The Official Movie Thread

[Einherjar86]

Finally saw Alien: Romulus...

Alien: Romulus was... a mixed bag.

I loved the first 40-ish minutes or so. It was so fucking immersive and textured. Pulled in immediately when they were still in the mining colony and making plans and you could hear all this industrial machinery going on in the background. It felt so damn grimey and sordid and dark and hopeless long before we got to the alien shit. Then we get to the space station and it plays up the industrial horror of humans exploring an abandoned, automated sci-fi facility completely indifferent to their existence. It gets so much mileage out of the hostile environment long before the xenomorphs enter the picture. Then we get the inevitable facehugger introduction and it falls apart into a jumbled mess of jumpscares and loud noises. All the subtlety and atmosphere of the first act just gone.

It recovered somewhat with the elevator shaft setpiece and if that had been the climax I'd have been happy. Unfortunately it kept going and let me tell you, a lot of people in my theater could not contain their laughter when they introduced the

Spoiler

human xenomorph

and I can't exactly blame them. Somehow I don't think that's the reaction you want out of the climax of your Alien film.

Lastly, the cast was fucking awful outside of the main girl and the two androids.

So all in all... it was about 50% "genuinely great" and 50% "laughably bad", with very little in-between.

I agree with you entirely about mixed bag; I'd actually even say it was a pretty bad movie, especially toward the end. But I weirdly was not expecting the

Spoiler

human xenomorph

to be the thing that made your theater laugh. My friends and I could barely contain ourselves when

Spoiler

CGI Ian Holm

made its first appearance. At first, you just see the silhouette, and I was like "oh, that's tasteful." Then it's fully visible, and it just looked terrible. Who signed off on that?

I was also excited by the opening, which I felt did some nice world-building. Also, the "Bar" sign you see on the colony is the same one from Aliens, which I thought was a nice touch. But then the film got way too into its elaborate set pieces and stunt acrobatics, and any subtle tension was just lost. Pretty remarkable this film has 80% on RT. It was very disappointing.

I also get wanting to pay homage to the old films, but enough with the word-for-word callbacks! fucking hell.

How did you love the 15 storylines introduction that almost had no impact or value the hell Vegard.

15 storylines? lol there were two, and they come together about 20 minutes into the film.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Spoiler

I feel silly because I did not recognize Rook as the android from the first movie. It's been a while since I've seen the first Alien, and I mistakenly thought Lance Henriksen played the android in both 1 and 2. There was definitely something off about him I couldn't put my finger on, but it didn't even occur to me that I was watching a CGI reanimation of a dead actor.

And the funny thing is, I probably enjoyed the movie more because I didn't pick up on it. I've seen several reviewers who otherwise enjoyed the movie specifically criticize the digital reanimation and meanwhile I'm over here enjoying this eerie original character who seems to reflect our troubled relationships with megacorps in the real world; being of great utility, but without our best interests at heart and with a complete apathy to our continued existence.

 

[Einherjar86]

lol that's pretty funny. My friends and I were joking afterward, "What if it's actually the director's crafty take on continued corporate exploitation of actors in Hollywood, a la Weyland Yutani's unending exploitation of its labor force???" Alas, the film wishes it was that intelligent.

 

[rms]

15 storylines? lol there were two, and they come together about 20 minutes into the film.

I didn't respond just because I realized there was no point in going forward.

Spoiler

But you have the main characters who wants to humanize her droid, and her own escape from hellacious life as a miner. There's two. Then you have the rest of the crew which I thought was some of the worst characters construction and "world building" I've seen in awhile. Can't believe the annoying dude lived for so long

Some of the most forced "how do we get them on that ship" in sometime.

Not that the movie matters at all, but how the hell do some ragtag losers take a ship and fly it into orbit? Am I forgetting the logic on that?

 

[Einherjar86]

I didn't respond just because I realized there was no point in going forward.

Spoiler

But you have the main characters who wants to humanize her droid, and her own escape from hellacious life as a miner. There's two. Then you have the rest of the crew which I thought was some of the worst characters construction and "world building" I've seen in awhile. Can't believe the annoying dude lived for so long

Some of the most forced "how do we get them on that ship" in sometime.

Not that the movie matters at all, but how the hell do some ragtag losers take a ship and fly it into orbit? Am I forgetting the logic on that?

Oh you're not wrong about the logic, especially concerning how they managed to actually leave the planet. That seemed far-fetched.

I just don't see all the elements you listed as being all that discrete. Rain, her brother, their friends, that's all part of the same storyline, I'd say. Working-class laborers trying to escape their shitty life.

As far as the plausibility of the characters, that I also agree with. My friends and I afterward were like "Who are all these gen Z kids?" At no point did we see them doing actual work, or really giving off miner vibes. The only person who felt real and cool to me was the pilot. Don't send the youths to do Sigourney Weaver's job, I guess.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm home alone tonight, so decided to put on the original Alien. I've been thinking about it since being underwhelmed by Romulus.

The first thirty minutes of the first film are damn near cinematic perfection. The slow tracking visuals of the ship, virtually lifeless while the crew is in stasis, combined with the gentle ambient music by Jerry Goldsmith, is one of the most impressive, patient, gorgeous, and unnerving opening sequences in any film. The script captures the authenticity of a labor class crew working for a massive multinational (or multi-planetary, at this point?) conglomerate, and the sheer lack of autonomy in such a situation (Dallas: "Standard procedure is to do what the hell they tell you to do."). Critiques of capitalism and political economy in film are so ubiquitous and ham-fisted these days, scripts typically just pay lip service without any actual skin in the game. And of course, mainstream Hollywood can't actually be anti-capitalist because it thrives on capitalism. Alien feels like a rare moment of a film betraying the real material inequities, bleakness, and deep despair of life under a massive, interstellar extractive capitalism.

After walking out of Romulus, my friends and I complained that the characters didn't feel entirely real, that the film didn't convince us of their plight. From Rain's dream of a sunrise to their implausible plan of escape, everything felt too manufactured, a product itself of Weyland-Yutani. To paraphrase one of my friends, there's no hope in Alien. The first film knew that all too well.

 

[WorldObliteration33]

FIRST TWO bitches

I should give 3 another go. Only seen it once and ages ago.

 

[CiG]

Trailer for the new Bong Joon Ho.

Edit:


Big Nick is back! Fuck I had no idea this was so close to being released.

 

[Burkhard]

Only learned about the sequel to "Heavy Trip" yesterday, but since I loved the original movie, I'll also watch "Heavier Trip".

 

[WorldObliteration33]

I watch horror movies year round but always enjoy watching 31 horror movies for the month of October. Gonna stick to mostly stuff I hadn't seen before this time.

Movies I've watched for the first four days:

Nekromantik 2

I honestly might prefer this one to the original. Definitely more of a slow burn but the final scenes are some pretty intense payoff. 10/10

August Underground

Pretty much everything I look for when it comes to a found footage film. One of those films that really makes you question whether or not it's real. The director was apparently planning to leave VHS copies in random places around the country for people to find but 9/11 happened shortly after they finished production. Fucking cool idea though. 10/10

Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom

Honestly kind of disappointed with this one. Pretty much a snooze fest with meandering dialogue from a former prostitute about the fetish acts she used to get into. Only thing that makes it worth watching is the last 15 minutes which depicts some pretty intense torture sequences. Glad I wrote it off my list but I doubt I'll bother with this one again. 5/10

Naked Blood



Young scientist invents a serum that transforms pain into pleasure. You can magine where it goes from there. Very dreamlike and atmospheric for a splatter film with a pretty clever ending twist. Definitely among the best of its kind. 10/10

 

[CiG]

What the fuck Salo fucking rules.

 

[WorldObliteration33]

Meh, glad I watched it anyway.

 

[Slammed]

Hehe

Horror Film ‘Terrifier 3’ Causes Walkouts In UK And French Ratings Ban​

“Thank you to everyone joining us last night for the Terrifier 3 gala,” Signature Entertainment wrote in the post. “Venue staff have reported 11 people walking out and 1 person vomiting.”

Horror Film ‘Terrifier 3’ Causes Walkouts In UK And French Ratings Ban

"Terrifier 3"—the latest chapter in a shock horror movie series that made Art the Clown a slasher icon—is already stirring up trouble overseas.

www.forbes.com

 

[no country for old wainds]

 

[Bloopy]

Whole heap of obscure Aus/NZ movies & TV shows just appeared on this YouTube channel. I just watched Last Train to Freo @CiG, pretty good! See if you can spot any others you'd recommend on there.

I'll prob rewatch Emerald Falls since I only saw it on a tiny airplane screen. Not bad for a straight-to-TV mystery/drama.

 

[CiG]

Glad you liked Last Train to Freo.

Damn there's so much here. Well that amazing Kiwi film Vigil is on there, but an Aussie one I'd recommend after a quick look is Toomelah.

 

[CiG]

I finally saw Alien: Romulus and although I lean more towards liking it, it was definitely a mixed bag if not outright disappointing in some areas.

Spoiler

The positives were easily the production value, aesthetics and attention to detail. It mostly looks and sounds real nice. The birth scene at the end was done really well, as was the xenomorph killing the anti-android guy and climbing out that wall vagina lol. It had some cool visuals that I'll remember even as memory of the mediocre script fades. The pacing was good too.

But the negatives continue to mount up the more I stew on the experience.

I'm noticing more and more that, in modern sci-fi, the world-building takes precedence over creating interesting characters. I agree with @Vegard Pompey that the first half did well at establishing a kind of gritty, grimy hopeless mining planet hellscape, but who really cares if the characters in that world suck? Say what you want about the Alien franchise post-1979, but even the weakest of the original four films had cool, interesting, memorable characters (Charles S. Dutton, Ron Perlman, Brad Dourif, Dominique Pinon!). Romulus has the most boring, forgettable cast ever. Yes even the lead actress. Pretty bad when your most memorable character is an AI abomination of dead actor Ian Holm.



They couldn't have worked up an animatronic Ian Holm puppet for the role like they did with Lance Henriksen in Alien 3? I thought these losers were supposed to be doing an old school homage to the franchise?

Speaking of, this movie made xenomorphs, once again, into mindless cannon fodder. Like @rms said, we were lead to believe this was supposed to be a return to HORROR Alien, and yet it winds up being just a lamer Aliens that didn't have the balls to at least be action-packed. They jammed all the action into the final act with the aim-assist rifle... They even repeated what Aliens did by making the space station into a hive, but we didn't even explore much of it due to the imminent crash subplot.

Aliens made sense because the characters were all heavily equipped soldiers, why did we need a space station filled with xenomorphs, facehuggers and a 7'7" xeno-man to terrify 5 young adult dipshits and a cuck-droid? Mind-boggling decision. It should've just been 2 rogue xenomorphs hunting them down, back to basics etc.

Don't even get me started on how PISSWEAK the final fight with the giant human xenomorph looked, as the lead is dangling out in space as the shit is colliding with an asteroid belt. It was a greenscreen nightmare with a side dish of CGI human xenomorph face disintegrating slop.

To me Romulus is like the Rogue One of the Alien franchise with how it takes place between the first and second original movies, relies on nostalgia, but isn't a caricature of itself like most nostalgic projects. A fairly interesting but ultimately rehashed step in the right direction, however so slight. I'll still take it over Prometheus and Covenant anyday.

/rant

 

[Einherjar86]

I agree with everything you said except that Rogue One is a great movie and WAY better than Romulus. (I don't actually think you were implying otherwise, and I get the comparison between the two; but Rogue One was definitely better in a lot of ways). I also lean toward liking Romulus, but I feel like I'm comparing it to the recent Scott prequels. That's not necessarily a high bar. The Gen Z cast of the new one really didn't do it for me.

Also, returning to the

Spoiler

CGI Ian Holm. So, apparently there are just a bunch of Ian-Holm looking androids that Weyland-Yutani has manufactured, and we're supposed to believe that the crew from Alien didn't know Ash was an android? It felt to me like that makes the plot of the original movie less plausible because wouldn't word have circulated that there are crew members on several different ships who all look alike...? Unless we're supposed to believe that they only made a few of them, or maybe Rook and Ash were the only ones... but still, this seems to open a can of worms regarding the character's recognizability.

 

[CiG]

Oh yeah Rogue One is definitely better, just on having an interesting cast of characters alone it's already beating Romulus. I just meant that they're both female-lead interquels inside a cursed franchise, haha.

As to the crew in Alien not knowing Ash was an android, I think it's because Ash actively pretended to be human, which is why he dined with the crew even though he doesn't actually eat, something Bishop never did in Aliens. Ash was actively concealing his synthetic nature.

Hard to know the context around Rook though. If Romulus takes place 20 years after Alien, maybe that's enough time for the corporation to cover up Ash's existence and re-use his likeness in other androids on other stations successfully? Bit of a plothole I guess. Mostly because it was a mindless act of nostalgia-milking I think.

 

[rms]

Bishop ate right? The knife scene?