Alien: Covenant (2017)

After I saw Prometheus in 2012, ostensibly returning director Ridley Scott’s prequel to Alien, I had such a viscerally negative experience that I’ve never gone back and rewatched the film. It worked on an instinctive level, with enough scares and dread, but the meandering narrative left me unfulfilled. It was a film without an ending, a prequel without a need to participate in the same universe. 

In fact, Prometheus was such an overall negative experience for me that it took me four years to watch its sequel, Alien: Covenant, which came out in 2017. At least this time, the film is unabashed about its ties to the Alien franchise, but it is so unbearably ponderous, and it takes far too long for much of anything to happen. By the time the film hits its strongest notes, most in the audience may have long since fallen asleep.

 

Android Walter (Michael Fassbender) awakens his ship of colonists after a solar flare damages their vessel. Once the repairs are complete, Captain Oram (Billy Crudup) and his second Daniels (Katherine Waterston) discover a mysterious broadcast that leads them to a planet perfectly suited for their settling mission. The planet, however, is home to a giant storm, a few mysterious creatures, and another android (also Fassbender) who appears to be the only survivor of a doomed ship ten years ago.

 

Alien: Covenant begins with a lengthy sequence between Fassbender’s robotic David and his human inventor, played by an uncredited Guy Pearce. The dialogue is laborious and painstakingly self-serious, as though this is the first time that such a scene has been presented between creator and creation. Pearce and Fassbender limp their way through dismally tedious monologues about creating life, and just when you think the scene can’t verge any further into cliché, Fassbender begins playing, of all things, Wagner on a conveniently adjacent piano. It’s guaranteed to induce a hearty groan from anyone who’s seen a science-fiction movie in the last forty years, yet this prologue is so sententious that it casts a dour pall over the rest of the movie.

 

It’s another forty minutes or so before the plot of the film really gets going, after taking much too long to introduce a crew of no fewer than nine characters – half of whom, don’t worry, will be alien fodder before too long. You’ll have to wait nearly an hour before seeing so much as a hint of an alien, which is a bit of a problem, especially because the alien hijinks in Covenant aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. There are blundering humans who unwittingly infect themselves with alien spores, alien eggs that ought to ring a bell for fans of this franchise, and things that go bump in the dark. There’s even a familiar piece of heavy machinery that plays a significant role early in the film’s climax; it’s not the cargo-loader from Aliens, but it’s close. 

 

Indeed, Mark Kermode has rightly called Alien: Covenant a “greatest-hits” collection, reprising so many recognizable moments to diminishing effect. One senses that Ridley Scott is re-staging them with all the dramatic flourish of the original King Kong, as if to say it’s all been building to this – ta-da! Yet we’ve been down this road once or twice already; we’ve seen it all before. There’s an instinctual fear of the darkness and of sudden scares, and Scott is deft at manipulating the audience into being startled, but at the same time any eagle-eyed Alien fan will probably spot some of these jumps coming. (Cautionary tale: if you’re in space, never ever go into a medical bay.)

 

Just about the only fresh thing the film does is to cast Fassbender as the dueling android twins David and Walter. Fassbender shines in these twin roles, not least of all because of the different accents he employs. He manages to make both characters visually distinctive in their mannerisms and bearings, yet Alien: Covenant finds a way to wear out your patience in a few navel-gazing sequences where the two androids explain the plot to each other before – and I cannot make up this level of narcissism – kissing. It’s a perfect metaphor for how enamored the film is of itself and its own weighty, needless mythology. 

 

You sense that the makers of Alien: Covenant are trying, really trying. Katherine Waterston is a fine update on the Sigourney Weaver archetype, and the film gives her enough room to carve out a unique take on the role. But no one else is quite trying at the level of Fassbender and Waterston, and the film is mired in its own reflection. There are things that will always work in an Alien film, but that doesn’t mean you can string them together time after time for a guaranteed winner. It took me four years to watch Alien: Covenant; maybe I should have waited a little longer.

 

Alien: Covenant is R for “sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality/nudity.” Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan, and Dante Harper. Starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and Demián Bichir.

This Is The End (2013)

You can read it as a scathing critique of self-obsessed celebrity culture, or you can take it as the payoff to a decade-long string of actors playing the same character over and over until they give up and play themselves.  But whichever way you choose to take it, This Is The End proves to be childishly crude, incredibly narcissistic, entirely self-indulgent – and, in the end, more fun than it has any right to be.

Trapped at James Franco’s house when a block party turns apocalyptic, a team of Frat Packers – Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Franco – struggle through the Biblical apocalypse while navigating their own petty differences and personal insecurities.  For example, with a demon at the door, the men argue about where to masturbate and whether anyone is entitled to a fifth of a Milky Way bar.  Satirizing the apoca-porn genre, which fetishizes death and destruction in disturbing ways (thank you, Roland Emmerich), This Is The End takes several surprisingly earnest turns, even while its leads are giggling about drinking urine.

Let’s be honest – taking This Is The End to task for its blatant and unapologetic immaturity is a little like scolding an infant for soiling himself.  Lest we forget, the writers – if indeed we can call “improvisation facilitators” such – were the savants (emphasis on the idiot) behind Superbad, a gleefully enjoyable movie that was quite obviously written by ten-year-olds.  So of course you’re going to get jokes about genitals and more weed gags than you can shake a joint at.  Of course.  And if that’s your thing, this movie has it in spades.

I’m of mixed feelings on this one.  It’s feel-good in the sense that you’ll probably end up laughing, even in spite of yourself if you go in deliberately trying not to have a good time (why you’d do that is anyone’s guess, but such people seem to exist).  Let’s be honest (the refrain of the day, it seems) – the earnest marijuana giggles Rogen delivers like a puttering engine are infectious, especially when it’s apparent that the rest of the cast are having as much fun making the film.  The cast are all fairly engaging as overblown caricatures of themselves (including an incisive turn by Jonah Hill as the “Hollywood fake” nice guy), though the standout performance award goes to Craig Robinson, who sells it to the back row with the same gregarious delight that made Hot Tub Time Machine more of a success.  There’s something about his mumbled confessions and oblivious non-sequiturs that gives him a fantastic screen presence.

But at the same time, I have trouble giving a good review to a film that contains a five-minute rape joke.  While the masturbation location conversation has a certain victimless immaturity to it, This Is The End takes on a very uncomfortable tone when Emma Watson becomes the subject of a hypothetical-rape conversation.  Though it’s played for laughs as a series of escalating misunderstandings, the scene is made all the more distasteful by McBride’s (admittedly) self-aware scummy self-caricature; and as the rape accusation is bounced around among buddies, the film’s brutal rejection of the Bechdel test is thrown into sharp relief.  I’m willing to excuse many of the film’s excesses  (including the bizarre detail that every demon has pronouncedly enormous genitals), but I’m at a loss as to why the film couldn’t have included Kristen Bell or Aubrey Plaza or – for God’s sake! – Melissa McCarthy among the survivors.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it.  There’s a certain ad hoc insanity to which you have to surrender in order to appreciate a film like this one, a go-along-for-the-ride resignation that carries with it a kind of intoxicating bliss while the lead actors bumble their way through arguments about the quotidian aspects of morning-after survival.  While certainly not for everyone, This Is The End has enough entertainment value that most people will find something worth enjoying – be it the catchy enthusiasm, the high stakes action-comedy, or even the exaggeration of excess (note the mild-mannered Michael Cera, rendered here as an oversexed addict).  A martini glass of urine never looked so funny.

This Is The End is rated R for “crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence.”  Every sexual and profane epithet you can imagine gets trotted out to excessive effect; alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine are abused throughout.  We see Cera’s rear end and the aforementioned demonic genitalia (twice), while many celebrities die in quick but intense fashion (played, you guessed it, for laughs).

Pineapple Express (2008)

These are the cats that brought you Superbad, the poster declares, and, with much of the same cast and exactly the same sense of humor, it's not hard to believe. It's also not hard to have a great time with a movie that couldn't take itself less seriously.

I'm an unabashed fan of these Judd Apatow "Frat Pack" comedies (You Don't Mess with the Zohan aside, which I couldn't even finish), but something about the premise brought a skeptical Cinema King to the sofa for the DVD run of this one. Seth Rogen plays Dale Denton, a stoner who witnesses a murder and runs to his dealer, played in top form by James Franco, to hide out. The pair end up fleeing into the woods to avoid Ted Jones (Gary Cole, the father of film's Brady Bunch and Ricky Bobby) and his feuding henchmen (Kevin Corrigan [Cousin Sean from The Departed] and Craig Robinson [Darrell from The Office]). Meanwhile, Dale tries to save his relationship with his high school girlfriend (literally, she's 18), played by Amber Heard, though this subplot fades in and out with only a hilarious appearance by Ed Begley, Jr., as Heard's father, to redeem it.

This is another in a famously uncomplicated line of comedies from Apatow & Co., but it's one of the funniest - perhaps even more so than Superbad, which I loved. Pineapple Express takes everything I loved about Superbad - silly characters, rapid-fire dialogue, and a race to... somewhere (Franco says something along the lines of the splendid line, "I wish we could run away to... nowhere.") - and adds things Superbad didn't have, like the inimtable rising star Danny McBride and plenty of gunfights & explosions. If there's one thing I can never have too much of, it's explosions.

I praised the dialogue earlier, similar praise being offered for Rogen and Evan Goldberg's previous screenplay (Superbad, for those not paying attention), especially because this movie really finds its niche in the kind of dialogue that's becoming popular these days - quick, hysterical, and occasionally mumbling. Rogen and Granco in particular do a masterful job of handling their lines, in which their characters frequently find themselves digging themselves into a verbal hole, often ending their scenes with self-conscious reflections like "That was too far" or "I shouldn't have said that, that was mean." It's also a credit to director David Gordon Green that he knows when to cut the scenes and how best to pace them so the laughs keep coming.

There's not a whole lot more to say about Pineapple Express except that it's a lot of fun. There's no heavy message - except maybe something about the nature of friendship (platonic friendship between males being a central tenet of Apatow flicks) - so it's really about having a good time. The movie won't appeal to everyone, of course; there's bound to be accusations of it being a "stupid" movie or condemnations for its drug culture backdrop. But for those who have enjoyed the Apatow train thus far, Pineapple Express might prove addicting.

The MPAA rated Pineapple Express "R for pervasive language, drug use, sexual references and violence." The violence is exceptionally cartoonish and only occasionally bloody, and the sexual references aren't as explicit as they have been in the past. Drug use, though, is all over the film, as is crass language some might not care for.