Alien vs Predator - Part 2 June 29, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Editorials, Horror, Action, Sci-fi, 1990s, 2009 , add a commentFive weeks ago (crikey, time flies) I began my series of reviews of the Alien, Predator and Alien vs Predator franchises with my thoughts on Alien: The Director’s Cut and the original Predator, both of which I’d seen before. Over the past few days I’ve moved on to the remaining Alien films, all of which I viewed in their original theatrical cuts and all of which were new to me.
Here’s a handy summary of what you may’ve missed, then, if you somehow had something better to do on a sunny summer weekend than check FilmJournal every day. You can of course click on each title for the full review.
“Where Alien is a Horror Movie — but in space — Aliens is a War Movie — but in space. The central characters are a team of marines, as opposed to the original’s ordinary guys; where the first film’s design was dark, shadowy and oppressive, here it’s all gleaming tech, tanks and guns and spaceships and the like; and, just to underline the point, the score is full of military drums.”
“Even if in some ways 3 combines the first two — single Alien, claustrophobia, unarmed heroes; but there are lots of them, most with experience of killing — it adds enough variety, especially stylistically, to mark it out… it soon turns dark, dirty and decrepit, abandoning both the the military sheen of Aliens and the old tanker grime of Alien.”
“the most notable differences are its black humour, where the tastes of both [writer] Whedon and director Jeunet make their mark, and how grotesque it is — almost two extremes walking hand-in-hand. The deformed, perverted Ripley clones; the Hybrid; the Ripley-Alien sex scene — there’s nothing like this in the other films, and that’s a grand thing.”
In the third and final part of this series I’ll be setting my sights on the allegedly-underrated Predator 2 and the much-hated pair of AVP and AVPR.
#16: Alien Resurrection (1997) June 28, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Horror, Action, Sci-fi, 4 stars, 1990s, Adventure, 2009 , 6 comments
Alien Resurrection is much maligned, to the point that even screenwriter Joss Whedon has publicly disowned it. Which is interesting to me, because I really liked it.
While you clean up your beverage-of-choice that I’m sure you just spurted all over your monitor, let me reassure you that I’m not about to argue Resurrection is an undervalued classic on a par with the first two films; but, having heard nothing but bad things about it for over a decade, I found myself pleasantly surprised. As so many other reviews have sought to detail the film’s flaws I won’t dwell on them myself, but instead seek to explain why I liked it.
In my Alien3 review I applauded the franchise for taking each installment in a new direction stylistically, and Resurrection doesn’t drop the baton on this. Structurally it’s the most straightforward of all four, slotting fairly neatly into a standard action-adventure/disaster movie template — especially once Ripley hooks up with the crew of the Betty — but this isn’t the most notable difference. No, that would be twofold: its black humour, where the tastes of both Whedon and director Jeunet make their mark; and how grotesque it is — almost two extremes walking hand-in-hand. The deformed, perverted Ripley clones; the Hybrid; the Ripley-Alien sex scene — there’s nothing like this in the other films, and that’s a grand thing. Even if you disapprove of most (or all) of that, the scene where two aliens kill a third so that its acid blood will burn through the floor, allowing them to escape, is a bit of genius that takes our existing knowledge about the species and does something gloriously new with it.
The Aliens themselves are very well realised. For fans who favour the first film to all others they undoubtedly spend too long in plain sight, but, while there is certainly some poor CGI (the underwater sequence being of particular note, though you can see how it seemed a good idea), the constantly slime-dripping practical creatures are excellent. The Aliens and the company (no longer Weyland-Yutani, for no good reason) are relatively revealed by the story too, which I’m sure is to its detriment for some. Personally, I considered it another sensible change: we’ve had three films of the company attempting to capture the Alien — what would happen when they succeeded? That the plot is still based around the company’s hunt for the Aliens (as significant chunks of the previous sequels were too) is also interesting — essentially, the whole franchise was launched because at some point during the first film someone decided Ash should be an android who wanted to capture this mysterious creature.
I can well imagine many hated all these additions and changes to the series’ mythology (especially the Hybrid — fans always hate things like that), but I found them to be an interesting attempt to further the franchise’s story rather than just rehash previous installments. I won’t deny that some of it borders on the silly (or even crosses that line) and there are a few plot holes (which is disappointing, because many could have been explained away if someone had taken a bit of effort), but for the most part it’s fantastically creepy, grotesque, and more than a little weird… and all within the confines of a standard action-adventure plot! Plus, within that it also retains an unpredictability over who will die, something Alien3 managed to fudge. (That said, the top four names in the opening credits are the four survivors, so maybe I should just pay more attention.)
Resurrection marries the franchise’s most wonderfully grotesque imagery with a standard action-adventure plot, meaning anyone who comes to this looking for their average sci-fi action-adventure may walk away with their sensibilities shocked — or perhaps mutated beyond recognition. It’s certainly not the series’ best film, but I have a nagging feeling that it might turn into my secret favourite.
Not so secret now I guess.
#15: Alien 3 (1992) June 27, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Horror, Sci-fi, David Fincher, 3 stars, 1990s, 2009 , 7 comments
We’re used to seeing big studio’s logos transformed at the start of films — Universal perhaps do it most often, having a handy globe, though others are far from immune — but I think Alien3 is the first instance I’ve seen where the logo is left untouched but the music is altered. Right from the disconcerting modification of the famous Fox fanfare you can tell this is going to be something a bit different and a bit edgy. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit rubbish.
At the very least the Alien franchise has to be applauded for giving each film a very different feel and tone. Even if in some ways 3 combines the first two — single Alien, claustrophobia, unarmed heroes; but there are lots of them, most with experience of killing — it adds enough variety, especially stylistically, to mark it out. This can probably be attributed to first-time feature director David Fincher, who, despite severe studio interference, still manages to quickly make the film his own. Though the story picks up directly from the previous film (as Aliens did from Alien), it soon turns dark, dirty and decrepit, abandoning both the the military sheen of Aliens and the old tanker grime of Alien.
The sets and costumes have a Gothic feel, devoid of most of the franchise’s sci-fi trappings, and though the cinematography is glossier than either preceding entry (Aliens looks distinctly ’80s, whilst this has a distinctly ’90s look — I’m not well enough versed in technical details to know why this is) it manages to feel grungier. From style to story, the whole film is bleak and uncompromising, particularly with its brutal plot — from the start, only Ripley survives the crash, and soon after there’s a horrid autopsy performed on Aliens‘ lovable little Newt, who Ripley previously fought so hard to save.
Alien3 is very dark and very nasty — and these are by far the best things about it.
Put simply, the story — or the way the story is handled — lets everything down. It all goes well for the first 40 minutes or so, but then it begins to get scrappy, and gets steadily worse as the running time rolls on. Leaps in story and logic abound, either creating plot holes or doing nothing to hide them. Much of the middle is the worst, where the convicts’ plans are muddled and quickly discarded. That said, this is also true of the climax — something to do with running around corridors and a giant piston and… I have no idea. It’s a shame because someone clearly had plenty of fantastic ideas, plot twists and action sequences, but they’re all squandered either by weak editing or, even worse, simply by being in this film.
As for the Alien, it sadly has no real menace — it just turns up as and when it (or, rather, the plot) fancies, and goes away for the rest of the time. In the first film it could be anywhere, in the second they were constantly advancing, but this time it’s just around, somewhere, sometimes. It’s not helped by poor realisation, spending too much time either in the light or in clear shots, both of which show the shortcomings of the special effects in a way the previous two films fought to hide.
The total lack of weapons or monster-fighting skill on the part of the supporting cast exacerbate these problems, meaning that, even when the Alien does turn up, the result is always a foregone conclusion. Even worse, any characters we really care about — or can even identify, to be honest — are killed early on, leaving a bunch of faceless potential victims who weren’t invested with any character and so who we’re not invested in. This is worsened by using a fantastic, recognisable British cast, none of whom are given anything much to do. For all these reasons, almost the entire film is devoid of any genuine tension.
Alien3 isn’t irredeemable — it’s packed with good ideas and good direction — but that’s also why it hurts. Lumbered with a hatchet job on the plot, characters and editing, it feels like some very talented people made a good film before someone else hacked it up a bit. The result is quite bad but, even worse, it’s disappointing.
Tomorrow, Alien Resurrection.
#30: The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) June 24, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Drama, adaptations, 2 stars, 1990s, Adventure, remakes, 2009 , 2 comments
From the off it’s clear that The Man in the Iron Mask is not going to go well. It’s an adaptation of a tale of the Three Musketeers, so naturally is set in historical Paris… where everyone has a different accent and very few of them are French. It is, to be blunt, a horrid mishmash — much like the whole film.
Wordy political intrigue tries to coexist with broad comedy which is squashed against swashbuckling adventure. The latter two could co-exist, but the film feels like it wants to be the former and so suffers for it. The comedy jars too much to be effective, while instances of unintentional comedy unfortunately provoke more frequent laughs. It should at least be able to swash buckles effectively — these are the Three Musketeers after all — but entirely fails to achieve this until the climax. The plot, semi-faithfully adapted from one of Alexandre Dumas’ original novels, offers a level of complexity to which the film clearly aspires, but the adaptation and acting struggle to match it.
The majority of performances are marred by overacting — Malkovich, especially, is woefully miscast, while Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t appear to give a particularly good performance as either Louis or Philippe. In DiCaprio’s defence I suspect this is actually the script’s fault, because he manages to clearly differentiate the two when they are silent or pretending to be the other — it’s when they open their mouths that it all goes wrong. Gérard Depardieu is fine as the comic relief, though that relief is tonally misplaced, while Gabriel Byrne makes an interesting d’Artagnan — there’s nothing at all wrong with him, and yet he doesn’t feel quite right. Which leaves just Jeremy Irons among the main cast. He fares the best of the lot, even getting the occasional scene or speech that is genuinely quite good, though it’s clear he is far better than the material. To be fair, the same is also true of everyone else.
For all this, The Man in the Iron Mask is more disappointing then bad. The Bastille-set climax is occasionally brilliant and never less than entertaining, delivering on the film’s swashbuckling promise in a copious fashion. Throughout, there’s the occasional good scene — or even just a decent line of dialogue — and you can briefly understand what inspired such quality actors to sign on.
Something went wrong somewhere though, and the obvious culprit must be writer/director Randall Wallace. The story’s good, but that’s Dumas’, while the adaptation’s weak — and that’s Wallace’s. The actor’s are good, but battle the poor script — and that, obviously, is Wallace’s. They don’t seem to have been given any significant direction, they’re not helped by an uneven tone, and even the cinematography falls short, failing to make the spectacular locations and costumes look suitably beautiful on screen — and we know who’s ultimately in charge of all that too.
The Man in the Iron Mask desperately wants to be better than it is — it’s a great tale, packed with politics and swashbuckling, and this particular version has the high calibre cast to pull it off. But both are left floundering by a writer/director who isn’t up to either task — poor dialogue, a gyratingly uneven tone and lacklustre direction abound. A missed opportunity, and all the more disappointing for it.
#9a: The Lunch Date (1990) June 12, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Drama, 5 stars, 1990s, Short, 2009 , add a comment
Short films are paid minimal attention by most people, but a good one can launch a career. Take this, for example, which won the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 and the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 1991. Writer/director Davidson may not have had a significant film career since, but he has directed episodes of Dexter, Deadwood, Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order, Lie to Me, Lost, Rome, Shark, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and more. Not all great TV, true, but there are some outstanding series in there and it makes for an impressive CV.
If any short were to kick-start a career it would be The Lunch Date. As with many shorts, to attempt to describe the plot would be to give too much away, which would be a mistake because this is a beautifully shot (in grainy black & white) and performed tale with a distinct, yet subtle, character arc and an important, but not over-egged, moral message. There’s virtually no dialogue, everything conveyed by what Davidson does (and, importantly, doesn’t) show and the performances, particularly that of Scotty Bloch as the central Lady.
Some of the film’s power rests in a neat twist, cunningly obscured by intelligent blocking and timing of other plot elements. Personally I saw it coming, but that didn’t diminish its point. It’s also worth nothing that none of the twenty-or-so others I was watching with spotted the twist ahead of time and they all seemed to find it even more effective.
Why short films are ignored is a discussion for another time, but The Lunch Date is an outstanding example of why they shouldn’t be.
This short is available on the Cinema16: American Short Films DVD.
#4: Anne Frank Remembered (1995) April 28, 2009
Posted by badblokebob in : Documentary, 5 stars, 1990s, British films, true stories, Biography, 2009 , add a comment
Anne Frank’s is arguably the best-known individual story of the Holocaust, perhaps because the diary of a 13-year-old girl in hiding from the Nazis — and, sadly, eventually captured by them — makes a perfect gateway for young people into learning about those atrocities.
In this Oscar-winning documentary, Jon Blair exposes the ‘untold story’ of Anne Frank. He adds to her words with the perspective of her friends, other people who knew her, and relatives of her companions in the annex. In covering these views the film presents alternate interpretations of many people Anne wrote about — for example, Fritz Pfeffer (renamed Albert Dussel in the published diary) is very disliked by Anne, but here is painted in a very different light by his son. The film also reflects on Anne herself, and what it uncovers is not always positive. Such an honest approach could be contentious, but its attempt to uncover the truth — rather than paint a false saintly picture — is admirable.
The film’s second half describes what happened after the diary ends, an often ignored part of the tale — even the BBC’s recent, excellent adaptation ended with the residents of the annex being escorted out, and I think many believe this is where the story ends. In reality there were seven months between the discovery of the annex and Anne’s death, and while only Otto Frank survived the concentration camps, many of the others came heartbreakingly close: Peter van Pels died just three days before his camp was liberated, while Pfeffer was marched away by the deserting SS as the Soviets neared, dying with so many others on that path. Here the film touches on much of what life was like in the camps, adding to its detail of how life was for those in hiding. There are undoubtedly other texts that do this more thoroughly, but by focusing on one family and using just a handful of interviewees, the events are made to feel incredibly personal in a way that some documentaries’ more factual approach fails to.
What happened to the diary after the war is also briefly covered: how the book came to light, the impact it had when published, allegations it was a hoax (due to differences between translations, and fictional events created for the 1955 play and subsequent film adaptation), as well as the positive effect it’s had beyond that, including comments from the likes of Nelson Mandela.
With its honest and extended investigation of the events covered in Anne Frank’s diary, plus its consideration of broader facts of the Holocaust, Anne Frank Remembered adds significantly to the original text. In doing so it becomes an essential companion piece to one of the most famous and important documents of the Second World War.
This review was written over three months after seeing the film, based entirely on notes made at the time and my rather poor memory. Apologies if it is therefore a bit unfocussed or in any way inaccurate.
#78: The Green Mile (1999) December 31, 2008
Posted by badblokebob in : Drama, Fantasy, 5 stars, adaptations, 1990s, 2008 , add a comment
Five years after making The Shawshank Redemption — somewhat ignored at the time, but now incredibly popular and constantly bidding for acknowledgement as The Best Film Ever — writer-director Frank Darabont returned to the Stephen King Non-Horror Well (quite a shallow one, I should think) to film this tale of a man on death row in the ’30s. Darabont writing & directing a three-hour adaptation of a Stephen King story set in a prison in early 20th Century America? But Shawshank 2 this is not; in fact, I would argue that, due to one key difference amid those similarities, it’s actually the anti-Shawshank.
The key difference, I should rush to point out, is not the presence of the supernatural. While obviously a major element of the film, the level of realism dedicated to it, plus the overall tone of the piece, means that it still doesn’t feel too far removed from its predecessor. Nonetheless, where Shawshank was very much a real-world story, The Green Mile gradually draws the viewer into believing that miracles may be possible. It’s a whole hour before Michael Clarke Duncan’s near-silent John Coffey (”like the drink, only not spelled the same”) does his healing thing, at which point what was apparently a straightforward period prison drama gains a new dimension.
The fact that this occurs so late, after a lot of effort has been spent establishing the normal real-world setting, means it is firmly grounded in reality. Where most supernatural-focused films ask the viewer to accept, “in this world, this is real”, The Green Mile forces us to ask, “in the real world, what is this power? where does it come from?” Perhaps this seems a subtle distinction, but it isn’t; and the film pulls it off with impressive ease thanks to Darabont’s writing and direction, plus the well-judged performances of Duncan, Tom Hanks as lead warden Paul Edgecomb, and the rest of the cast.
Up to this point, the film feels like a collection of subplots. It takes a slow and careful, but never dull, approach to storytelling, slowly unfurling details of the characters, their relationships, and the technicalities of prison life; but it’s not until Coffey’s power emerges that these really begin to come together. Within this process, Darabont’s writing cleverly structures the release of information to the viewer. We never learn any details of some of the inmates’ crimes, for example, allowing us to sympathise with them; indeed, a lot of subtle effort is put into making Michael Jeter’s Del likable, serving the double purpose of making his death infinitely more shocking (that we don’t know his crimes largely removes the danger of a “well he deserved it” reaction from certain viewers) and, by his association with Coffey, helping the viewer to like the apparent child murderer. All sorts of details slip by almost as scene setting, only to have horrendous significance later on, and both the reveals and later revelations are played out perfectly.
The film’s ending successfully brings together a wide variety of these seeded elements, neatly melding the remaining subplots without pushing into the realm of unsatisfactory coincidence. But the conclusion is also unapologetically downbeat, and it’s this which affirms that anti-Shawshank status: where Shawshank ends with escape and hope, The Green Mile ends with injustice and imprisonment — the execution of an innocent, miraculous man, and Paul’s ‘imprisonment’ in an unknowably long (potentially, endless) life, suffering the constant loss of those he loves and the guilt of what he did.
If The Green Mile is not quite Shawshank then that’s because it’s not trying to be. It’s a superb film in its own right, but the lack of an uplifting ending is the reason it isn’t — and never will be — as popular as its apparent twin.
(Originally posted on 28th January 2009.)