Alien Covenant

I saw the very first Alien film at the old Capitol Theater during its premiere run.  Back then the theaters didn’t do matinée showings all the time, so Mom had to take me to downtown Charleston in the evening to see the film.  It was a haunted house on a spaceship with an alien in place of a ghost.

I really didn’t know what I was in for, but I was excited.  There were several points in the film where I remember being acutely aware of my heart beating a little faster than normal.  There were some genuine scares in the film.

When Aliens came along I was looking for more of the same.  What I got was a war film in space with a large dose of action movie heroics in the final act.  I found the early part of the film to be slow and it took me a couple of re-watches to warm to the film.  It wasn’t like Ridley Scott’s original.

Aliens 3 had a great trailer, but I missed it during its theatrical run.  When I finally did catch it, most likely on HBO, I really disliked it.  I really didn’t like the bald Ripley.  I also disliked the fact that they chose to kill her off at the end of the film.  I haven’t revisited the film, so my opinion could very well have changed.

Alien Resurrection was a little more to my taste.  I caught it at a theater in Beckley after work one Saturday.  For most people this was the nadir of the franchise, but I found it much more entertaining than Alien 3.  Once again this is a film that I have not revisited since my original viewing.

After this film the series shifted gears and did a couple of crossover films with the Predator franchise.  The xenomorphs most recently poked their heads out in Ridley Scott’s return to the world of the Weyland Corporation, Prometheus.  We watched and reviewed Prometheus on the Cinema Toast Crunch podcast (available on iTunes, Stitcher and at http://www.cinematoastcrunch.libsyn.com ).  The film was enjoyable enough, but it wasn’t Alien.

When word got out that Scott was working on a new film actually in the Alien world, I was intrigued.  The trailers looked great.  I was stoked to see this movie and to see it in 3D at the theater.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it during the film’s theatrical run.  Thank God for home video!

The box art they used was eye-catching, and unlike many recent releases, they used the same art across all forms of home media.  The image, also seen in the trailer, is of a xenomorph clutching the outside of a ship and staring into the glass at the human within.  The human is omitted from the box art, but the look, the body language of the alien, tells you it has someone in its sights.  The amazing thing about this art is the use of white.  All of the previous Alien films as well as Prometheus have had very dark colors, usually the black of space spread across their box covers.

I bought the Target exclusive Blu-ray/DVD combo that came packed inside a limited edition book.  I love book packaging for discs and Target, Fox, and Titan really hit a home run with this one.  The design they came up with for holding the discs in place is the absolute best I have ever seen.  The book itself is also a thing of beauty, apparently borrowing content from Titan’s Alien Covenant art book.  I was especially drawn to the cover of the book with its simple line drawing.

Popping open my Sony Blu-ray player, I dropped in the disc and prepared myself for the Alien experience I missed in the theater.  About a week ago my podcast co-host watched Alien Covenant and had told me it was fantastic.  He said it had everything you want from an Alien movie.  I was stoked.  The film starts off slowly.  David the android from Prometheus is having a discussion with his creator.  From there we finally get introduced to the crew of the Covenant, a colonizing ship headed for a new world to settle down.  They also have an android (this one named Walter and also played by Michael Fassbender) who handles the day-to-day activities while the crew waits out the 7 year plus trip in cryo-sleep.

When a freak energy storm damages the ship, the crew is awakened early only to find their captain’s pod is malfunctioning and he bursts into flames.  While making the repairs, the ship picks up a transmission from an unknown planet.  Their scans show that the planet is perfect for colonization and is much closer than their planned destination.  They decide to check it out.

On the planet they find a perfect world with running water and free growing wheat.  There appears to be no animal life, but they know someone sent out the signal they received.  In the course of their search two of the crew inadvertently get infected by a biological agent that quickly gestates inside their bodies and soon produce a white skinned creature similar to the alien xenomorph.  The creature was referred to by fans and filmmakers as the neomorph.  These creatures don’t appear to have the extendable inner teeth of the original xenomorph, but they are still incredibly deadly with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

For the most part this film does the cat and mouse game that the first film did so well.  Instead of trapping the “mice” inside a spaceship, this time they are stuck on a strange world with the creatures and David, the originator of the mysterious transmission.

I enjoyed Alien Covenant, but I had one huge problem with it before the first shot was hitting my TV screen.  We know that this is a prequel to Alien.  This means that the crew cannot survive.  If they survive, they would have warned Earth about the creatures.  Since this never happened, the crew cannot have survived.  At this point it just becomes a question of how they will die and in what order will their deaths occur.  Technically I guess you could argue that Daniels and Tennessee didn’t actually die on-screen.  They were shut inside their pods as the villainous David is revealed to have been masquerading as Walter.  He claims in his log that they died, but there is a chance they survived.  Survived to be killed at a later date by David, I would suggest.  This took away much of the suspense for me.  When someone was in danger I didn’t really feel any sense of hope that they would survive, because even if they did make it out of that peril, their fates were still sealed.  Nothing they could do was going to alter the fact that they were all going to die.

Despite this issue the film has much to recommend.  The effects look great.  The acting is top-notch with Danny McBride turning in a performance that truly surprised me.  Ridley Scott’s direction was good, but not nearly as sharp as his original turn.  All in all not a bad film, and one that I am sure I will like much better on future viewings where the fate of the crew will not be an issue for me.  Obviously on a second viewing I am expected to know who will survive.  I shouldn’t feel that way on a first viewing however.

I give Alien Covenant a 7.5 out of 10.  I feel certain that will rise to an 8 or higher upon a second viewing.  It safely falls in at #3 in my rankings of the Alien franchise, coming in behind Alien (#1) and Aliens (#2).  It is miles ahead of the other films in the series.

 

Monsters vs Aliens

I really wanted to see Monsters vs Aliens in 3D when it was out at the theater, but like so many movies, I missed it.  When it was released on DVD, it wasn’t 3D, so I felt no great rush to pick it up.  The other day I was at Wills and found a used copy for a couple of bucks.  I decided to get it and check it out.  I’m glad I did. 

Monsters vs Aliens is a cartoon, and it is a family film, but it is also a wonderful love letter to the fans of the old 1950’s monster movies.  Many of those films were made in 3D as well, which adds another layer to the homage.  The story is that the U.S. government has been capturing monsters and keeping them locked up since the 50s.  They have Dr. Cockroach, a humanoid cockroach ala The Fly.  There is BOB, a blue blob, and The Missing Link, a half man/half fish Creature from the Black Lagoon knock off.  Rounding out the monsters is Insectosaurus, a fuzzy Mothra type monster.  When the story opens, a new monster has just been added, Ginormica, or as she refers to herself, Susan.  At her wedding, Susan was hit by a meteor which bombarded her with a strange cosmic energy that caused her to grow to gigantic proportions.

An alien known as Gallaxhar wants the energy and decides to destroy the earth to get it.  The government believes the only way to stop the alien’s plan is to counter attack with monsters, so they set the monsters free to take down the alien invasion.  There are numerous scenes and snippets of dialogue that are winks to the old monster movies.  A shot of Ginormica using a syringe as a spear is taken from one of the Amazing Colossal Man movies while Gallaxhar’s exhortation to “Destroy All Monsters” is a reference to a 1968 Japanese monsterfest with Godzilla and crew.

Monsters vs Aliens is a beautifully animated film and is cleverly written.  The Dreamworks animation crew decided to go with well-known actors for the voices.  Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Keifer Sutherland, Will Arnett, and Rainn Wilson voice the lead roles with Stephen Colbert, Amy Pohler, Jeffery Tambor, Paul Rudd, and Ed Helms among others pulling up minor roles.  I can only speculate about how this looked in 3D, but I would guess it was amazing.  Some of the scenes just scream out that they were planned for a 3D release including an end credits gag involving the president sticking his head out of the screen.       

The DVD provides a nice featurette about the making of the movie as a 3D experience.  It also has some deleted scenes that never got fully animated.

Monsters vs Aliens is a wonderful film that just happens to be family friendly.  I give it 3 stars.

They Live

Somehow I had never gotten around to seeing They Live before now.  I have seen almost all of John Carpenter’s classic films, but for some reason They Live had always squeaked past me.  I was familiar with the plot and the classic bit of dialogue dealing with chewing bubblegum and kicking ass, but I hadn’t put it all together.  I decided it was time to rectify that situation and Wednesday I popped They Live into the DVD player.

They Live concerns a future where aliens have surreptitiously taken over the world, hiding their true appearance and subliminal control messages under a signal broadcast over television and through a device on the roof of their secret headquarters.  Rowdy Roddy Piper stumble across a pair of glasses that allows humans to filter out the signal and see things for what they really are.  Now he must convince buddy Frank (Keith David) to help him bring down the aliens.

They Live can be watched as a straight up action/sci-fi film or you can look deeper and find all sorts of messages about the media and the way the American people have allowed themselves to be controlled by television and the media.  They Live was made in 1988, but the message is even closer to the truth today.  We have let the media assist in selling us a war.  The media sells us political candidates and then works to tear them down once they are in office.  They bring us news reports on the oil spilling in to the gulf bookended by ads for cars that run on the same petroleum product, and we’re so hypnotized by the flickering images that we don’t even question what we’re being told.

Roddy Piper makes a decent B grade action hero, but his character has to be one of the dimmest heroes ever considering his inability to figure out the obvious in regards to Holly Thompson’s (Meg Foster) role in the big picture.  He was standing there at the meeting where she announced that the TV station where she works is clean.  When he later finds out that the aliens’ headquarters is in the same building wouldn’t he be at least somewhat suspicious?  And since she had no trouble whatsoever shooting Frank while his back was turned, why does she give Piper the chance to turn around, have this long discussion with her, get the drop on her, shoot her, and destroy the signal device?

Like so many films made in the 8os and before, They Live is being remade for a 2011 release.  It would be great if they played up the political intrigue a bit more and made the characters a little brighter, but instead we will probably get CGI, bigger explosions, a rock soundtrack, and 3D as opposed to any true improvements on the film.  They Live isn’t bad as a Saturday afternoon action flick with a little more substance than most action films, but scenes like the ones I mentioned above as well as a 5 minute fight scene over Piper wanting Frank to try on the glasses keep it from being a true classic.  It’s not that the fight scene is bad, or too long.  It’s actually a very well done fight, but to fight that long and take that many blows to the crotch as well as the head, stomach and chest over simply trying on a pair of glasses seems unrealistic.  The first punch and I would have said, “Okay, I’ll try the damn glasses”.

They Live gets 2 1/2 stars in my book.

The Chubbchubbs!

Forgive me father for I have sinned, sort of.  On Friday morning my wife, my daughter and I all packed up and drove 500-600 miles to visit my sister and her family.  We stayed for the Memorial Day weekend and drove back on Monday.  For those 4 days I didn’t watch any DVDs.  I love my DVDs, and I have been enjoying this little project, but when I have to choose between watching a DVD or spending a couple of extra hours visiting with family that I’m lucky to get to see once or twice a year, family wins out hands down.  So for 4 days, I didn’t watch a DVD.  Today I’m playing catch up.  I have watched 4 DVDs for the days I skipped and after my eyes rest a little, I’m going back to watch today’s disc.  All four of the DVDs I watched today came from the great Illinois vacation.

First up is The Chubbchubbs!.  When I decided to catch up by watching five discs today, I began looking for some short films.  The Chubbchubbs! was a DVD I found at the Big Lots near my sister’s house.  I remembered The Chubbchubbs! being nominated for an Oscar a few years ago.  Turns out it won the Short Film (Animated) Oscar in 2002 and that the DVD was only 5 minutes and 27 seconds long.  It’s short, but boy does it pack a lot into those 5 and a half minutes. 

The CGI animation is fantastic; some of the best I have seen.  The story is cute as well.  A loser alien who works as a janitor at a popular bar called the Ale E Inn is mopping the floor while a female alien singing Aretha Franklin performs on stage.  One tipped mop bucket later, the poor little guy has nearly fried the singer.  He is fired and thrown out of the bar where a dying alien crawls up to warn him that the Chubbchubbs are coming.  When the little alien looks over the horizon, he notices a dust cloud with these armoured marauders quickly approaching.  The alien makes several attempts to warn the patrons of the bar, but they all turn out the same.  He ends up injuring the singer, stopping the show and getting tossed back out.  When someone else shows up and delivers the warning, the place clears out in an instant.  The little alien tries to leave too, but now he notices four little fluffy baby chicks.  He rushes back to save them and in the process is unable to leave before the marauders arrive.

The Chubbchubbs features a plethora of science fiction cameos in the animation.  The alien from Alien is sipping a drink, Yoda and Darth Vader are arm wrestling, Robbie the robot and the Lost In Space robot are dancing (what else) the robot.   Even ET and Jar Jar Binks manage to pop in for a quick gag.  The short was so good I had to call the wife back in to watch it.  She loved it as well.

The DVD is extremely bare bones.  Some trailers and the short and that’s it, but I’m still very happy with it.  The Chubbchubbs! gets a perfect 10 on the Night Flight scale.  If you don’t want to run out to Big Lots and pay $3 for a 5 minute DVD, I understand it is also available on the Surf’s Up DVD.