3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Megalopolis

2023, Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) -- download

Not only have I not seen anything he did since Bram Stoker's Dracula but I haven't even heard of any of those movies. Supernova doesn't count. 

I am only half way through this movie but I feel compelled to start writing. Despite all expectations, and those expectations of mine were that I would love this movie to spite what everyone was saying about it, I really don't like this movie. I am not going to say that this is because the movie is bad, as I honestly don't feel qualified to say whether it is Good or Bad. And part of why I don't like this movie is because it instills that in the viewer -- it presents as so fucking pretentious and full of allegory and metaphor and allusion that the Average Joe cannot hope to comprehend the Great Vision that Coppola put in front of us. And that is why I don't like it.

So, from those more qualified? Perhaps from reading the unfavourable, I will find the more favourable in my own viewing?

I miss Ebert.

But first, the story, what there is of it. The city is New Rome, a reimagining of a world where the Roman Empire never ended. Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito, The Mandalorian) runs the city but is opposed by "The Design Authority" led by arrogant genius (with the ability to manipulate time itself) Cesar (Adam Driver, Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi), known for his invention of "megalon", a revolutionary building material that won him the Nobel Prize. With it he wants to turn New Rome into a utopia, but Cicero claims to be more practical, wanting what is best for the city's people now. 

Cicero's daughter Julia (Natalie Emmanuel, Army of Thieves) falls for Cesar. Cesar's floozy reporter ex-gf Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza, Agatha All Along) schemes to destroy him by marrying the Trump-analog Crassus (ironically played by Jon Voight, Anaconda), head of The Bank.  Cesar's cousin Clodio, grandson of Crassus, the manic on-point Shia LaBeouf (The Peanut Butter Falcon), schemes to bring down his cousin. Cicero has also always wanted to bring down Cesar, after his failed attempts to prosecute Cesar for his wife's death.

Yeah, lots of schemes and machinations. Golden Age of Hollywood style pomp, circumstance and the kind of spectacle I actually wanted more of in Gladiator II. And mad imagery after mad imagery after MAD imagery. If I could turn myself around for the movie, its for the sheer audacity to put together all this shit on the screen and present it with complete sincerity. 

A few interrupted viewings later.

What the fuck was that. No, seriously, WTF. I was hoping that all  the weird little twists and turns it was taking would lead somewhere, that the movie would inevitably say something, say anything, but ... it's over?

So, what are the positive reviews saying? That it is grand, and that it is. So very grand, so very good looking. Do you remember Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? It was a Jude Law and Angelina Jolie film from the early 2000s, a scifi actioner that was supposed to introduce the world to what could happen when we merged CGI and live acting, for a diesel-punk fantasy. And while it has retconned itself into fond remembrances in the past 20 years, it was widely panned by many, when it came out, for its sheer audacity -- who would want to watch a "live action" movie where most of the sets were digital? Twenty years later, with even extreme examples like Avatar, we consider it the norm. So, be audacious all you want, have grand visions, be true to yourself, but for the love of gawds, have something to say? What was Coppola saying? That with enough money behind it, abject nonsense can be art?

I mean, that is kind of true... Tape a banana to a wall.

Many of the positive reviews are not technically "positive" but ... they admire what he was going for? Admiring that he actually got it made? Not sure that qualified it for the Good Movie category. And yet, as I read them, I find myself oddly in sync with their positions. I do admire what it was doing, what Coppola was doing, I admire sticking to your guns. I just wish I got something out of this movie beyond "wee that looks neat!" Maybe if I had approached it with an expectation of very expensive, very gilded camp then I would be ultimately satisfied? It is my own fault I expected a movie about the grandeur of Big Cities, of megalopolises, of art nouveau, and German expressionism. What I got instead was Shia LaBoef being shot in the ass by a bow & arrow of a size best left to cupid.

Cesar could manipulate time. I would love to forward time and attend a film school classroom presentation of this movie where pretentious professors laud its great achievement and jaded students wonder what shrooms prof took that morning. Cesar could manipulate time but it contributes very little to the movie. Very little of what is presented in the movie actually contributed to the movie. Ideas, monologues, animated allusions, hallucinations, constant speechifying -- all end in a "oh, look the megalopolis is open. The End."

I did not like this movie, but I cannot help but admire the size of Coppola's golden (platinum? wow.) balls.

One last thought. Remember Loki's play in Thor: Ragnarok ? This is how this movie presents itself.

31 Days of Halloween: I Saw the TV Glow

2023, Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair) -- download

I entered into this movie, hearing only a bit of the buzz, with a concept as to what it was about... one that proved not quite accurate. I knew it was about a cult TV show that may be more than just a mere TV show, maybe one that was not quite ... real ? Like Channel Zero? And it was that, at one layer, but at the deeper layer it was more about the experience of gender dysphoria and being trans.

But let's talk about the horror movie as a horror movie aspects first, as I am not sure I am qualified to make much commentary on the actual meanings to the movie.

Owen (Ian Foreman, Let the Right One In) and Maddy are weird kids at school in the 90s. They find connection and Maddy invites him to experience a TV show she is into, a late night, sshhh-only-we-know-about-it low budget magic realism show about teenage heroes fighting odd creatures led by the evil Mr. Melancholy. 

The opening act sets the tone for the movie, definitely indie, definitely left of centre, weird and nostalgic, everything tinted in other worldliness. It wouldn't be for everyone, it would definitely be for That Guy, but it would also draw a lot of mundane viewers down the road of "I don't understand what I am seeing, but I know I am supposed to think its important". The creator has mentioned being influenced by Donnie Darko and I can definitely see that.

The movie shifts to years later, Owen (now oddly Justice Smith, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, only two years later) is still sneaking off to watch The Pink Opaque, at Maddy's (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Downsizing) place. I believe the horror is carried through the obsession the kids have for the very very bad looking show, the pink glow (yes, that pink glow) and the mild hallucinations Owen is having. Then Maddy confesses she is going to run away her abusive mother and wants Owen to come along. But at the last minute, he panics and bails. He confesses what he is doing to the mother of the child he was supposed to have been doing sleep-overs with. But Maddy does disappear, and it is depicted that its not seen as just a running-away, police tape and investigations.

And The Pink Opaque is cancelled.

Eight years later Owen lives a lonely, isolated life. His mother has passed and he is entirely disconnected from his father, an actor with nary a line, a father who he has to apologize to for coming home late, even though Owen is an adult. He works at the local cinema and is mocked by his coworkers.

Then Maddy shows up again. She tries to tell Owen what The Pink Opaque was really about, that it was not just a TV show, but... the real world? Maddy confesses to Owen that they are the main characters in the show (she does so in a bar on the edge of town; oh, look, there's Phoebe Bridgers on stage) and they were captured by The Big Bad of the show. This world, the one Owen lives in, is The Midnight Place, the scary dark realm of the show. And the only way to get back to the "real world" is to bury yourself alive. And she is going to do that soon, to go back, and wants Owen to come with her, because Owen is actually Isabel, the main character.

It is during these confessions that we get brief flashes of Owen wearing a dress, Isabel's dress from the show. There was more than just obsessing over a TV show going on in Maddy's basement. And when offered the opportunity to run away and embrace who Owen really was, he chose to stay. He chose to stay "he". Its not overt, the scenes are brief, but the disconnection you see apparent on Owen's face is terrifying, his voice thin and strained, his wheezing even more apparent.

Another time jump. Owen is in his 40s. He has embraced modern, adult, male life. He has a family (which we don't see), a career (fuck, he just works at a kiddie ball pit / entertainment zone because the movie theatre closed down) and a big screen TV. He looks half dead. He lives in the same house he grew up in, his father now also dead. The Pink Opaque is now available on streaming (so, it was a "real" show after all) but Owen sees it for what it was --- terribly low budget and badly done. 

One last time jump; he's in his 50s. He looks older, barely alive. During a kids party he has a breakdown, and... the other characters just... fade out... just NPCs without a script. We see Owen cut his own chest open, no blood, just the glow & static of an old CRT TV. Its still inside him, the "real world" but... he just leaves, meekly apologizing to everyone.

So, you may ask, where was the horror? What I recapped didn't have it, maybe a little bit here and there. But the style of the movie, how it was shot, scored and the tones all say that Owen was trapped in a world, both of his own making, and not ... real. Its too terrible a world, that initially was tinted with nostalgia for the 90s but once that has faded, the world is dark, dim, cold and empty. Nothing colourful, nothing PINK about it at all. Its fucking bleak. And the supernatural elements are very real to the movie, not just metaphors on top of the allegory. 

The director is clapping back against the response to the ending of the movie, people commenting on and complaining about its bleakness. But the salient point is that The Pink Opaque is still inside Owen, the possibility of finally letting it out, of finally embracing Isabel is there. There is always still time. Not everyone has to be trapped in an utterly mundane, middle-American, work to live, live to work lifestyle (OK, that's a bit of transference from my experience), where your true self is hidden -- you can become The Real You.

Kent's take on it, different yet more poignant.

31 Days of Halloween: The Beast Within

2024, Alexander J Farrell (documentary Making a Killing) -- download

I have always enjoyed a horror movie that establishes itself strongly in the mundane, often introducing a family in a grounded manner, doing so better than other genres because the actual meat of the movie is usually so far removed from said family dynamics. What do I mean by this? A crime movie, if it shows a family in the establishing phase, they will always be either a cop family or a criminal family, inherently tied to the genre, and therefore beholden to the tropes. Many of the horror movies we watch, and I enjoy, just have "a family" or "a couple" and the horror element is put upon them.

This is not that movie. From the get go we see a family in distress tied directly to whatever is happening to them. They live in isolation, somewhere in the wilderness of England, maybe near Scotland? Willow (Caoilinn Springall, The Midnight Sky) has breathing issues and is often seen dragging a bottle of oxygen with her. She sees her mother depart with a pig in a cage. When mom returns, sans pig, she tries to act normal but there is tension everywhere: tension between mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) and her father Waylon (James Cosmo, The Hole in the Ground), Imogen trying to act normal through pained expressions, Willow sensing the adults anxieties but not understanding what is going on.

When the dad Noah (Kit Harington, Eternals) finally appears wrapped in a bloody bear-skin rug (coat ???) he wants things to be normal, but they aren't. It is without spoiler warning that the movie presents itself as a werewolf movie. But immediately I am asking, "Wait, are they doing an allegory for familial abuse?" All the trappings of an abuser are there, including the being sweet when chooses to be, being all about protecting (and keeping) his family, and the sudden bursts of anger & violence. Imogen is played like someone at the centre of a true horror movie, and Cummings portrayal is probably the most true to how this movie was pitched -- that she is living each day as if she was in a horror movie.

And yet the movie plays itself as a werewolf movie up until they "oh no, they are going to fucking do it..." final scene. Yeah, the whole movie was an allegory. No werewolf, just an abuser. And it wasn't even a particularly good werewolf movie as it had to rein itself in to not be too monstrous, because the message would be lost if a monster in reality (an abuser) was less horrible than a fantasy monster. But no, the movie was a failing on all ends.

31 Days of Halloween: The Dark

2018, Justin P Lange (The Seventh Day) -- Amazon 

Apparently we also finished off the season last year with one of Lange's flicks, The Seventh Day.

This might be a good candidate for Kent's horrornothorror tag, as it plays the thin line between horror movie and horrific faery tale very well. Let's call it a fantasy with horror overtones.

Mina is the boogeyman in the woods, in a remote area of... There are tales of a monster in the woods. She looks like a horrifically scarred zombie and acts like a feral child. Joseff has kidnapped Alex, also horrifically scarred, and blinded, likely by his captors. Mina kills Joseff, whom Alex was completely dependent on, and she is forced by some shred of humanity left in her, to care for Alex. A bond is formed. As the bond and trust increases, as the two hide in the woods, from hunters, and police, Mina's humanity appears to return, her flesh healing, her memories of her past (and her death) returning, until eventually she becomes (again) a real girl.

The tone is what makes this somewhat muddled indie movie. So many are going to compare the interaction with the original Let the Right One In but this movie wants to be more allegorical, more dark fairy tale, than true exploration of monsters. It gets the dark, shadowy nature of two abused people finding connection. But it is challenge by also trying to tie in a thriller plot, of a kidnapping ring, of a police hunt, etc. The timelines seem to be off, when the plot focuses on the thriller/horror aspects -- Alex's scars are years and years old, but the police hunt is fresh; Mina's death and her subsequent murderous resurrection was long enough ago to have her become urban legend but some of the trappings around her death appear to be recent. Either way, despite my desire to skip past the allegory and see a proper monster movie, I did enjoy this.

Dave Made a Maze

 2017, d. Bill Watterson (not the Calvin and Hobbes guy)

Remember in Community when Troy and Abed made that really cool blanket fort? The titular maze (well, labyrinth, actually) that the titular Dave has built here seems like it could have been something Troy and Abed built, because it's magical. Like a Tardis it's much bigger on the inside (and far more deadly) than you'd expect.

Visually, this film and its cardboard sets are legitimately stunning. I'm quite in awe of how cool it all is. It's a short 80 minute runtime and 70 of it is spent within the cardboard maze. There's just set after set of weird delights, moving parts, strange effects (all practical) that are so viscerally pleasing. The story is another matter.

There's some kind of metaphor at play here but I'm not sure if it's the script, or the production, or the combination, but the intention gets lost. The story muddies fantasy and reality to a confusing extent, such that neither the characters or viewer is all that certain about what's the point is.

The makers of this could have watched the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" - an episode where the characters become stop-motion animated yet still have a clear divisible line between fantasy and reality. There isn't such a line here and it sinks the film which could otherwise have been both fun and potent. At first I thought Dave was having some kind of psychotic break from reality that has manifested into a magical world, but that doesn't bear fruit. There's stuff about relationship troubles and feeling inadequate and directionless, but these existential white guy problems aren't handled cleanly and they seem kind of trivial for the scope of the production.

The cast is mostly great, with Meera Rohit Kumbhal turning what could have been then nagging, fed up girlfriend into the ultimate protagonist of the piece. While the conceit of documentary filmmaking is also out of step with the filmed reality, the mostly silent cameraman and sound guy are kind of fun background players and responsible for some of the more enjoyable gags. Nick Thune, as the titular Dave, is the weak link though. I have enjoyed Thune's stand-up for years but he's not the strongest actor and he can't handle the subtle emotion his character needs.

The editing at times is puzzling, why they decide to cut away to certain things and when often doesn't make sense...I can only think it's trying to be funny but it's  more confusing. A lot of the humour falls flat, whether it's the absurdity of adding in "foreign travelers" randomly or specific lines that don't have any comedic punch to them but are timed like laugh lines, it seems like it's trying too hard. The gold is in the labyrinth, the utter absurdity of it that isn't always played out. The death traps are phenomenal, and so PG rated. Even though people are being killed, their blood is yarn or silly string or crepe paper.

This is absolutely worth watching just for the creativity, and nothing is outright offensive about it, it's just a shame this weren't more a mental health allegory, or that we weren't watching the Community gang work their way through another one of Abed's fantasy breaks from reality.

31 Days of Halloween: Us

2019, Jordan Peele (Get Out) -- download

Wandering through the dross, leaving the ones I know I will enjoy to be scattered amidst the rest, so I cannot just end up feeling apathetic about this whole yearly endeavour. Oh dear, even with that sentence I guess I can say that even a fan who enjoys even just the concept of horror movies can be weighed down by just the boredom of much of the genre.

*shake it off*

Jordan Peele comes almost with his follow-up to the pretty much perfect Get Out. While not in the calibre of his debut, it again shows off his fondness for horror and even the whole Twilight Zone affection, which, I guess, is why he is the new Rod Serling? This movie, is like an episode of said show expanded into a full run, with only a slight hint at having stretched too thin.

Typical Middle Class family (this time he dispenses with black social commentary and just gives us a family) made up of Winston Duke (Black Panther), Lupita Nyong'o and their two kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph & Evan Alex) are heading to the summer house for a deserved vacation. Something tense is going on, mom being nervous and depressed about something. Dad is just trying to make it OK.

Oh, noteworthy preamble about mom, as a kid, getting lost on a beach front boardwalk and running into her mirror doppelganger. Afterwards she is just not right.

Speaking of just not right. Lupita presents us with someone who is more than just depressed or introverted. You can see her trying, trying to interact, trying to connect with other people, but eventually giving up, preferring to just be her alone self instead of faking it. That is something to be said of many introverts, even if we don't have a dark trauma in our past.

And then they show up. The movie goes from tense to tense when a quartet of people dressed in red jumpsuits appear in the driveway and see entry to the house. Instantly we learn they are twisted versions of the family them-self. Agenda? Who knows, but escape is on the table. This is where we see Lupita come out of her malaise, to take control, to protect her family, to violently defend. The middle act of the movie is wonderfully tight and nerve-wracking

And then things get even weirder. This is where we enter the Twilight Zone. There are more than just THOSE doppelgangers. There seems to be an emergence of MANY, at least one for each person in this town, if not all America. And they are killing each and every one of their originals. While I can say that this might have an example of over-explaining a weird plot element, I like that Peele went from chilling to weird & absurd. This was right down my wheelhouse, to mix my metaphors as I am wont to do.

Saturday Sci-Fi Spectacular, vol 1

War for the Planet of the Apes
Upgrade
High-Rise
Alien:Covenant
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It's a rare occasion when I get an evening to myself, nevermind a full day, where I can just linger and do nothing.  A few Saturdays back I wound up in that very scenario, with the kids off visiting with grandparents, the wife out RPGing for the night... all I really had to do was walk the dogs and feed myself, which left me with many hours to fill in very much the way I would have filled a sleepy Saturday some 25 years ago: movie marathon.

But what to watch?  My ability to watch movies became very limited once children came along, not to mention competing forces of epic television, streaming services and a new revolution in comedy via podcast and standup.  What to watch?  Do I spend precious minutes that turn into dozens of minutes scrolling through feeds, or thinking about my sizeable, if aged, DVD/Blu-ray collection?  What to watch?  And how to program this mini home festival so that it feels like a cohesive whole?  I've missed so many films over the years that I still want to watch, but so many competing for attention I'm always at a loss on where to start.  What to watch?

I settled on watching science fiction movies from the past few years that I've been meaning to get to.  In a couple instances, they were the latest chapters in series that I've enjoyed or was invested in.  In another case it was picking back up a movie I started watching but didn't finish.  Just narrowing down to a genre and also a time frame made it so, so easy to just dive in and start watching.  I knew where I wanted to start, and where I wanted to end, which made the middle relatively self evident.

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War for the Planet of the Apes (2017 - d. Matt Reeves - netflix) was the easiest choice.  I love the Planet of the Apes franchise.  The original pentalogy is always watchable and fascinating (save the last one, Battle for the Planet of the Apes which may well be worse than the Tim Burton/Mark Whalberg misfire), and this modern series reinvented the story brilliantly, from the traumatic animal abuse in Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the emotionally affecting Shakespearean drama Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, these are legitimately great films.  The fact that I didn't see War for the Planet of the Apes in the theatre and basically let it dangle on the vine for years after it's post-theatre release speaks ill of my devotion to the series, but I do love it.

This third installment opens with literal war.  A waning humanity desperately clawing at relevance by murdering apes with their guns, but apes are smart, and tactical and have the advantage of the war being on their turf, in the forest.  But Cesar (the brilliant Andy Serkis) sees the writing on the wall. The more desperate the humans become, the more dangerous, so their home is only protected, only safe for so long.  It's time to leave.  As the community of apes prepares to leave for new land, a strike force infiltrates the ape's forest home at night, in the process killing Cesar's mate and first born son.

The anger and rage towards humanity that Koba felt - and Cesar fought against - in the last installment starts to boil inside him.  He abandons his tribe for revenge, but without his leadership they are taken captive.  Cesar was blinded by his own grief and fury, and his society pays the price.

There's actually very little direct war, in War for the Planet of the Apes, as it's mainly a prison camp/prison break style movie with a lot of dramatic motivation.  Cesar and The Colonel (Woody Harrelson) are the main focus of the film, with Cesar desperate to get his society away from human influence, while the Colonel fights the inevitible (the plague that made apes smart across the globe are making humans mute and depreciating their intelligence) thinking that eradicating the apes will stop anything.  At the same time, he's preparing for war, not just with the apes, but an opposing human faction.

Certainly the messiest of this latest Planet of the Apes series, it's still a very engaging, gripping, entertaining 2 hours and 20 minutes of drama and adventure.  It's a literal technological marvel how seamless the CGI apes fit within their surroundings, how natural they feel to the environment.  You're not seeing a performer or special effects, it feels like you're watching actual apes who are amazing performers.  How can you not just adore Bad Ape (a bald chimpanzee played by Steve Zahn) or Maurice the wise orangutan (played by Karin Konoval)?  I want to hug them so badly.

If anything didn't work in the film, it was the tail end of the climax.  Without spoiling anything, it sets up a new threat for the apes, then immediately dispenses with it.  It's a very strange moment that is meant to be ironic, but not the comedic kind of irony that it pretty much is.

Based on where War for... ends, I don't know where the franchise goes from here.  This truly feels like closure.  Whether it attempts to reinvent the original (which was tried with the Tim Burton venture...a financial success but not a creative one) or if it has a new path it could forge in a futuristic ape society that would in any way appeal to a human audience, I don't know.  This trilogy was full of surprises and deeply resonant characters that show exactly the right way to reboot an older property for modern times... by telling a good story not rehashing an old one.

(I can't believe how terrible most of the posters were for this movie)
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My second movie for the evening was Upgrade, the 2018 action-thriller from Australian director Liegh Whannell.  I had heard about this movie via The Weekly Planet podcast shortly before it came out.  The hosts of The Weekly Planet were both rather taken with the style of the film, and how technically accomplished it was for its very small budget.

The story is set in a sort of 5-mintues-into-the-future type scenario, in a world where the technology we're just on the cusp of standardizing has become standard.  Fully integrated home systems with voice activation and AI response cues and self-driving cars are a the forefront in this film.  Our lead character, Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) is a luddite in this integrated world.  He likes to be disconnected and repairs vintage muscle cars for a living.  He's wary of technology, but not outright disdainful.

While he and his wife are traveling in her automated car, the vehicle goes haywire, taking the wrong course and putting them into the dangerous surroundings of the city.  There they are accosted by three men who execute them, or so it appears.  Grey survives and battles with full body paralysis, grief and depression... until one of his muscle car clients, a wealthy technology magnate, offers him an experimental trial implant that would cure his paralysis.

When Grey accepts he's surprised at how quickly he's able to move, but even more surprised to find an artificial intelligence speaking directly into his head.  The AI wants to aid him in his quest for justice/revenge and when Grey's physical limitations are met, the AI takes over.

The film's sensibilities are very 1980s without seeming dated (it may be a little cliche, but it's definitely playing into those cliches).  Whannell approaches the storytelling and design in a way that wouldn't be out of place in a vehicle starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or Kurt Russell in their prime.  If anything it does a better job at modernizing the Robocop story than the 2014 version does.  At the same time, there's a synergy with Alex Garland's Ex Machina, where this feels like the action-oriented younger brother, a little less mature, a little less heady but similarly stylized.  Or maybe it's a next-generation tale in the world of Person of Interest.

Where this film feels innovative though is in the fight sequences.  Whannell and team have crafted a stunning new method for capturing dynamic and kinetic fights.  Whenever the AI takes over Grey's body the camera starts tracking Marshall-Green's movements precisely.  Every twist, tilt or punch has a corresponding camera move that just cranks us the momentum of these well orchestrated sequences.  It's rather ingenious.

I have to say I loved this movie.  It's an instant classic of action and sci-fi in my book.  I can't believe Toast hasn't written about it yet (though I'd be dismayed if he hasn't actually seen it).
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I was super keen to see High-Rise in 2015 as I had just become acquainted with director Ben Wheatley's Kill List and was intrigued by his style and sensibilities.  The poster and the trailer for High-Rise seemed downright Cronenbergian in their tone and aesthetic (I'm most definitely thinking of Shivers as a big inspiration here) and I was in for it.  I intentionally kept myself in the dark about what it was really about, the few glimpses I caught was all I needed to see.

In my head I was also thinking this was some sort of Demon Seed situation, where the technology in a high rise tower goes haywire and starts manipulating its residents.  But it turns out, there's not a damn bit of science in this fiction, unless you consider architecture science.  Though, the tone here is once more 5-minutes-into-the-future, but it's five minutes into the future of 1975

Based off the book by J.G. Ballard (who wrote Crash, which Cronenberg adapted), the titular high-rise of the film is part of an experimental neighbourhood, the first finger in a hand formation.  The concept is of a microcosm of society with different classes of people living on different levels in the building.  Though work happens in town, not in the building, almost everyone's leisure time is spent in the cinder and concrete monstrosity they call home.  They all seem to be very enamored with it at first, but the class structures start to poke through and eventually decay any and all goodwill between men.

The first act introduces this place and a cross-section of the people in it, the second half chronicles the slow degradation of the relationships between them, and the third act is all madness and rioting and orgies abandoning all sense of self.  In the collapse of civilized society, everyone kind of winds up the same.  The inference is that perhaps the complex's designer, as played by Jeremy Irons, did use some forms of satanic symbolism in the overall design, and the concept of a hand reaching up from beneath the earth to pull everyone down.


It really does owe a lot to Shivers, but the same allegory of societal structures is at play here as the most-definitely-sci-fi film Snowpiercer but the two stories do play out quite differently.  Our focal character here is not underclass struggling for justice and truth like Chris Evans in Snowpiercer but rather a middle class/straddling upper class Tom Hiddleston, someone who from the middle can see the struggles on both sides, and doesn't know where he belongs (he doesn't really belong at the bottom nor the top).  It's an interesting film, to a point, but it doesn't really hold together fully as a narrative, and the characters exist to represent their class rather than have any real individualism or personality.  In the end I struggled to maintain interest, as the last act of debauchery is tedious and loses the plot, if there ever really was one.

(unlike War for the Planet of the Apes, the High-Rise posters are pretty great)
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And finally, the last film for the evening, because I wanted it dark, was the latest in Ridley Scott's exploration of the Alien franchise.  2017's  Alien: Covenant is a serves as prequel to his 1979 classic as well as sequel to his much-maligned-but-loved-by-me 2012 outing Prometheus [link to my take...Toast's take on Prometheus is here, we disagree!]


I know that Prometheus as the sum of its parts isn't a great movie, but there are so many of those parts that I just love that I can watch it over and over again without any voice nagging in the back of my head about the quality or plot holes or absurdity.  I just enjoy it.

The critical response to Covenant was even worse than Prometheus but I thought that maybe Scott was on the same track, that he was going to still be operating at a level of insane and awesome individual bits that don't coalesce as a whole.  But even the scant few Prometheus defenders I knew didn't have much good to say about Covenant, which wasn't a good sign.  As such I skipped it in theatre, and then avoided it on VOD, and even still kept passing it by on the streaming services.


I did still hold out hope that everyone was wrong, that I would find a movie in here that I could appreciate, like Prometheus.  But no.  This is trash.  It's a garbage film full of dumb characters doing dumb things, getting in stupid situations that make no sense, and having dumb conversations about which dumb thing they're going to do next.  It's awful. It's a Z-grade horror film with an A-grade budget that wants to provide world building and an origin story but in a most shoehorned fashion.

The opening scene takes us back to David's creation (David from Prometheus as played by Michael Fassbender), his education and his evolution. He's the malevolent force of the picture full of other malevolent forcest.  Following the end of Prometheus David has returned to the Engineers home in their own ship carrying a payload of bioengineered weapons which he's set loose and eradicated their society.  But David has left a homing beacon running, which brings a new crew of colonizers to this planet teeming with bad shit.  There are so many malevolent forces!  Too many.  Way too many.  It's stupid how many malevolent forces there are.  No human should be able to survive a minute on this hellscape planet David has created and yet we keep following the cast around as if there's some hope that any of this will turn out well.

This film is tragically unentertaining.  The characters, with the exception of David and Walter, are boring and thin.  David and Walter, however, are both artificial intelligences that are explored, but not explored very well.  The film should fully revolve around these two characters, but it gets distracted too often with its human cast (and killing them off) to the detriment of really getting into any sort of commentary about the nature of AI (as unnatural as it is).  There is some thinking about the nature of creation and evolution but even that seems rudimentary and not well crafted.

This is science fiction, but the science part of it feels left on the floor and repeatedly stepped on like a doormat.  I hated this movie.  What a waste of time and money (and I'm not even talking about my time or my money).

(Toast's take on Covenant is here, we disagree, in that I hated it so much more than he did)

3+1 Short Paragraphs: The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

2016, Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) -- Netflix

Marmy made me watch this, as she had watched it prior during one of my Boys Night Out. We both watch stuff alone, usually me and my disaster flicks or Star Trek and she and her "ghostie shows". But if she recommends I watch something, it is with good reason. And damn, again with the best praise I can come up with is to swear. Waititi makes a movie that is funny, poignant, sad and entirely engaging. See? Weaksauce praise sentence. I need to work on those; pointing out the terrible bits of a movie is so much easier.

Ricky is a tough little troublemaker in the foster child system. He is sent by a zealous child care agent to live with a couple in a remote part of New Zealand. After a rocky start, Ricky sees that Bella really wants things to be better for him. His gangsta attitude doesn't really fit into the rural area, but she doesn't care and gives him love anyway. Her cranky old coot husband Hec (Sam Neill) barely tolerates Ricky. Then she dies. Holey crap; I did not expect that.

With a return to the system as his only choice, Ricky tries to run away but gets lost in the woods, found by Hec, who in turn injures himself. In the weeks they camp out, while Hec recovers, they get to understand each other more. But the outside world has assumed Hec has kidnapped Ricky. Comedic misunderstanding ensues.

Normally I hate the bratty gangsta kid. But damn, if Julian Dennison as Ricky is just downright charming. He wants to be that urban kid, but like most of them, only seems to know the sub-culture from American TV. He stylizes everything he does, even when presented with the Kiwi wilderness. And carries it through the hero's journey he is presented with. Totally wonderful movie.

ReWatch: The Book of Eli

2010, The Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society) -- Bluray

I love me some PoAp (post apocalypse) fiction. Just finished reading Wastelands 2 and that got me into the mood to poke around in some ruins. The Book of Eli is the perfect American wasteland movie, despite it heavily leaning toward the proselytizing of old time Christianity. Like most, it never really explains what happened, just presents us with an American west full of craters and covered in dust. It absorbs the fantastical element, in that no radiation hinders our hero, but sets him on a hero's journey against great odds of the human kind.

This is an incredibly stylish movie, The Hughes Brother again trying something different for this movie. I am surprised we don't see more of these guys, only having a handful of films under their belt since the iconic Menace II Society. With its washed out colours, distinctive music by Atticus Ross and nods to Kung Fu, this slides a little into concept movie, but no, really does stay firmly as an action flick.

Denzel is Eli, a wanderer of the wastelands. He heads west with his cherished Bible and his iPod of Motown classics; I am sure he has more than just Al Green. He wants to avoid conflict, but sometimes he just cannot bypass evil, slicing and dicing haggard villains with moves of his light and incredibly sharp blade. Finally, the need of a battery charge leads him to a town led by Gary Oldman, a warlord who just happens to be looking for a Bible. It is the last book Oldman needs to control the people, the book with just the right words to make him legit. Of course, the wanderer will not give up his good book.

Much of the beats and notes of this movie are from a western. He might not be a cigar chomping white guy and the music is not done by an Italian, but you can almost hear the spurs jingling. Eli comes into town, fights the Bad Guy, defeats his goons on the town's single street and saves the girl from the saloon. I will have to go check if it was noon. And further into the west they go.

Despite my apathy towards Christianity, I appreciated what the movie was trying to say. Tradition, belief and faith. I also like that Eli is bringing this book to publishers who see the importance of it next to all the other great books of history, not as the centre of a new religion. Reverence can be a beautiful thing.

Of course, the reveal is entirely magical. Eli is blind. Has always been. His Bible is in brail. Even when he loses it to Oldman, its a waste of Oldman's efforts. Not only has Oldman given up everything for it, he also gets to die knowing how much he has lost, for nothing. But Eli, having read that book on his long walks back and forth across the wasteland, has memorize all the words. And they get transcribed by Malcom Mcdowell before Eli passes from his wounds.

Solara, Mila Kunis, the girl from the saloon that Eli has saved, both physically and spiritually, dons Eli's armour (his aviator glasses) and begins her own hero's journey back east, to save her mom and free her people. Its a shame that movie never got made.

Rewatch: They Live

1988, John Carpenter (Vampires) -- Netflix

We are not on a John Carpenter binge but in June we re-watched The Thing. And not long after we re-watched this.  THIS is one of those post-high school movies for me, when catch lines were still a thing. "I am here to chew bubble gum and kick ass; and I am all out of bubble gum," Rowdy Roddy Piper says as he walks into a bank with a loaded shotgun, knowing full well the bank will be full of the aliens that have quietly invaded earth. Roddy is not a good actor, but he really falls into the role. Seriously, he is not an actor at all, but he genuinely does a decent job of playing an out of work guy just looking for honest pay when he stumbles across an alien invasion conspiracy -- one that has been on the go for quite a while.

I remember loving this movie when I first saw it, thinking it was a cut above what else was out there. But really, no it is just a classic John Carpenter flick -- not very good but done with a lot of oomph. And it is quite the man's man movie. It dedicates an inordinate amount of time to a fight scene between Roddy and Keith David. I know I know, the guy was a wrestler and his fans are in the audience, but these guys keep on going at it again and again. And in the end they are friends, because that is how manly men make friends? Dunno; was never one of the club.

The movie is set in a divisive period, that could be the late 80s, but could be now. The wealthy are wealthy and employed; the poor are poor and living in shanty towns. Do shanty town still exist? Tent towns? Or have we knocked them all down and forced the indigent into shelters and group homes... and prison? Its not likely we have reduced the number of homeless. So, the movie bases itself out of a small one on some edge of LA. But really, it exists only to be knocked down once the aliens realize residents are involved in the resistance.

I love the whole core of the alien invasion, so Twilight Zone or Outer Limits influenced. When Rowdy puts on the sunglasses, the Arnie inspired glasses, he sees the current world as it really is -- a massive black & white pastiche of subliminal messages and drab 50s style. The aliens have come with their skeletal, bug eyed look and adapted entirely to the 1% lifestyle on Earth. Quietly they live the privileged life while most Earthlings barely scrape by. And broadcast world-wide is a signal that makes us susceptible to the messages everywhere -- on billboards, on TV, in every magazine, on every poster, etc. Obey, marry and reproduce, conform, submit, consume, etc. All those familiar messages that even now the freaky left accuses the Authority of actually transmitting into our brain. But this movie was pre-Internet, so can you imagine how this would have been done in the age of Facebook, blogs, smart phones and the Kardashians ?  Scares the hell out of me.

I wonder how Carpenter will feel that this movie will be relegated to re-run theatres and late night movie stations.  movie that is so inspired by old 50s movie and serial TV shows, is now the old, retro horror movie. It is the B Schlock flick that will be looked upon with amusement by the kids of today, sort of like we looked at the Atomic Age movies.

Fuck it, I am using the fan art posters from Dr. Monster. I actually stole it from someone else's blog post about alternate Carpenter posters.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. B)

Pt. A can be found here.

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Y'know, world ending bad.  Rewritten time bad. Monsters from another dimension bad.

This is how I stated I watch TV, to a coworker yesterday, who was somewhat surprised I had not yet watched all of Mr. Robot S2. There are good shows I cannot miss, there are bad shows I cannot miss, there are shows I don't watch and probably never will and there are shows I know I will just eventually get around to watching.

There are also dropped shows. Shows that just didn't keep me paying attention long enough, not because I thought they were bad but just because... well, yawn or meh or I fell asleep on the sofa. Here are three from overseas that unfortunately are / will be in that body of work.

The Aliens, 2016, Channel 4 -- download

The Aliens comes from Channel 4 in the UK. In this darkly comedic show, but not sitcom, aliens crashed landed in the 70s. Alien Nation or District 9 comes to mind, but that the aliens look human. They integrated into society pretty easily but the 80s and 90s saw tons of unrest, and eventually the UK government segregated the aliens behind a wall. Whoah, that is all kinds of current news culture dark. Did some sort of alternate reality Trump live in the UK ?

The shows starts with a young security guard on the wall getting mixed up in  the drug trade. Or the hair trade. Apparently alien hair is a great narcotic to humans. And then the guard learns he is probably half-alien.

This is a show about a seedy underbelly.  All of Lewis's family and friends are class chav/riff raff. And the alien girl he falls for is a cam chick. I never actually watched enough to see where the show was going, as it didn't capture my attention but for its shock value. Obviously, the racism metaphor is Mjolnir heavy in its hammering. But I wonder how long it can spin that metaphor out without any other central plot.

Cleverman, 2016, ABC (Australia) -- download

Also using the same metaphor and the same idea, but from an entirely different fantasy point of view is Cleverman from Australia. As far as I understand, in watching three episodes, the "Hairies" are other beings that came from the Aboriginal Dreamtime and migrated to our world not so long ago. They are pseudo-human, more bestial and obviously more body hair. Hairies didn't do a very good job of integrating, and are currently living in a ghetto around an abandoned train station. The human authorities fear them and are moving to fully segregate them, possibly into classic detention facilities. Many have already began to disappear.

Koen runs a bar with two friends; his brother keeps the Hairypeople camp running through free clinics and political movement. They don't like each other much but their "Uncle" tries to draw them together. He is the family Cleverman, a mix of shaman, wiseman and family leader. But this is a world where beings from mythology have appeared, so the Cleverman is more than just your local psychic, faith healer. And Koen is destined to become the next one.

But really, the focus of the bit I watched was more on the dire situation the Hairies are in. Humans don't trust them; of course. And even more than they never trusted the Aboriginals. On one level, the show is an extreme representation of the tension between the whites of Australia and the Aboriginals themselves, but its also a fantastical representation of how we always fear what we don't understand. And magic is a scary thing in a mundane world.

Something was going to happen, but I never watched enough to know. Koen is on his way, connected to the Hairies by a force he doesn't understand, by a monster that is hunting... something. The Hairies are close to having enough of the fear and abuse. And rich white folk want to take as much advantage of the situation as they can.

Hunters, 2016, SyFy -- download

This show, also about aliens from ... somewhere, may call itself an American show but its produced and shot in Australia and does a pretty bad job of pretending its in Baltimore... or is it Philadelphia? Washington DC ? The same way you can tell a show is shot in Vancouver, when they say its Seattle or Denver, boy can you see this ain't the US. But all that sort of lends itself to the weirdness of the show.

Aliens are invading, this time quietly and unknown to the populace. They are reptilian, sort of V like, covered in human skin. There is a conspiracy tieing them together and on the other side is a human task force trying to root them out and... well, kill them. This is all tired mystery, double talk and shadowy low-rent X-Files. The primary focus is on an FBI agent drawn into the task force because his wife is taken by the alien leader (in human form) played by Julian McMahon (yes, Dr Doom from the first Fantastic Four movies) who actually does a great job of a creepy, charismatic alien terrorist.

The problem is that the show doesn't seem to know how to do episode to episode. There is a core world its building, but it doesn't have a real story to tell. That wouldn't hold down many other shows, as alien intervention of the week could hold it together. But this one just fails to make anything interesting happen. They just jump from here to there, never actually capturing our attention.

I think I stopped watching it before SyFy cancelled it.

Tomorrowland

2015, Brad Bird (Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, The Incredibles) -- download / netflix

Fuck it. I have/had to rewatch this to fully remember it. Which is neither here nor there, just a statement of time, not of fondness, because I rather liked it, despite it lacking in many areas.

Of note: I initially typed The Impossibles, which I guess would be a version where a family makes up  the Impossible Mission force. I'd watch that.

Retro future. The idea of The Future as seen through the eyes of people behind us. Rocketships with port holes & bright colours. Vacations on the moon and space suits with fishbowls as helmets. Personal jetpacks. Robot butlers. Raygun Gothic design choices, as William Gibson penned it.

I love this aspect of pop culture, though strangely enough not so enamoured with its most popular iteration -- steampunk. I don't dislike Steampunk, I just don't care for it as much as I thought I would. It may be more the steampunks themselves, as I find myself rather dismissive of their dressup as a fashion choice. Getting old, get off my lawn.

Anywayz, love retrofuturism. Still love rockets and laser guns and jetpacks. And the idea of a future that would be enhanced and improved by technology indistinguishable from magic. Focus on improved. We should be vacationing on the moon by now, or more accurately, I should be reading with envy, about people's trips to the moon. I still am yet to take a proper vacation.

We are briefly introduced to the retrofuture Tomorrowland when young Frank Walker talks his way into the 1964 World's Fair to showcase his jetpack. While dismissed quickly because it only mostly works, he catches the eye of a young girl who gives him a pin and some instructions. The pin triggers his entry, from the Disneyland Small World pavilion, because this movie is the latest adaptation of a Disneyland ride, in case you didn't know, to Tomorrowland. Athena, the young girl, thinks he really belongs here. Aaaaand fade.

Casey Newton, played by Britt Robertson (who has previously been a witch in The Secret Circle) is the daughter of an engineer watching his time at NASA wind down. His last job is to participate in the dismantling of a launch facility. Casey is doing her best to delay that by sabotaging the deconstruction equipment. Her dad is not impressed. But someone is; a young girl observing Casey's actions slips her a little pin of a stylized capital T (the same one Athena gave Frank 40 years before, and yep Athena is the same girl, but not at all aged) and when Casey touches it, poof, she is in Tomorrowland. Well, she can see Tomorrowland.

OK ReWatching as it just showed up on Netflix. Being reminded of actually how much of this movie I love.

Casey is given a time limit to see into Tomorrowland, but is desperate to know more. That takes her to Texas, to a retro collectibles store. Once she confronts the salesfolk in the store, she is drawn into the odd conspiracy behind Tomorrowland, which Athena desperately wants her involved in, and the legacy of Frank Walker and his time there.

My gawds, I love that store and the evil robots who run it. There is Keegan-Michael Key (i love that name) as the paunchy bellied, be-dre(a)ded nerd but actually evil robot. Once Casey escapes their clutches, with the help of superheroic roboto girl, we meet some REAL evil robots. Brad Birds movies might feel very very PG but he always reminds us of the stakes, as the smiling evil robots dust the bystanders.

The movie is like a ride. With brief pauses for some comedic drama, it jumps from bouncing, exploding, running, riding and flying all over the place. Clooney is incredible as the older Frank, a disillusioned, cranky old coot (though its hard to take him seriously as a "coot"; its Clooney!) who was kicked out of Tomorrowland when things started going odd there.  Britt is wonderful as the equally cranky, but doubly optimistic young girl who is the destined Last Hope for Tomorrowland... and our world. I am not completely onboard with the destiny idea but I love the idea how boundless optimism can affect the world in the greatest of ways. Its Brad Bird after all, and he is all about the feels.

Frank's house, the quiet countryhouse with all the hidden tech, is why I love Brad Bird's mind. Frank was kicked out of Tomorrowland but that didn't make him any less the genius, just a whole lot more cynical.  I get that. The movie is so much about losing your dreams, giving into apathy and mundanity. The world needs as many dreamers as it can.

There are little details that define why I like Bird's direction so much. When Casey steps on Frank's doorstep demanding his attention, he has a non-lethal countermeasure that blasts you off the stoop with sound or air. It tosses you ass over tea kettle, and when she lands ten feet away you are not so much as hurt, as intimidated. It just looked so.... appropriate. Frank's not a bad guy, just a guy who gave up.

P.S. Also have to mention --- the Eiffel Tower is a launch platform for a Tesla Rocket. Of course it is, why didn't I see that before ?!?!?

The only problem is once they actually get to Tomorrowland.... then the movie seems to fall kind of flat, with a destiny to be fulfilled, worlds to save and hand wringing bad guys to be defeated. Third acts are often set in bigger worlds, wider sets, larger ideas, but I didn't fall into it the way I hoped I would. And yet, I am not completely sure where I would have taken it myself.

Part of why I didn't like the third and final act was that Tomorrowland seemed to be empty. If evil Governor Nix was allowing Earth to be destroyed so Tomorrowland could prosper. But where are all the people? Tomorrowland 2015 is all dusty and dirty, empty and silent. Why? Some details would have been nice.

Frank and Casey are set up against Governor Nix, an ageless meglomaniac who has been broadcasting the apocalypse into the minds of we on Earth. I guess I am one of those who Frank complains about it, because in the preachy dialogue where he outlines why he gave up, I am highlighted. I am one of those guys who sees the end of the world coming, and buys into the packaged, pop culture versions of it. Gamma World, Mad Max, po-ap Teen Fiction, etc. I love that shit. But I also get how seeing that as our only future is not exactly life affirming.  It is up to people like Casey to help us out, a teenager who still has boundless affection for the world and what we can become. Now, if the tech of Tomorrowland can just help her help the world along.

Under The Skin

2014, d. Jonathan Glazer - netflix

(Hey! Spoilers ahead!)

It's astonishing to me that this is only Jonathan Glazer's third film in 14 years, astonishing and a little saddening.  Sure, Glazer has a whole other astounding career as a music video and TV commercial director, but his cinematic hand is so refined that every year that goes by without another Glazer production is a genuine loss for cinephiles the world over.  Sexy Beast marked his auspicious arrival in 2000, a decidedly lower-key British gangster movie that seemed almost a pointed counterpoint to Guy Ritchie's hyperactive, darkly comedic genre pictures.

Beast had elements of music video composition (the opening sequence, playing to The Strangler's "Peaches", followed a giant boulder rolling downhill past a sunbaked Ray Winstone, into his hillside swimming pool) and photography, all established within its opening minutes, but beyond that Glazer drew out astounding performances,  a career resurrecting one for Ben Kingsley (about as far away from Gandhi as you can get).



Nobody was certain what to expect from Glazer's follow-up, but I doubt Birth, 4 years later, was exactly what anyone had in mind.  I was a methodical and tense drama about a woman coming to terms with the death of her husband, and his possible resurrection inside the body of an 10-year-old boy.  The film was positively Kubrickian, in both the meticulousness of the direction and the somewhat unruliness of the story.  It scaled back on the music video elements, straying away from the mixtape soundtrack, instead accompanied by a lavish score by Alexandre Desplat.  Again the opening sequence is a marvel, melding music and imagery, a 2-minute tracking shot of a man jogging through central park in the winter, before cutting to the title card.


From there it's a slow burn through Nicole Kidman's internal distress.  The film requires that you to buy into Kidman's reaction to this young boy claiming to be her husband, especially that her emotional attachment to him at this stage is clearly unhealthy but still honest.  Where Sexy Beast's fantastical elements (the boulder, the heist) are subversive and only marginally weird, certainly not enough to distract from the central emotional conflict, Birth puts the fantastical as the center of the conflict and asks you to believe in its reality, at least enough to question it.

Under The Skin, Glazer's long-awaited third effort, has equal parts that Kubrickian meticulousness and a fascinating improvisational stream.  This one abandons emotional conflict almost entirely (at least until the third act), and instead just asks you to embrace its weirdness, its fantasy.  It seems that no Glazer film can open without a brilliant opening sequence, and here it's a marvel (embed of the video was disabled) of lights and darkenss, circles and halos, eyes and irises, all underpinned by an audiocollage of language and noise and Mika Levi's haunting, screeching score.  It's as bold a title sequence as that of Gaspar Noe's Into The Void or David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: bracing, daring you to continue.

What follows has no clear intention, nothing is spelled out.  It's all intonation and what you take with you.  On a seamlessly white stage, Scarlett Johansson strips a dead woman of her clothes and puts them on.  She gets into a white van and scopes out the streets of Glasgow for, essentially, a victim.  Once she finds her mark, a man with little connections, no real kids or family to speak of, she takes them back to a deserted barn.  Once inside the extremely black room with its glossy black floor, she seduces them.  They follow her breadcrumb trail of clothing, disrobing themselves, stepping forward into darkness, unable to take their gaze off her, unaware of their sinking surroundings.  We learn what happens to these men.  Why?  That's never the clear part, but it's also not really relevant.

There's an extremely potent allegory at play here, as Johansson, in her beefy, bulky white van cruises the street for prey, one cannot help but think of how uncommon it is that a woman is the predator in this manner.  Even though we know she's an alien -- and in that there's the unknown of what she actually is, or what she's capable of -- we still can't help but feel that she's vulnerable just because she's a woman.  Glazer shot these scenes with hidden cameras, with Johansson approaching men on the street (but first waiting for them to be alone or at least distantly separated from a crowd) and conversing with them.  It was a bold choice that is equally distracting and effectively unsettling.  It takes three rounds of abductions before the audience can ease into Johansson's identity as the predator, then feel some sense of anxiety for the fate of the men, but even then it's only because at that stage her victim is a young, shy, lonely man with facial neurofibromatosis.  At that point as well, Johansson's alien is starting to find some connection to humanity, and it lets the man go before it flees into the Scottish Highlands, away from it's motorcyle-driving handlers.

In the Highlands it's greeted with kindness and hospitality by a bachelor, who gives it shelter and food.  The unease of vulnerability is still there, for both of them.  Will ScarJo's alien return to its mission and take advantage of this stranger, or is the stranger taking advantage of the attractive, mysterious woman through the guise of kindness.  Much has been made in advance of Johansson's nudity in advance of the picture, however the sort of defining moment, as the alien examines its female form in the mirror, the film presents Johansson as, plainly, a woman.  In the moment, she's not a superstar, not a pique specimen of femininity or attractiveness, not an object of sexual desire, but rather a representation of the female form, of the human body, of flesh and skin and what it looks and feels like to be alive.

As the creature experiences things for the first time with the samaritan, it also experiences genuine attraction, and, for the first time, it willingly engages, not seduces, only to discover that it is not a whole woman.  It panics and flees into the woods, eventually finding a trail, only to come across a logger with a less than comforting disposition.  It finds a hiking shelter where it curls up to sleep.  It awakens to find its being molested by the logger and it flees, only to be savagely pursued.  It's that undercurrent of fear that permeated the film from the onset, that in spite of the creature's predatory nature, as it's in the skin of a woman, an it exists in a world where its viewed as prey.  The logger, tearing at its clothing also tears at its skin, revealing its inhuman blackness beneath.  The allegory that rape is dehumanizing in full play, but the ultimate denigration, the logger, in abject terror of what he's encountered, douses the alien with gasoline and sets it aflame and walks away.  It's a vessel for his pleasure and disposable when of no use.  It's a sickening moment that the film ends on, watching the creature burn in the snow, any trace of humanity burned away.

The film is one of perpetual unease, a moody (or perhaps moodless) art-piece that isn't so much a story as a concept, a 2-hour art installation about male sexuality in its various forms - primal, tender, brutal - masquerading as entertainment.  For those receptive to such things, it's a must-watch.  For those looking to be engaged more directly, you know, with dialogue, and plot, and action, well, it falls far away from the conventional.

(Read David's take)