Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (thar be spoilers below!)

AvP:R (the R isn't really for Requiem, it's to make sure you suckers know that it's rated R) was directed by the Brothers Strause (in their feature debut) and written by Shane Salerno (Armageddon, Shaft).

 

I love the Alien movies, though I'm far from being an expert. I love them, love them, love them. All of them, even Alien3 (so long as it's David Fincher's work print version, not the Fox executives' version) and while there may be a few issues with Alien: Resurrection, I love it, too. Predator...well...I found them to be interesting, but not "omigod PREDATORS R SEW COOL!" interesting. The Alien aliens win for me.

 

I hated the first Alien versus Predator movie. Hated it. Paul W.S. Anderson's shoddy treatment of both properties, and essential transplant of the two species into the Resident Evil script, really frustrated me, though the Predalien hybrid introduced at the end of the flick was really interesting.

 

AvP:R makes the first one look like a masterpiece of Shakespearian proportions.

 

The film starts out with the biggest mistake EVER which was carried over from the first flick. Can you tell me, honestly tell me, that the Predators would actually carry their impregnated homie back onto the ship without any sort of protection? They have a super-special Alien tracking sight thingie in their masks, for the love of Pete. They'd KNOW that their fellow Predator was carrying a really nasty hybrid and would DISPOSE OF HIM / HER IMMEDIATELY. And by really nasty, I mean to say that the Predalien was a Queen / Uber-Facehugger unless forcefeeding multiple embryos down their host's throat is how the Predators procreate...

 

AND WHERE DID THEY GET THE FACEHUGGERS THAT ARE ON THE SHIP IN THE BEGINNING?! They couldn't have rescued them from the temple, there wasn't enough time to bottle the six (or whatever) of them up so nicely before the building went bye-byes.

 

The Predator knives (the ones that come out of their little gauntlet things): are they some special acid-resistant metal or something? Even their armour isn't acid blood resistant, but their weapons are, by golly...

 

There were very few, very VERY few, things in the script that were surprising and even fewer things that weren't slightly misogynistic or racist. Only white people live, only the menfolk (and the half-assed Ripley stand-in) get to shoot the guns, and only men get to be impregnated by facehuggers while already pregnant women get to be impregnated by the Predalien Queen. This is one terribly written movie. And, may I mention how much I hate that the lead male character is named Dallas?

 

Shots and even whole moments were stolen (even repeated once or twice) from the various Alien films (maybe Predator, too...I don't know,) but usually Aliens and Alien3. It was nice the first couple of times, but when conservatively 66 of your 86 minute runtime consists of stolen shots and moments, it gets boring fast especially when it doesn't feel as though the shots were understood by the filmmakers beyond "Oh, yeah! That was an awesome moment...let's do that!"

 

There are two really good things about this film, though: Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. came back for the effects (their Alien work is phenomenal) and the score by Brian Tyler took all kinds of cues from the Alien and Aliens scores (again, probably the Predator stuff, too, I don't know) and melded them into something that really worked for this film, though it did feel a little uneven, going more for the military feel of Aliens and I imagine the bombastic Predator.

 

My biggest problem with these movies is ALIENS ON EARTH BEFORE RIPLEY LEAVES IT?! WHAT?!?! Maybe it's explained in the comic books or one of the games or something, but you can't tell me that none of the characters in the first Alien film had ever heard of the complete nuclear annihilation of even a small town because of alien infestation ESPECIALLY when there were four survivours. If Weyland-Yutani were so gung-ho about finding these things (including the Predators?) separately or together, they would have LONG before the Nostromo was even drawn on paper.

 

The new breed of "versus" movies have the same problems: the crew aren't paying attention. If explanations to any of my concerns are in the comic books, they really need to be in the movies for them to make sense IN THE MOVIE.

 

Frustrating and disappointing.

Unconditional Love and Jodie Foster

Unconditional Love is a film from 2002 directed by P.J. Hogan and starring Kathy Bates, Jonathan Pryce, and Rupert Everett. It's about a middle aged housewife whose husband decides that he wants to get a divorce because he feels dead inside meanwhile her favourite singer ever, Victor Fox, was murdered by a serial killer. It's Victor Fox's death that puts her over the edge and sends her on a trip to England to attend his funeral where she finds herself trying to help Victor's boyfriend come out of both the closet and the house. And Julie Andrews tells someone to bugger off whilst singing "Getting To Know You." That alone is worth the price of admission.

The movie is freakin' hilarious. It's well written, well directed, well performed, and wonderful. I was, admittedly, dubious at first. Then my mom had me watch the trailer and I saw Jonathan Pryce and knew I had to watch it. I was rewarded with one heck of a quirky flick. I highly recommend it.

This was in today's IMDb news section:
Rupert Everett has dismissed Jodie Foster's "coming out" as insignificant - insisting she is too old for it to have an impact on Hollywood. Foster appeared to confirm rumors about her sexuality earlier this month when she thanked producer Cydney Bernard during her acceptance speech at an awards ceremony in Los Angeles. She said, "(Thank you to) my beautiful Cydney who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss." But openly out star Everett insists Foster has done little to encourage secretly gay stars to be more open. He says, "She is 45 and just couldn't be bothered anymore. After a certain age you can be gay in Hollywood. Before that, it's not only not good, it's impossible."

"Imagine that...he was 55 years of age and he finally screwed up enough courage to come out." -- me paraphrasing something Rupert Everett's character said to Kathy Bates in Unconditional Love.

"I thought she came out ages ago..." -- my mom upon reading the above IMDb news item.

I know the world's reaction to Jodie's sort of coming out is more like "Duh." than "HOLY CRAP, REALLY?!", but come on, Rupert. Give the girl a break, yeah? She is Jodie freakin' Foster and it's because she doesn't make it a big deal that it's a big deal. She treats her life, her personal life, as normal whereas if she'd come out a labrys wearing, flag flying lesbian, (or even if not...just look at Rosie O'Donnell, I've never seen her swing a labris or tote a flag, but she's having a hell of a time. Ellen's bounced back, but she STILL has troubles) it would put her on show as a freak and then there would be nothing for her regardless of how talented she is.

Regardless, she's handled her life in the best way for her. She can't live for the rest of us...

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

So, I watched Sweeney Todd last night. It was directed by Tim Burton
 from the apparently classic stage musical with lots of blood. The source of the stage musical was a folk tale about a barber looking for revenge.

Okay, lemme cut to the chase: I'm not a big fan of musicals. There has to 
be something really special about them to make me like them. I can't stand older musicals and Sweeney Todd, in spite of the horror aspects, harkens back to shows like Oklahoma! and West Side Story. To put it quite frankly, I WAS BLOODY BORED. My only previous experience with Sweeney Todd comes from an episode of Just the Ten of Us when one of the daughters (Connie, played by JoAnn Willette) sings the title song in the pizza parlour. Since the title song isn't used in the movie, but makes up the main theme, I was thinking of that episode all through the movie.

Don't get me wrong: the performances were good. Johnny Depp has a serviceable voice (not bad, not great), but it's his performance that makes his Sweeney Todd work. Helena Bonham-Carter was good. Alan Rickman should not sing again, but his performance was fantastic. Timothy Spall really shouldn't sing again, but he was fantastic. Sacha Baron Cohen was...Adam Sandler, basically. Why was Anthony Stewart Head shown so prominently after Pirelli's disgrace when he doesn't show up again?

When put against the constantly bleak London backdrop that Burton created, even the livliest of the songs was lost. Everything was flat, the locations, I mean...even the parts that should have been poppy and bright were flat.

For a two hour movie, it felt strangely truncated and severely unsatisfying. 

I Am Legend

The short: Apparently, it's impossible for Hollywood to do justice to Richard Matheson's wonderful book by the same name. This is just a fancy rehash of The Omega Man with speechless "Infected."

Also, Emma Thompson destroyed the world...but I can't be mad at her...she's Emma Thompson, for the love of Pete. I screamed when she appeared on screen for her little cameo. Too bad the movie wasn't worth her presence.

This film, the third in a series of increasingly bad adaptations of a brilliant novella, tells the story of soldier/scientist Robert Neville as he struggles to survive while searching for a cure to a virus that was intended as a cure for cancer. Of course, as such things do, it went horribly awry. Those who were injected with 'KV' mutated into sunlight sensitive cannibals with big rubbery mouths and no social structure (according to Neville.)

I already said that this is just a flashy remake of The Omega Man starring Charleton Heston. There's a considerable amound of tension and it's well directed, produced, and performed. The problem is that IT'S NOT I AM LEGEND.

Below this sentense, I'm going to spoil everything. You have been warned.

In the novella, Neville doesn't die a martyr...he doesn't save the human race. The vampires are the new world order and he's the monster murdering them in their sleep...that's the WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK! That's the main thing every single adaptation of the novel has failed to grasp. The only version that has come close to the desperate isolation of the book is the first one: The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price.

Basically, if you've never read the book or seen the other films, you'll like it. If you have, you'll most likely find yourself very disappointed.

Dear Frankie

To see my other movie reviews, please go to my LiveJournal. Through that link they're posted with the most recent review first.

Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and Jack McElhone in a story about a nine year old boy who wants to meet his dad more than anything else in the world, and the mother who has been protecting him from the awful truth by saying that his father's out at sea, on a ship called the Accra (or A.C.C.R.A., not entirely sure about that one.) When her good intentioned lie starts to fall apart, she hires a man to pretend to be Frankie's father for one day and he ends up changing both of their lives.

I'm not really sure why this ended up on my queue, to be honest. I mean, mom and I saw a trailer for it on some DVD recently, but I'm not sure as to why we went ahead and added it. That's not to say that it was a bad flick...far from it. It's a tad boring in the beginning, but if you can make it through the first twenty to thirty minutes, you'll find yourself quite enjoying this cute, though sad, little film.

I really don't have any problems with it that weren't addressed at some point in the movie and I didn't notice any technical problems. All was well and it was a good flick. I recommend it.