Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
December 30th, 2007
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. *
Sweeney Todd — Or Not
December 5th, 2007
Because of a bloody embargo, I can’t yet share my thoughts on Tim Burton’s adaptation of the Sondheim musical, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Instead, here are clips from twelve musicals I love. Enjoy.
What good is sitting alone in your room?
“Cheek to Cheek”
“Wig in a Box.” I once saw John Cameron Mitchell perform this with the Polyphonic Spree, and it was a perfect fit.
Lars gets his Björk on — in DV!
“Well Did You Evah?” with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Some people apparently prefer The Philadelphia Story, but I don’t.
“Let the Sunshine In/The Flesh Failures”
I wish there was a longer clip of “Crash the Party” online. Anybody?
I like the island Manhattan.
The video of “Girls & Boys” from Prince’s woefully underrated second film. Also: Mountains. Wrecka Stow!
Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication. Also: Gethsemane.
“Falling Slowly”
The first time I ever teared up over a YouTube clip.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Tim Burton, 2007. N/R
There Will Be Blood
November 29th, 2007
There will be puns, there will be awards, there will be awesome. Based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, Paul Thomas Anderson (whose movies I often failed to appreciate in the past) has made a magnificent epic about the price of the precious resources, liquid and otherwise, that we extract from the ground — and from other people. Daniel Day-Lewis is reliably fantastic as Daniel Plainview, a prospector turned wealthy oilman and all-around American monster, but the real stunner here is Paul Dano as his nemesis, the pimply-faced fire-and-brimstone preacher Eli Sunday.
This one’s got “movie of the year” written all over it, and I’m already itching to see it again as soon as possible. We’ll have much more on this before the December 26 release. I drink YOUR milkshake!
UPDATED: My gushing review is now up at About Worldfilm.
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
- Karina Longworth found two tacks from the terrific score, and here’s the latest trailer:
Planet Terror
October 15th, 2007
It’s one of the profound mysteries of the movie year 2007: why, exactly, did critics embrace Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof the way they did while dismissing the far superior Robert Rodriguez half of Grindhouse out of hand? I could go on about this, but instead of expounding on the comparative joys of Planet Terror yet again, I’ve decided to join the Close-Up Blog-a-thon underway at The House Next Door and post a number of dramatic close-ups that perfectly illustrate just how much fun Rodriguez is having with the Grindhouse concept. The DVD of Planet Terror, severed from its insufferably pretentious twin, is available tomorrow.
Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez, 2007. ****
Bonnie and Clyde
September 2nd, 2007
Bonnie and Clyde are the names of the cats we’re currently staying with, so there was no way around rewatching Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic. The film is still horrifying and hilarious in its casual depiction of murder, love, and grand theft Ford Model T, and it’s this last part I found most curious: Bonnie and Clyde provides the blueprint for a gazillion crime-spree romances to follow, and the car already occupies a central role, as if American lawbreaking in the 20th century wasn’t even possible without the automobile — even when there weren’t roads to drive on. You know Ms. Parker and Mr. Barrow are doomed when their escape vehicle is hit by a hand grenade, and the final machine-gunning riddles not just their bodies but also their “death car” with bullets. This movie has led to many ruthless but gentle mock machine gun executions of our feline friends.
Bonnie and Clyde. Arthur Penn, 1967. *****
- Bonnie and Clyde on Wikipedia
- Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on Wikipedia
- Bright Lights on Pauline Kael and Bonnie and Clyde
- A review of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Lester D. Friedman (ed.)
- Bonnie and Clyde on All Things Considered
- Greenbriar Picture Shows on the film’s 40th anniversary (via)
- Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg: Bonnie & Clyde
Severance
March 14th, 2007
Shaun of the Dead meets Saw. Employees of an international weapons manufacturer are off to Eastern Europe for a “team building weekend.” When the bus is stopped by logs blocking the road, their jerk of a boss (Tim McInnerny) has everybody walk to the lodge where they’re supposed to play some paintball. The ass-kissing nerd (Andy Nyman) can’t wait to get there, Posh Guy (Toby Stephens) lets everybody know he thinks it’s a terrible idea, and the cute American chick (Laura Harris) is busy keeping the stoner who just ate a bag of ’shrooms (Danny Dyer) from chewing the bark off the trees and seeing strangers in the woods.
Of course, our drug-addled hero is right: there are strangers in the woods; you can tell by the subjective camera. Hiding in the underbrush are murderers driven mad by the wars that ravaged their country, Yugoslavian or Transylvanian ninjas toting machetes, flamethrowers, and other weaponry manufactured by — aha! — the corporate pansies about to be butchered.
Unlike Boon Joon-ho’s polished variations on genre, this hybrid doesn’t feel all that controlled. Severance is pleasantly shoddy, and the movie knocks about like a jerky haunted house ride with a few detours to the fun house. A mildly surreal dream sequence gives way to a gross-out joke about a disgusting pie, a swinging sixties “sex lodge” fantasia follows a black-and-white Nosferatu parody — and while you’re still trying to figure out how it all fits together, well-meaning Billy (Baabou Ceesay) gets gutted, earnest Jill (Claudie Blakley) is beheaded (or was it the other way around?), somebody is burnt alive and a leg gets amputated in one of the more gruesomely hilarious scenes I’ve seen in a while.
The most outrageous and exhilarating moments of Severance zip by like Apocalypto on whippets, gory but oh so hilarious. But in the last third, the movie leans too heavily on the horror conventions it’s not quite mocking. If you’re not a fan of slasher flicks, the endless frenzied running about through leafy hillsides spiked with booby traps is bound to get a wee bit tiresome — and if you’re squeamish about crotches stabbed by Rambo knives, feet stuffed in refrigerators and human organs pierced by sharp utensils, you might not be around anymore anyway. For those who can take it, Severance packs some bloody good laughs. Severance opens in May.
Severance. Christopher Smith, 2006. ***
300
March 6th, 2007
Dulce et decorum est, the movie. A bunch of Spartans swear they’d rather die than surrender or retreat, and then they do just that. Like Sin City, the images of 300 have been heavily post-processed to closer resemble Frank Miller’s comic book, and when there isn’t a slow-motion battle going on, the camera lingers over tableaux of warriors on a mountainside, trees hung with corpses, a fleet tossed about in inclement weather, and sweaty nymphs doing double-duty as corrupt oracles.
It’s all about as exciting as a half hour of the Battle of Helm’s Deep, without the rest of The Lord of the Rings to support, y’know, the characters. Instead, there are lots of speeches, about how freedom isn’t free, about how the only glorious death for a soldier is on the battlefield, and about how, yes, Spartans never surrender. Which is too bad, because Sparta is under attack by the Persians, led by debauched and sexually ambiguous Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro.) In waves resembling nothing so much as the levels of a video game, the good Spartan king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) has to fight the turban-wearing villains while he is being stabbed in the back by treacherous politicians who refuse to support the troops and send reinforcements.
I saw 300 on an IMAX screen, and I’m still wobbly from the intense overdose of machismo and stupidity. The best thing I can say for the movie is that it steals liberally from John Boorman’s Excalibur. It looks interesting enough, but so does Triumph of the Will. In the world of 300, there is no room for art, negotiation, or weakness; there is only room for the strong. At the screening, outright murder brought great applause, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find an Army recruiting station outside the theater. Huah!
300. Zack Snyder, 2006. *
