Alien: Covenant

Speaking of illegal aliens….

(2017) Sci-Fi Horror (20^th Century Fox) Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demian Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Lorelei King (voice), Goran D. Kleut, Andrew Crawford, Javier Botet, James Franco, Guy Pearce, Noomi Rapace. Directed by Ridley Scott

 

Back in 1979, movie posters and trailers proclaimed that “In space no-one can hear you scream” and a classic of science fiction was born, one that changed the entire genre. Alien still reverberates as one of the most influential sci-fi movies of all time.

In this sequel to Prometheus a colony ship called the Covenant suffers a fire that sweeps through the colonist sleep chambers killing the captain (Franco). Taking over is Orem (Crudup), a religious sort who is a bit on the indecisive side. Despite the objections of the Captain’s widow and second officer Daniels (Waterston), the new captain decides to take the crippled Covenant to a planet from which a distress signal is coming – one that incongruously takes the form of John Denver’s “Country Roads.”

Orem takes a team including their android Walter (Fassbender) who is of a similar model to David from Prometheus and Tennessee (McBride), Lope (Bichir) and Karine (Ejogo). They find a beautiful paradise with a disturbing apparent lack of animal and insect life but there are strange alien spores that once they get into a human system hatch nasty little alien neomorphs – a colony of which soon makes their presence known. The neomorphs seem to be not unlike velociraptors only angrier.

Taking refuge in an abandoned city, they discover to their surprise David, the last survivor of the Prometheus incident and David has plans – plans that aren’t going to be so good for the surviving members of the reconnaissance mission.

The big knock against the movie has been that the plot is too close to the first movie but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. If you’re going to take your plot from a movie, you could do a lot worse. There are some other things that I have issues with but more on that later.

Fassbender has the dual role of the innocent Walter and the devious David and he plays both quite well. Through the magic of CGI the two Fassbenders interact and even kiss – a homoerotic moment that nobody had ever even conceived before although it may well have been simply irresistible to an actor’s ego to seduce himself.

McBride, not one of my favorite actors to date, delivers his best performance ever and shows some real screen charisma that I hadn’t seen in him before but now that I think about it, I think he always had but just hadn’t found the right cinematic vehicle for it. I hope this leads to some new sorts of roles for McBride in the near future.

Scott, now pushing 80, still can direct an action sequence like few others in cinematic history. There’s a battle between Daniels and a xenomorph on a loader ship that really ranks up there among the best in the franchise history and certainly one of the best this year. Waterston is not really known as an action actress but she definitely channels Sigourney Weaver in that sequence and others throughout the film.

Some of the CGI looked unfinished as if the effects houses ran out of time before the deadline and the producers just plugged in what they had. That was a little distressing particularly since Scott has shown comfort with CGI going back to Gladiator and used it well in Prometheus and The Martian as well.

My main issue here is the script. It’s a bit convoluted and at times long-winded. There are also way too many characters here, most of which exist to get picked off by the alien. That gives the movie a bit of a slasher mentality despite the trappings of a fairly intellectual science fiction epic. They may as well have named all of the characters save Fassbender and Waterston “Lieutenant Deadmeat” although I will say not all of them meet a grisly end at the hand of the creature.

Scott has hinted that there will be another prequel (and possibly two) that will tie directly to the first film. At one time that would be exciting news but frankly the franchise feels a little tired here. It could be that the director has wisely figured out that the xenomorph has essentially run its course (his original idea was to steer the series off in a different direction but the studio wouldn’t allow it) but it also could be that Scott needs to pass the torch to someone who could revitalize the series much like James Cameron did with Aliens. I certainly wouldn’t object.

REASONS TO GO: The loader fight sequence is spectacular and the action sequences are well-done overall. Fassbender delivers a fine dual performance and McBride is impressive.
REASONS TO STAY: The story is convoluted and overpopulated with unnecessary characters. Some of the CGI wasn’t up to the standards of the other films.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of violence and gore, profanity and some sexuality and nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first Alien film to be released after the death of H.R. Giger who designed the original alien xenomorph.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/16/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 71% positive reviews. Metacritic: 65/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Alien3
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Logan Lucky

Passengers (2016)

There’s nothing quite like a swim by starlight.

(2016) Science Fiction (Columbia) Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia, Vince Foster, Kara Flowers, Conor Brophy, Julee Cerda, Aurora Perrineau, Lauren Farmer, Emerald Mayne, Kristin Brock, Tom Ferrari, Quansae Rutledge, Desmond Reid, Emma Clarke (voice), Fred Melamed (voice), Chris Edgerly (voice), Curtis Grecco, Joy Spears. Directed by Morten Tyldum

Loneliness can drive us to do terrible things. But contemplate this; you are completely alone on a starship full of sleeping human beings on their way to a distant interstellar colony. You have been awakened 90 years too early and are likely to be dead, or at least enfeebled, by the time the ship arrives. How do you cope? What do you do with absolutely no human contact for the rest of your life?

That is the prospect facing Jim (Pratt), an engineer and passenger aboard the Avalon, a colony ship headed to a distant world. His hibernation pod has malfunctioned and awakened him almost a century too early. The only conversation comes from Arthur (Sheen), a robotic bartender who dispenses whiskey and advice in equal measures.

Then Aurora (Lawrence), a fellow passenger also awakens. She’s a writer who had purchased a Gold level ticket, entitling her to more perks on the luxury liner than Jim gets (think of it as first class vs. steerage – Titanic much?) who is equally mystified even as the two enjoy the many amenities on the Aurora – in complete and utter silence and solitude.

But they have much bigger problems. The ship has begun to show a series of worsening malfunctions, from elevators that won’t work to failures of more critical systems. They don’t have access to the vital crew areas where the malfunctions can be dealt with. And while Jim and Aurora are falling deeply in love, there is a secret that may destroy the fragile relationship that is beginning to blossom – if they survive long enough for the relationship to develop.

Pratt and Lawrence are two of the biggest stars in Hollywood and star power is just what a movie like this needs. The bulk of the movie rests on their capable shoulders with little interaction with anyone else other than the aforementioned Arthur and a crew member (Fishburne) who also awakens early. Pratt often plays characters who are generally not very serious. Jim is super serious and the twinkle that Pratt normally has in his eye is not really present here. This is Serious Guy Chris Pratt and while some may prefer the Not So Serious Guy, he is displaying more range than he’s shown to date, which augers well for a long run as an A-lister.

I’ve always known Lawrence is a tremendously gifted actress with extraordinary range but I never thought of her as a sex symbol before this film. There is a scene where Aurora goes on a date with Jim (some of this is shown in the trailer) where she wears a stunning Little Black Dress and has the nightclub walk down. It is as sexy a scene as you’re likely to see and yet no clothes are shed and no skin is viewed. It’s just an actress showing that sexuality doesn’t have to be simulated humping; the most sexual organ is indeed the mind.

Also playing a huge role is the production design. The Avalon is a cruise ship as reimagined by the designers of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s sleek and in some cases sterile, but it looks like the way we thought the future would be back in the 60s before movies like the first Star Wars and Alien showed us a future that was more lived in and industrial. This future is, as Walt Disney might have put it, a great big beautiful tomorrow.

The movie begins to break down in the third act as the love story begins to unravel and turn into a straight-out disaster movie which I think is a tactical error. While Titanic used the love story to give the disaster humanity, here because there is no interaction essentially with anyone else, it becomes less of a disaster than a “Oh no, the ship is sinking!” kind of thing. More like the S.S. Minnow, if you get my drift.

The movie has all the ingredients to be a science fiction classic, but it unfortunately doesn’t pull it all together to make it so. The storytelling could have been tighter and there could have been more emphasis on the people than on the environment. The antiseptic corridors of the Avalon, devoid of human life, become an echo chamber for the two protagonists and that seems a bit cold and empty. The movie is the definition of eye candy; pretty to look at but ultimately nothing substantial once you’ve seen the images.

REASONS TO GO: Pratt and Lawrence make a beautiful couple. The effects are pretty special.
REASONS TO STAY: The story meanders a little bit. The ending is extraordinarily weak.
FAMILY VALUES:  There is some sexuality and nudity as well as some sci-fi action.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  The starship is named the Avalon after the mythical location connected with the legend of Camelot. Not coincidentally, the bartender’s name is Arthur.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/11/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 31% positive reviews. Metacritic: 41/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Titanic
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Sing

Pandorum

Dennis Quaid still has The Right Stuff.

(Overture) Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Le, Eddie Rouse, Andre Hennicke, Norman Reedus. Directed by Christian Alvart

It is inevitable that someday, barring some sort of technological fix, we will exhaust the resources of our planet and/or overpopulate it past the breaking point. This may well lead us to seek out a new home, but once we find it we may come to discover that not only are we amazingly adaptable mammals but we are also our own worst enemy.

Cpl. Bower (Foster) and Lt. Payton (Quaid) wake up from hypersleep aboard a gigantic space vessel called the Elysium. They have no memory of their mission or their journey, and only vague memories of a previous life on Earth. One thing they do know – there should be more people aboard the vessel. A lot more, in fact.

Mystery piles upon mystery. Where are they headed? What are they supposed to do when they get there? How long have they been asleep? They need to get into the command center to find the answers but they can’t – it seems the power is out and the ship’s reactor needs to get re-started. Payton decides to hang out by the command center while Bower goes off to fix the reactor.

As he descends into the bowels of the ship, Bower discovers that a horde of flesh-eating mutants rules there, with the few human survivors completely paranoid and violent. Bower begins to wonder if the space psychosis Pandorum – also known as Orbital Dysfunction Syndrome, a delusional paranoia complete with hallucinations that is caused by being in space too long and exacerbated from the process of awakening from hypersleep – may be at work on the crew. He also begins to wonder if Pandorum may be at work on him as well.

German director Alvart goes for a very dark look here, literally. With the power nearly gone, the lighting is dim in nearly every scene, so much so that the company that processed the film had the filmmakers sign a waiver that they wouldn’t be held responsible if the film was unwatchable. However, what you can see is magnificent, a kind of industrial Gothic that conjures of visions of Metropolis and Alien at the same time. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the filmmakers were very much influenced by the latter film, references to which are peppered throughout this movie. The production design makes this movie a visual treat.

One of the drawbacks is that the movie was constructed from two scripts that were similar in theme; cobbling together a movie out of parts like some sort of celluloid Frankenstein is almost never a good idea. However, it seems to have worked fairly seamlessly here for the most part.

Quaid has played spacemen so often he could do it in his sleep – reference The Right Stuff, Innerspace and Enemy Mine – and he kind of does so here. Aside from periodically barking into the intercom “Bower do you copy?” he is given very little to do. Fortunately, Foster gives a fine performance as the aforementioned Bower, a man a little bit terrified of what he doesn’t know but completely focused on the task at hand.

I get the distinct impression that there were two warring schools of thought behind this movie. The filmmakers intended to make a thoughtful science fiction movie laced with horror, while they were pressured instead to make a horror movie with a science fiction setting. The latter won out, and I think the movie is poorer for it; the albino space mutants don’t really break any ground, and the visceral horror is really at odds with the movie’s thoughtful tone. It’s a lot like listening to William F. Buckley telling fart jokes.

A note here; Alvart is very much taken with quick cuts, which means that at times you are going to feel like rewinding and playing back a scene because you’re sure you missed something. I have nothing against quick cuts when used reasonably, but not when used constantly – it gets irritating, like the filmmakers think I have a three second attention span. Of course, maybe they’re marketing this towards people who do have that kind of MTV generation video game instant gratification mentality.

The sad thing here is that the movie’s payoff doesn’t meet the expectations of the premise, which is actually a pretty good one. At just a hair under two hours, the movie drags quite a bit in the middle as well, and by the time the amply endowed Traue and mixed martial arts champion Le show up to amp up the action quotient, it’s far too late to rescue the film from its own psychohorror morass. However, it is a fascinating movie to watch at times, and Foster’s performance makes it worth sitting through some of the gratuitous gore. I suspect that if the filmmakers had made the movie they wanted to make, there’d be a higher rating at the bottom of this review.

WHY RENT THIS: Fantastic production design, alternately claustrophobic and grand in scale. Foster does a bang-up job, particularly in the first half.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Baddies look too much like the mutants in The Descent. The intent to be thoughtful science fiction is subverted by the reality of trying to be a visceral horror movie.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of violence, lots of bad language and some fairly horrific images. If you think your kid is ready for the Alien trilogy, they’re probably ready for this.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Ben Foster insisted on eating actual living insects rather than prop insects, dead insects or using digital effects (the other choices he was offered).

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There are a couple of decent shorts on both the DVD and Blu-Ray edition; one is an explanation of what happened to Nadia’s team (I’m sure you can guess) and the other is a simulated training video for prospective flight teams for the Elysian. The latter is actually a kind of interesting look into the backstory of Pandorum.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Sleep Dealer