David Vining's Blog, page 204
October 30, 2019
A Quick Thought about Rotten Tomatoes
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Looking at the disparity between critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes seems to be a favorite pass time and way to create a punching back of critics. It’s usually brought up with really big movies that critics hate or love while the audience does the opposite. Star Wars: The Last Jedi got hit with this a lot. The critic score is 91% and the audience score is 44%. That’s a wide disparity.
I’ve never really taken much in the argument in general because I thi...
The Major and the Minor
In terms of first films, Billy Wilder could have done much worse than The Major and the Minor, a light and occasionally delightful comedy. I mean, have you seen Fear and Desire? I have.
Susan Applegate is a small town girl living in New York City and at the end of her rope. After one more job in a long series of jobs ends with a middle aged man expecting more than just a hair treatment, Susan throws up her hands and decides to go back home to Iowa (after giving the man a head full of egg). She’s saved exactly...
October 29, 2019
The Alien Franchise Ranked: The Definitive Ranking
A top 7…of 6 movies. Well, at least it’s not a top ten.
So, I wrote separate reviews of the two cuts of Alien 3 because, I feel, they are materially different enough to justify separate looks. I also excluded the Alien vs. Predator films because they suck and I consider them a separate franchise.
Well, enough of that. From Best to Worst, the Alien franchise:
“A handful of nice things, though, don’t outweigh the movie’s...
Alien: Covenant
This feels like two movies in one. One is fine, technically proficient, and somewhat effective. The other I love.
Ridley Scott was caught in a bit of a bind after Prometheus. A lot of people weren’t happy with what he had done, how it was only tenuously connected to the Alien universe, but he was far more drawn by the ideas of AI as antagonists rather than the xenomorphs of the given universe. What was he to do with a sequel to the reasonably financially successful Prometheus? Well, he seems to have found some kind of midd...
October 28, 2019
Movie News – Week of 10/28
News that caught my eye:
First ‘Doctor Sleep’ Reactions Tease Heartfelt Horror & a Worthy ‘The Shining’ SequelFirst reactions tend to be overly positive when compared to actual reviews, but this is a nice sign. I’ve been looking forward to Doctor Sleep since it was announced. I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, but this looked good and the trailer’s quality. Fingers crossed that it’s actually good.
Taylor Kitsch to Star in Neill Blomkamp’s ‘Inferno’Neill Blomkamp is a director...
Prometheus
Out of all the opinions I’ve expressed about film, my love of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is probably the one that I receive the most grief over, and I do not care. I’ve seen this movie seven times now, and I love it as much after the seventh viewing as I do after the first. This movie is great.
It’s about searching for truth and the nature of faith. I think it meshes well with the ideas behind Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though they would make an odd double feature being so different in style and tone. An...
October 25, 2019
Alien: Resurrection
This is the first movie in the Alien franchise that makes no attempt to be a horror film. Instead, it’s a blackly comic action movie, and I think it sort of works. Sort of.
There’s a lot of handwaving away of certain practical elements like the source of DNA used to clone Ripley, or how her DNA includes the DNA of the alien, or how, if they had both, they couldn’t just clone the alien and not Ripley. But, hey! If they don’t do this, then there’s no movie! So, handwaving is somewhat appropriate.
What that create...
October 24, 2019
Alien 3 (Assembly Cut)
Literally every change and addition in this cut improves the film. It doesn’t make the movie good. It still has a lot of the flaws the theatrical cut has, but it helps with some of the others, strengthens some of the images, and creates a more cohesive experience overall. It can’t rise above mediocrity, but at least it’s not mired in badness.
Skipping the plot summary and diving right into the improvements. This is not meant as a comprehensive list, just a quick look at some of the major changes and...
October 23, 2019
Alien 3 (Theatrical Cut)
Where Aliens was one of the great examples of how to do a sequel right, Alien 3 is one of the great examples of how to do a sequel wrong. It’s an interesting case study in contrasts, thinking of the two films side by side, but even then, alone, Alien 3 is a broken film with several visions competing against each other, undermining everything, and producing a rather miserable experience overall.
It seems trite, but the first two Alien films were about family. The first film was about the dissolution of a family,...
October 22, 2019
Aliens
There are several ways to approach making a sequel to a successful genre film. One of them is “bigger is better”. James Cameron’s 1986 Aliens might be the textbook example of how to do that.
The movie follows so many of the same basic plot points and character models as the first that it could almost be called a remake. A group of working class people land on LV-426 where they are attacked by aliens, killing everyone but a few. The few fight back, thinking they’ve succeeded before a final fight erupts...
