands of 20th century fox, who after the success of Star Wars were putting the green light on anything they had that involve outer space in some way. Eventually it ended up in the hands of RIdley Scott which was where the movie finally had cameras roll and the rest is history.
Ok, that out of the way how did this not uncommon and yet strangely round about origin end up as a finished film? Well, to bring up the obvious, the movie is great. It has a solid enough premise, and went with the bold choice of having the film’s main hero be a woman, something that is far more common today thanks to this film’s success. So where do I start? What is it that makes this movie work so well and still hold up today? Atmosphere, this movie is dripping in it.
There is never a single moment in this movie that doesn’t have something going on for it. From its cold and unnerving opening where the ship looks almost abandoned, to the heart pounding climax. It’s a hard thing to do in a movie at all, let alone in a thriller where you have to keep the movie going while at the same time keeping the urgency up, but damned if Alien doesn’t do it amazingly well. That’s the movie’s major strength, and a lot of it I feel comes from the fact that it was a movie that didn’t have a single central voice calling the shots. Yes, a lot of the thanks needs to go to Ridley Scott for numerous touches that give the movie it’s pulse, but just as much needs to go to cinematographer Derek Vanlint who lights and frames the movie in such a pitch perfect way it seems almost like breathing for him and of course editor Terry Rawlings who seriously makes the movie.
I feel that’s the film’s greatest technical strengths. None of the scene never outwear their welcome, nor does the movie itself ever feel like it’s lagging. Rather slowly sucking the audience in and slowly building the intensity with how fast paced the final moments of the movie are. Rawlings skillfully handles everything with the touch of a master. Which is even more surprising when you find out that this was one of his earliest credits in the position.
And of course the cast must be mentioned for all they add. Everyone does a great job, and this is no big surprise since it’s entirely a cast of up and coming future A listers. But of course the big star launched that we should look at is Sigourney Weaver. This was not exactly Weaver’s first movie, but it was her first starring role and one of the things that everyone likes to talk about is how badass the character of Ripley is, which I think is a little odd if we just go by the first movie.
One of the things I always found most interesting about the movie is that Ripley just feels like a natural character. In fact it’s not even clear that she’s the heroine until the end of the second act when she has to take command. The performance is very natural, and it a performance of a person that is in serious danger that only keeps getting worse with each passing moment. Weaver imparts so much to the character with minimal dialogue and give this character a great amount of presence. Even while the movie was giving off a more ensemble feel at the start, Ripley has something about her that makes her stand out, all thanks to Weaver.
But what’s a hero without a villain? In this movie we are first introduced to the vicious xenomorphs. The design is fantastic, it’s one of the few alien monster designs that truly feel like something totally foreign, but at the same time feels hauntingly familiar. It’s elongated head and gnashing teeth with the inner mouth are just creepy and made even more so by the fact that the main body actually resembles a humanoid, giving us the unease of the idea of a body perverted. Each of the creature’s various life cycle stages all feel unique and complement each other as they never feel like clash.
I could write a book about this movie, I really do love it quite dearly, but at the same time I know that there are already so many already written and I don’t want to ramble too much. But I said there were two versions, and I’ve been talking about the theatrical cut. So how’s the director’s cut? Well to be honest, it hardly feel worth mentioning. It’s not that it makes the movie terrible, but when the movie was already so good, and so well balanced that it should have just been left as is. The movie had clearly left those scenes out for a reason, they weren’t needed and added to that the amount of retooling required to make them fit makes a lot of the film feel forced, which is sad. It’s nice to see how these scenes would have been in the movie, but that’s it. Now some may say that I’m being harsh and that I shouldn’t rain on the fact that a director got to have his version finally released, but that’s the joke, Scott prefered cut is the 1979 theatrical cut. Not kidding, in the insert included with the special edition dvd in the boxed set, he flat out says so:
“... I felt the original cut of Alien was perfect. I still feel that way.”
So to state the blatantly obvious, Alien get a big hell yes watch it from me. It’s a great piece of filmmaking and science fiction, and not very many of those seem to come out anymore. If you haven’t seen and think you’d want to, go for it.
Theatrical cut: 5 out of 5
Extended/Director’s cut: 4 out of 5
Next time, we look at how the franchise took off like a wild fire with the 1986 sequel, Aliens.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Prometheus
Ridley Scott. I’d say something like “there’s not a more misunderstood genius” or “a sage of the medium of film” but that’d be a lie. Scott is a filmmaker that has made some great movies and also some very forgettable ones too. It’s not that Scott really has tangible strengths or weakness, it’s rather more that his weak films stand out considerably when you see the stronger works he’s done. Granted I’m one of the weird people that like his more low key and personal movies like “A Good Year” (a actually quite fun movie) or “Matchstick Men” (fix that if you haven’t seen it.) but for the most part Scott seems to get the most praise when he does big, world building type projects, like one of his most praised works “Blade Runner”. Not to mention that things like “G.I. Jane” or “White Squall” are just mediocre and forgettable. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say he’s polarizing, he’s just a fairly talented film maker with great movies and not so great movies dotted through his resume. One example of his great movies is actually only his second movie and it is one of the high water marks of the sci fi genre, “Alien”.
I love this movie. I have such love for this movie that my girlfriend might get jealous. It’s a pitch perfect example of atmosphere, the pacing is tight and well done, the acting superb and I could seriously go on and on and on about this movies style, production history, and the people involved, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I”m here to talk about “Prometheus”, one of the most anticipated sci fi movies in a very long time. Why you ask? Aside from the simple fact that Ridley Scott is making a more than welcome return to the sci fi genre, it’s also a prequel to “Alien”. Yes, you read that correctly, prequel.
If you aren’t a die hard sci fi fan, then you are blissfully unaware of how ice cold the word ‘prequel’ renders the fan boy’s blood cold these days, largely thanks to one George Lucas. In general the idea of a prequel is flawed for several reasons, but more specifically if it takes place before the previous film, either everyone makes it out alive, or no one does thus tension is forever lost. Plus, in sitting down to try and think of prequels that have worked before the only one I could think of was “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. Yes, most people think of it as a sequel, but if you actually pay attention to the dates at the start, it takes place before “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. And that’s it, the only other ones that exist are the trilogy of which WE DO NOT SPEAK! Also that abortion of a lazy cash in that was the “The Thing” remake masquerading as prequel. So needless to say, the tension was high on this one, not helped for most fans by some of the news coming from the set. Now, I’m one that really prefers to NOT read news from the sets of big productions because I like to be surprised, and I like to try (this is the keyword here, TRY) to go in with an open mind to these things.
So how was “Prometheus”? Excellent. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch and I would debate that no such thing actually exists, but “Prometheus” is a damn well crafted movie. Taking place in the not too distant future, some scientist have discovered evidence that in ancient times mankind was visited by extraterrestrial beings that may have also been our progenitors. So with a star map in hand they head out to a distant planet to try and see if they can make contact. That’s really the big idea, they go looking for “god”. However on arrival, they discover some dark and terrifying secrets, and things just get worse from there.
The biggest thing in this movie’s favor is Scott’s really firm grasp of tone and atmosphere. There are so many moments in this movie that are just giving you a big holy shit money shot and the man knows where and how to place the camera to get exactly the right reaction out of the audience. That shot you see in the trailer of the room with the giant face? Even when you know what it looks like, it’s something to behold when it’s revealed in the movie. Plus, the contrast between their ship Prometheus and the alien planet well nicely done. This is assisted by some stellar cinematography that truly lets the production design shine and giving fans of the first film a very nice treat with how meticulous they recreated some of the sets.
The performances are all great with the stand out being Michael Fassbender who promptly walks away with the movie the moment he shows up as the android, but mention must also be made of Charlize Theron as the corporate stooge that tagged along for the trip and Noomi Rapace is very engaging as the scientist in charge of the mission.
And thus we come to the real meat of why I loved this movie so much, the story. Now, from reading/watching other reviews and discussing this with others that have seen the film, many people are hyper focused on the fact that while it’s an alien prequel it seems to focus more on was originally a B story that Scott flipped around to the main plot and made the alien prequel stuff the B plot. Honestly, this was part of what made it a good prequel. Just think for a moment folks, the movie was originally pitched as a straightforward alien prequel, how would that have been better? The fact that this movie has the whole looking for our creator premise makes it more interesting with the reveal of the alien xenomorphs as a great twist/perk to the whole idea. Just think about this, these people are going searching for answers, they are literally looking for GOD, and that would have been the B story. No, not just the B Story, the B story in a monster movie, that would have probably ended up looking like a monster movie we’ve already seen. The fact that it’s a big idea that explored throughout the narrative makes the film itself interesting and the fact that it’s the reveal of the origin of the aliens works better for it. Plus, it really likes to take a show don’t tell approach to a lot of the ideas and moments that it explores, which I like because while narrative hand holding is sometimes a good and even necessary thing, it can often times feel invasive or unnatural, alien if you will. The whole idea of the movie is that they went searching for the answers to some big questions, how would it make the movie better to just straight up tell them that the answer to all life is 42? Ok, that would actually be awesome, but I have a point here. The point is that there are always going to be questions, and that’s a good thing. Humans are just naturally curious creatures and we will never be satisfied with what we know. I know so much trivia about my favorite movies, but I’m always looking for more. Some people go looking for bigfoot because that want to know for sure that it does or doesn’t exist, philosophers are constantly examining and debating the point of life, but what happens then? There’s nothing wrong with searching for knowledge, hell I honestly think things would be better if more people did it, but what happens when we know everything? I try not to think about it.
Look I’m not going to spoil any more of the movie, you all should watch it. it’s a great movie and it has some nice well done ideas in it and it’s seriously the best movie connected to “Alien” since 1986. Give it a watch.
5 things you shouldn’t look for the answers of. out of 5
You know, writing this reminded me how interesting the whole Alien franchise, good and bad, is to look like, and I’m in the mood to revisit it So for the next month we’ll take a look at the other four films, starting where it all began. Alien.
I love this movie. I have such love for this movie that my girlfriend might get jealous. It’s a pitch perfect example of atmosphere, the pacing is tight and well done, the acting superb and I could seriously go on and on and on about this movies style, production history, and the people involved, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I”m here to talk about “Prometheus”, one of the most anticipated sci fi movies in a very long time. Why you ask? Aside from the simple fact that Ridley Scott is making a more than welcome return to the sci fi genre, it’s also a prequel to “Alien”. Yes, you read that correctly, prequel.
If you aren’t a die hard sci fi fan, then you are blissfully unaware of how ice cold the word ‘prequel’ renders the fan boy’s blood cold these days, largely thanks to one George Lucas. In general the idea of a prequel is flawed for several reasons, but more specifically if it takes place before the previous film, either everyone makes it out alive, or no one does thus tension is forever lost. Plus, in sitting down to try and think of prequels that have worked before the only one I could think of was “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. Yes, most people think of it as a sequel, but if you actually pay attention to the dates at the start, it takes place before “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. And that’s it, the only other ones that exist are the trilogy of which WE DO NOT SPEAK! Also that abortion of a lazy cash in that was the “The Thing” remake masquerading as prequel. So needless to say, the tension was high on this one, not helped for most fans by some of the news coming from the set. Now, I’m one that really prefers to NOT read news from the sets of big productions because I like to be surprised, and I like to try (this is the keyword here, TRY) to go in with an open mind to these things.
So how was “Prometheus”? Excellent. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch and I would debate that no such thing actually exists, but “Prometheus” is a damn well crafted movie. Taking place in the not too distant future, some scientist have discovered evidence that in ancient times mankind was visited by extraterrestrial beings that may have also been our progenitors. So with a star map in hand they head out to a distant planet to try and see if they can make contact. That’s really the big idea, they go looking for “god”. However on arrival, they discover some dark and terrifying secrets, and things just get worse from there.
The biggest thing in this movie’s favor is Scott’s really firm grasp of tone and atmosphere. There are so many moments in this movie that are just giving you a big holy shit money shot and the man knows where and how to place the camera to get exactly the right reaction out of the audience. That shot you see in the trailer of the room with the giant face? Even when you know what it looks like, it’s something to behold when it’s revealed in the movie. Plus, the contrast between their ship Prometheus and the alien planet well nicely done. This is assisted by some stellar cinematography that truly lets the production design shine and giving fans of the first film a very nice treat with how meticulous they recreated some of the sets.
The performances are all great with the stand out being Michael Fassbender who promptly walks away with the movie the moment he shows up as the android, but mention must also be made of Charlize Theron as the corporate stooge that tagged along for the trip and Noomi Rapace is very engaging as the scientist in charge of the mission.
And thus we come to the real meat of why I loved this movie so much, the story. Now, from reading/watching other reviews and discussing this with others that have seen the film, many people are hyper focused on the fact that while it’s an alien prequel it seems to focus more on was originally a B story that Scott flipped around to the main plot and made the alien prequel stuff the B plot. Honestly, this was part of what made it a good prequel. Just think for a moment folks, the movie was originally pitched as a straightforward alien prequel, how would that have been better? The fact that this movie has the whole looking for our creator premise makes it more interesting with the reveal of the alien xenomorphs as a great twist/perk to the whole idea. Just think about this, these people are going searching for answers, they are literally looking for GOD, and that would have been the B story. No, not just the B Story, the B story in a monster movie, that would have probably ended up looking like a monster movie we’ve already seen. The fact that it’s a big idea that explored throughout the narrative makes the film itself interesting and the fact that it’s the reveal of the origin of the aliens works better for it. Plus, it really likes to take a show don’t tell approach to a lot of the ideas and moments that it explores, which I like because while narrative hand holding is sometimes a good and even necessary thing, it can often times feel invasive or unnatural, alien if you will. The whole idea of the movie is that they went searching for the answers to some big questions, how would it make the movie better to just straight up tell them that the answer to all life is 42? Ok, that would actually be awesome, but I have a point here. The point is that there are always going to be questions, and that’s a good thing. Humans are just naturally curious creatures and we will never be satisfied with what we know. I know so much trivia about my favorite movies, but I’m always looking for more. Some people go looking for bigfoot because that want to know for sure that it does or doesn’t exist, philosophers are constantly examining and debating the point of life, but what happens then? There’s nothing wrong with searching for knowledge, hell I honestly think things would be better if more people did it, but what happens when we know everything? I try not to think about it.
Look I’m not going to spoil any more of the movie, you all should watch it. it’s a great movie and it has some nice well done ideas in it and it’s seriously the best movie connected to “Alien” since 1986. Give it a watch.
5 things you shouldn’t look for the answers of. out of 5
You know, writing this reminded me how interesting the whole Alien franchise, good and bad, is to look like, and I’m in the mood to revisit it So for the next month we’ll take a look at the other four films, starting where it all began. Alien.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Lunatic's Top 25 Part One
So, I’ve finally reached that point. It’s that one question all movie buffs dread but know that they must at some point figure out an answer for: “What are your favorite movies?” Honestly, I really really love a TON of movies. I have special equipment like a region free DVD player for imports, a VCR for things that aren’t even released on DVD and even a Laserdisc player for movies that either have a feature not on the DVD or don’t have a version I prefer on DVD. I just really LOVE film and I just couldn’t decide how many movies to include. Ten seemed too little, and then I thought maybe 50 but that was just pushing it, so I eventually decided on 25. So intermittently through the rest of the year, I will count down from 25 to my all time number one. I’m not doing this as a normal top 10 for one major reason, I have a very specific and personal reason for picking these movies and ranking them as I do. Just devoting simply a paragraph to them just doesn’t feel like I’d be doing them justice, so I’m giving a full breakdown of why I picked it and like it as much as I do. But I would like to clarify, these are FAVORITES, not what I feel are the BEST, granted I know there would be some of these on that list, this is more about my personal experience with film and the ones that stand out for me as especially enjoyable. Therefore, at long last, let the countdown proper begin:
Number 25:
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
I’ve made it no secret that I have a love for the old B style movies, and especially those from the 50’s and 60’s, and this movie’s the reason why. I was about eight or nine years old when I first saw this movie and I was hooked. Not only was it the first movie I saw in black and white, but it was just so much fun to watch. Scientist exploring an ominous area that no one had apparently seen and lived to tell the tale, a monster that terrorizes them while at the same time looking pretty goofy when you stop to think about it, and just copious amounts of hammy acting.
Why this one over things like “The Blob” or “Them!”? Pretty simple, nostalgia. I can’t help it, the fact that this was the one I saw first is probably just me being all sentimental, but if I’m ever feeling like watching something cheesy and silly with a goofy monster, I reach for this one.
A lot of it has to due with the acting and directing, this movie does not ever stop taking itself seriously, you have actors playing scientists that do things no scientist would ever do, and yet you buy it because they just have this air to them that feels truly genuine. Even if you ignore that aspect, a lot of the different characters are just fun and they have some great lines delivered hilariously. I have a feeling director Jack Arnold was aware of this because he really goes all in with some great inserts of the monster that hold off the reveal until just the right time, not to mention the movie has a very ensemble feel to it.
While the story is nothing special it does have a lot of the troupes of the genre; the beauty and beast touches, the monster carrying the girl away limp in its arms, the good scientist and the in it just for fame and glory “evil” one, the quirky local, etc. Even if it’s not wholly original and the movie when combined with its 1955 sequel is just a huge rip off of 1933’s “King Kong”, I still enjoy it for how fun all the characters are and how nicely paced it is. Especially at the beginning and end when movies like this tend to drag at that time.
But of course, a monster movie is nothing without a monster and man do I have lots of love for the Gill man. From the great suit designed by Bud Westmore and his team (Millicent Patrick, Jack Kevan, Chris Mueller, Robert Hickman) to the great portrayal by dual team Ben Chapman (while on the surface) and Ricou Browning (while underwater). All this gives the creature such a depth to even make his menacing of the scientists seem almost like he was the victim (also potentially due to Jack Arnold) and his antagonism only brought to life by the bombastic theme that plays anytime he shows up.
Really the reason I pick this movie is that it is a perfect example of what I hope to see when I see a popcorn movie. It’s goofy, but not stupid. It’s silly, but passionately so. In a word, it just a ton of fun. I have seen it many times and I’ll probably see it many times more before it ever loses this spot that it has here, at number 25.
Number 25:
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
I’ve made it no secret that I have a love for the old B style movies, and especially those from the 50’s and 60’s, and this movie’s the reason why. I was about eight or nine years old when I first saw this movie and I was hooked. Not only was it the first movie I saw in black and white, but it was just so much fun to watch. Scientist exploring an ominous area that no one had apparently seen and lived to tell the tale, a monster that terrorizes them while at the same time looking pretty goofy when you stop to think about it, and just copious amounts of hammy acting.
Why this one over things like “The Blob” or “Them!”? Pretty simple, nostalgia. I can’t help it, the fact that this was the one I saw first is probably just me being all sentimental, but if I’m ever feeling like watching something cheesy and silly with a goofy monster, I reach for this one.
A lot of it has to due with the acting and directing, this movie does not ever stop taking itself seriously, you have actors playing scientists that do things no scientist would ever do, and yet you buy it because they just have this air to them that feels truly genuine. Even if you ignore that aspect, a lot of the different characters are just fun and they have some great lines delivered hilariously. I have a feeling director Jack Arnold was aware of this because he really goes all in with some great inserts of the monster that hold off the reveal until just the right time, not to mention the movie has a very ensemble feel to it.
While the story is nothing special it does have a lot of the troupes of the genre; the beauty and beast touches, the monster carrying the girl away limp in its arms, the good scientist and the in it just for fame and glory “evil” one, the quirky local, etc. Even if it’s not wholly original and the movie when combined with its 1955 sequel is just a huge rip off of 1933’s “King Kong”, I still enjoy it for how fun all the characters are and how nicely paced it is. Especially at the beginning and end when movies like this tend to drag at that time.
But of course, a monster movie is nothing without a monster and man do I have lots of love for the Gill man. From the great suit designed by Bud Westmore and his team (Millicent Patrick, Jack Kevan, Chris Mueller, Robert Hickman) to the great portrayal by dual team Ben Chapman (while on the surface) and Ricou Browning (while underwater). All this gives the creature such a depth to even make his menacing of the scientists seem almost like he was the victim (also potentially due to Jack Arnold) and his antagonism only brought to life by the bombastic theme that plays anytime he shows up.
Really the reason I pick this movie is that it is a perfect example of what I hope to see when I see a popcorn movie. It’s goofy, but not stupid. It’s silly, but passionately so. In a word, it just a ton of fun. I have seen it many times and I’ll probably see it many times more before it ever loses this spot that it has here, at number 25.
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