Category: Film

Alien Romulus
directed by Fede Alvarez
from 20th Century Studios
2024

The Alien franchise (which I loved the first two films of) gets a classic/traditional addition very similar to the first movie.

A group of young people trapped in endless mining-colony/company-town debt devise a plan to salvage cryopods from a derelict structure in orbit to escape from their slavery and all associated corporate planets.

What they don’t know is that the structure is a Weyland-Yutani Corporation lab, and was the scene of a grizzly accident involving certain xenomorphs…

The introductions to the characters are efficient, yet also effective in explaining their desperation. Great sets (love those labs, the hallways, the blinking analog buttons, asymmetrical doors…), great monsters, great atmosphere, solid pacing, everything I want in sci-fi. The rings around the planet are LOVELY, especially close up!

Yes, in the Before Times (pre-2020), I would have argued that people are not so foolish about the risks of deadly contamination, but I know better now. The odds that humans would TOTALLY bring alien-contaminated friends back to their only spacecraft, or insist that they could quickly open a door without letting a fast and fatal xenomorph through, are through the hollow, alien-filled roof.

This is a great addition to the Alien family, and I’m impressed with the friend who recommended it to me. I recommend it!

The Creator
published by 20th Century Fox
2023

This science fiction film is stunningly beautiful.

The story takes place in a future where robots, synthetic people, and artificial intelligence HAD become part of modern life, until a disaster attributed to artificial intelligence occurred in the U.S. As the U.S. turned against its technology, Asia continued to use it, and this leads to overwhelming U.S. military aggression in pro-technology Asia.

The story centers on the experiences of Joshua, an American soldier who infiltrated a pro-AI group in southeast Asia. While on assignment, he falls in love with Maya, a medical scientist who had helped him with this prosthetics, then loses her due to U.S. military action. As he mourns her, he is called back into action after someone who resembles her is recorded, giving him hope and his own personal mission as he attempts to locate a new AI super weapon.

This film was directed by the Rogue One director, and all the things I loved about the use of locations and landscapes in that film is vastly expanded in scenes that vary from science fiction military bases to tropical beaches and riverside refugee towns. The vastness of U.S. military equipment, the culture of them-versus-us, the determination of Colonel Howell who wishes to get the mission done and avenge her sons… The pace is fast. Flashbacks are used effectively to explain Joshua’s motivations. The focus on the super weapon and Joshua’s private mission keep the action focused. It is intense, high-stakes, persuasively acted, and the world and its technologies are compellingly designed.

It is gorgeous. I purchased it as soon as it was available, and have enjoyed watching this film several times. (I also blame it for putting Dream On by Aerosmith onto my playlist.). I highly recommend The Creator for sci-fi fans.

The Marvels
published by Marvel Entertainment (which feels self referential, but isn’t)
2023

[Me, shouting:] THIS IS AN ACTION COMEDY. Viewers laughed loudly in the theater with delight at appropriate moments when I saw it! I enjoyed it. It was intentionally silly. It was perfectly FINE.

But whoever was responsible for most of the ad campaign should be interrogated and maybe have to spend a few years locked up with Loki, or perhaps reading rival DC’s hate mail.

The film previews were misleading. Maybe the ads came out during the writers-strike or were the work of an evil intern, but they featured dead Avenger flashbacks about fighting great evil, rather than costumed musical numbers involving a hot prince singing to Captain Marvel while she dances in a ballgown-version of her battle costume. (This was a surprise worth saving to delight my fellow movie-goers, but STILL.)

Captain Marvel herself doesn’t seem to be having fun through much of the film, as the weight of possibly being a war criminal weighs heavily on her (ooopsie). Luckily, Ms. Marvel is having enough fun for everyone. And Monica Rambeau is grounded, consistent, and capable, playing it straight between star-struck Ms. Marvel and gloomy Captain Marvel.

If you like action hero comedies with mismatched buddies, disapproving parents, musical numbers, hot princes (hello, Park Seo-Jun!), secret marriages, flerkin kittens consuming Nick Fury’s staff, fangirls, and very poorly timed body swapping, this is a ‘light romp’ in superhero-dom that you might enjoy.

Dune
published by Warner Brothers
2021 (Part 2) 2024

The most beautiful science fiction films I’ve seen recently are these two films. Based on books by Frank Herbert, they tell a story of extractive settler colonialism, in which one feudal family is assigned by the emperor to rule a colony, but this leaves them vulnerable to the jealous emperor’s sabotage. Instead of being fully destroyed, the survivors foment an uprising that takes control of the substance that makes intergalactic travel possible, which threatens to undo the emperor completely.

Dune (part 1) shows the fall of that sabotaged feudal family, House Atreides. Dune Part 2 shows the beginning of uprising against the emperor’s go-to saboteurs, House Harkonnen, which will lead to war for the galactic empire itself.

The architecture is striking; the scale of it, the focus on shade and shelter, the efforts to shape the machine-like city to withstand sandstorms… The vehicles are impressive, with the vast scale that space would logically lead to (though landing such craft on planets with gravity seems less practical from an engineering standpoint, and more as a display of power toward unwilling subjects). The dragonfly-like craft are especially pleasing…

The acting is GOOD. If you’ve seen prior versions of this story on tv or film, you’ve seen both sincere efforts and cartoonish camp. This story plays it straight; the actor playing Paul Atreides is young enough to pull off the role of a conflicted youth persuasively, rather than being played by a full adult with painted rosy cheeks who is bigger than the people referring to him as ‘the little one;’ the villains remain over the top, but in a properly menacing way, more as plausible abusers of power than merely as monsters in appearance.

There are many things to admire, including the scale and pomp of many large gatherings, and the parts of the story that are simply about a boy and his mother trying to survive. The story scales up and down without losing the narrative. Technology scales from space weapons to knives, and still works seamlessly.

It’s really lovely to watch. You’ll need time – these are long movies – but there is a lot of story to cover in these books, and it never hurts to spend time looking at the beautiful patterns wind makes on sand – or how spaceships look when they explode in flames.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
published by Apple TV+ (1 season/10 episodes so far)
2023-

We San Franciscans can be vain about our beloved City, so OF COURSE we have to watch the Godzilla movie about the “G-Day” attack on SF in current times, and remark on the rendering of the monster-smashed high-rises and relocated subway stops that appear in this fun series.

The premise: Godzilla and other giant Titans are real, and can periodically leave their connected universe to appear on (and destroy parts of) our world. How our worlds connect was the focus of the parents and grandparents of two of our three young current-era protagonists, who track down solider Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell now and by his son, Wyatt, in Shaw’s youth) to learn more about Titans, their world, the missing father of two of the leads, plus the government agency, Monarch, that turned against Shaw.

The series does a good job of telling the past and present stories without jarring us – we always know which era we are in (thanks, Russell father and son!) – and of showing a version of our current world where Titan evacuation drills are just a thing we do.

The older generation of characters, Doctors Miura & Randa and Lt. Shaw, have great chemistry, and I love seeing scientists as the leading characters. Their monster-chasing adventures have an old-school, Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark feel in the best kind of way (and in a different era), but with less camp. Their grandkids are persistent in the right way, though their shaky bonds are shaky for plot reasons; once they free him, older Shaw herds them to where they need to go.

This is a fun, San-Francisco-smashing version of a Godzilla mythos, and I would like to see another season.