Movie Reviews posts

It was fun comparing and contrasting Siskel and Ebert's top 10 love for Woody Allen recently, so I thought I'd try it with other directors. 

One of the most startling revelations in the documentary “Life Itself,” about the life and times and films of Roger Ebert, comes from Martin Scorsese. He admits he was depressed in the 1980s, but we all knew that. He also admits he was suicidal, and what helped bring him back from the edge was an award he won at the Toronto Film Festival, instigated by Siskel and Ebert. He basically says they helped save his life. Pretty cool. Then they panned “The Color of Money,” which is even cooler.

That said, how much top 10 love did Marty get from S&E? 

A lot. Here's a list of all of Marty's movies from 1973 to 1999, when Gene died.

He got more love from Roger (8-6) but ... a higher degree of it from Gene? In an 11-year period, 1980 to 1990, Scorsese directed Siskel's #1 movie of the year three times. He also directed one of Siskel's top 10 movies of the 1970s (“Mean Streets”) and his top movie of the 1980s (“Raging Bull”). “Goodfellas” probably wouldn't have been Gene's top film of the 1990s, not with “Fargo” and “Hoop Dreams” around, but it would've made the cut. Third or fourth, I'd guess.

Interesting that Roger has “Alice” in there at #3 for 1974, then “Age of Innocence” at #2 in 1993. These are the more womencentric Scorsese flicks, which tend to get dismissed. Certainly not rewatched. Maybe I should rewatch them.

I also like their big, mid-1980s Scorsese battle. Roger chose “After Hours” as his #2 movie of 1985 while it didn't make Gene's list; Gene chose “Last Temptation” as his #1 movie of 1988 while it didn't make Roger's list. I think the former has the bigger cult following, but “Last Temptation” got lost amid all the fundamentalist handwringing. Another movie worth revisiting. 

Which of Marty's movies would have made my top 10 list? I don't know. All I know is the greatest double feature I've ever seen happened at the Neptune Theater in 1992, when I saw—both for the first time—“Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas.” Doesn't get much better than that.

They didn't agree in 1980, when it was Gene's #1 and Roger's #2 movie of the year, but by 1990 they both agreed “Raging Bull” was the #1 movie of the decade.

“I lasted about 45 minutes with Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller‘s 'Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.' Not to sound pervy but I waited for Eva Green‘s nude scenes. Honestly? They were pretty damn good. That’s what this film is selling, right? Hard-boiled hard-ons. The first 'Sin City' (’05) was a simple-dick noir cartoon crammed with gruff machismo and brazenly sexual temptresses. 'Sin City: A Dame to Kill' For is a parody of a parody of a simple-dick noir cartoon ...”

-- Jeffrey Wells, “Candified Bird-Turd Noir,” on his Hollywood Elsewhere site. My review of the first “Sin City” here.

Green, Dawson, Alba: dames worth insulting your intelligence over?

Siskel and Ebert: One liked “Apocalypse Now,” the other “Full Metal Jacket.”

One of the kicks I got out of the documentary “Life Itself,” on the life and times of film critic Roger Ebert, was watching Ebert and his TV partner/nemesis Gene Siskel battle over movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (which Roger loved and Gene dismissed for its last, rambling 30 minutes) and Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (which Roger dismissed and Gene loved). These guys fought about Vietnam war movies the way the rest of the country fought about the Vietnam War.

All of which revived a thought I had as their various shows (“Sneak Previews,” etc.) wound their way through the years: Did Roger and Gene tend to agree more the longer they worked together? It seemed so to me at the time; but unless someone counted the thumbs ups/downs, we’d never really know.

Let me say right off: I’m not about to count the thumbs up/downs for 24 seasons of “Sneak Previews,” etc. No way. But I did compare and contrast Siskel and Ebert’s annual top 10 lists to see how they stacked up. Here are their number of top-10 agreements over the years: 

For a while there, as I was tabulating, it seemed like I was onto something. They start out with only three agreements in 1975 but within a few years they’re together on 7 of the 10. But then it slips. And rises? And slips. And then back down to three a few times. And we wind up with something fairly inconclusive.

Siskel and Ebert did seem to agree on the No. 1 movie of the year the longer they were together:

* 1983 may have been their most agreeable year, since they were exact not only on No. 1, but No. 2 (“Terms of Endearment”), No. 4 (“Fanny and Alexander”), No. 7 (“Silkwood”) and No. 9 (“Risky Business”). 

Their agreements are even starker with the best-of-the-decade lists. They agreed on only one movie as the best of the 1970s:

** Not in order of preference; simply in order presented.

*** Yes, I was tickled that this made Roger's cut.

But they agreed on four films in the 1980s:

Fewer options, maybe? There were so many great movies in the 1970s, it was easier to disagree. I’ll take “The Conversation” and you take “Apocalypse Now”; you get “Days of Heaven” and I get “Mean Streets.” But in the ‘80s, if not “Raging Bull,” what? “The Return of the Jedi”? “Three Men and a Baby”?

(Sidenote: While “Raging Bull” is Roger’s best of the 1980s, it wasn’t even his best of 1980. He gave that one to “Black Stallion,” which, of course, didn’t make his decades-end list. Some movies just work on us better as time goes on.)

That said, overall, I wasn’t noticing statistically what I'd noticed anecdotally.

Then I realized that I was only documenting their time together. What about the years when they were both reviewing movies in Chicago but weren't doing the show yet? What story would that tell?

This is the story it tells:

In terms of top 10s anyway, they actually agreed more before they got together. From 1969 to 1974, they averaged 5.66 top-10 agreements. From 1975 to 1998: 4.95.

So I actually kind of proved the opposite of what I wanted to prove. I guess that’s why we crunch the numbers.

“Most of 'Blended' has the look and pacing of a three-camera sitcom filmed by a bunch of eighth graders and conceived by their less bright classmates. Shots don’t match. Jokes misfire. Gags that are visible from a mile away fail to deliver. Two rhinos are seen copulating by the side of a swimming pool, and someone has the wit to say, 'That’s not something you see in New Jersey.' Not funny on so many levels.

”There are comedians who mine their own insecurities for material. Mr. Sandler, in his recent films, compensates for his by building monuments to his own ego. In 'Blended,' he once again proclaims himself both über-doofus and ultimate mensch, disguising his tireless bullying in childish voices and the ironclad alibis of fatherhood and grief.“

--A.O. Scott in his review of Adam Sandler's ”Blended," in The New York Times, May 22, 2014.

Not funny on so many levels.

I'm sorry but I couldn't leave this one alone.

There are so many distortions in Kyle Smith's New York Post review of the film “Philomena” that it's hard to deal with them all. It's also difficult to extract the half-truth from the half-lies he's formed around them. 

But let's have a go. Near the end of his review he writes:

Philomena spends the movie saying dumb stuff (at the Lincoln Memorial: “Look at him up there in his big chair!”), Martin is rude and dismissive, and we’re meant to laugh, I guess, at her being a rube and his being a journalist. You may be wondering why Coogan felt the need to play a cold and unpleasant a figure who isn’t (like many other Coogan creations) funny, but the answer is simple: Coogan hates journalists.

OK:

1. Coogan, I imagine, hates bad journalism, particularly tabloid journalism, particularly the awful tabloid journalism revealed in the phone-hacking scandal that sunk News of the World in July 2011. His own phone was hacked, his own private life revealed to sell newspapers, and he's become a strong voice against the practice. He's testified before the Leveson inquiry into unethical journalism and has written Op-Eds for The Guardian about same. 
2. News of the World was owned by Rupert Murdoch.
3. Rupert Murdoch also owns The New York Post, for which Kyle Smith writes his reviews.

Look again at the shoddy way Smith raises the phone-hacking scandal without mentioning the phone-hacking scandal. Which, of course, would point back to his boss. Awful. 

More, though, it's Smith's representation of the characters Coogan and Dench play: “a ninny and a jerk” he calls them. Is that all Smith sees? We‘re supposed to laugh at him being rude and her being a rube? No. We identify. I did anyway. He reminded me a bit of me (distant, overly academic)  and she reminded me a bit of my mother (not much formal education, heart of gold). He’s got the education and the words but she's got the wisdom. As here:

Philomena: Do you believe in God, Martin?
Martin: [Exhales] Where do you start? I always thought that was a very difficult question to give a simple answer to. ... Do you?
Philomena: Yes.

What was this to Smith? “90 minutes of organized hate.” “Philomena,” as a movie and a person, is all about forgiveness, but as a movie critic I have trouble forgiving Smith's review.

It belongs to Kyle Smith of The New York Post, writing about the film “Philomena,” starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.

Here's a snippet:

There’s no other purpose to the movie, so if 90 minutes of organized hate brings you joy, go and buy your ticket now.

“90 minutes of organized hate.” I can't remember the last time I ran across such a mean-spirited review about such a gentle, and genuinely heartwarming, movie. Here's Smith's full review.

And here's the real Philoemena's defense of the film.

I came across all of this last night after Patricia and I saw the movie, which we both loved. Can the film be read as an attack on doctrinaire (that is, anti-sex) Catholicism and doctrinaire (that is, anti-gay) Republicanism? Sure. But the greater takeaway is a lesson in the meaning of forgiveness, upon which Philomena's open letter to Smith concludes:

Just as I forgave the church for what happened with my son, I forgive you for not taking the time to understand my story. I do hope though that the families heading to the movie theatre to see the film decide for themselves – and disagree with you.

For once I'm in complete agreement with Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells. He has a good one-paragraph synopsis of “42”—why it's not particuarly good but why one scene is powerful—amidst his analysis of Marshall Fine's review:

42 is okay if you like your movies to be tidy and primary-colored and unfettered to a fault, but it’s a very simplistic film in which every narrative or emotional point is served with the chops and stylings that I associate with 1950s Disney films. The actors conspicuously “act” every line, every emotional moment. It’s one slice of cake after another. Sugar, icing, familiar, sanctified. One exception: that scene in which Jackie Robinson is taunted by a Philadelphia Phillies manager with racial epithets. I’m not likely to forget this scene ever. It’s extremely ugly.

Agreed. Alan Tudyk, who plays Ben Chapman, the taunting Phillies manager, should get some special kind of award for his performance. It's unblinking.

Links:

• My review of “42”.
• Alan Tudyk on playing Ben Chapman.
• My disagreement with Wells about the “42” poster and “Lincoln.”

Alan Tudyk: A good actor acting ugly.

I found out yesterday after lunch. I'd known, vaguely, about his “leave of presence” from The Chicago Sun-Times, because I'd heard, via his Facebook page, about the return of the cancer, the new radiation treatments, the hospitalization. We get this sometimes. It's like a harbinger that takes the edge off the worse news. Someone shot at Reagan and missed? OK. Wait, they hit him? Oh. Kurt Cobain OD'ed in Italy but he's OK? OK. Wait,he killed himself? Oh.

This harbinger didn't take the edge off yesterday. Roger was a voice in my life since 1978. He'd actually gotten louder in more recent years thanks to all this. He felt closer.

Some eulogies:

For a generation of Americans - and especially Chicagoans - Roger was the movies. When he didn't like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive ...
-- Pres. Barack Obama

We were getting ready to go home today for hospice care, when he looked at us, smiled, and passed away. No struggle, no pain, just a quiet, dignified transition.
-- Chaz Ebert, “Roger Ebert Dead at 70 After Battle with Cancer,” Chicago Sun-Times

It would not be a stretch to say that Mr. Ebert was the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted. The force and grace of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture. Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw.
-- Douglas Martin, “A Critic for the Common Man,” New York Times

He saw, and felt, and described the movies more effectively, more cinematically, and more warmly than just about anyone writing about anything. Even his pans had a warmth to them. Even when you disagreed with Roger you found yourself imagining the movie he saw, and loved (or hated) more than you did. ... I came late to film criticism in Chicago, after writing about the theater. Roger loved the theater. His was a theatrical personality: a raconteur, a spinner of dinner-table stories, a man who was not shy about his accomplishments. But he made room in that theatrical, improbable, outsized life for others.
-- Michael Phillips, “Farewell to a Generous Colleague and Friend,” Chicago Tribune

If not for them, I don't know what would have happened to me. I often tell Roger, “No Gene Siskel, no Roger Ebert, no film career.”
--Errol Morris, “Errol Morris on Ebert and Siskel,” on YouTube

But Roger made everything feel personal, didn't he? That's why we're seeing such grief upon the news of his death. We all felt as if we knew him. He turned the discussion of films that might've seemed too artsy or intimidatingly intellectual into comfortable conversations. At the same time, he remained capable of walking into a movie – any movie, in any genre – with an open mind after decades as a towering force in this business. He always wanted to be dazzled, just as he did when he was a kid.
--Christy Lemire, “AP Critic Remembers Colleague, Friend, Roger Ebert.”

Ebert argues that writing criticism is about expressing your values, so why not be honest about where you stand on the issues of the day? I didn't tell Ebert, 67, how I admired his productivity in the face of his serious health issues. He has already shrugged off comments like that in print, saying that the energy that once went into speech now is channeled into writing. He has written that he's not dying any faster than you or I, so why should he get special attention for doing what he loves?
-- Colin Covert, “My Afternoon with Ebert,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune

In a wonderful mutual interview Ebert and Siskel did for the Chicago Tribune in 1998, Ebert responds to Siskel’s criticism that he tends to go too easy on “cheap exploitative schlock” like The Players Club with this telling reply: “I also have the greatest respect for you, Gene, but if you have a flaw, it is that you are parsimonious with your enjoyment, parceling it out as if you are afraid you will prematurely expend your lifetime share.” Joy—in movies, in conversation, in language, in life—was not something that Roger Ebert meted out parsimoniously. He had more than enough to last a lifetime ...
--Dana Stevens, “Roger Ebert,” on Slate

Roger was always supportive, he was always right there for me when I needed it most, when it really counted — at the very beginning, when every word of encouragement was precious; and then again, when I was at the lowest ebb of my career, there he was, just as encouraging, just as warmly supportive. ... Really, Roger was my friend. It's that simple. Few people I've known in my life loved or cared as much about movies. "We all knew that this moment was coming, but that doesn't make the loss any less wrenching.
--Martin Scorsese, in a statement reprinted in USA Today

Feel free to post your own below.

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris ...

”Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. 'Faith' is neutral. All depends on what is believed in.“

-- Roger Ebert, who died today at the age of 70, from his book, ”Life Itself: A Memoir." 

I couldn't agree more with this last part. Roger had faith that there's nothing on the other side and thus nothing to fear in dying. I wish I had that kind of faith.

Roger Ebert in 1987, mid-explanation.

First I reviewed Tom Hooper's “Les Miserables,” then my 11-year-old nephew Jordy did; now my 80-year-old father, Bob Lundegaard, formerly of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and one-time inspiration for the Coen brothers, has a go ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that three generations of imbeciles is enough. Although there’s no truth to the widely held belief that he was referring to movie reviewers, one can’t be too careful in a family in which grandfather, father and son have all aspired to the craft.

I haven’t reviewed a movie in 30 years — I was once the film critic at the Minneapolis Tribune – but recently an opportunity arose that was too good to pass up. Our family went to the Christmas Day opening of “Les Miserables,” which meant that I sat right in back of my grandson, Jordy, who’s a frequent movie reviewer on Facebook.

We decided to have a friendly competition, dueling reviewers, with a third entrant, Jordy’s Uncle Erik, who lives in Seattle. I’ve seen several stage productions of the musical, but Jordy had a distinct advantage over me: He’s been in it, so he knows all the songs, even though he’s only 11 years old. A local high school, renowned for its stagecraft, mounted a production two years ago, when he was in 3^rd grade, and needed a chorus of street urchins for the revolutionary Paris scenes. And to our delight, one of the chosen gamins was Jordy!

I’ve always had mixed feelings about “Les Miz.” The rhymes usually are telegraphed way before you hear them. “Give” invariably rhymes with “live,” for instance. “Bring him joy” leads to “he is only a boy” Not exactly Ira Gershwin. And the sentimentality can get overwhelming.

Not to mention Victor Hugo’s coincidences, which can put Dickens to shame. Why does Inspector Javert always happen to show up wherever Jean Valjean is living? And when Valjean and his adopted daughter catapult into a religious sanctuary while on the lam from the evil Inspector Javert, who should be tending the garden but a man Valjean had rescued from death years ago in a village far from Paris?

Still, it’s a powerful story, and much of the music can make you feel like standing in your seat and joining the revolution, so I brought an extra Kleenex or two. Turns out I needed them. The story is even more overwhelming on film, spearheaded by an Oscar-worthy performance by Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, the ex-convict with a heart of gold and the strength of a Samson.

Director Tom Hooper has personalized the epic proportions of the story by unremitting use of close-ups, so close you can see the nose hairs on Javert. I also liked Hooper’s opening innovation: Thousands of convicts trying to tug a foundering ship onto land. The ubiquitous Javert is their overseer. When they can’t manage it, he orders Valjean to bring him a flag attached to an enormous, stubborn log. Valjean does more: he lifts the log as well and becomes emblazoned in Javert’s memory forever.

The stolid Russell Crowe as Javert was, I thought, the least effective of the leads, though admittedly it’s a difficult role to shine in. Anne Hathaway does shine in the tiny part of Fantine, though she does return (with almost everyone else) for Valjean’s insufferable deathbed scene.

All in all, a good day at the movies, if only because Hollywood is making MUSICALS again. As someone who grew up with “Oklahoma!” and “My Fair Lady” on Broadway, I really miss them.

Richard Brody, the grand old blogger for The New Yorker whom I generally admire, recently wrote the following as part of a post on “The Girl,” an HBO movie about Alfredy Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, which premiered last Saturday, and which wasn't bad if a bit one-note.

Here's Brody's sidebar:

I’ve long thought that “Marnie,” not “Vertigo,” is Hitchcock’s best film—and, as such, is one of the greatest films of all time. It, too, is about disguise, deception, crime, and desire, about mental illness and unhealed trauma. The plot twists in “Marnie” aren’t as elaborate or as surprising, but it captures, more harrowingly, a sense of derangement—inner and outer, intimate and widespread—that reflects a world on the breaking point. Nobody would mistake Hitchcock for a political filmmaker, but “The Birds” and, especially, “Marnie,” are the work of an American Antonioni, whose psychological dramas are matched by architectural and symbolic ones, by a confrontation with the roiling chill of technological modernity.

But, yes, these movies also feature the performances of Tippi Hedren, which are not only the ultimate Hitchcock performances but—and especially that of “Marnie”—among the very best in the history of cinema.

Wait. One of the greatest movies of all time? Among the best performances in the history of cinema? “Marnie”?

It's a movie about repressed memories; it feels as dated, and as relevant, as a late-'70s “M*A*SH” episode with Dr. Sidney Freedman. It's like that five-minute monologue at the end of “Psycho” where the shrink goes on and on about what's wrong with Norman Bates—but here it's for an entire movie. 

I wrote my review of “Marnie” a year ago. Let me know what I'm missing. Because I just don't get it.

“...a confrontation with the roiling chill of technological modernity.” Or a bad cold.

I liked my review of Ben Affleck's “Argo” well enough until I read Anthony Lane's in The New Yorker. Wow. (Of course, he gets paid.)

First he gives us this laugh-out-loud line:

[W]e were wrong about Ben Affleck. Few of us, watching “Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor,” could see a way out, or back, for an actor so utterly at the mercy of his own jawline.

Then he ties the film's super-dramatic ending to its earlier gentle mocking of Hollywood values, which include super-dramatic endings:

If you visit the C.I.A. Web site, you can read Mendez’s account of events in January, 1980. “As smooth as silk,” he calls the hostages’ passage through the airport, whereas Affleck, chopping up the action and spinning it out, insures that no nails remain unchewed. This is absolutely his right as a teller of tales, and “Argo” never claims to be a documentary. It struck me as a bit rich, however, to make such sport of Hollywood deceitfulness and then to round off your movie with an expert helping of white lies, piling on car chases that never occurred.

It helps, as it always does, that Lane and I are more-or-less in agreement about the movie. We‘re pleasantly surprised by Affleck, love ourselves some Alan Arkin, wish the last third had delved a bit more into character, particularly the character of the six embassy workers, rather than Spielbergian thrills—most of which, even as I watched them, I didn’t buy.

But I bought “Argo.” It's one of the best movies I've seen this year: smart, funny, accessible.

Of course the year is just getting interesting.

Lane: “...and, most enjoyable of all, Alan Arkin as Lester Siegel, a producer so scornfully amused by Mendez’s request that he has no option but to obey it.”

“Looper felt to me like a maddening near-miss: It posits an impossible but fascinating-to-imagine relationship—a face-to-face encounter between one’s present and future self, in which each self must account for its betrayal of the other—and then throws away nearly all the dramatic potential that relationship offers. If someone remakes Looper as the movie it could have been in, say, 30 years, will someone from the future please FedEx it back to me?”

--Dana Stevens in her Slate review, “Looper: Joseph Gordon-Levitt meets his future-self, and he’s Bruce Willis.” I agree with her, particularly on the above point (my review here), but we're in the minority. “Looper” is currently running at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

My friend Tim directed me to Film Crit Hulk's review of “The Dark Knight Rises,” which I could barely get through. Hulk need editor. Hulk not use simple words but big college words. Hulk need to get to point. “BEFORE WE BEGIN” is bad way to begin. This made head hurt:

THE THING TO ALSO UNDERSTAND IS THAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE NOT THE KIND OF THINGS THAT PREVENT NOLAN FROM MAKING A BIG, ENTERTAINING MOVIE.

Hulk not rewrite Hulk's words? Hulk make plug for THING movie with so many THING words? Make Erik want to smash.

[Cough.]

But the review did make me realize what “The Dark Knight Rises” should've been.

Two options.

1. In the first movie, Batman becomes a symbol of law and order in an anarchic world. In the second movie, the Joker represents an attack from the side of anarchy. So why not, in the third movie, have the villain, Bane or whomever, attack him from the side of law and order? Bane, or whomever, posits himself as a better vigilante and usurps Batman's role. Then he defeats Batman (who's wanted for murder, after all). Then he takes over Gotham to an unhealthy degree. 
2. A better option is closer to what we actually have. Batman is a symbol of law and order but also a symbol of the status quo. The new villain, or vigilante, could be, like Bane in “DKR,” more of a Robin Hood, and presented as such to us the audience. I.e., there is no Talia. There is no nuke. If there is an ulterior motive we don't see it until later. In the last few years the great criticism from the left is how, give or take a Bernie Madoff, none of those responsible for the Global Financial Meltdown are in jail. That would be Bane's criticism of Batman, too. He's fighting the wrong crimes. He's attacking the victims. He's maintaining a corrupt status quo. He's keeping the system unfair. Then you go wherever you go.

2) is more interesting to me but 1) would've aligned better with the ending of “The Dark Knight.”

Either would've been better than what we got.

“THE THING TO ALSO UNDERSTAND IS THAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE NOT THE KIND OF THINGS...” Who knew Hulk verbose?

Patricia's brother, Alex Bradbury, a marine biologist who works and lives on the Olympic peninsula, and author of several books on Brazil and Belize, is, it turns out, a big fan of Ridley Scott's “Alien.” Its prequel? “Prometheus”? He had this to say...

The best thing to be said for “Prometheus” – besides Idris Elba playing the concertina – is that it has inspired me to see “Alien” again. I saw it six, maybe seven times in the decade after it came out in 1979, and I still consider it one of the greatest horror films ever made.
 
Science fiction has never really interested me, in either print or film. And for me, “Alien” was always a classic horror film that happened to take place in outer space, not a sci-fi film. Indeed, almost all the best elements of the whole movie could have been moved to Earth and it would have still been a great horror movie. The alien itself, for example, especially in its most horrifying and believable life-forms –- the face-hugger and chest-buster juvenile forms –- could easily have been a previously undiscovered parasitic creature from anywhere on this planet: a rainforest, or a remote research station in Antarctica (a la “The Thing”). Perhaps a tug in the middle of the Pacific could come upon a piece of tsunami debris with strange egg-like life forms adhered to it. The only important aspect of “Alien” that wouldn’t translate easily to Earth would be H.R. Giger’s gorgeously creepy interiors of the spacecraft and the the planet’s landscape.
 
All of these elements are present in “Prometheus,” of course. The problem is we saw them all back in 1979 in the original masterpiece. Granted, we’ve had 30-plus years of improvements in special effects technology since then. And if “Alien” had been filled with clunky clay-animation effects from the stone age of cinema, a remake might have been justified on technical grounds alone. But that wasn’t the case. “Alien” looks nearly as good today as it did in 1979, down to every detail of the creature and every piece of set design.
 
With nothing new on that score to offer, “Prometheus” instead heaps on all sorts of unnecessary sub-plots, characters, and confusing philosophical ideas. “Alien” had a simple plot similar to “The Thing”: a remote station with a small crew is infected with an alien parasite/predator – today we might call it an “invasive species” — that knocks them off one by one. There was only a single sub-plot: the android working covertly for the corporation in order to get the creature back home, possibly for future use as a weapon. And even that single sub-plot in “Alien” could have been dropped as an unnecessary distraction (although we would have lost the scene where Ian Holm loses his head).
 
But in “Prometheus,” we get all sorts of unnecessary distractions: humanoids that have apparently landed on Earth and left their DNA, archaeological themes, and all sorts of  philosophical and religious mumbo-jumbo. There are also far too many crew members and characters in “Prometheus.”  Nostromo had a crew of seven, a good number for suggesting isolation and helplessness, while at the same time supplying the necessary fodder for the creature to destroy. The crew of Prometheus is at least fifteen, probably more when the hidden character (Weyland) and his entourage are revealed. There’s less terror when you’ve got a crowd like that, and less chance to build a little empathy with your characters. And most of the extra cast is pointless anyway from a plot standpoint. What point does Peter Weyland serve, for instance, and why should we be shocked to learn that the Charlize Theron character is his daughter? (And why, for that matter, is he wearing that awful prune-face makeup?).
 
There are even too many aliens in “Prometheus.”  I like monsters, and these film parasites remind me of the very real creatures I saw today at work, pawing through mud on the beach — wriggling segmented pileworms, for example, with a semi-circle of tiny biting teeth. Because they were all so thoroughly and horribly believable, I enjoyed the various creepy life-forms that the parasite took in “Prometheus.” And there is some basis in biological reality for a series of distinctly different morphs of the same creature as it grows. But in this film, those different forms became confusing after a while. Were there actually several different parasites involved, or is this still the same single species ? “Alien” showed the creature in, at most, four life-forms: the egg, the face-hugger juvenile, the chest-buster juvenile, and the fully formed adult predator. Here we seem to have more variations yet, and I got the feeling that Ridley Scott simply wanted to throw all the great slimy creatures he had in his special effects arsenal at us, and hope we wouldn’t ask questions.
 
Likewise, there is far too much frenzied action, and a dearth of quiet nail-biting terror. I yearned for just a single scene as terrifying as the one in “Alien” where Harry Dean Stanton follows the ship’s cat into the bowels of the spaceship, water dripping from the pipes. It was a quiet, gut-churning episode, and there is nothing at all like that in this noisy mess of a movie. There are vehicles speeding about, flamethrowers, fights, gunfire, and exploding spaceships. Worse, much of the violence and action in “Prometheus” seems pointless, or at least unexplained. Why, for instance, does the giant humanoid fly into a rage and kill both Weyland and David — other than to provide us with another android beheading scene to echo the Ian Holm episode?
 
And speaking of gut-churning, the most harrowing scene in the movie shows Noomi Rapace surgically removing a parasite from her own body. But much of this episode’s power is lost on us, for two reasons: First, we know pretty much what’s going to come out – we saw it come out of John Hurt 34 years ago. Second, there is no element of surprise in this new film. When Hurt sat down to dinner we weren’t at all prepared for his little episode of indigestion. Even before watch “Prometheus” you know you’re going to see, at some point, some variation on the chest-popping scene. And Scott gives us way too much preparation for what’s coming, as Noomi grabs her gut and runs toward the surgery station. It’s gruesome alright, but not anything as shocking as the chest-popping scene in “Alien.”
 
Even some of the small charms of “Alien” are gone, replaced by stock sci-fi formulas. In “Alien,” the Nostromo was a space-going tugboat, its crew mostly blue-collar workers on a routine mission towing minerals. It was a nice touch, much like the gritty, funky vision of the future metropolis in “Blade Runner.” Prometheus, on the other hand, is on a scientific and archeological mission, filled with scientists, scholars and even, as it turns out, a “seeker” (Peter Weyland). And thus we are back in the pompous, cliché-ridden world of “Star Wars” and “2001: Space Odyssey.” There is even a reference or two to the latter film in “Prometheus.” Unlike “Alien”, this new film can definitely be pigeon-holed in the sci-fi bin. And the most annoying, pointless yet puffed-up episode in the whole film involves a swirling light-show of planets, stars and swirling lasers. Like drum solos and dream sequences, it seemed to last forever.
 
I can’t say that “Prometheus” was disappointing since I wasn’t expecting much. Scott is at his most entertaining when he’s working in totally new territory that he hasn’t explored before – “Gladiator” is a good example --- and I had low expectations for a special-effects extravaganza prequel to “Alien.” But I was hoping for a bit more focus. This was a hodgepodge. I walked out of “Alien” absolutely stunned. I walked out of “Prometheus” bored and confused.

-- Alex Bradbury, Port Townsend, Wa.