jürgen fauth’s muckworld

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the Alien is my favorite movie monster of all time, and I’ll go see the insectoid, double-jawed acid-for-blood chestbursting spawn of H.R. Giger in any incarnation — even this budget-bin junk, which wasn’t screened for critics and cost me $11 at the Queens midnight screening. I thought I was ready for anything, but you know you’re in trouble if you find yourself holding up the “original” AvP as any kind of standard.

AvP:R picks up at the exact moment the previous film ended: a “predalien,” product of gooey space miscegenation, causes a Predator UFO to crash in the Colorado woods, and a few exploding rib cages later, all of Gunnison is under Alien attack. What should have been a fanboy’s wet fantasy — Aliens on Main Street! — turns into a piss-poor attempt at the kind of 50s horror we’ve seen plundered, satirized, and bowdlerized a million times, from The Blob to Slither.

Instead of showing us the creatures battling it out in bright sunlight (which would have required a few fresh ideas), the entire movie takes place over the course of one rainy, moonless night, which means that you can’t see the monsters you came for. Instead, the “talent” behind this film (”the Brothers Strause”) cranked up the gore: victims usually considered taboo all become Alien fodder, including children, pregnant women (”I think my water just broke. Ahhhhhh!”), and the hot high school chick (Kristen Hager) who takes the pizza boy skinny dipping. The ostensible heroine — a poor man’s Ripley indeed — is a returning Iraq vet (Reiko Aylesworth) who brings her daughter — get this — a pair of infra red goggles as a homecoming present. Gee, I wonder if those will come in handy!

On a downward spiral ever since Fincher’s failed Alien 3, the series has now hit rock bottom. This is the Return of the Son of Dracula meets Jesse James vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter Unbound of Alien films, or whatever the classic equivalent would be. It’s been a long way down from the polished horror by Ridley Scott and James Cameron. Bad as it was, AvP was savvy enough to slyly quote from the original movies, but AvP:R doesn’t even bother with genre conventions like the pithy catchphrase. (The wittiest thing these people can think to say after killing an Alien is “Fuck you.”)

Too underlit to qualify as splatter, too bloodless to qualify as fun, too unaware of its own idiocy to be enjoyed Grindhouse-style, AvP:R is a real education in the finer stratifications of badness. A straight-out parody may be the only move left for the franchise, and then, perhaps, in another few years, the Gods governing the cycles of genre may just smile upon us again with another high-minded attempt at returning the monster to its former glories. Where there are sequels, there is hope.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Colin Strause and Greg Strause, 2007. *

• Rotten Tomatoes: 16%
• Official Site
• The trailer
• Alien vs. Predator

A punchy B-picture, high on testosterone and a Hollywood megabudget, featuring pleasantly absurd giant robots that turn into cars. The boy-hero’s teenage crush is an improbable babe (Megan Fox) sprung from the pages of a glossy magazine, and because this is a Michael Bay movie, the fights are ridiculously overblown.

Now, I have nothing against popcorn flicks aimed at the thirteen-year-old in all of us, but I can’t stand propaganda. Transformers wallows in the questionable rhetoric of heroism and sacrifice, and the shots of fighter jets taking off at dawn and military helicopters swooping over downtown L.A. just need the superimposed tagline “Army of One” to be turned into recruiting ads. When Shia LaBeouf gets his orders and is told “You are a soldier now,” the fun is all but ruined for this pacifist. With John Turturro as anti-alien G-Man.

Transformers. Michael Bay, 2007. **

• David Byrne agrees
• Rotten Tomatoes

The hype machine is in high gear, but for once there’s truth in advertising. As far as megabudget superhero adaptations go, Spider-Man 3 delivers exactly what it promises: more of the same. If you liked the first two installments, this is great news. Unlike the self-important Batman Begins, the Spider-Man movies know exactly what they are and what they want to be.

Again, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco engage in cheeseball humor and soapy storylines illustrating bromides like “everybody needs help sometimes.” As before, Sam Raimi’s crisp direction makes elaborate three-dimensional action set pieces as transparent as a few well-chosen comics panels would. Again, the bright color scheme, the iconic NYC locations, the funny bit players (J.K. Simmons and Mageina Tovah as Ursula), the swooping score, and the gee-whiz wholesomeness that leaves no doubt that this poppy entertainment is squarely aimed at kids.

There are three new villains: Franco turns into the hoverboard-surfing New Goblin, Sideways‘ Thomas Hayden Church becomes the Sandman (who, by film’s end, looks like the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock), and Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, who is covered with alien goo as Venom, the most wicked of the Spidey villains. Their tag-team battles are the most exciting of the series so far.

Peter Parker also undergoes some transformations. As a deft metaphor externalizing his anger and aggression, the alien symbiote colors Spidey’s costume black, and he ends up with a hipper haircut and a mean new attitude: the dweeb struts to a James Brown tune and turns into a sexual predator (or at least a dweeb’s idea of a sexual predator.) In mythic terms, the symbiote represents the Devil of the Tarot deck, but by the end of the movie, the Sun of forgiveness comes up over Manhattan. There’s room for plenty of sequels.

Spider-Man 3. Sam Raimi, 2007. ***

• Spider-Man 3 on Rotten Tomatoes
• In case you managed to miss it, the trailer:

Only Werner Herzog would attempt to remake 2001: A Space Odyssey as documentary. Brad Dourif plays an alien stranded on earth; Roswell and microbes are involved somehow, and NASA footage is slyly repurposed to illustrate a space mission to his home planet. Real-life mathematicians explain how to slingshot around planets, and for the exploration of Dourif’s home world, Herzog uses gorgeous imagery from an ice dive. Narrative is kept to a minimum; it’s all just an excuse to show people floating through bizarre black and blue environments–which is something I can watch for hours, especially if it’s after midnight.

The Wild Blue Yonder. Werner Herzog, 2005. ***

• Official Site
• RT: 56%
• More at Gpod

[tags]film, 3 stars, werner herzog, nasa, aliens, diving, space, mathematicians, science, brad dourif, blue, light, ice, jellyfish, scifi, documentary[/tags]