Alien Resurrection (1997)

I’m the Monster’s Mother.

We’ve come to the conclusion of the Alien series, but not quite to the end of the movies that I’ll be reviewing that are like it.  I feel like the review series wouldn’t be complete if I neglected to review the film that finds out what happens when Aliens come up against Predators, which also means I should review Predator.  But that’ll come in the next couple of days.  Today is the final Alien movie, which I remember being fairly fond of for whatever reason, but Rotten Tomatoes still does not show this movie favor.  Who will be wrong?  Rotten Tomatoes, obviously, but I’ll write some words to explain why.  First, I’m awesome and always right.  Second, my review of Alien Resurrection, written by Joss Whedon, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dan Hedaya, Brad Dourif, J.E. Freeman, Michael Wincott, Gary Dourdan, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Kim Flowers, Raymond Cruz, and Leland Orser.

Since they killed Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the previous movie, we’re going to have to be introduced to our new protagonist of the Alien series.  That comes in the form of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) … wait … Cloning?  Oh movie…  You are the sillies.  Ellen Ripley has been cloned because humanity really wants to get its hands on the creature that seems to do nothing but kill them and her clone would have the queen in her chest.  They successfully clone her and remove the queen, but keep her alive for study because her DNA has been mixed up with that of the Xenomorph queen.  After a while, the crew of the mercenary ship called the Betty show up with a bunch of people in stasis for General Perez (Dan Hedaya), who wants to use the people as hosts for the aliens.  Unbeknownst to the crew of the Betty, their newest member and engineer Annalee Call (Winona Ryder), joined up with them to get onto the ship and kill Ripley and the alien menace, but she’s too late because the Xenomorphs have already escaped and gotten to what they do best.

I still like this movie.  It’s still not really comparable to Alien or Aliens, but it was lucky enough to follow Alien3, making it that much better in comparison.  Also, Joss Whedon wrote it, so it probably gets some love just for that.  Of course, I didn’t know that until this viewing and I still thought it was pretty good.  Once you get past the initial annoyance of the return of Ripley being based on cloning, you can let yourself enjoy the movie.  Sure, the cloning thing is a bit of an easy solution to a problem, but it also opens up for some things that I found interesting, like Ripley basically being a superhero with super strength, senses, and acidic blood.  It also opened the story up for some things that I didn’t dig on very much, like the hybrid alien.  Sure, it looked icky as hell, but the Xenomorphs are way scarier and far more badass-looking.  For instance, I’m going to be a little afraid of an alien with no nose and dripping white skin, but then I’m going to look down and see its tiny alien boobies that it has for some reason and I’ll probably be dying laughing.  And that’s not a good thing when the regular Xenomorphs look as awesome as they’ve ever looked in this movie.  They have never been constantly wetter.  The rest of the story kind of unfolds as you’d expect as this story seems like mostly Whedon’s love letter to the Alien series, but that also makes things less surprising.  One of the characters turns out to be a robot, the army in this one makes fun of the company for not being able to handle the Xenomorphs while making the same mistakes, Ripley’s going to win.  Not a whole lot of surprises, but it’s still got a lot of cool going on.  I liked the underwater scene where the group had to pass through an area underwater while being chased by a couple of Xenomorphs, for instance.  I also liked when one of the characters used the alien bursting out of his chest to kill someone.  And the way they defeat the last alien in the movie is pretty awesome, and extremely icky.  The way the Xenomorphs escape their captivity by sacrificing one of their own is also very clever.  I like when they make them smarter than your average monster, but I wasn’t that fond of the aliens pressing the red button that was once used to punish them to kill the soldier, as awesome looking as that death was.  It just doesn’t seem like their style.  They’re plenty good at killing without the use of buttons and liquid nitrogen.  Speaking of better ways to kill things, though I liked the emotional impact of the scene with all the failed Ripley clones, it seems like there are better and quicker ways to kill them than using a flamethrower.

Most of the performances were good in this movie.  I would say this is the movie where Sigourney Weaver brings Ripley to the full potential of badass.  She’s got superpowers and she knows it.  It’s kind of the opposite of how she was a badass in Aliens.  In this movie she never seems afraid, so she’s just a badass because she’s the toughest one in the room, where in Aliens she was just the toughest because she did what she had to even though she was afraid.  Still an interesting character though.  I also really liked Winona Ryder in this movie.  For my money, she’s never been hotter in any movie I’ve seen her in.  There’s something about that lady that is a little bit of alright.  Although her sexuality never really came into play in her performance.  Her performance was more about hating on someone for not being human, which is completely ironic given what we find out about her later.  I also liked Gary Dourdan’s character.  Sure, he did a lot of things that I’m sure the Mythbusters wouldn’t take kindly to, like crazy ricochet shots to kill people, but he was also pretty badass and had a great look as well.  I did get a little confused by his death though.  I mean, he just got a little acid burn on his face.  There was no reason he couldn’t grab back onto the ladder and live a little while longer.  There’s also no reason that he couldn’t survive the short fall into the water that apparently killed him for good.

Alien Resurrection was much better than Alien3, but still far inferior to Alien and Aliens.  The story is good once you get past the BS cloning thing, the look is good, the action is over the top and fun, and a lot of the performances are still solid.  It’s a somewhat acceptable end to the series, but of course I wouldn’t have minded another one.  But, at this point, they’d probably have to replace Ripley, and I don’t think I’m down for that.  It’ll do, I suppose.  Alien Resurrection gets “Ellen Ripley died trying to wipe this species out.  For all intents and purposes, she succeeded” out of “Must be a chick thing.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Clueless (1995)

This Reminds Boys of Being Naked, and Then They Think of Sex.

Again feeling the need to get away from the underdog fighting movies, I feel that the movie I’ve chosen for today could not be further removed from them.  When the Lady MacBalls last suggested a movie, it was my most popular review in a while, so I felt a little obligated to do her next request quickly.  The movie she suggested was a movie I already owned, but had never opened and never really had an inspiration to open it.  I had seen it before, though the last time was much closer to when the movie came out.  It doesn’t seem like the kind of movie I would enjoy, but I vaguely remember it being better than one would expect based on the subject matter.  Let’s see if memory serves in my review of Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, and starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, Dan Hedaya, Jeremy Sisto, Justin Walker, Wallace Shawn, Twink Caplan, Elisa Donovan, and Julie Brown.

I just realized that this is going to be a hard movie to describe because there’s no singular plotline to be seen.  Well this movie is basically about a superficial high school girl named Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), who is pretty, popular, and rich.  She’s friends with Dionne Davenport (Stacey Dash), who is roughly as pretty, popular, and rich.  Cher lives with her father (Dan Hedaya) in Beverly Hills and is visited often by her ex-stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd).  First, Cher gets a mediocre grade on her report card and resolves to fix that by setting her teacher, Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn), up with another teacher, Miss Geist (Twink Caplan).  With that out of the way, she then decides to give a makeover to the new girl at school, Tai Frasier (Brittany Murphy).  Tai seems to like a stoner named Travis (Brecken Meyer), but Cher sets her straight and steers her towards rich kid Elton (Jeremy Sisto).  Elton doesn’t want Tai; he wants Cher, so that backfires.  Cher starts going after a new kid whose wardrobe is stuck in the 50’s named Christian (Justin Walker), but it turns out he’s gay.  Then a couple of other things and the end.

I remember this movie being better, but I suppose it’s not really made for my age range.  This movie seems more appropriate for teenagers around the same age as the characters in the movie, or at least for people that really enjoyed the movie back then.  Watching the movie today and as a 28-year-old, I don’t find a great deal of appeal in the movie.  It’s fine, but doesn’t really seem for me.  Even though I know that it’s mostly done in parody, I don’t know why I’d want to spend very much time with this superficial and stupid lot of people.  Yeah, pretty much everyone in this movie is super great to look at, but it turns out they talk too.  I grant that I’ve seen the movie before, but I didn’t really find most of the jokes funny.  The funniest thing to happen in the movie to me was when Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd were talking about Marky Mark and how he wasn’t cool anymore, which made me laugh because Mark Wahlberg is super famous now and Alicia Silverstone could very well be dead for all I know.  Beyond that, it seemed as if the bulk of the humor came from how dumb the characters were.  I would give the movie credit for having a decent enough message in the end about getting over yourself and trying to do something for those in need, even if you remain dumb to do so.  I didn’t feel like the story was ever really any one story either.  It was just like a couple of smaller stories smashed together to no great effect.

I guess you could say the performances were really good because they accomplished the two goals they set for themselves: be super-hot and pretty stupid.  Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash were particularly good at both of these.  Brittany Murphy’s looked better than she did in this movie, even after the makeover, and her character typically got on my nerves.  I had completely forgotten that Paul Rudd played the stepbrother in this movie.  That’s all I had to say about that.  Donald Faison and Breckin Meyer’s characters had a few quasi funny moments.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t muster much to say about this movie.  It wasn’t really good, and it wasn’t really bad.  It wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t painful.  It’s a decent enough conclusion, but a haphazard story with no real conflict and resolution, and the characters were mostly dumb and not people I want to spend time with.  I vaguely remember liking this when I was younger, but the attractive stars would’ve accomplished piquing my interest at that age all by themselves.  You may still like this movie if you have really fond memories of it from your youth, but it doesn’t really stand on its own anymore as far as I’m concerned.  You can probably skip this movie and not miss much beyond some sexy, fully-clothed ladies.  Clueless gets “Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?” out of “Old people can be so sweet.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Laugh While You Can, Monkey Boy!

I’ve heard about today’s movie many times as a staple in nerd culture. It got to the point where I felt as if I would not qualify as a true nerd if I had never seen this movie. And since I have only two things – my nerdiness and my balls, and I don’t break ’em for nobody – I felt it was necessary to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, written by Earl Mac Rauch, directed by W. D. Richter, and starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Robert Ito, Clancy Brown, Lewis Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Pepe Serna, Ronald Lacey, Matt Clark, Vincent Schiavelli, Rosalind Cash, Dan Hedaya, and Yakov Smirnoff.

Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is some kind of scientist/action hero guy. The movie opens with him testing out a Jet Car with a oscillation overthruster mounted to it that allows it to drive into a mountain. When he comes out, he finds some kind of alien organism attached to the car. Elsewhere, in the Trenton Home for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) hears about Banzai’s accomplishment and has a flashback to when he helped Banzai’s mentor, Dr. Hikita (Robert Ito), in a overthruster experiment that failed and allowed Lizardo to have his mind taken over by Lord John Whorfin, leader of the Red Lectroids. The Red Lectroids are a group of alien reptiles that tried to take over Planet 10 before being stopped by the Black Lectroids and getting banished into the 8th Dimension. The Red Lectroids now spend their time hidden as regular people who all share the same first name of John. Banzai finds a girl named Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), the long-lost twin sister of Banzai’s deceased wife, but she is kidnapped to ransom her for the overthruster, and the Black Lectoids threaten to destroy Earth if Banzai can’t stop the Red Lectoids. Can Buckaroo Banzai save the day? And if he can, will we understand what the hell is happening in this movie?

Generally speaking, a cult hit is not a very good movie, but has a certain campy charm that makes it appealing to a certain group of people. I guess you could say that this movie has a bit of a campy charm to it, but it just wasn’t very good. You could very easily say this movie is imaginative, but it was also very strange and confusing. I barely have any idea what was happening in this movie. The whole theme of the movie was reminiscent of old serialized action/drama’s that I’ve seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I wouldn’t want to watch those without three hilarious guys mocking it. This movie was not painfully bad, and certainly had a few entertaining moments, but it was so confusing to me that I can’t say I enjoyed watching it. There was a machine that put people into another dimension, this group of scientist/superheroes that were also in a band or some shit, a love interest that was inexplicably depressed when we meet her and was the twin sister of our hero’s dead wife but them dating was cool somehow, a bunch of strange-looking aliens that all were named John for some reason. I have no idea what was going on here. I suppose it’s a similar story to the first Men in Black movie where the heroes have to stop something from happening to save the world, but it was like the first Men in Black if it was written by people on LSD that didn’t read the story they wrote after the drugs wore off.

The coolest thing about this movie is the people in it. It may not have been the start of these actor’s work, but it was certainly one of the earliest roles for people that went on to be in huge movies. Peter Weller may not have had as big of a career as some of the other people I’ll get to, but he was Robocop. His performance in this movie was decent, but nothing that caused me to pay much attention to him. John Lithgow, on the other hand, I did pay attention to. We should all know Mr. Lithgow from his many other fantastic performances and he was probably the most enjoyable part of this movie with his over the top performance as Emilio Lizardo. If not him by himself, some of the funniest parts were interactions between him and his resentful underling, John Bigboote (which most people pronounced Big Booty), played by Christopher Lloyd. This man will be forever loved by me for Back to the Future, and his role as Fester Addams helps too. This movie didn’t do anything to help my love of him, but didn’t do enough to hurt it. I don’t really know what I thought about Ellen Barkin’s performance because I mainly spent all the time she was on screen trying to figure out if I was attracted to her or not. I’m still undecided. There are many other people in this movie who went on to huge movie roles that I’m sure had very little to do with this movie. Jeff Goldblum was in Independance Day and Jurassic Park, Ronald Lacey was most famously Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark (though that was before this movie), Clancy Brown was the fuckin Kurgan in Highlander, Dan Hedaya was in Alien: Resurrection, and Yakov Smirnoff was … Yakov Smirnoff. Lots of big names in this movie, if nothing else.

I can see how people would find this movie charming without actually finding it charming myself. Kudos are deserved for making a movie that certainly qualifies as a candidate for the most imaginative movie I can think of, but the movie also has to make some sense for me to get into it. It was sort of fun, and included varying qualities of performances from numerous recognizable characters, but if you never know what’s going on, what’s the point? I can’t really recommend you watch this movie. I imagine I’ll find it fun to be able to say that I’ve seen this movie in the future, and it is apparently such a staple in nerd culture that you may have to watch it to consider yourself nerdy, but the movie itself is only good to be mocked, as far as I’m concerned. If they tried to be funny by kind of being a parody in itself, I didn’t get it. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension gets “Use more honey. Find out what she knows” out of “I’ve been ionized, but I’m okay now.”

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