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Death, illness, poop, and divorce
Unpleasantness abounds in this week’s new movies, including Alien: Covenant and Obit
Aliens aren’t really the star, or even the star baddie, of Alien: Covenant.
I’m probably more fascinated by H.R. Giger and his xenomorph than is entirely healthy, so it took me a little while to get over the fact that the aliens aren’t really the star, or even the star baddie, of Alien: Covenant. But get over it I did, and what’s more, I found myself doing more post-movie thinking about its worldview than I had expected.
Movie
Alien: Covenant **
Ridley Scott finishes what he started in <em>Prometheus</em>: the story of David (Michael Fassbender), a sentient creation who discovers that his creator is laughably inferior, but still potentially useful. (There’s a bang-up opening scene featuring David’s awakening — physical and otherwise — for those who may have thought they were here for the xenomorphs.) Happily for the audience, he isn’t alone in his superhuman status — a little brotherly rivalry keeps things interesting (just ask Cain and Abel). So the new crew, piloting the titular colony ship, has an android of its own: Walter, he of the flattened accent, dialed-down individuality, and bulked-up virtue. The drama between the two is the stuff of good, even classic sci-fi, but in his eagerness to make his point, Scott reduces his people to stumbling, panicky incompetents (whatever made the scientists so dumb in <em>Prometheus</em> seems to have spread to the soldiers and other supposed professionals here), and his monster to a glorified service animal. (At one point, David explicitly compares it to a horse.) Possibly worse: he trades the slow, creeping dread of the original <em>Alien</em> for frenetic slasher-pic violence and gore. Definitely worse: the way the film seems to borrow from those released earlier this year: <em>Passengers, Life, Ghost in the Shell, et alia</em>. Still those movies didn’t have <em>that</em> creature, nor the religious underpinnings. What should a god do but create?
So there’s that. But I was still disappointed that they didn’t do more with the horror potential of that awful critter. Here he feels more like a particularly ferocious animal than a malevolent force of nature. Maybe it was the slasher-style violence. (Seriously, though, even in the trailer, he’s sneaking up on a couple while they’re getting it on. That’s straight Friday the 13th right there.)
Movie
Obit. ***
Vanessa Gould’s documentary look at the obituary department of the <em>New York Times</em> in action is as deceptive in tone as it is perceptive in vision. A strange air of calm rumination pervades the account, even as we watch a group of consummate professionals go through their daily, panic-inducing routine of finding out who died, figuring out who’s newsworthy, puling clips and photos from the paper’s labyrinthine and comically understaffed archives, interviewing loved ones, gaining “command of [the deceased’s] life, work, and historical significance,” weaving “a seductive historical spell” for an increasingly distractable reader that gets its facts right and doesn’t blow its “one chance to do justice to a life and make the dead live again,” and then pitching it for editorial consideration. She achieves this unlikely tranquility by frequent cutaways to the writers themselves as they discuss their particular brand of journalism, and to their invariably engaging subjects. They’re not all movers and makers of worlds, but even the minor figures are lent significance by the way their stories are told. (Go ahead and Google “John Fairfax badass obit” for the story of a professional adventurer who lived the bejesus out of life before he passed on — sorry, <em>died</em>. The <em>Times</em> doesn’t go in for euphemism.) That’s the real subject here: storytelling, the creation of a stylish, authoritative record of “how the world got to be the way it is.” One more thing to miss about newspapers when they go.
Death makes a less violent, more ruminative appearance in the documentary Obit, which I liked. Why, yes, I did used to dream of starting a magazine called Obit that would consist of excellent obituaries for the people who had died the previous month. Thanks for asking. But of course the Internet made that dream shrivel up and skitter away like yesterday’s newspaper. As the movie notes, people don’t even want to wait until the next day any more. But it also shows why such an endeavor might have been worthwhile and even enjoyable.
Moving on to the illness mentioned in the title of this post: Everything, Everything is a teen romance in which the girl isn’t allowed to go outside because of her condition. Good thing there’s a cute boy to get her to forget herself and her parents and everything, everything else. Yay, cute boys! We didn’t review it, just like we didn’t review the Frenchy food-and-wine glories of Paris Can Wait, which would most likely have made me sick with envy. But they’re out there if you’re so inclined, as is The Last Men in Aleppo, which I regret not seeing.
And poop? Scott had doody duty with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and he enjoyed it more than might be expected. A kid at heart, that one.
As for divorce, it hangs like the legally (un)binding Sword of Damocles over the unhappy couple at the center of The Lovers, which is why it’s surprising when said couple starts coupling. Or maybe it isn’t, given what we learn about them. It’s well made, but it isn’t terribly pleasant (which puts it ahead of the unhappy, er, evil couple pic Hounds of Love, by Scott’s account). Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If it’s good feelings you want, it sounds like your best bet is the “real-life Rocky” biopic Chuck. Yes, there’s cocaine addiction, but come on, the man boxed a bear.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Death, illness, poop, and divorce
Unpleasantness abounds in this week’s new movies, including Alien: Covenant and Obit
Death, illness, poop, and divorce
Unpleasantness abounds in this week’s new movies, including Alien: Covenant and Obit
Aliens aren’t really the star, or even the star baddie, of Alien: Covenant.
I’m probably more fascinated by H.R. Giger and his xenomorph than is entirely healthy, so it took me a little while to get over the fact that the aliens aren’t really the star, or even the star baddie, of Alien: Covenant. But get over it I did, and what’s more, I found myself doing more post-movie thinking about its worldview than I had expected.
Movie
Alien: Covenant **
Ridley Scott finishes what he started in <em>Prometheus</em>: the story of David (Michael Fassbender), a sentient creation who discovers that his creator is laughably inferior, but still potentially useful. (There’s a bang-up opening scene featuring David’s awakening — physical and otherwise — for those who may have thought they were here for the xenomorphs.) Happily for the audience, he isn’t alone in his superhuman status — a little brotherly rivalry keeps things interesting (just ask Cain and Abel). So the new crew, piloting the titular colony ship, has an android of its own: Walter, he of the flattened accent, dialed-down individuality, and bulked-up virtue. The drama between the two is the stuff of good, even classic sci-fi, but in his eagerness to make his point, Scott reduces his people to stumbling, panicky incompetents (whatever made the scientists so dumb in <em>Prometheus</em> seems to have spread to the soldiers and other supposed professionals here), and his monster to a glorified service animal. (At one point, David explicitly compares it to a horse.) Possibly worse: he trades the slow, creeping dread of the original <em>Alien</em> for frenetic slasher-pic violence and gore. Definitely worse: the way the film seems to borrow from those released earlier this year: <em>Passengers, Life, Ghost in the Shell, et alia</em>. Still those movies didn’t have <em>that</em> creature, nor the religious underpinnings. What should a god do but create?
So there’s that. But I was still disappointed that they didn’t do more with the horror potential of that awful critter. Here he feels more like a particularly ferocious animal than a malevolent force of nature. Maybe it was the slasher-style violence. (Seriously, though, even in the trailer, he’s sneaking up on a couple while they’re getting it on. That’s straight Friday the 13th right there.)
Movie
Obit. ***
Vanessa Gould’s documentary look at the obituary department of the <em>New York Times</em> in action is as deceptive in tone as it is perceptive in vision. A strange air of calm rumination pervades the account, even as we watch a group of consummate professionals go through their daily, panic-inducing routine of finding out who died, figuring out who’s newsworthy, puling clips and photos from the paper’s labyrinthine and comically understaffed archives, interviewing loved ones, gaining “command of [the deceased’s] life, work, and historical significance,” weaving “a seductive historical spell” for an increasingly distractable reader that gets its facts right and doesn’t blow its “one chance to do justice to a life and make the dead live again,” and then pitching it for editorial consideration. She achieves this unlikely tranquility by frequent cutaways to the writers themselves as they discuss their particular brand of journalism, and to their invariably engaging subjects. They’re not all movers and makers of worlds, but even the minor figures are lent significance by the way their stories are told. (Go ahead and Google “John Fairfax badass obit” for the story of a professional adventurer who lived the bejesus out of life before he passed on — sorry, <em>died</em>. The <em>Times</em> doesn’t go in for euphemism.) That’s the real subject here: storytelling, the creation of a stylish, authoritative record of “how the world got to be the way it is.” One more thing to miss about newspapers when they go.
Death makes a less violent, more ruminative appearance in the documentary Obit, which I liked. Why, yes, I did used to dream of starting a magazine called Obit that would consist of excellent obituaries for the people who had died the previous month. Thanks for asking. But of course the Internet made that dream shrivel up and skitter away like yesterday’s newspaper. As the movie notes, people don’t even want to wait until the next day any more. But it also shows why such an endeavor might have been worthwhile and even enjoyable.
Moving on to the illness mentioned in the title of this post: Everything, Everything is a teen romance in which the girl isn’t allowed to go outside because of her condition. Good thing there’s a cute boy to get her to forget herself and her parents and everything, everything else. Yay, cute boys! We didn’t review it, just like we didn’t review the Frenchy food-and-wine glories of Paris Can Wait, which would most likely have made me sick with envy. But they’re out there if you’re so inclined, as is The Last Men in Aleppo, which I regret not seeing.
And poop? Scott had doody duty with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and he enjoyed it more than might be expected. A kid at heart, that one.
As for divorce, it hangs like the legally (un)binding Sword of Damocles over the unhappy couple at the center of The Lovers, which is why it’s surprising when said couple starts coupling. Or maybe it isn’t, given what we learn about them. It’s well made, but it isn’t terribly pleasant (which puts it ahead of the unhappy, er, evil couple pic Hounds of Love, by Scott’s account). Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If it’s good feelings you want, it sounds like your best bet is the “real-life Rocky” biopic Chuck. Yes, there’s cocaine addiction, but come on, the man boxed a bear.
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