AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem

Year 2, Day 120 - 4/30/10 - Movie #485

BEFORE: Finally, this is the last Alien and/or Predator film on my list (though a new film titled "Predators" is coming out this summer...) and I'm anxious to get this one out of the way and move on. I've seen enough people eaten this week to last me a good long while...

THE PLOT: Warring alien and predator races descend on a small town, where unsuspecting residents must band together for any chance of survival.

AFTER: This movie picks up right after the last one (I think...), when a spaceship full of Predators is heading away from Earth. However, they didn't realize that they carried an Alien on board, inside the body of one of their fallen comrades. So, before you know it, the Aliens run rampant on their ship, and it crashes back down to Earth. Damn it, when will be rid of these guys?

The ship crashes in Colorado, and the aliens start taking over a small town - the film shows us a number of the folksy characters, but there's little point in getting to know them, since very few of them will make it to the end of the film alive. The conventions established in the previous "Alien" movies (first the crab-like thing grabs on to their face, then their chests explode, etc.) are combined here with many of the usual horror-film clichés (don't go into the woods alone, don't have sex of any kind...).

Problem #1 - the film takes place at night, during a heavy rainstorm, and THEN the power goes out in the town. End result - for most of the film, I couldn't see a damn thing. The cameraman might as well have left the lens cap on the camera.

Problem #2 - since the lead alien hatched from a Predator's body, it has some of the characteristics of a Predator. I guess they merged DNA or something - because some of the aliens look like...Predaliens, I suppose. Which makes it even MORE difficult to tell what's happening during a fight scene between two similar-looking characters, in the dark, in the rain.

Problem #3 - Like in the last film, neither of the titled characters speaks any dialogue. Which is great if you're trying to sell the film overseas, but terrible if you're trying to follow the plot (what little there is of it...)

So, it's dark, I can't see hardly anything, and what little I can see, I can't really distinguish. Seriously, there are like 3 to 4 minutes at a stretch where the screen is almost pitch-black - and that's during important fight sequences! What the hell? Didn't anyone learn anything in film school about lighting - like, maybe how to TURN A FEW OF THEM ON? So we, the audience at home, have some idea about what might be taking place on-screen? Jeesh!

I will say that I did NOT fall asleep during this movie. OK, maybe I dozed off once, but not nearly as much as during last night's film. Does that mean it's a better storyline? Not necessarily...'

At least this time, there are a couple of actors I have actually seen before - like Steven Pasquale (a regular on the show "Rescue Me"), and Robert Joy (the coroner on "CSI:NY") I could have sworn that one of those teens was Daniel Tosh, star of Comedy Central's "Tosh.0", but apparently I was wrong...

RATING: 2 out of 10 pepperoni pizzas

UPDATE: Well, that's going to wrap up my "Alien Invasion" chain, but I just wanted to point out that this week, noted physicist Stephen Hawking announced that he feels that we humans should NOT be searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence - and it wasn't followed by a line where he said we should first find some on Earth... No, Hawking thinks that aliens DO exist, but if we were ever to contact them, it could be really bad for humanity, since they would probably want our resources, and perhaps enslave us or wipe out our civilization to get them.

This is exactly the conclusion I reached, after watching films like "Signs", "Predator", and even "Meet Dave", so I think it's safe to assume that Stephen Hawking is reading my blog, and watching the same movies along with me. Mr. Hawking, I just want to say that I'm a big fan of your work, but I have to disagree with your latest treatise on the quantum nature of alternate realities generated within black holes - what the heck were you smoking?

So you heard the man, call off the search, and cut funding for SETI unless you want humanity's future to resemble a lame sci-fi movie.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator

Year 2, Day 119 - 4/29/10 - Movie #484

BEFORE: I think this was originally based on a Dark Horse comic book - at least, that's where the idea to merge these 2 film franchises came from. Often I'll go into the comic-book store (yes, they still exist...) and find two teen geeks in a corner, debating, "Who would win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?" or maybe it's Superman vs. Hulk, or Wonder Woman vs. Thor...

One time I even heard kids debating whether Big Bird or Barney the Dinosaur would win in a fight - now THAT'S getting creative. I left the store and found myself thinking how much of a wuss Barney is, with all that "I love you, you love me..." baloney, and recalling how Big Bird lives on the street (Sesame Street, but still, it's a NYC street). Barney may be a dinosaur, but he's got those stubby little dinosaur forearms - and Big Bird's got some reach, even though one arm is useless (think about it...) he can peck, and kick with those big feet. Yes, definitely putting my money on Big Bird. Oh, wait, tonight's movie...

THE PLOT: During an archaeological expedition in the Antarctic, a team of archaeologists and scientists find themselves caught up in a battle between two legends.

AFTER: As stated, this was something of a left-turn for the "Alien" movies. They could have easily continued the story of the Ripley clone on Earth, just have 1 single alien survive the destruction of the last film - then you've got an Alien loose on Earth, and that story pretty much writes itself...

Instead, simultaneously, they found a way to both acknowledge AND ruin the "Alien" films continuity at the same time... At least the "Predator" movies hinted that the Predators had been visiting Earth for centuries. But to suggest that the Predators maintain some kind of underground, pyramid-shaped training facility on Earth, where their teenage warriors battle the Alien creatures, in order to hone their skills - does this make any sense?

Why would the Predators travel across the stars, just to get in some training exercises? Can't they do that at home, before they go on their first official hunt? It would be like a person traveling to France to learn how to paint. Yeah, you might benefit from being close to the works in the Louvre, but you can also learn to paint at home, it's easier and cheaper.

Plus, the whole point of the "Alien" films so far was to keep the aliens from coming to Earth, where the Company wanted to study them. This movie takes place in 2004, and suggests that the Aliens have been on Earth for centuries! So why did the Company need to try and bring one to Earth in the future? They were already THERE!

OK, so once again the films' directors didn't work together or compare notes... Aside from that, one of the main problems here is that neither alien species talks (OK, the Predators talk a little, but as we've seen it's mostly cuss words...) so for long stretches of this movie, there are loud, noisy action sequences with no dialogue exchanged!

So we see most of the film from the P.O.V. of the group of scientists + explorers. One of them is played by Lance Henriksen, who played androids in both "Aliens" and "Aliens 3" - the implication seems to be that his character here, a multi-millionaire corporate executive, is the inspiration for the "Bishop"-model robots seen in the previous films (which take place several hundred years later) - anyway, it's a nice touch, an inside joke for the hardcore fans.

I didn't recognize any of the other actors, except for Ewen Bremner, who was in "Trainspotting" and "Snatch". Anyway, the focus was on the alien nasties here, and rightfully so.

One of the ways I judge a movie is based on how many times I accidentally fall asleep during the film, and am forced to rewind back to where I dozed off. I know that it's not always the movie's fault, since I usually start watching my movies after midnight, and if I've had a busy day or went out for a couple drinks, then the chances of dozing are much greater. Still, a great movie should hold my attention and keep me from nodding off. I had a major nap about halfway through this film (a bad sign for an action film...) and then had to wake up and finish the film - it shouldn't take me 3 hours to watch a 90-minute film!

I don't know, this was a tough one for me to judge. It just seemed like there was too much emphasis on the killing, which actually was double the normal death-rate, since both title characters ended up being a threat to the humans. And why would I want to watch a film that only seems interested in portraying death and destruction? What's the message here, you know, for the kids?

This will lead me into comic-book/superhero movies, though - so I'm looking forward to some more upbeat, heroic storylines.

RATING: 3 out of 10 hieroglyphics

Alien: Resurrection

Year 2, Day 118 - 4/28/10 - Movie #483

BEFORE: As stated, I never saw the third movie in the franchise before - so why would I have seen the 4th? Plus I was sort of busy in 1997 and beyond...but I was lucky enough to get all the installments from Cable On Demand a few months ago. I think the other reason I never watched this before was that shortly after its release, some staffer on the Howard Stern Show revealed the movie's big plot twist on air, and I hate when people do that.

THE PLOT: 200 years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived as a powerful human/Alien hybrid clone who must continue her war against the Aliens.

AFTER: Well, actually there were many more plot twists than the "big one" I knew about - but it was still disappointing to have a big reveal in the film, and for me to know about it in advance.

And I'm not talking about Ripley's death, either - since "Resurrection" is part of the title, and the movie is set 200 years after the last one, I don't think I'm giving anything away by pointing out that Sigourney Weaver's character died at some point, and this movie figured out a way to bring her back. Though the process and the result tend to lead to a number of new questions...

For one thing, I'm not sure that the cloning process seen in this film would (or should) work as depicted. And since the other word in the title is "Alien", it stands to reason that the Aliens will be making another appearance, whether you believe in the scientific process that makes it possible, or not. No alien, no movie. No Ripley, no movie, so let's just take those things as a given, and move on...

The Company that Ripley used to work for, the one that she tried to prevent from gaining control of an Alien - is long gone. But in its place is a sort of mega-military-industrial complex (the kind that LBJ warned us about...) with a very similar motive: obtain alien, study alien, try not to die in the process. Good luck with that, guys.

The new-and-improved Ripley clone has super-strength, acid blood, and considers herself the "mother" of the new Alien Queen. Unfortunately this makes her very ambivalent throughout the film about her old motives: find alien, kill alien. Now she's got this weird kinship/empathy with them that trips her up and slows her down.

So, it's up to a ragtag group of space pirates - sorry, cargo ship crew members - to find, locate and destroy, while the aliens are trying to do the same to them. Hmmm, where have we seen this plotline before? Oh, yeah, every other film in the franchise. (and why do they always have to be so "ragtag"? Can't anything in movies be accomplished by a group of well-equipped, similar-minded over-achievers?)

And once again, the storyline remains open for yet another sequel - God, it would be so EASY to pick up on the obvious hints at the end of this movie as to what the next step in the battle between humans and Aliens would be...but no, the franchise got pulled into a completely different direction. Sometimes I wish that when a film franchise has four films with four different directors, they would just get together for coffee and compare notes or something. Just so there would be a little bit of continuity, and one director could tee up the storyline for the next guy...

But why does the fourth film in a franchise have to suck so bad? "Superman IV: the Quest for Peace", "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (too preachy with all that hippy save-the-whales stuff...), "Jaws IV", "Batman and Robin", and "The Concorde: Airport 79" - do I need to continue? Even "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", while more awesome than most other films, might be the weakest of the 6 Star Wars films...

Also starring Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan (pre-CSI), Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, and Leland Orser (one of my favorite "Hey, it's that guy!" character actors)

RATING: 3 out of 10 cloning tanks (again, it's 4 for story, minus 1 for excess gore)

Alien 3

Year 2, Day 117 - 4/27/10 - Movie #482

BEFORE: Of course, I've seen "Alien" and "Aliens", but then sort of had a falling-out with the franchise. Perhaps I had a falling-out with movies some time around 1992, which is essentially when I started working a full-time schedule. It's taken me this long to try and get back on track... Maybe I just felt that the "Alien" movies were veering too close to horror movies, which is not usually my cup of tea.

THE PLOT: Ripley continues to be stalked by a savage alien, after her escape pod crashes on a prison planet.

AFTER: Now HERE is where you should use that tagline "Man. It's what's for dinner." It would sure beat the one they went with - "The bitch is back." Are you referring to the alien queen, or to Sigourney Weaver?

Actually, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) does act pretty bitchy in this one, but she sort of has a right to. At the end of "Aliens", it looked like things might work out and she might have escaped from the monstrous aliens - of course, we, the audience, know better.

Her escape pod lands on a prison planet, and she's the only survivor. Unfortunately, it's a prison-like mining colony, full of men who are double-Y chromosomed, so they're extra manly. Which of course means that they're all thieves, murderers and rapists, who haven't seen a woman in years. However, some of them seem to have forsaken their evil ways and formed something like a religious cult, which includes a vow of celibacy. Makes sense, if I were in a prison full of burly men I'd want to be celibate too.

Of course, where Ripley goes, an Alien nemesis is sure to follow, either as an egg or one of those crab-shaped thingies, and what we learned in the first two movies still applies - they grow up/adapt very quickly, hide in ducts and airshafts, and love to snack on humans. Actually, they seem to kill more often than necessary for their own survival - you'd think they would treat the humans more like a food source (Ripley makes a lion vs. zebras analogy at one point) and space out their meals, but I guess the filmmakers want to cram as much gross alien snackage into the film as possible.

More bad news - the prison colony doesn't have many weapons (other than the occasional shiv, one presumes) so the ex-cons have to make do with fire-axes, welding equipment, and other mining tools. Did I mention it was also a mining outpost and refinery? Yeah, that turns out to be significant.

The big question - can Ripley and the miners defeat the alien before the "rescue" ship arrives? Ripley assumes that the ubiquitous "Company" that she works for would rather capture and study the alien instead of killing it, so she works hard to keep it out of their twisted corporate hands.

I could have done without the nauseating "alien-cam" footage, where you see the alien's P.O.V. as it runs across the ceilings of the corridors, chasing down its meals. But other than that, I thought it was an OK continuation of the franchise. Online reviewers don't quite seem to agree...

Also starring Charles S. Dutton, Lance Henriksen, Pete Postlewaite.

RATING: 5 out of 10 sliding doors (6 for story, minus 1 for excess gore)

Predator 2

Year 2, Day 116 - 4/26/10 - Movie #481

BEFORE: Well, if I never saw "Predator" before last night, it stands to reason that I haven't seen "Predator 2" either...

THE PLOT: Amidst a territorial gang-war, a sophisticated alien hunter stalks the citizens of Los Angeles and the only man between him and his prey is veteran LAPD officer, Lieutenant Mike Harrigan.

AFTER: This is the movie that was promoted with the tagline: "He's in town, with a few days to kill." Which is never a good sign - bad puns actually don't sell many movie tickets. I secretly want to write a Christmas-themed slasher film titled "Slay Ride" which would be promoted with the tagline "You better watch out..." See, bad idea. I might have gone with "Man. The other red meat." or maybe "Man. It's what's for dinner." But then I guess you set up a lawsuit from the Pork Council of Beef Council that way.

This film was released in 1990, but is set in Los Angeles, 1997. I guess it's a little easier to deal with the idea of an alien invasion if it's set slightly in the future. Last time the Predator was in the jungle, this time he's in the urban jungle. So this is another PB Cup movie - but this time the alien invasion is wrapped in a "Lethal Weapon" style cop film.

Schwarzenegger is nowhere to be found, instead the central action star is Danny Glover, who surprisingly never once says that he's getting too old for this, umm, stuff. But the Predator alien has learned to curse, and manages to speak a few words of English, like mother-bleeper, and saying that, umm, "stuff" happens...must be a bad habit he picked up from listening to Arnold S. and Jesse Ventura.

The Predator keeps himself busy in L.A. by taking out local gangs - so why do the police want to stop him, exactly? Also interested are some federal agents, led by Gary Busey's character - who want his light-bending technology and whatever else he's got hidden in that suit. But it might not be so easy to get it...

A passable action movie, maybe not as exciting as the first one, but in some sequences, perhaps more so. And they did leave the ending sort of ambiguous, implying that Predators have been hunting on Earth for hundreds of years - so in the future they could easily depict Predators vs. pirates, Predators vs. medieval knights, Predators vs. cavemen - the possibilities are endless!

Also starring Ruben Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton (not Pullman), Morton Downey Jr. (playing an obnoxious TV reporter, that's a stretch...) and Kent McCord (wow, the guy from "Adam-12"?)

RATING: 4 out of 10 sides of beef

Predator

Year 2, Day 115 - 4/25/10 - Movie #480

BEFORE: And now for some movies about creatures that are both monsters AND aliens...starting with the Predator. I didn't have this film when I did my Schwarzenegger chain last year, premium cable ran it just a couple of months ago, so let's fit it in here.

THE PLOT: A team of commandos, on a mission in a Central American jungle, find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial warrior.

AFTER: Once again, we see that a good alien film gives its invader(s) a good motivation - here, it's not water or salt or classic films, the Predator is on Earth for sport, the thrill of the hunt. OK, maybe some tasty man-flesh, but really, it's about the sport - unfortunately he doesn't seem to believe in "catch and release". And come on, isn't man the ultimate prey? Or is he "the other red meat"?

This is what I call a "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup" of a movie - it's an alien invasion film, wrapped in a military film - two great tastes that go great together...but I don't know which one's the chocolate and which is the peanut butter. Unfortunately I'm not THAT into big, steroid-induced renegade mercenary films. All I know about guns I learned from playing "Grand Theft Auto" (actually, that probably covers quite a lot...)

But I didn't really grok a lot of the military strategy on display here, from setting trip-wires and claymores to some of the stealthy (and let's be honest, not so stealthy...) methods for surviving in the jungle. Schwarzenegger and company are big, loud, hot and sweaty guys - and since the Predator has heat-tracking vision and very sensitive audio-receptors, it's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.

Since the Predator is (presumably) an advanced life-form - although one that apparently never got over the primitive practice of killing for sport - with light-refractive technology that makes him all but invisible in the jungle, there's a very high learning curve as these muscle-heads try to figure out what exactly they're up against. I don't think anyone even says the word "alien" in the whole film... Here's a tip, guys - you see that man-shaped thing that's rippling as it runs through the leaves? Yeah, shoot that.

Again, I'm not that big on violence, or watching people get blown apart, but if that's your cup of tea, then I don't fault you.

Also starring Carl Weathers, Jesse "The Body" Ventura (hey, 2 future Governors in one film!) and Bill Duke (who I mistook for Andre Braugher - my bad!)

RATING: 5 out of 10 grenades

Monsters vs. Aliens

Year 2, Day 114 - 4/24/10 - Movie #479

BEFORE: This one looks like it might be pretty good - a high-end CGI Dreamworks film with an A-level voice cast.

THE PLOT: When a meteorite from outer space hits a young woman and turns her into a giant, she is taken to a secret government compound where she meets a ragtag group of monsters.

AFTER: Although this might be perceived as a movie for kids, there's plenty to entertain the adults as well - a blend of action, sci-fi and comedy.

This is something of an homage to classic monster-movies from the 1950's - each one of the heroes is a spoof/spin on a famous cinema monster - Ginormica is straight out of "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", B.O.B is a riff on "The Blob", Dr. Cockroach has got to be a reference to "The Fly", the Missing Link is a knock-off of "The Creature From the Black Lagoon", and Insectosaurus is like Mothra (I think...)

And there are plenty of other inside-jokes and references for the adults in the audience - sure, you expect nods to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T.", but there are also nods to "The Wizard of Oz", "The Great Escape" and "Beverly Hills Cop".

My sole complaint might be that the plot is somewhat simplistic - monsters band together, alien arrives to take over world, monsters fight aliens. Hey, at least I can't complain about the movie not living up to its title. I guess they kept it kind of simple so the kids wouldn't get lost - and at least there weren't a lot of noisy gags that went nowhere, like in "Space Jam".

But there's just no faulting the voice casting - starting with Reese Witherspoon as Ginormica, Seth Rogen as B.O.B. (his voice just sounds blobby, despite recent weight loss...), Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, Kiefer Sutherland as Gen. W.R. Monger, and Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar (just as evil as Dwight from "The Office"), plus Paul Rudd, Jeffrey Tambor, and Stephen Colbert as the President (a reference to his comedic presidential campaign in 2008?)

RATING: 7 out of 10 jet-packs