Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die: Powder does air-guitar

★★★★--I loved this movie, though it was far from perfect. The realest, darkest comedy you’re ever gonna see, yes. But it also has a giant man-eating cat with a giraffe neck made of other living cat heads and a body of a goat that pees glitter. Yeah, when it eats, the little cat heads on the neck sort of puke out glitter. Once you get there, you realize “oh yeah we’re in a Black Mirror episode.” An AI nightmare. 
 
The person I watched this with was physically angered by this development. He said he almost walked out at that point and ultimately wished he had. “It was like a movie about AI written by AI,” he groaned. Personally, saw that as part of a long critique on the dangers of AI and a subverting what has been a cliché my entire life by making it realistic. Because we’ve all seen our fair share of AI crap in the last couple of years, we recognize a “shitty prompt” when we see one. As Michael Peña’s character says, “[AI] is gonna get so much worse,” or something like that. And elsewhere, “You’ve normalized this... You just can’t see how bad it’s gotten.”
 
Speaking of, I hate that guy. The actor. Scientologist, ya know. He was especially irritating in this… But it does have three of the most beautiful women in the world, all of whom start out at this random diner. Though it is in Los Angeles. They are Haley Lu Richardson (she’s the Florence Pugh looking young woman in the second season of White Lotus), Zazie Beetz from the second Dead Pool movie, and Juno Temple (she plays the popstar Keeley Jones in Ted Lasso). Sam Rockwell and White Lotus Florence Pugh were both great. Rockwell is on fucking fire as the Man from the Future. And unhinged. 
 

When talking about AI, the future man says shit like “There's some shit that's about to come down that I can't prepare you for. It's going to try to give you everything you ever wanted, but in the end, it will all be a lie.” And “Somewhere inside of you, you know the way things are, the way we're heading, the way people are with each other. You know the world's going to shit.” This is indeed how things feel at present. We all know this. It was nice to hear this in a creative film. Basically saying AI is super bad, but we are already fucked. No putting that genie back in the bottle. It is inevitable. Which is interesting and true, but also kind of where the film falls apart. 
 
For example, at some point it becomes clear that future man is at that diner because there is someone there he knows, which is obvious pretty early in the movie but is shown as a big reveal. However, because he knows her in the future, he doesn’t pick her until this time, the 117^th time he has tried and failed in this missing, wanting to keep her safe. If he wanted to keep her away from harm, why doesn’t he go anywhere else? One of several things that don’t make any fucking sense and make this confusing as hell. 
 

As far as the characters and the, spoiler, failed mission, I think where they made the mistake (assuming they were in reality at any point in the movie, because maybe they weren’t) was when they put the USB in the box. Was glad it was not a happy ending, because society is beyond fucked and AI fucking things up even more is just around the corner. That’s how reality really works. Can’t have a happy ending AI movie. We’ve been warned about it all these years and now it’s here. And it fucking sucks. Who could’ve predicted this? That’s $1 million question and now we’re just sitting back waiting on it to ruin the world more than it is already fucked. 
 
A return to directing for Gore Verbinski, who is one of the most hit or miss directors of all time. He’s been in director jail for the last decade since A Cure for Wellness bombed hard in 2016. The hits include Mouse Hunt, The Ring, the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, The Weather Man, and Rango. The rest, all more or less unwatchable, were The Mexican (at one time a guilty pleasure), the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and the truly god awful The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp as fucking Tonto and “100% a cannable” Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger. Yeesh. Did result in one of the greatest Onion headlines of all time, “Ecstatic American Indians Praise The Lone Ranger: ‘Finally Our Story Is Being Told,’ Tribespeople Say.” 
 

Ye olde finding-the-omnipotent-bald-child routine

Overall, highly recommend. Beautifully done. Fantastic opening. Dialogue is great. Super entertaining. Lot of homages to genres films, especially The Terminator, 12 Monkeys, and The Matrix. Also, Groundhog Day, Her, and Edge of Tomorrow. But won’t be on my top 10 come the end of the year as there are complaints. 
 
It reminded me of one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, Miracle Mile. I was super into Denise Crosby sexually as a small child and watched everything she was in. This one angered me at the time, a lot to do with the film’s bleak cynicism. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thought this. I remember the film implying a dream out and then being like, no this is real, which I found bullshitty. So obviously not something for the positive column. Though I appreciate Don’t Die’s absurdist cynicism. 
 
Powder doing air guitar is the lamest thing I’ve ever seen. Didn’t need to be two hours and 15 minutes long. But what do you trim? The film’s ending, and probably ours, is The Matrix where humanity thinks they’ve won. Sort of a bullshit ending. Was any of a real type of bullshit that I hate. Thought it was very good up until the last 10 minutes. Again, the beginning was absolutely amazing. The second act was pretty good. Third act was pretty good until it fell apart at the very end. Sort of leaves you disappointed at the end, but that’s OK. Funny but sad as fuck.

Stargate: A foray into 90s CGI

★★★★--Scanners meets Micky 17 with teleportation. When I saw this in the theater in 1994 as a child, I thought that we had reached the pinnacle of special effects. The CGI sucks. I was an idiot! Pretty good movie though. And like nothing I'd seen at the time. To quote the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, “Of the four star franchises, 'Wars,' 'Trek,' 'Gate,' and 'Search,' 'Gate' is easily my third favorite." 

Kurt Russell and James Spader are both solid and fun. Jaye Davidson from The Crying Game, if ya know, ya know, plays the alien dude. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the so-called "master of disaster" for being the go-to the-world-is-literally-falling-apart-guy. He's maybe  the biggest directors that isn't a household name. His films include Universal Soldier, Independence Day, the maligned Godzilla (1998), 2012, White House Down, Independence Day: Resurgence, and Moonfall, among others. According to Wikipedia he is the 17th-highest grossing Hollywood director of all time, which is nuts. 

Top 10 of 2025: 8. Freaky Tales

★★★★--This technically came out in 2024, but you couldn’t see it anywhere until 2025. So I’m including here.
 
God, I’m a sucker for whacky, blood soaked anthology movies. Throw in the summer of any random year from my childhood. And set it in the Bay area. And toss out some obscure 1980s NBA. Goddamn. 
 
This wild, nostalgic ride blends punk, hip-hop, crime, the supernatural, and basketball into a four-part anthology that’s is pure chaotic energy. Solid, fun ensemble cast led by Pedro Pascal (who absolutely kills it), Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis (the best part of the movie), Normani, Dominique Thorne, Jack Champion, Tom Hanks (who is amazing), Too Short, that Angus Cloud kid that died a couple years ago that I keep seeing in movie, and Marshawn Lynch. It is a crazy good time and ends on the highest of notes. 

Top 10 of 2025: Tie—10. Mickey 17

★★★★--Some serious Pattinson-on-Pattinson action. The first third is amazing. The second third is solid. The last third, especially in the last 20 minutes, is lame. However, overall, it was fun and silly and my kind of shit. 
 
Bong Joon-ho (of Parasite fame) doing a sci-fi satire. Definitely one for me. Saw complaints about the tone, but I personally loved that part of it. Sort of silly, yeah, while dealing with real issues of life and death in a fucked up time. I found it consistent and good for what the film is. The Running Man it was not. 
 
Stars Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. Pattinson is the clear star, though. He does an amazing job of playing the “Expendable” (Mickey Barnes) in another sort of twin movie. He is part of a group that goes to a distant ice planet with the job of dying repeatedly. Once expired, he is reprinted with his memories intact. Uses this setup to rail against capitalism, authoritarianism, and humanity’s hubris. Lot of absurdist gallows humor. Also doesn’t skrimp on the feels. And what a time to release a movie about how those in power see people and resources as disposable.

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. 

They Cloned Tyrone delivers clever social satire and compelling storyline

They Cloned Tyrone - Juel Taylor - 2023

★★★★-Overall, thrilling story that blended humor and suspense with excellent performances. Has something of Westworld quality to it. I loved it, though it drags on a little near the end. Still a phenomenal social commentary and with subtle humor that will reward multiple viewings. Currently streaming on Netflix. Released on Barbenheimer Day. 

Stellar cast. Stars John Boyega (Attack the Block, the new Star Wars movies), Teyonah Parris (Candyman, Dear White People.), and Jamie Foxx, who produced the film. Easily in my top three Foxx performances. Together, the trio embarks on a journey to unravel a hidden government cloning conspiracy that threatens to keep black communities from self-improvement. Also appearing in the film are David Alan Grier and the renowned Kiefer Sutherland.

The directorial debut of Juel Taylor, I thought it was another Boots Riley film until I saw it wasn't at the end. Shares a lot of DNA with Sorry to Bother You, which is a major compliment in my book. Taylor co-wrote the with Tony Rettenmaier. 

Clever, odd, compelling with a great score that includes a version of “Call Tyrone” that is awesome. The performances are stellar, and the social satire hits home without being preachy. Fans of blaxploitation as well as people that appreciate comedy sci-fi/mystery will find the movie especially enjoyable.

Interstellar - Christopher Nolan - 2014

★★★★★-More Nolan. Hard rain today so I'm knocking out three of his flicks. Feels a little weird watching this one right after submarine disaster. But at least these adventurers have a noble goal in mind. This is an intensely captivating, stunning, thought-provoking film. I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. 

Gist of the film. It's 2067. Future: dystopian. Humanity is going extinct from a global famine caused by ecocide. Like we are starting to face now, really. 

A team of astronauts embark on a space mission to find a habitable planet for humanity as Earth faces an impending implosion. They traverse through a wormhole near Saturn to jump across the universe where they encounter mind-bending phenomena and race against time to ensure the survival of humanity. Thats the short of it. It also explores themes of love, time dilation, and the exploration of the unknown. 

Something I've thought long and hard about is this: How does one navigate a wormhole? I'd think you just get what you get. Best case scenario. You go in. It doesn't kill you or drive you mad. You get crapped out wherever you get crapped out in the universe. That seems to be the way it works in this flick. 

Anyway, dude loves his daughter. Barely remembers he has a son pretty much, but the son is sort of an asshole. Doesn't really listen to her or care about his opinion though. Goes on an obvious suicide mission, ignoring all the red flags and what not. So, I use the laughing/crying gif a lot for my sad laugh. But this movie is a gut punch. 

Stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway (my queen), Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn (the mom from The Exorcist), Matt Damon, and Michael Caine. This was the first thing I ever saw Jessica Chastain and Timothée Chalamet in.

At the start of the movie, for a minute, at least, it sounds like the government is actually figuring shit out in this future. But “freedom” and what not. Lot of books are banned. Moon landing was faked. Food is scarce because of the “wastefulness” and greed of the people in the 20th century. 

“This world is a treasure and it has been telling us to leave for a while now. Mankind was born here, it wasn't meant to die here,” McConaughey's character says. I agree with the first part, biology has determined the second part was a lie. 

Anyway, lot of sacrifice. Go to a planet where every hour is seven years. End up spending 23 Earth years. It's Nolan, so you gotta expect a little bit of time fuckery. Grandpa's dead. Kids have grown up. Poor guy left on the ship also experienced the time jump. Poor fucker. Requires a lot of faith for the people left behind. Plan A is to turn it around on Earth. Plan B is to go elsewhere. Decades go by and they are waiting to see if we have a place to go. How we get there is a good question, but you know. 

Speaking of, we aren't leaving this planet. We might get to Mars, but no where livable. Have about as much chance of that as time travel. Shit ain't happening. Once we finally fuck this planet up enough, that's it. Doubt it happens in my lifetime, but we're already seeing the beginning of the end.

Great wrist watch flick. Features the Hamilton Khaki Pilot Day Date and the Khaki Field (Murph). Both are great watches. Hamilton might not be as great as it was 50 years ago (mostly uses the ETA 2824 if you know anything about watches and is now Swiss owned), it is still a solid brand. My next watch will probably be a Hamilton. Maybe one of these. 

For me, this is a better, more accessible version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I hated. Ambitious, exceptionally beautiful, insanely complex, this is fucking cinema at its best. How people go to this and don''t fall in love, I have no idea. This film moved me. Nolan, again, is a master filmmaker. 

The Shining Girls - 2023

I loved this mind-fuck of a show. A complex, time traveling murder mystery. My kind of shit. 

Elizabeth Moss stars. She is incredible in everything. Too bad she's a Scientologist.

Overall gist is a woman played Moss is attacked. We meet her years later and see her literal constantly changing reality as she investigates a series of murders spanning decades that might be related to her own attack. She eventually convinces a veteran reporter played by Wagner Moura (Pablo Escobar in Narcos) and they try to stop this time-hopping serial killer. 

The killer, played by Jamie Bell (he was Bernie Taupin in Rocketman and Billy Elliot in Billy Elliot), is pretty terrifying as he can afford to be patient and has the ability to go back in time and correct his mistakes. Dude caused a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of peoples. You really want him to get put in this place. He looks exactly like this friend of mine, one Ronnie Vance. Good looking guy, but this show now makes me trust him less. I've got my eye on him in case he ever finds a magical house that lets him jump about the century to do unspeakable shit. 

I really fell in love with this at the end of episode four, “Attribution.” Previously, Moss's character experiences all this sudden shifts in her world. Her apartment changes, her hair, her job, she all the sudden has a husband, so forth. At the end of this installment, when her and the killer meet and get it on, as in fight for their lives, the place around them constantly changes. Moss get slammed into a wall that completely changes, then it becomes a mirror and they smash through it, then it becomes a bar that is a major piece to the puzzle. It's awesome and just gets better from there. 

Highly recommend this if you are into dark murder mysteries that way out of the ordinary. Definitely not like anything I've ever seen before. 

Alien: Resurrection - Jean-Pierre Jeunet - 1997

★★-Pretty incredible cast is somewhat wasted on this installment. Not as horrible as I remembered, but pretty not great. 

Gist of this is 200 or so years after Ripley died, she and the queen Xenomorph that was inside her in Alien3 are brought back to life to harvest this bioweapon. Yeah, again with the bioweapon stuff. Now Ripley is upgraded to human/alien hybrid clone status. She basically has Matrix powers. She and a group of space pirates are trapped on a spacecraft with 12 aliens. They are trying to kill everyone so the queen can make it to Earth and do her thing down there. 

Love a good basketball scene out of nowhere, which this film has. Ripley has some fundamentals, can dunk, and has acid blood. At 5'11, I'd take take her in the first round if I were a WNBA GM. I remember seeing an interview with Sigourney Weaver and she claimed she made that shot she threw behind her head from 30 feet out on the first take. Looked it up and apparently true, which shocked Ron Perlman, causing him to lose it. 

From Bloody Disgusting: “I watched her training for this sequence, and they were rehearsing this little thing for a month. She never made it once. The camera’s rolling. I’m in the shot where she’s walking away and it goes in.” It indeed would be shocking, I'm sure. However, they were able to cut his reaction out and the shot was able to stay in the movie without being faked. 

Here's the cast...  We've got Sigourney Weaver back from the dead as Ripley. Winona Ryder as the smaller, whinier droid version of Ripley (more or less). The always fantastic Ron Perlman. Perlman plays a great pervy creep. This was sort of his modus operandi back then. One-on-one banter during basketball, then, at one point, Ripley asks, “Who do I have to fuck to get off this boat?” He replies, “I'll get you off... maybe not the boat.” So naughty!

Others include Brad Dourif (you know, Chucky), one Kim Flowers who is there to show off her remarkable ass (I think), the guy that played Tuco Salamanca, Leland Orser who I mostly think of from this and Se7en as the guy that kills a prostitute with a switchblade dildo, Dan Hedaya (Nick Tortelli from Cheers), and Michael Wincott who is sort of having a moment after Nope. Also, Gary Dourdan who looks like this buddy of mine I went to high school with. He's mostly known for the role Warrick Brown on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Finally, one J. E. Freeman as the main evil scientist. He was often a bastard, notably like in the role of mobster Marcello Santos in the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern and as a henchman in the Coen bros dope flick Miller's Crossing. 1990 was a big year for him. 

This movie has a few feels, believe it or not. First we have this horrible bit where the scientists put the eggs in front of these miners to impregnate them with the Xenomorph embryos. Cold blooded. 

This flick also features the saddest of the aliens. Again, they aren't asking for any of this. Born into this bullshit like livestock. Smarter than your average Xenomorph because of the human intelligence it has. Plus it feels a little emotion. It doesn't just want to kill. Then it dies horribly and slowly in excruciating pain after being betrayed during a tender moment with it's chosen mother. Fuck, man. 

This version of Ripley, by the by, is completely different from previous portrayals and is pretty interesting. Sigourney Weaver's performance was widely praised. Her allegiance is questioned because she birthed the queen when they brought her back. Has a connection or whatever. Do you fucking know who she is? Exterminating Xenomorphs is all she does!

When she sees the failed clones is another one of those shockingly moving bits from this franchise. It's kind of surprising that Sigourney Weaver came back for this and put in such a stellar performance. She is a great actress and all. Criminally underrated even. This is sort of trash, yeah, but without her would have been embarrassing, probably. 

In the bad column we've got some “hacking the mainframe” bullshit. They even say it at one point. “I have to hack the mainframe manually. I destroyed my modem.” “I have a neuro-processor that allows me to dream.” Little of that shit. We also get more lazy anti-corporation stuff. The corporate guys, of course, are comically terrible. They are always worse than the aliens, ya know. I think this series did more to hate corporate empires than anything else really, other than what they do in real life, of course. 

The film also ends on a weak note with Ripley finally getting back to Earth. This should have been cool after four movies, a Christ-like death with resurrection, and countless dead aliens, but is sort of like, look at that, Earth, cool, I guess. See what this is about, why not. Bill Bryson must have had this scene in mind when he wrote I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes from a Big Country in 1998. 

The film also has a lot of potential that wasn't fully realized. 

Like Ripley, the queen too is an alien/human mismash and at the end starts giving birth to more hybrids instead of eggs. Cutting out the middleman. An exceptional cool concept that does not deliver in the end. 

This is probably something that has potential to explore, the birthed hybrid killing the queen, it's mother, then taking to Ripley, it's grandmother, who ultimately kills it. But this is too crazy to put that much thought into. 

Overall, it had good pacing and was pretty entertaining. Larger cast than most of the Alien movies, these extras are mostly there to raise the body count. There are some good moments like the underwater alien chase scene that goes on for like several minutes and nearly resulted in actors actually drowning. Then when they finally get out, the facehuggers are there waiting for them. The Xenomorphs look like they would be great in water. The biggest problem with the movie, IMO, is that the tone is all over the place. You have Nick Tortelli here and Chucky yucking it up, then Ripley damn near makes you cry. Likely more too many people giving too much input, like with Alien3. I feel like it could have been really good, but it tries to do too much and fails. 

Alien3 – David Fincher - 1992

★★★-“The Bitch is Back.” Another kick ass tagline. Saw this in the theater with my dad and brother while my sister and mom watched Sister Act. At the time, I thought this movie was pretty great. Rewatched in junior high school and changed my opinion to meh. This viewing I'm watching the Special Edition also known as the Assembly Cut (which David Fincher refused to be involved in [more on that later]). It's 30 minutes longer than the theatrical version. I'll call it a mixed bag. Kind of dumb, but has some potential. Feel like it was a good flick for director David Fincher to get his start and figure out what he wanted from the rest of his career. This, obviously, wasn't it. 

One change of note in this version, I had always been reluctant to rewatch this because it's a dog in the theatrical cut that get implanted by the facehugger. A brutal animal in pain scene I wasn't about. In this version, the alien burst out of a yak like animal that they farm for meat outside of the prison. The dog was part of the studios considerable recutting, which was a weird one. Thankfully, didn't have to watch that shit. 

Back to the basics on this one. One solitary Xenomorph picking off unarmed prisoners that don't stand a chance. In this installment, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the only survivor from Aliens after the ship crash lands on Fiorina 161, a wasteland inhabited by former inmates housed on this maximum security prison planet. After, again facing skepticism, Ripley leads the men into battle against the alien. 

Cast includes Holt McCallany who plays Bill Tench in Fincher's incredible Netflix show Mindhunter, Charles Dance who was Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones, Charles S. Dutton (title character from the show Roc among other things [bought a lot of stock in that guy]), Paul McGann from Withnail and I, Lance Henriksen (again), and Pete Postlethwaite (Keyser Söze's lawyer, Mr. Kobayashi, in The Usual Suspects). Ripley and the eldest Lannister go to pound town, which is a weird way to introduce sexual encounters into the universe. 

Ripley, among all these rapist and murderers (who have all taken a religious vow of celibacy), is repeatedly told not to go around the prisoners. The warden guy basically says that she will be raped and murdered if she goes around these guys. First chance she gets, she waltzes into the mess hall, trying to show them she's not afraid, I guess, maybe that she is just one of the guys, I don't know. Not a good situation for her or the prison, ya know. When she walks in, the first guy she engages with says, “You don't want to know me, lady. I'm a murderer and rapist of women.” She's like, “alright, well, I'm just going to sit here with you and the other sexual deviants and enjoy my meal like one of the guys.” It's never a woman's fault, but maybe in this very dangerous situation, try to be chill is all I'm saying. 

Which brings me to this fucked up attempted rape scene. This is by far the darkest of all of the films in the series and like all Fincher's work with a few exceptions features psychopaths capable of anything. Though fucked up, I sort liked this aspect of the film. I was all in early... but the movie starts to fall apart in the last third. 

It all starts when Ripley is all, we have to kill it, they can't take the alien and use it as a weapon. You know this speech because she makes it in every movie. Charles Dutton is like, why not? Fuck them, but really, why should we should we volunteer to die here when there is a lot worse shit out there already. He has a point, but then the point is mute because some idiot lets it out because he thinks it's cool or whatever which is my biggest beef with the movie. Really, it's not terrible. At times it's nearly great. But this is so unforgivably dumb. They have it trapped, neutralized. And then no. I don't recall if it is the same in the theatrical version. But I would have really hated this in junior high and it would have ruined the movie. 

Also, dumb and irritating is after Ripley finds out that she has an alien in her chest, she is like everyone has to die now. Call off the medivac team and nuke the bitch. You know, Ripley, this is her one plan for every situation. Now that she is going to die, might as well take everyone else with me. The guy in charge is like, uh, fuck that. Sorry you're going to die, but no. Pretty fucked up on Ripley's part, to be honest.

Then after this weird scene where Ripley goes to kill it and mistakes a pipe for the alien head, she asks Dutton to kill her. But Dutton is like, fuck you, how about you help. She goes, makes her speech again and rallies the troops with an anti-corporate rant with Dutton throwing out some god stuff and they're all on board. 

It kind of comes back around and is exciting at least with a lot of chasing and murdering which culminates in an alien covered in molten lead. When they turn the sprinklers on it, it dies in a satisfying explosion. Spoiler. 

But then it ends on some dumb shit with the return of Lance Henriksen, the designer of the droid that looks like him, who spouts some corporate nonsense and tries to convince Ripley to let them take the queen out of her. It then descends into self-sacrificing nonsense and Henriksen saying shit like “it's a beautiful specimen! You're throwing away the chance of a lifetime.” And Ripley Christ's herself into the fire. The end. I remember the chestburster popping out as she fell, but that doesn't happen in this version. 

So let's get into the production... 

Can't really talk about this movie without acknowledging the legendarily troubled production. Fox, the studio behind the flick, kept pushing the film back and making changes. Supposedly there were something like ten different writers for the film and Fincher was not the first director. Then at some point in1991 they released a teaser that simply stated “In 1979, we discovered, in space, no one can hear you scream. In 1992, we will discover, on Earth, everyone can hear you scream.” Incredible teaser. 

I remember being more than a little intrigued, hence seeing it in the theater at age 10 (my parents didn't discourage the horror/film stuff my brother and I were into and now I'm a sort of successful, sort of well adjusted adult, love you mom and dad). If you haven't seen it, uh, don't get too excited. This trailer came out before the script was finished and as anyone who's seen the movie knows, this shit ain't on Earth. 

Almost immediately Fincher started distancing himself, leaving the project before the final edit was in the can. That summer he said “If I go on to make 10 great ones, this'll probably be looked upon as my first bungled masterpiece.” In 2009 he told The Guardian that “no one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.” When he made the film he was 29-year-old music video director getting his first picture. Fox more or less had no faith in him and breathed down his neck the whole time, demanding recuts and reshoots throughout. You can read more about it on Film Stories. 

The 10 great ones/bungled masterpiece thing is pretty much exactly what happened as he has 10 more under his belt here in 2023 and most of them are indeed considered great. 

What's nuts is Fincher nearly left the industry after this experience, going back to music videos and refusing to read scripts until Se7en wound up in his lap. Thank fuck he stuck with that shit as he is one of the all-time greats. In my opinion he has three movies in the top 10 of this century in The Social Network (behind only There Will Be Blood for best movies of my lifetime), Zodiac, and Gone Girl. Mank and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ain't bad either. I haven't even mentioned his best two either in Se7en and Fight Club. I wrote papers in college about both of those. Hell, Fight Clubbasically turned me woke when I saw it 1999. It completely changed the ways I look at consumerism and contemporary masculinity. 

Despite all the issues between Fincher and the studio, a lot of the actors working on the film were impressed enough to keep working with him. 

Dance, the love interest in the film, said that while it wasn't the nightmare it's been characterized as, it still wasn't an easy shoot. He explained that the executives back in Hollywood, the film was shot in England, phoned Fincher at all hours of the night, ignoring the time change, just basically fucking with him. For what it's worth, Dance said doesn't regret that he was a part of it and that he'd like to work with Fincher again, whom he considers a genius. “The minute David Fincher first walked onto the set I thought, 'My god, this guy is going to go far.' He was fantastic,” he said. Talk all that for what you will. He later did work on another Fincher film with Mank, playing William Randolph Hurst. 

One of the prisoners (a lot of them sort of blend together) Christopher John Fields is in four Fincher films, Holt McCallany was a henchman in Fight Club and has since gone on to star in Fincher's Netflix show Mindhunter, and Charles S. Dutton also appeared in Se7en. Then again, there are several actors who won't work with him again for what sounds like pretty good reasons. Notably Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal, and maybe Mark Ruffalo. Dude is tough to work for, for sure. 

Final thoughts...

My parting words here. This is easily the cutest little alien of the series. Nicknamed it “Bambi”. Running around on all fours. They used a dog in a suit at one point. Not sure it it made it into this cut, but it's pretty adorbs. Just a little guy. Aw. People went wild when Sigourney Weaver buzzed her head. Good look on her. I've historically been kind of into that. And, finally, while not perfect and near the bottom of his films, it does have it's moments, and shows more than a few glimpses of the promise of Fincher's later work. Overall, highly underrated. 

Aliens - James Cameron - 1986

★★★★★-Might be the greatest sequel of all time. Takes the world/premise of the first movie and dials it way up. Plus, no one is better at subtly shitting on corporations than James Cameron. All of his movies are a soulless corporate entity focused on profits to the extreme, causing preventable death to completely innocent people (or aliens or whatever) on a massive level. My kind of dude. With this flick, he goes all out with it and when in doubt, throws a couple exploding aliens in there. Incredible. 

To hammer this home, the first half hour of this movie is the most brutal shit a character has ever had to endure mentally. After floating in space in stasis for close to 60 years instead of the eight weeks she was expecting, Ripley wakes up to find her daughter got old and died. She is then forced to explain why she destroyed company property and gets fired and her space license revoked. They treat her like a criminal and even talk jail time. Then, when she suggests they check out the planet, a suit tells here that there are people there now! 60–70 families. “No complaints from them.” She immediately knows they are all going to die. Some real heavy shit to wake up to. Just put me back into stasis, Jesus fuck. 

Wrote a paper in college about this movie for a religion in film course I took. We all had to present on a couple of the predetermined movies. No one wanted this one because it took real work to make something of it. Intellectually confident as I was by senior year, I took this on by choice. Back as a stupid freshman, I dated a girl that was more or less identical to Ripley in this flick after the haircut. We did not have a good breakup and I harbored let's say dislike (she broke up with me because she thought I was a shitty writer, which has like always been MY thing, don't ya know, so I hated her) and I kind of held it against Ripley. So my take was siding with the Xenomorphs, which fucking killed. “They didn't ask to be born killing machines, they aren't the evil ones, they are just following their instincts in fighting this hostile group encroaching on their territory.” Lot of stuff like that with a bunch of digs on Bill Paxton. When I graduated, the professor from that class, one of only two classes I got A+s in, wrote me a letter saying he hopes I continue being a voice for “the other,” which was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, and I think about often. I feel this way with damn near every creature feature I watch these days. Down with the status quo, I say! Rip that guy's head off, Cocaine Bear!

Admittedly, the Ripley-Newt relationship is surprisingly touching though, which makes it hard to all out root for their deaths, though I managed. She's sweet for a feral child, she won the “Citizenship Award” for her second grade class. I, too, won the citizenship award in second grade. I was opinionated and still loathed everyone, but I was much quieter about all that back then. It wasn't until high school that I realized I was also hilarious and developed my barbed wit and general gift of gab. So, yeah, on a related note, I've been in my fair share of tussles since ye olde citizen boy award of 1989 with that combination. The most terrifying part of the movie is when Newt is in the like sewage system or whatever with chest level water and the inevitable happens. Spoiler. Also, back to the movie, I thought Newt was the same feral child in Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior until adulthood. 

Remember them being in space a lot more. Most of the movie takes place on the ground with this nuclear disaster looming with blue lightning and everything. What this series is pretty much. Trying to get out and kill the aliens before wherever they are explodes. Anywho, this is why the marines can't use guns at one point, which is eventually ignored. Plot science at its finest, “you can't fire bullets, you're inside a nuclear reactor!” So it's basically go in there and die, which they do. 

It was probably crazy to see a bunch of aliens back when this came out. But I saw this before the original and was sort of surprised and let down the first time I saw the Ridley Scott movie as a kid with it just being the one. Something nuts, Cameron only had six Xenomorph costumes. It looks like there are hundreds. I shit you negative on this. Plus, we get the first queen, which is just amazing. 

Cast is nuts. Stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, of course. As an athlete, I love critiquing running form in film. And not a good runner, Sigourney Weaver. Form is beyond terrible. Worse than Harrison Ford's old man run in The Temple of Doom. Still looks great in underpants and a tank top though. Also get Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn from The Terminator and Tombstone, Paul Reiser from Mad About You, Lance Henriksen from Pumpkinhead who is probably most remembered from this flick and his character Frank Black from The X-Files its dope spinoff Millennium, and Carrie Henn as Newt. 

A little on Michael Biehn. I pretty much love every movie this guy is in. Bought a lot of stock in him after The Abyss, but it never really happened for him. 

The film, I'm sure everyone knows, has a happy ending. Yay! But then after another crazy long stasis we get bold Ripley in Alien 3 and see that the kid and Biehn died and there were facehuggers all over the ship. Boo. 

The one-two punches that both Ridley Scott and James Cameron had after their first movies in this franchise are unmatched. Scott made Alien and then Blade Runner (a top 10 all time), then Cameron makes The Terminator followed by Aliens. He also wrote the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II during this same period. Fucking sick. 

Alien - Ridley Scott - 1979

★★★★★-One of the all-time great cats in this flick. I love that kitty boy, Jonsey. Save the fucking cat indeed.

Everyone knows and loves this flick. Sigourney Weaver taking on Xenomorphs in her tiny underpants and a tank top. Rock on. 

Ridley Scott's second film. Released in 1979. Written by Dan O'Bannon. Follows the space crew of the Nostromo, just a bunch of working stiff space folk who bring an alien onto the ship to everyone's detriment. The alien was designed by the artist H. R. Giger who is famous for this type of shit. That thing is cool as hell. The film won a bunch of awards but got mixed reviews at the time. Critics really fucked up on this one. 

Super cast with Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright (the little girl from The Birds), my surrogate grandfather Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggens), and Yaphet Kotto. What a crop!

However, there are several plot holes that are distracting. Of course, there is the facehugger getting through the helmet of a space suit and the acid blood. But one really irritates me. 

My beef is this, how the aliens go from being squirrel-sized to Yao Ming is ridiculous. Of the six movies, none allow for any kind of reasonable window for the aliens to grow to full size. One molting cycle, no food, and a half hour, and they are enormous. They really do grow up so fast! No, if you’re going to gain 100 kilos, you’re going to have to eat like a lot of stuff, and you’ve got to molt and shed and shit somewhere. It's fucking physics or biology or whatever, I'm not a scientist. 

Still, the greatest sci-fi/horror movie of all time. A slasher in space, scary as fuck. When it gets Dallas, coming out of nowhere, always scares the shit out of me. How low-energy it seems in the escape pod makes it somehow scarier/realer. When it comes face to face from the girl from The Birds, it basically scares her to death. Hence, the incredible tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

M3gan - Gerard Johnstone - 2023

★★★★★-AB says "check it out." Second from auteur Gerard Johnstone that I loved. The first, Housebound, is one of my favorite horror movies from the 2010s. It is crazy good and will keep you guessing. Check out my take on that here.

So M3gan. Total masterclass in bad ethics. Shitty parents probably watch the first 30 minutes of this movie and think “open up the fucking pod bay doors, mother fucker!” Then M3gan kills a dog and it is all down hill. 

The movie is basically your standard cautionary tale involving artificial intelligence. In a world that learned nothing from The Terminator nor The Matrix nor like 10 other movies I can think of off the top of my head (2001, Age of Ultron, the whole Alien franchise, Blade Runner, Dark Star, Deadly Friend, Ex Machina, RoboCop, Singularity, Wall-E, WarGames, Westworld [that's like 15 without looking up shit]), AI is the new big thing in tech. For years we've heard that AI is going to probably make all of us irrelevant and will definitely end the world. And here we are, expecting to see M3gans rolling off the assembly line any day now and murder us folk with annoying doggos. 

Anyway, the creator of this literal monstrosity, is robotics engineer Gemma, played by Allison Williams, who embarks on the risky endeavor of having the robot she just created raise the child that is thrust upon her by her very selfish sister who went and died. Real frumpy dump, this sister, dying and all. The orphan niece child, Cady, is played by a kid named Violet McGraw. She does a fine job of playing a terrible child. 

Something fun is that “resting bitch faced” M3gan is something of a gay icon. From the New York Times: 

“Gay men are protective of women like M3gan, the gorgeous and loyal but messy and insolent ones. (In the horror genre, where awful is wonderful, looking good and being depraved is a métier.) We consider our M3gans to be family, and we will fight you if you even look at them cross-eyed.

“To find M3gan’s gay roots, flip the calendar back to October, when Universal dropped the first trailer. A gay perfect storm helped it go viral: It was National Coming Out Day and Halloween month. Gay stan Megan Thee Stallion tweeted it. And — for me this was the clincher — the trailer featured a snippet of the sinister, awkwardly leggy dance M3gan does that’s set to a remix of Taylor Swift’s “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” a song that isn’t even in the movie...

“The trailer’s gayness might not be readily apparent. My mom wouldn’t notice it. But to me it’s there, and nowhere more so than when M3gan enters a room and pointedly removes her sunglasses, as if she’s Miranda Priestly surveying her panicked minions. Here’s the thing: M3gan doesn’t need sunglasses. She’s a doll. She wears them for drama.”

"I will murder you for this indignity"

Before you make M3gan a part of your chosen family though, remember all the murder, which shouldn't be too hard since you don't often see uncanny valley push a shithead child in front of a pickup too often these days. I mean, as soon as you put that doll with the other toys, it will murder the shit out of someone just to cope. 

Here's something to freak you out, just because. AI is here already, by the by. It is unfathomably smarter than people think. It can do remarkable things like not only recognize faces, but also pick up subtle shit that gives away things about your mood and behavior. Like, for example, if you are cheating at cards in a casino, this shit is gonna know. It can pick up things like fucking eye movement and betting patterns and know what you're up to before you even do it. That's what's fucking up. 

Honestly, it would know how people around her talk, something that it fucks up on in the movie. AI don't make mistakes like that. With enough data, it'll write in your voice. It has access to pretty much everything on the internet, doesn't need to learn, just access information and it runs with it. AI is way more conceptually terrifying than is fucking believable. This movie is indeed terrifying, and AI probably isn't going to kill you as it's not evil, but the people behind it might be. Looking at you Google, Facebook, Amazon, so forth. 

Last thing, the flick has pretty good movie references sprinkled throughout. A lot of Sam Raimi style slapstick. There is a silliness to it that I knew was inspired by the The Evil Dead himself. Googled that shit and director Johnstone sites Raimi as an inspiration, of fucking course. A second robot named “Bruce,” which doesn't seem like a co-een-kee-dink, looks like the big bad ro-bit from RoboCop 2. Plus, M3gan Terminators around the work shed at the end of the movie. This movie is fucking awesome. 

Palm Springs - Max Barbakow - 2020

★★★★★-Released in 2020, Palm Springs, a science fiction romantic comedy, is director Max Barbakow's feature debut. It stars Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti (whom I mostly think of from The Resort), and J.K. Simmons who is great in everything. It's another Groundhog Day inspired flick, the likes of Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, Edge of Tomorrow, Source Code, so forth. I can name at least half a dozen more. This replaces Happy Death Day as my new favorite. Fantastic film that you should totally watch.

The gist is two individuals encounter each other at a wedding in Palm Springs and subsequently find themselves trapped in a time loop. Nyles (Samberg) is the first to get stuck in the loop after walking into a magic cave, reliving the same day for god knows how long, living a carefree lifestyle until he convinces when Roy (Simmons), a man he parties with at the wedding, goes in as well. Pissed, he occasionally finds Nyles and tortures him. 

One night, after Roy shoots Nyles with an arrow while making out with Sarah (Milioti), the sister of the bride, he goes into the cave which starts the day over. He tells Sarah not to follow him, but she does and also gets stuck in the loop. The pair eventually become close, even sort of falling for each other, but we learn that Sarah starts each day guilt-ridden having slept with her sister's fiancee the night before. She eventually become obsessed with finding a way out of the loop, which involves exploding herself while in the cave. But will it work?

If you are sort of tired of the whole Groundhog Day concept, Palm Springs breathes new life into the idea with its own refreshing uniqueness. Despite its well-worn familiarity, the film manages to be both new and thought-provoking. What really sets it apart, however, is the endearing central relationship between its two leads. Their chemistry and genuine affection for each other are what make this film such a pleasure, IMO. 

Beyond the lighthearted comedy and dance numbers, it delves into some deep and meaningful shit, such as personal trauma, depression, and guilt. Despite these heavy themes, the film strikes a perfect balance between humor and existential dread. By the end, if you're like me, you'll find yourself reflecting on your own life and questioning the nature of existence and what have you. In short, this was a truly exceptional flick that is both highly entertaining and thought-provoking.

Crimes of the Future - David Cronenberg - 2022

★★★★ - One of the great food movies of all time. JK. People eat either plastic or a mixture of what looks like guacamole, nacho cheese, and creamed corn. Yum!

Gist of this science fiction body horror film by David Cronenberg is that a performance artist couple performs surgery for audiences. Evolution apparently accelerates for people in the future and mutations come in the form of growths. 

Stars Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as the artists. Kristen Stewart is in the flick as well. She takes her character in some weird/distracting directions. Other than her, I was digging it up until the last 20 minutes and then it gets strange even by his standards.

Visually it was pretty cool. I’d say it is worth a watch if you are into movies like The Brood with some extreme body stuff thrown in.