A visually stunning film that lingers despite some flaws

I Saw the TV Glow - Jane Schoenbrun - 2024

★★★-Was one of the movies at the top of my watch list. Didn’t think I was a fan. Drags too much, especially at the end. But I can’t stop thinking about it, and have been listening to the soundtrack non-stop.

For starters, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen before. Stunningly stylish. Like the way it was shot. Dreamlike, beautiful, nostalgic, surreal. But the story was pretty meh. Not that I’m the target audience. It’s not for everyone. Saw the director, one Jane Schoenbrun, say if you don’t vibe with this, congrats on having a wonderful childhood. Alright. 

 

I can relate in some ways. Like having a friend that pops in and out of your life that you at some point realize is insane. Also being obsessed with a television show. Have bought many episode guides in my day, especially in the late 90s, when most of the movie takes place. 

 

It’s really touching, and sweet, at times. Super intimate. Very sad. Said to be an “egg crack” allegory. This is moment when a trans person realizes their true identity differs from their gender at birth. The horror is living inauthentically, in living in one’s assigned gender. Not what you’d call conventional. 

 

Stars one Justice Smith in the lead role of Owen. He’s in a bunch of stuff I’ve never seen like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, All the Bright Places, Detective Pikachu, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Brigette Lundy-Paine plays his friend Maddy. She was Ted’s daughter in Bill & Ted Face the Music. She gets Owen into the show The Pink Opaque before she goes missing. She shows back up years later saying that she has been living in the show and that Owen should bury himself alive with her to get to that place. He declines and talks her before running off. The Pink Opaque is kind of a mashup of Buffy and Are You Afraid of the Dark. 

 

Owen’s dad in the movie is a real fucking asshole. Played by none other than Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, Robert Durst’s son (JK). Owen’s mom dies and he checks out. Knows something is going on with his child, but is incapable of parenting.

Directed by Schoenbrun, who is transfeminine and non-binary. They have said that Owen’s decision not to bury himself alive with Maddy, along with his ensuing existential crisis, reflects their own fears about possibly living life without transitioning. They also directed the film We're All Going to the World's Fair, which I hated, though it was also critically lauded. Zero-for-two for me. 

 

Scariest thing that happens, for me, is Owen comes up to a downed powerline at one point, which is pretty terrifying. He gets out the car, which you are not supposed to do. Ever. I knew a guy that had his legs blown off doing that. No shit. 

 

Probably a movie that requires multiple viewings. Shouldn’t have to do that. Life is too short to rewatch movies you weren’t that into the first time.

Gritty, Working-Class, Romulus is one of the franchise’s best

Alien: Romulus - Fede Alvarez - 2024

★★★★--Loved it, but it wasn’t perfect. Alien is my Star Wars. Love all the movies, even the ones that aren’t good, likeAlien: Resurrection. As such, I watch all of these through the rosiest colored glasses imaginable and will watch every version of every bit of IP that gets put out there. Because the movie is pretty working-class, the stakes might seem kind of low, but not for the characters, of course. Best to think of it as the Rogue One of the Alien franchise in basically every way. Stand alone flick. Set between two of the original movies. Doesn’t have a huge impact on the other movies. Brings back an old dead guy with horrible CGI. So forth. 

Gist is a group of people and their android butler (jk) board a derelict space station to get cryo-pods/fuel to escape their mining colony on a Saturn moon. This leads to them fighting for survival against face-huggers, Xenomorphs, and shitty “synthetics” as happens in these flicks.
 
The cast is mostly unknowns. Rain Carradine is played by Cailee Spaeny—only thing I’ve seen her in is Mare of Easttown.She is the dead girl. David Jonsson plays Andy, the robit. Others include Archie Renaux as Tyler, Isabela Merced as Tyler’s preggers sister Kay, Spike Fearn as Bjorn, Aileen Wu as Navarro, and Ian Holm who is back from the dead as Rook, another robit. 
 
Director is Fede Alvarez. He previously did the 2013 Evil Dead movie, eh, Don’t Breathe, and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. 
 
Some of the stuff I like: the acid blood in zero gravity, the thing at the end (no spoilers), robot maintenance, and getting back to the working-class aspects of Weyland Yutani. Actually, this is the most working-class movie of all the movies, which adds to the mythology. We get a lot glimpses of that over the course of the movies, but this one, these guys are the bottom of the barrel grunts. This also really focuses on the whole immortality goal that becomes so important in the prequels. 
 
Also of note, none of the movies are as unsettling as this one, including the original. This is straight up white-knuckle horror shit. 
 
The guy who plays Andy is great and does a lot heavy lifting. Starts out benevolent, becomes a company man, then goes back to being cool and seemingly feeling guilty. 
 
Soo, I’m really looking forward to Alien: Earth, which takes place about the same time as Prometheus. Bummed we probably aren’t getting a sequel to Covenant. But you never know. Hopefully that a lot of the quests get answered then. 
 
I’d put this at No. 4 on my list of Alien movies. My order from favorite to least goes thus: Aliens, Alien, Prometheus, Romulus, Covenant, Alien3, and Resurrection. 

The real Trap is turning M. Night's daughter into a pop star

Trap – M. Night Shyamalan – 2024 

★★★-Not the trainwreck I’d been led to believe. It’s not Old or The Happening bad. But it’s not Unbreakable either. It’s just a forgettable meh that went on too long. 

 

Gist is a father and his daughter attend a pop concert, only to discover it’s a trap set by law enforcement to capture the father, who is a notorious serial killer. Hell of a setup. 

 

Like every M. Night movie, the trailer makes it look amazing. But then it’s not.

 

I feel like of course M. Night has a pair of nepo babies, but his daughter, Saleka, is serviceable, and her voice is amazing. 

 

Big problem is that the film is way too long. Thought it was wrapping up when they leave the concert, but then there is something like 45 more minutes. Also, requires a lot of awkward exposition. Josh Hartnett was fine. He is inexplicably shirtless for a good stretch of the flick.