There are billionsssss and billionsssss of starrrrrsssss…..in the Cosmosssss….

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Given yesterday’s post, I can’t help believing this is true – although SOME people weren’t laughing (me! 🙂 )

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Again with the sci-fi movie series, eh? So (now) having seen all four of them (not talking about Alien vs. Predator, which I have also unfortunately seen) I can truly say that only the first two are worth watching. Alien (from way back in 1979 – Black Hole vintage) was a great horror story in space, and has lots of (now) famous actors in it, including Tom Skerrit, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt and of course Sigourney Weaver (ultimately the star of all the movies). The somewhat obscure (at the time) bio-mechanoid H.R. Giger art and set design really made Alien a unique movie – and with Dan O’Bannon as a key writer plus Ridley Scott as director (this was several years before Blade Runner) were a great combination.

Aliens, the next movie, was directed by James Cameron and took a different tack to turn the saga into an action movie, this time including Michael Biehn (Terminator alum and regular Cameron movie actor). Here, Ripley gets to be a badass and save the day again, despite a squadron of Marines sent to ‘protect’ her and Paul Reiser (who plays a great corporate douchebag, and thankfully ‘gets his’ from the aliens themselves – ha!). And who can forget the classic “game OVER, man!” from Bill Paxton? One of his classic goofy movie roles.

Alien3 was pretty bad. interesting premise (Ripley, Hicks and Newt’s ship is diverted somehow to a prison colony but only Ripley survives the crash – Lance Henrikson shows up again now as the scientist trying to continue the research on the aliens but Ripley ends up as the ‘Christ figure’ and kills herself to thwart him). Interestingly enough, Wired has an article on David Fincher (the director) this month, where he’s still fairly pained about the whole experience – it’s safe to say that the low quality of the movie upon release is probably not his fault based on this article.

Which brings us to Alien (4): Resurrection. Pretty simple plot – yet *again* the ‘Company’ is trying to do experimental research on the aliens (they just can’t learn that lesson, can they?) but this time they are also using clones of Ripley to incubate the alien babies as their hosts. They also seem to be trying to ‘meld’ Ripley WITH the aliens along the way, as she finds out later. A ship of baddies arrives at the military research ship where all this ‘research’ is being conducted – but then when Ron Perlman gets his face popped by Ripley after being a smartass – someone gets trigger happy and the baddies effectively kill most of the guards. However, only Winona Ryder knows about the aliens onboard and what’s really going on – and that Ripley is a clone (200 years have apparently passed since the original Ripley died on that prison planet, after all). So then we go into lengthy chase/confrontation scenes where we find out WR is a robot (remember Ash from the first movie and Bishop from the second? Same deal). We also find out that one of the objectives of the alien research was to allow the alien to have live babies(?) instead of laying all those eggs with face-huggers in them – wtf? After all this useless/?? plot tedium that kills about 45 minutes, the survivors almost get away in the smaller ship only to have an alien on board (again) but manage to kick it out the airlock (again) and then see a sunrise on earth, where the movie ends.

So, while the movie wasn’t near as cheesy as ST:Insurrection – it lacked nearly any original plot and many moments of WTF all over the place – I like many of Joss Whedon‘s writing creations, most notably Firefly/Serenity, but he’s really grasping at straws here (and drowns in the process). He doesn’t include enough plot to make it more a straight horror movie like the first one (and really, now having had 3 previous movies, how could you build onscreen terror in that sense anyway?) nor any real interesting action sequences that even come close to matching the second one. We’ll just politely ignore the third movie altogether. 🙂 And most of the dialog is pretty throwaway too – save the new ‘malevolent’ Ripley, who as a clone with alien blood had a much darker tone and personality than her original – but they never really explore it to any degree, the most she ever says at once is maybe a sentence?

Oh well….

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So I watched the movie Monsters this evening. I had never actually heard of this movie, even though it apparently came out in 2010. It was on the DVD rack while I was walking out of the library, so I checked it out. While I don’t think it will be contending for The Academy anytime soon, it’s an interesting movie for a number of reasons.

The plot is pretty simple – NASA detected evidence of alien life several years ago and sent a probe, which returned to Earth but crashed in the general region of the US/Mexican border, and caused an alien infestation. As a result, a big swath of territory – mostly in MX but some across the southwest US – has become the ‘infected zone’ and is walled off on the US side, while heavily bombed and monitored by US and MX troops to attempt to control the aliens. The central character(s) are a young(er) freelance photographer in MX (trying to take closeups of the aliens he can cash in when back in the US) and a young female, possibly a marine biologist (hinted at but never confirmed) – whom he retrieves from a hospital on behalf of her father (his publication employer back in the USA) and together they try to get back to the USA – he to his estranged young son, she to her fiancee so she can get married and resume her life.

So while this story has been done in quite a few variations, not all of them science fiction (e.g. road trip, quest/journey movies, etc.), there are interesting departures from even the recent versions of this theme.

First, while the monsters here largely look like huge, 100-ft+ walking octopi with many extra tentacles, you don’t get much of a sense of them as characters (e.g. unlike District 9) nor much variation (unlike Cloverfield), although they seem to have a stationary incubation form too. The ‘infected zone’ here is much more a quarantine rather than an implied racist encampment as was the case in District 9 (or even the much earlier Alien Nation).

Second, the film goes out of its way, possibly due to a lower budget (not sure) to have long sequences of bleak music and no dialogue between the characters or their Mexican handlers (a variety of boat, truck and caravan drivers/armed guards help transport them north for much of their journey). While sometimes this gets a bit repetitive – other times it provides moments of reflection and identification with the main characters – what would YOU do in such a situation? How would the world deal with such an ‘infected zone’ if it actually existed? Would the Mexican govt. tolerate frequent American jet-bombing raids over their country in the name of killing aliens? The main two characters discuss at least some of this with their handlers around the campfire one night, and again, while not much dialogue there either – it still provokes thought for them and the viewer – the mexican perspective is quite different.

The end sequence with the aliens is also different than most such movies (certainly way different than Cloverfield’s end and any Godzilla/kaiju movie I’ve ever seen) but it doesn’t explain much, either. It leaves the interpretation up to the viewer – but at least a few of those have to be on the optimistic side?

The effects are on balance pretty good but I suspect they kept alien activity to a minimum to save on money. Nearly all the movie seems to have been shot on location and this is pretty effective – I have to believe that the burned out neighborhoods they show in the infected zone had to have been (still) leftover, abandoned housing from Katrina or similar. Certainly much of the journey would not have lent itself to special effects, although it’s not clear whether they are really in Latin America or not. There is at least a decent amount of hand-held camera work, again reminiscent of Cloverfield, but not nearly as frantic in most cases.

What’s also interesting is that the various Mexican characters – almost none of which have names or many scenes, they usually function to keep the plot rolling forward in most cases – seem to take the situation in their same ‘live life as it comes’ way they always have. Even as the Americans proceed deeper and deeper into the infected zone, there are still people living there and trying to survive, same as always. A veiled commentary on the US? Perhaps….

Ultimately, the overall impression is one of a world even more paranoid and unstable than the one we already live in – not unlike that of 28 Days Later or Children of Men, especially the latter’s very bleak, dystopian view of the future world.

Anyway, if you like such movies, you may like this one as a quick view – it’s only 90 min. or so long.

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So amid other home projects yesterday, took a break to watch the 1956 movie ‘Earth vs. the Flying Saucers‘. For those of you who haven’t seen it (likely everyone at this point) but HAVE seen a old movie clip of a flying saucer hitting the Washington Monument used in various ways on TV/etc. (e.g. Toonces the driving cat is blamed for it at one point on SNL) – that clip is from this movie.

Basically the plot is simple – an american scientist encounters a UFO during his project to launch space rockets (that seem to be going missing – he’s on his eleventh one) – ‘Project Skyhook’. They find out the UFOs are responsible, and want to colonize earth. Some skirmishes ensue, and (in part due to a mistake on the part of the Americans) the aliens attack and completely obliterate Project Skyhook’s launch base and buildings.

Some further discussions happen between the leading researcher and the aliens, but ultimately we decide to try to fight them – through some ‘amazing insights’ apparently obtained on the spot – we come up with a ‘sonic weapon’ to disrupt the aliens’ ability to defy gravity and make their ships crash. The movie ends with a bunch of jeeps jetting around DC trying to zap the alien saucers – several govt. buildings and monuments die a fiery death as we force the alien ships to crash into them. The main two characters are seen relaxing on a beach afterward, staring into the sunset and thankful that we saved ‘our earth’.

So…..there are many plot holes in this movie. And by way of comparison to the great, earlier movies The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953) and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) – this is seems a lot more low-budget and cheesy. The saucers were animated by Ray Harryhausen, and they aren’t bad – but their comparative size/scale seems to shift in every scene! Some shots where they are flying over major cities – they seem to all-but-equal the city in size (not unlike the huge ship in District 9 or even V) – and other times they aren’t any bigger than ET’s spaceship – e.g. when the aliens meet the scientists on the beach.

The aliens are pretty crappy tacticians – on their few manned attacks (where they come out of the ship) they show a forcefield below the ship that protects them (and in one case, they can fire out of it at the attacking jeeps, guns and army men) – but then they LEAVE its protection and promptly get shot up – WTF? And they walk like snails – which may be a product of lame rubber suits for the actors, not sure – easy pickin’s for the gunners (even a scientist picks one off).

Also, at one point they show a saucer battling a B-29 (propeller-powered) bomber – hello? Earlier and later in the movie jets are zipping around – why would a old B-29 be leading the charge (it gets zapped in fiery death – big surprise)?

Also, in the climactic battle – despite having shown repeated scenes (and discussing same between the aliens and scientists) that the saucers are hovering over the world’s major cities, awaiting the order to land and take control) – the battle only happens in DC(?) and with a bunch of lame jeeps tearing around town with big ‘sonic guns’ in them – half of which get zapped by the aliens anyway? What happened to all the other ships? At least in (the equally if not much MORE cheesy) Starship Invasions 20 years later (1977), they at least cover that one!

There were some interesting touches in this movie, however – I liked the stark interior of the spaceship, and the ‘talking rose flower’ they used as a translation device. I liked the weird alien voice distortion and psuedo-science babble they used throughout the film (although – no Theremins in the soundtrack? see The Day The Earth Stood Still for how it’s DONE) The saucers are decent – although many times they seem to fly as if the alien pilots are drunk.

So….. in summary, not a terrible movie, but there are far better from the era (see above, or also the great Forbidden Planet (1956) – which includes an extremely young Leslie Nielsen!) – as to me, the next cheesefest will be the slightly earlier This Island Earth (1955) which I have never actually seen – Scarecrow, here I come! 🙂

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