Quickie film reviews

[dreamshark]

While LJ is temporarily up and running, I'll take the opportunity for a few film reviews.

Last Sunday Richard, Thorin, and I decided to take advantage of Mnstf's invite code to the sneak preview of a new sci-fi film: Another Earth. We were joined by skylarker. I was vaguely expecting something like The Adjustment Bureau, but it turned out to be an offbeat, arty little indie film. I guess it qualifies as speculative fiction, but it was really more of a philosophical character study than science fiction. It was slow-moving and introspective, but thoughtful and well-acted. We all enjoyed it on its own merits, but the really fun part was having the film creators show up afterwards to talk about the film and take questions. The screening was well-attended by all sorts of SF and film fans, with MinnSpec particularly well-represented. I don't usually like crowds, but this one was kind of fun because people were talking to each other (having a perfect conversation starter at hand - "How did you hear about this screening?").

In preparation for next week's Fringe shows I decided to watch the films that are referenced by the following Fringe shows: Tempests and Highlander: the Musical. I've been trying to fill in the holes in my film classics list, and these were two that I had never seen.

Highlander was pretty tedious, although the on-location shots in Scotland were worth the price of admission. And Sean Connery in a Spanish flamenco outfit makes up for a lot. His character didn't entirely make sense, given that the other immortals were all baby-faced 20-somethings, but I'm not complaining. As usual, I found the action scenes to be endless and uninteresting up until the last 5 minutes, which was actually pretty effective. I loved the part where all the windows blew out of the old office building. I understand that this stupid movie actually spawned a whole franchise of sequels, which is quite a trick considering that there was only one immortal left alive at the end, and he wasn't even immortal any more.

Aliens was also a rough ride, but for an entirely different reason. The action scenes were not boring in this one - just stressful and terrifying. I had to take a couple of breaks because I couldn't stand the tension. Not that it wasn't a great movie - I'm just a wuss. I can't deny it - I like James Cameron movies. I like the tight scripting, the strong women, the epic sweep, the vividness of the incidental characters, and the little islands of tenderness between the action scenes. I have an odd habit of reading reviews of movies after I have just watched them. While snooping around online I found a great essay called something like "25th Anniversary of James Cameron's Explosive Ode to Motherhood," which tickled me. It's true, it IS about motherhood from start to finish. *heh*

Watching three mid-eighties sci-fi epics in quick succession (the first being The Terminator) got me thinking about what has been lost with the easy availability of CGI. There was a force and solidity to the locations, monsters and props in these movies that just isn't there with modern computerized movies. There is no point in anybody ever trying to design a more horrifying movie monster than H.R. Giger's alien - it simply can't be done. I have now white-knuckled my way through two Alien movies and I have to say that there was never a moment in either of them where I found myself thinking, "Gee, I wonder how they got that effect?" when one of the aliens leaped, slithered or oozed across the screen; I was too busy cringing. It was only afterwards when I looked it up online that I learned that it was all done with puppetry, black leotards, slimy prosthetics and tricky lighting. The limitations of those techniques dictated that you never saw the original alien fully lit, and rarely saw more than bits and pieces of it as it slithered around in the shadows. This was a thousand times scarier than the fully articulated, completely rendered monsters in modern video games and movies. In Aliens we do see some baby monsters inside large bell jars, and they are more grotesque than scary. They really need semi-darkness or lightning speed to be fully terrifying. The real star of Alien is the monster, but the real stars of Aliens are the heavy equipment. I don't know just how they constructed that fantastic cargo loader that Ripley keeps stomping around in, but the power and solidity of it is undeniable.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Highlander, especially the incredibly sentimental story line about his love affair with the short-lived woman, and as she lay dying he said, "We're in the Highlands, love. Where else?"

Aliens I saw in the Varsity Theater, back when it showed movies. It absolutely terrified me, but that was all absolved by the second act of the double feature that night, the campy John Carpenter filmDark Star (The usual linky goodness is available at Wikipedia.) The only sustaining thing about it was the song "Benson, Arizona", which I remembered when it was presented to me, years later, as the organizational anthem of General Technics.

From this also I acquired the basic rule of double features: contrast is good. About the same time, I attended a triple feature at the Uptown. Plan 9 From Outer Space then Schlock and then Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. So much camp in one evening made this an endurance event. I washed away all of that by leaving the theater, getting in line again, and seeing Rocky Horror, which was admittedly also pretty campy, but also had all the music and audience participation that the contrast really made it a pleasure to attend.

As for CGI, I stand by my admiration of old-school film making as I commented here in your journal.

K.