Ripley, believe it or not, has been cloned from a drop of her own blood, with new superhuman strength as befits her stature as a Cultural Icon. But it is not for herself that she has been brought back from the dead. It is for the alien queen inside her, …
Well, that was a surprise. The plan seemed clear enough: over the course of Prometheus and Covenant, the Alien franchise had gotten a little too far from its nightmarish roots — body horror, monster scares, and corporate malfeasance giving way to existential searches for meaning, the war of creation vs. …
Space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life-form in the universe while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station. Directed by Fede Álvarez.
The cross-series combat continues on a crash-landed spacecraft in Colorado, and spills into the small town of Crested Butte. The brothers Colin and Greg Strause, visual-effects technicians in their feature directing debut, appear to be on very poor terms with human beings, and not a whole lot better terms with …
This creature-feature has, and is, a good time, but it works very hard and spends a lot of money in order to have it. The question is, is it worth it? This question comes up not only because this movie seems much too heavily endowed for the simple, 1950s-style monster …
To feel affection for the grade-Z science-fiction films of the Fifties, especially as their descendants get ever more deluxe, is perfectly natural and no cause for shame. (A Not-Guilty Pleasure.) To set out in the 21st Century to make a grade-Z science-fiction film of the Fifties, purportedly shelved and now …
Plural, more accurately: Aliens vs. Predators, facing off in the arena of an ancient pyramid under the Antarctic ice. Notwithstanding the outward hostilities, it's a pragmatic pooling of commercial assets by the Fox studio, profit motive only. A clearer motive, at any rate, than that of the dreadlocked Predators, who, …
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's crocodile-tearjerker about the romance and marriage of a sixtyish German scrubwoman and a young Moroccan immigrant. It's a crossbreed of two Douglas Sirk tearjerkers of the Fifties, All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life, and twice as hard to swallow as either of those. Fassbinder clicks …
A pre-credit disclaimer brings us up to speed: what follows is a fictionalized biopic inspired by the life of Céline Dion that’s “been modified in keeping with the filmmaker’s vision.” Regrettably, writer-director-star Valérie Lemercier never makes good on her promise of a triple threat. When drained, the script contains enough …
Why did Robert Rodriguez bother giving Rosa Salazar the CG Margaret Keane treatment when Hollywood already had tumescently-eyed young actresses like Anya Taylor-Joy or Bel Powley eager to report for duty? It’s Ex Machina for teenagers when a futuristic sawbones (Christoph Waltz in cruise control) fuses together the upper-torso of …
There’s a gay, black BFF living down the hall, a suffocatingly adorable mom, a handsome Jewish doctor, the obligatory Hallmark greeting card romantic interlude (parasailing, anyone?), characters who break out into spontaneous sing-alongs, and Whoopi Goldberg as God. What separates this from all the other chick flicks out there? Colon …
Grisly details of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes, the survivors of which resorted to eating the casualties in order to stay alive. The crash itself is hair-raising, and the rest is certainly a more tasteful (not to say tasty) treatment than the 1976 Mexican quickie, Survive. Possibly it's …