A L I E N Romulus

Holm On The Range

A  L  I  E  N  Romulus
Directed by Fede Alvarez
USA/UK/Canada/Hungary/New Zealand
2024  20th Century Fox
UK cinema release print

Warning: There are things people need to be starting a conversation about so, yeah, there are huge spoilers in here. Don’t read if you don’t want to know.

Okay, before I start with this somewhat problematic review, I’ll preface it by saying that Alien Romulus is the best Alien movie since the fourth in the series, Alien Resurrection (and certainly blows away the last two terrible movies). It’s entertaining and feels like it’s part of the Alien franchise but also has a level of suspense which is up there with the best of them. So, before I cover the plot set up and then get into the pros and cons, I want you to understand that I had a, mostly, pretty good time with this ethically unsound film. But, as I said in the spoiler warning, there’s a bigger conversation to be had.

Okay, so the set up is that the film starts off with a ship picking up a certain piece of ‘Alien’ debris from the floating, exploded remains of the Nostromo, which Ripley destroyed near the end of the original Alien (how it got in that piece of debris, though, I have no idea... she was well clear of the Nostromo by the time she did that) and, a few months or more have moved on since this opening scene, is my guess but, the movie properly takes place between Alien and Aliens (yeah, their will be reviews of those movies coming to the blog at some point, when I get around to taking the Blu Ray set out of shrink wrap and revisiting them one day). So this film really is set some 20 years after the first movie... and many decades before the second one (so, sometime while Ellen Ripley is sleeping away in hypersleep).  

The film features a group of ‘young adults’ being exploited on a Weyland-Yutani colony on some planet when some of them get wind that an abandoned space station, comprising of two halves (the titular Romulus, where the action mostly takes place and Remus), is about 36 hours away from burning up in their planet’s atmosphere. Everybody wants to get off the colony and Weyland-Yutani are pulling a Catch 22 on anyone who reaches their years of servitude in their mines, upping the number of years when they get to their agreed target).

So, with the help of Rain (played by Cailee Spaeny... who I’ve seen in a few things and is a pretty good actress) and her android Andy (or synthetic human, if you like, played by David Jonsson), they stage a heist on the apparently deserted space station to try and steal the hypersleep chambers on board so they can get to a more welcoming and functioning colony.  And of course, things happen when they get up there as the station was the ship where the dead xenomorph and other things ended up and... yeah... experiments have been done. Everyone on the station is actually dead and its full of face huggers and big aliens alike. Also, something happens to up the ante because the ship shifts a couple of degrees and there’s now less than an hour before the craft burns up in the atmosphere. So the film becomes a race against time... and some other, added biological complications... while what’s left of our raggedy band try to survive the running time as best they can.

Okay, so the good stuff first because, the other stuff is going to take me a while to sum up, I suspect.

The acting is brilliant. All the cast in this are great and with a special mention for the phenomenal talent that is David Jonsson, who plays not one but two very different iterations of the same synthetic human (that’s not a spoiler, you know what he is right from the start). I won’t give away why but, yeah, he does an amazing job throughout this movie, it has to be said.

And the film looks a lot like the first two movies, somehow mixing outdated looking ‘future speculation’ technology from the first two films with modern day expectations to a degree that it does, at this moment in time at any rate, seem to seamlessly blend in with those first few earlier outings in the franchise. And Benjamin Wallfisch’s score (sadly unavailable as a proper CD at time of writing) is suitably sedate and sinister in a not dissimilar vein to what Jerry Goldsmith and, to an extent, James Horner were doing in the first two films.

Plus, it’s chock ful of suspense and ‘oh no, I can’t believe you just did that’ moments. And the full size aliens are felt rather than seen a lot of the time... only really overly used in an Aliens inspired shootout in zero gravity towards the end of the film. So this stuff is all pitch perfect and there are some lovely call backs to the other films such as sound samples, computer screen displays and even one of those nodding/drinking ducks I like so much which were prominent in the original movie. Now to the big spoilers... you were warned...

Yes, there’s an alien/human hybrid in this movie. But it is kinda terrifying this time and works a heck of a lot better than the one they came up with in the fourth film in the series (which looked more like a Casper The Friendly Ghost Alien and was the one bad thing about that entry). It retains some H. R. Gigerish details on an essentially humanoid frame and, yeah, it’s relatively effective (in the lighting they use... I suspect it looks awful in broad daylight but these kind of movies are always about smoke and mirrors anyway and it works effectively here).

Okay, lets look at the bad stuff then.

Those call backs to the other movies are not subtle (which half works some of the time) but some of them are waaay too much. Certain lines and even paragraphs of dialogue associated with other actors in the franchise seem like they’ve just been pasted into the mouths of the characters here, to the extent that it feels like those actors are stepping out of character just to get the call backs in. You will definitely know them when you see/hear them and some of this stuff was just popping me out of the movie... because that’s what it seemed the characters kept doing. Popping out of the movie to make a ‘cool reference’.

Also, ridiculously, some of those homages don’t go far enough. If you’re going to reference the long, voyeuristic shot of Ripley in vest and knickers getting into the space suit at the end of Alien, maybe hold the shot longer than a second... the whole point of the way that first one was shot in that scene seemed to be to enhance the sexuality of the actress to the audience gaze, so this small nod seems undercooked, for sure. Why have it at all?

And, by the way, future generations who decide to watch these movies in order of when the story takes place, are not going to get half of the references yet because they haven’t taken place so far in the order they are watching it in. They may well think, for instance, that Corporal Hicks’ gun tuition speech from Aliens is a call back to this movie, if they don’t pay attention to old timey release dates. It just doesn’t really work.

Then we have the other big problem with the movie... which has a couple issues tied up in it.

So perhaps the biggest call back in the movie is the return of Ian Holm as an android from the same model series (and identical looking) as the android he played in the first movie, Ash. This one is called Rook, presumably to try and link it into Lance Hendrickson’s Bishop character from Aliens, Alien 3 and, kinda, Alien Vs Predator but... well let’s put it this way... it’s way much more than a cameo. The studio has resurrected this dead actor with the use of CGI and mimicry to give a new performance (albeit one which includes some dialogue from the first film) and he’s in several scenes and is a main plot point.

So two things about this because, his inclusion makes this movie morally reprehensible.

Firstly, it looks pretty bad. This CGI actor replacement rarely works well and this looks just as bad and fake as Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher did in Rogue One (reviewed here). It looks like someone’s just pasted the face on in Photoshop and it doesn’t quite match, looking really flat and useless.

Secondly, when Harold Ramis was brought back as a ghost for a few scenes in Ghostbusters Afterlife (reviewed here) everyone was accepting of this because the usage was respectful and, heck, everyone knows that in his lifetime, Ramis was trying to get another Ghostbusters sequel off the ground for decades so, he would have agreed to it. Ditto when a computer generated younger version of actress Sean Young was used for Blade Runner 2049 (reviewed here)... she was on board with it and had been in talks with the film makers. But, honestly, I don’t care how involved his family or estate were in this decision (or how much money they were compensated... if they were, I hope... that’s another can of worms), Holm may well have decided to not take part in this one. He may not have liked the script. He may well have thought it would diminish his classic performance in the first movie (which I feel it kinda does but, that’s just me). And, no, I don’t think Hollywood should be allowed to bring back dead actors as anything more than a fleeting glimpse, or cameo. The problem here is that it’s a whole performance of a major character and, not only that, it feels really flat and unreal.

And, bottom line, did we really need him to be here for yet another call back to previous elements of the franchise when another actor/character would have done just fine and the film is already overpacked with references anyway. Bringing back a dead actor to just fizz up your movie is a really low move in my opinion and I really hope Hollywood stops this terrible practice soon. It’s one thing to see a fleeting glimpse of George Reeves as Superman in The Flash (reviewed here) but it’s quite another to create a new performance. It just feels wrong to me and, frankly, should be outlawed.

But that’s me done with Alien Romulus, I think. Good effects (apart from the CGI Ian Holm, which just looks bad), great acting, some nice callbacks (too many) and, apart from the ethical issues, which may give you pause, a mostly great time at the movies.

Civil War

Road To Washington -
No Crosby, No Hope

Civil War
Directed by Alex Garland
USA/UK 2024
A24
UK Theatrical Cut

Civil War is the latest movie both written and directed by Alex Garland. I actually find him a bit hit and miss in both professions, truth be told. The ones that fall into both those categories which were more hits with me were the TV show Devs (reviewed by me here) and, to an extent, his movie Men (reviewed here). This new movie, set in the very near future, is about an ongoing civil war in the USA, where the states of California and Texas team up against everyone else in an attempt to take over the country.

This story follows a seasoned ace photo-journalist called Lee (played by Kirsten Dunst) and her journalistic partner Joel (played by Wagner Moura) as they go on a 400 plus mile road trip across a war torn USA towards Washington, to try and get one last interview with the President (played fleetingly by Nick Offerman) before the combined forces of the two opposing states steamroller through and kill him (with no intent of taking any prisoners). Aiding and abetting them... or rather just tagging along for the ride but becoming seriously involved in the action... are seasoned journalist Sammy (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson) and ‘shutterbug trying to get experience in war photojournalism’ Jessie (played Cailee Spaeny).

The film is absolutely exquisite and I’ll go ahead now and say that this is easily Alex Garland’s best work ever. It’s a sometimes reflective, often chaotic and definitely violent, intense and suspenseful road movie that doesn’t itself stop to take any prisoners along the way. Now, a lot of critics have taken the tack that the film, seen through the lens of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, doesn’t make any judgement calls or take political sides (I believe Garland chose those two unlikely allied states to detract from drawing a political message)... except for one of my favourite reviewers, who said the film is indeed political. Well, I don’t know who is right about that because, as long time readers will know by now, I don’t have a political bone in my body and so probably wouldn’t recognise any points being made. That said, I certainly didn’t think the movie was trying to pontificate for any one political alignment and the take away messages I took home from it don’t, I suspect, fall into any such camp.

I took away two things. Firstly, the message I always take from any film... people shouldn’t make war or go around killing each other. Behaving like that is just crazy outside the confines of mass cultural art and entertainment. 

 But the key thing the film seems to play around with for me... and it’s another old cliché of a point but it sits right with me, is this. What kind of human being are you if you stop to take pictures of the violence and injustice going on around you and don’t put the camera down and try to help out instead? The question is none too subtly explored in this film and Kirsten Dunst’s character, who seems to be secretly haunted by this herself, certainly addresses the issue head-on in a conversation she has with Jessie at one point. Her answer is that you’re there to document and let other people make the judgements and Lee and Jessie certainly come to a conclusion with their individual grasp of that context at the end of the movie. To say anything more about that matter would be to spoil the ending but, to that end, there are also certainly characters in the movie who, in the parlance of Star Trek, are definitely ‘red shirts’.

And the film is shot really well, edited really well and has brilliant sound design. I mean, sure, all the sound cliches are in there such as using upbeat or trivial songs juxtaposed to the horrors of a situation to highlight them... or the old chestnut of letting the music take over to the point where that’s all there is on the soundtrack, before it suddenly drops out and the artillery and explosions of the situation rush in to give a shot in the arm to the audience. But, clichés become that because they work really well and Garland and his colleagues use them to great advantage here.

Lastly, I have to say a word about the acting performances in this. Everybody is absolutely great but special shout outs go to both Cailee Spaeny (who you are in fear for throughout the entire movie) and Kirsten Dunst (turning in what might be the greatest performance of her entire career to date, as far as I’m concerned). There’s also a short but pretty scary and intense sequence featuring Kirsten’s real life spouse Jesse Plemons, which is almost unbearable to watch... a snippet of it can be seen on the trailer.  

And that’s me done with Civil War, I think. This seems to me, from this opening end of the lifespan of the film, to be a stone cold classic which I’ll snap up on Blu Ray when the time comes and, it’s good to see this before a real civil war breaks out in either the USA or the UK anytime soon (or both, as both countries seem to be just around the corner from that, it seems to me). Definitley worth a look if you want a suspenseful time at the cinema.

Bad Times At The El Royale

Royale, No Cheese

Bad Times At The El Royale
2018 USA Directed by Drew Goddard
UK cinema release print.

So this one surprised me a little.

I took a punt on Bad Times At El Royale and kept my fingers crossed that Drew Goddard, who directed The Cabin In The Woods (reviewed here) would deliver something greater than the dreadful, slickly edited gangster film that the trailer kinda half made it out to be. I’d recently said to somebody that, more often than not these days, trailers really put one off going to see the movie and reflect the tone of said movie in a completely inaccurate manner and... I’m happy to say that this is the case with Bad Times At The El Royale.

Now, the film is about criminally inspired shenanigans at a famous hotel (once owned by Frank Sinatra) which is split in half by the state line which separates Nevada from California (the rooms on the California side are a buck more expensive). It’s also got a rollicking good ensemble cast including Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, John Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman and Chris Hemsworth... who are all truly excellent and it’s nice to see this cast interacting in ways you wouldn’t expect them to here.

I say ways you wouldn’t expect because, although I quite liked The Cabin In The Woods, I did find it incredibly predictable. However, this new film surprised me a number of times when I was sure I knew what was coming next. For example the film has a pre-credits sequence which consists of a static camera watching a room in the El Royale. After a while the action within the shot keeps cutting to different parts of the day in the same shot placement, rapidly, in a montage which shows us the set up one of the film’s main plot points. I don’t want to ruin this sequence for anyone but this set up includes buried treasure (of a sort) and a man with a shotgun. Now, after the sequence ends and the title goes up, the rest of the film takes place ten years later, in 1969 and tells the story of what happens when seven characters converge on the place over the course of the fairly long running time. My point is, though, that I was pretty sure I could figure out the identity of the man with the shotgun within the opening minute of the post opening credits shot but, as it happens, I’m glad to say I was wrong. On the other hand, certain things about this opening set up do go unanswered still by the time the end credits start to roll but, you can take an educated guess at certain things and it’s nice to at least leave a movie with something to think about.

Now, the film has an excellent script, good acting, a nice fluid camera style which alternates between static shots and slow pans when required and it gets you interested in the various characters in a number of chapters which give you a little of the back story of each person and how they came to be here as the movie progresses. It’s an old cliché of a way of giving you the information in the most suspenseful way, to be sure and certain things are deliberately left unsaid (as in that pre-title sequence) so you can draw your own conclusions about them but, for the most part, it’s a very smart movie and it keeps you interested in the way things are going to turn out all the way through. It also feels dangerous a lot of the time, so you fear for the way things are going to go down when you see someone who’s got a gun, for example. Especially when not all the characters are as stable or predictable as you might think... Dakota Johnson’s character, for example, or Chris Hemsworth, who seems to be playing some kind of evil cult leader in the same vein as Charlie Manson.

I guess if I was going to compare it to something else, I might say it’s put together in the same way and with the same intensity as a Quentin Tarantino movie... just with less flowery dialogue (not knocking Tarantino’s dialogue, it’s usually very good, just saying that the speech here doesn’t match expectations of his particular work). Less sonorous dialogue is no bad thing though and I have to say I found the, relatively, smaller amount of ironic, post modernistic references in the movie to be a refreshing change in a film set in this kind of era, to be honest. That being said, Jeff Bridges does sign his name in the hotel register as Father Daniel Flynn, Flynn being the name of his character in the two Tron movies (reviewed here and here)... but I can forgive them that one, I think.

My main criticism of the movie is actually found within that dialogue, however. That being the use of very similar phrases coming out of different character’s mouths, rather then getting them all to speak about things in different ways. For instance, at least two different characters from different backgrounds use the phrase “all the bad” when such a distinctive phrase is not probably something two different protagonists are going to share. So the voice of the writer/director is very much present in the dialogue and... like a lot of writers tend to do and should really think about not doing... all the characters are thus easily perceived to be a version of how he speaks/writes. Which is a shame if you ask me.

The only other thing I didn't like so much was the constant use of songs in the film. They play an important role in terms of both atmosphere and, in at least one scene, commentary on the action but the rest of the music in the film is handled by Michael Giacchino and is less prominent. Maybe if I’d known more than a couple of the songs I would have had a better response to the musical side of the film but, as it stands, I’m not sure it’s quite my cup o’ tea.

All that being said, though, these are really minor criticisms and I have to say I enjoyed Bad Times at The El Royale from end to end. Which is especially impressive because the film has a running time of 2 hours and 22 minutes but it really doesn’t feel that long and the pacing is such, with a cliff hanger seemingly at the end of every chapter stop, that you certainly won’t realise where the time has gone. At least I didn’t so, yeah... pretty impressed with this one. It’s not something I think I could watch again but it certainly holds the attention and I’d definitely recommend you catch this one while it’s at cinemas. There’s a lot of rubbish out there at the moment in movieland but this film certainly doesn’t add to that pile and is worth your time, I’d say. You’ll find yourself caring for characters who probably make a bad first impression on you when you first meet them, which is no mean feat in itself... so give this one a go.

Pacific Rim Uprising

The Jaeger Sanction

Pacific Rim Uprising
2018 China/USA
Directed by  Steven S. DeKnight
UK cinema release print.

Well this one took me by surprise.

I kinda half liked the first Pacific Rim film (reviewed here) but found it a bit strange when the basic premise... robots vs monsters... was a bit dull in places. I quite like Guillermo Del Toro, have a good time with about two thirds of his films and the fact that he wasn’t directing this one was kinda turning me off from the idea that this could actually be an entertaining sequel to the first.

I’m happy to say that, in no way did this film turn out like I thought it would. Pacific Rim Uprising is an extremely entertaining film and, if anything, the way it builds on the first film and eschews some of the admittedly interesting creative ideas and instead, goes full on for the action flick route is to its advantage, I think. In other words... I reckon this sequel is a much stronger film than the first one.

The film headlines John Boyega, who also jumped on board as one of the producers and... well I think this actor is just a great talent and, a likeable person away from the camera too. Although he’s still quite young and newish to movies, he really shows he can carry a big movie on his shoulders.

He’s joined by the equally likeable Scott Eastwood. Yep, I’m going to say it and I hope Mr. Eastwood doesn’t mind this comparison himself as, I’m sure he must get it all the time but... it’s just like watching his famous father, Clint Eastwood, as if a younger Clint had been ‘time scooped’ up from whatever movie he was making in the 1960s and then plonked down in front of the camera for this. Scott walks, talks and acts like his father but... he does it so well and his chemistry with Boyega in this is really quite nice.

The third of the big three in the film who carry the brunt of the story on their shoulders is newcomer Cailee Spaeny, doing a truly excellent job playing a young girl who, ten years in the wake of the last movie, illegally builds a mini Jaeger (the name of the human designed robots piloted by humans) and, for reasons you’ll see in the first ten or so minutes of the movie, is recruited, along with Boyega playing the son of the Idris Elba character from the last one, onto the government payroll to learn how to pilot a proper Jaeger (with Boyega as one of her instructors).

After a brief voice-over montage of Boyega as he gives narration on the current state of the world and what’s happened in the intervening years since his father ‘cancelled the apocalypse’, the film opens really strongly when he and Spaeny are thrust into each other lives, culminating with them inside Spaeny’s small ‘junker’ Jaeger, facing off against a huge government model.

I was expecting the film to kind of just dilute itself down after this opening but, I have to say, it doesn’t let up the pace and I was truly having a good time with it. There are only three characters returning from the last film and one of them, who was my favourite from the last one as it happens, doesn’t last very long in the movie before being killed off. Which is really a shame. Of the other two remaining characters... well one of these is used here as the reason for all the events that occur in the film but... I don’t want to give anything away because, although the storyline is kind of basic and clichéd, the first reveal that something is a bit ‘off’ about this character is still a bit of a surprise.

One of my few regrets about this one is that Ron Perlman’s character, shown to have actually survived being eaten by a Kaiju in a post credits scene of the last installment, didn’t make it into this movie. Oh well, maybe in the third one, if they get around to doing it... which I hope they do because the final, post end title scene (before the credits properly start) with John Boyega’s final line, has got me pumped to see where they take this one.

Like I said, the story on this one is more than a little clichéd but, you know, things become so because they work and the various elements of the film are so well handled here that I couldn’t have cared less if things got a little predictable. The action sequences aren’t over edited to death so you can easily figure out what’s going on and all the characters are used well... with Scott Eastwood’s exit from his Jaeger towards the end being well followed up by a scene where he comes back unexpectedly and... oh, right, this is a non-spoiler review. Can’t tell you where they go with that one.

A couple of things that I thought were a little weak in some ways are the score and the final battle.

Lorne Balfe is a marvellous composer and he does a pretty good and appropriate job in scoring for this film. That being said, Ramin Djawadi’s heroic main theme from the first film, which was all over the trailer for this one, is sadly missing from the majority of the movie and when Balfe does decide to employ it, about two thirds of the way through when ‘a new hope’ is about to be constructed to give mankind a shot at... erm... re-cancelling the apocalypse, it’s in a much changed variation which lacks the punch of the original. The theme turns up again better realised over the end titles but it’s been sadly missed up until then.

The other thing is that I was waiting for the big, final showdown and didn’t realise I had already seen it. The film felt like it needed one of these typical, modern Hollywood “oh, you thought it was over... check this even bigger threat to your depleted resources” style denouement thrown into the mix and, just when it was hinted that it was going to do just that, one of the characters you’d forgotten about negates that moment with a single punch to someone’s jaw. So... a really nice character moment, in all honesty but, at the same time, a real dampener because the film actually felt like it needed a double climax at that point.

However, the film is hugely entertaining, nicely scored, brilliantly acted and has some truly nice shot compositions to boot. Watch out for a scene in the first 20 minutes of the movie when Boyega and Spaeny are in a  prison cell talking and the long shot has each of their heads framed by different vertical sets of bars. Lovely stuff.

So... not much else to say about Pacific Rim Uprising, I guess. If you liked the original Pacific Rim but thought it could have maybe held together a little better then I think you’ll genuinely have a better time with this one. A worthy successor that more than lives up to its roots and which, I hope, makes enough money to greenlight another sequel which makes good on the promise of a certain scene in this one. And for Scott Walker’s next trick, I’d like to see him in a reboot of the Dirty Harry franchise with John Boyega playing against type as a psychotic villain. Probably won’t happen but that could be nice.