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Alien: Covenant (2017)
We have purposely trained them wrong, as a joke!
A colony ship is sent from earth to a remote planet. Someone in charge must have *really* hated those colonists, since they chose the most stupid and inept crew imaginable to try and get them to their new home.
If you thought that some of the characters and their actions in Prometheus were dumb, hold on to your hats, because things are about to get worse in Alien:Covenant.
Other people have already provided comprehensive lists of the many mind-bogglingly stupid moments in this movie. But it would be remiss not to mention at least one highlight. After interrupting a clearly crazy android in the process of trying to make friends with an alien creature that decapitated one of his crew members just moments before, the captain decides to follow the android into a damp basement, to have a good chat. Curious about weird slimy eggs that he sees there, the captain is momentarily cautious. But then the same clearly murderous and doesn't-care-for-humanity android proceeds to tell him that it's quite safe to look more closely. So the captain leans right in for a good look. Guess what happens next?
Really, if these people were carrying the hopes of humanity for a new start on another world, then perhaps David's plan to stop them at all costs isn't so bad.
Other disappointments are the removal of Shaw, the heroine of Prometheus who had made it her personal mission to find the Engineers and ask them: "Why??". By simply killing her off in "between time", Alien:Covenant essentially made the trials and challenges that she previously went through completely meaningless. And while the movie tried to incorporate some other "deep" questions, overall those attempts came across as shallow re-hashings of tired issues such as the role of "faith", and "evil AI".
On the positive side, overall the movie looks beautiful, with top-notch camera-work and special effects. (But while the aliens look great in most scenes, was it really necessary to have a dancing xenomorph hatchling that looks like it was inspired by the freaky CGI Dancing Baby from old Ally McBeal episodes?)
It's too bad that despite all the money that was clearly spent on art direction and special effects, there seems to once again have been no funding left to get the script proof-read by someone who possesses even a small dose of sense or logic.
Unfortunately, despite high hopes for a strong continuation of this franchise, Alien:Covenant was a huge disappointment.
The Book of Eli (2010)
Deliver us... from shallow Christian propaganda wrapped with a sparkly Hollywood bow
Movie trailers are strange beasts. Make a movie look too good, and the end-product will often turn out to be disappointing. Make a movie look too bad, and the audience might never give it a try. Make a movie look like something it's not... well perhaps that's the most risky strategy of all.
This movie was promoted as being a post-apocalyptic action film. Instead, it turned out to be a shallow, and above all boring, Christian propaganda piece. (Although i'm not sure what branch of Christianity it's trying to portray, given that the hero lies, cheats, is excessively violent, and often fails to even try to help his fellows when they are in need.) It is rare that i go to see a film and feel so utterly cheated and misled. Well done Book of Eli, at least you evoked an unusual response.
Inception (2010)
Dream your own dreams instead... you'll get more out of them
You might think that a movie that literally sets itself up to play with people's dreams would have a broad vision and try to break through boundaries. But sadly, an engaging start to the film quickly leads to a sense of claustrophobia, as the viewer is forced down an increasingly predictable sequence of action scenes. And while the action is certainly well choreographed and executed, it's nothing that we haven't seen before.
Worse, the run-on exposition by the characters, who are constantly reciting (and then literally re-citing) the Rules of the Inceptionverse, leaves precious little to actually think about. This film is not awful, but it's also far from being the deep and thought-provoking cinematic masterpiece that some viewers would have you believe.
Go in with lower expectations, and you might be less disappointed :-)
District 9 (2009)
Setting human-prawn relations back by several centuries
Much hype (too much hype) has gone before, and unfortunately this film fails to deliver.
Yes, the CGI is quite good (really, with Wiki-wiki-wild-wild Weta and PJ involved, what do you expect?).
Yes, the action scenes are sometimes compelling.
But sadly, there is also 2 hours of footage, which feels more like 4. Because, let's face it, the story is just not very interesting.
Oooooh, let's have a clever commentary on racism. Let's use aliens instead of an actual suppressed group of people, because that will make it more original. It'll be ground-breaking sci-fi... No, wait. This all sounds strangely familiar! Worst of all, although this movie appears to be trying to make a statement about racism (and most reviews actually buy into this!) it manages to include its very own racist overtones. As Blomkamp goes out of his way to show us again and again, Nigerians are either gangsters or hookers. And no matter which of these two professions they may be pursuing, they are universally uneducated and superstitious, believing that by consuming their enemies, they can absorb their power.
Even the supposed hero is racist (although apparently he is more strongly biased against aliens than Nigerians), and blatantly so at the start of the movie. Sadly, he never grows to overcomes his views, only finally working with some aliens because of self-interest, rather than any sort of recognition that his prejudices might have been founded on ignorance and closed-mindedness.
All in all, this movie wasn't utterly awful, but it was rather boring and misguided. I wish I'd bought myself a prawn cocktail instead. And I don't even like prawns.
Knowing (2009)
"Knowing" when to avoid a movie
** SPOILERS ** The earth will end. Some weird aliens want to take away a few children and rabbits to repopulate a planet with strange white trees and lots of pollen. Let's hope they brought their asthma-puffers.
And that's it. What does this have to do with the strange sequence of numbers, a plane-crash, and a New York subway train derailment that you have seen in the trailers? Well, actually, nothing at all. There is no connection whatsoever between the prophecies of disasters and the alien abduction plot that is revealed at the end of the film.
Who came up with this plot? And moreover, was there really not one person among the hundred or so individuals who worked on this movie who was able to stop think for a moment and say, "hang on, the first 1 hour and 45 mins of this film have no real bearing whatsoever on the overall premise"? Because, let's face it, those aliens directly intervene and take the kids to their spaceship, by abducting them at a petrol station. This really didn't require the parents of either child to believe in, or even care in the slightest way about, the so-called prophecies. And it didn't require the audience to sit through all of those drawn out scenes, either.
In fact, the only practical purpose of these prophecies seems to have been to satisfy a sadistic streak in the aliens, to drive a child in the 60s mad by whispering to her until she takes her own life!
Aside from the incompetent storytelling (the whole "aliens will save a few humans just before the world ends" storyline has been done over and over), this also film excels at over-acting (Cage), over-screaming (Byrne), and over-CGI-ing (while the effects were generally quite good, was it really necessary to show a tortured burning CGI moose running through a forest?).
Please, directors and script writers, don't torture the audience with nonsensical drivel!
The Mist (2007)
A film that should definitely be "mist"
A small sleepy town. A storm. Some ominous mist. People trapped in a supermarket. Tentacles attacking. Yup, so far is seems so promising. A monster movie which builds up tension slowly, and when the creepers are first shown delivers with reasonable-looking CGI.
But wait. This ain't no shallow monster flick. We need to include room for characterisation. We need give the story some real depth. We need to get people thinking about stuff.
So many messages. Hey, let's show how when people are scared, they may do stupid things. Hey, we could include a religious nut who's crazy. And better add in some country hicks who are clearly stupid and easily misled. And of course, don't forget that big city lawyers are inevitably self-righteous and unwilling to listen to common sense. And let's show how when people care for their children, like really really care, then they will do anything for them including **spoiler for the most stupid part of the movie** shoot them. OMG, so many messages to deliver. This film is so DEEP!
Needless to say, what started out as a watchable horror film for the first 30 minutes suddenly transforms into one of the most irritating attempts at social commentary that's turned up on the big screen in some time. Its subtlety could be equated to being hit in the head with a sledge-hammer. Repeatedly. For 2 hours.
Do these directors actually _watch_ what they're cutting together? How can they not be embarrassed by their own pretentiousness, or fail to realise how low the standard of their shallow, banal drivel actually is? But at least there was good music towards the end. The loud, screaming choral interjection that suddenly bursts forth from nowhere actually had people laughing out loud in the cinema.
I Am Legend (2007)
I Am Legendarily Bad
Sadly, this film suffers from the Narcissismus Directorus virus that has become so widely spread among film directors since 2009... wait, 2006... oh, whenever. And the big tragedy is, Emma Thomson thought that she had developed a _cure_ for all those directors that mangle good novels beyond all recognition and instead churn out tedious over-dramatised renditions peppered with lackluster comic relief scenes. Poor Emma. No wonder she didn't want to be credited for her role in this film.
Surely only someone who is infected would have the audacity to pretend to be making a movie of a novel, and then change the two essential premises: there is only one survivor ("hello? oh, pleased to meet you, glad you could drop in just as i was trying to kill myself, oh and you brought a kid too, great!"), and that the monsters are vampires ("vampires, zombies, the audience will never know the difference, and anyway, they're infected, but we're not ripping off 28 Days Later, honest").
Add to that some sub-standard CGI: yeah, we've seen weird creatures with over-sized mouths before, anyone remember "The Mummy"? And what was with those lions at the start? Did they have a special "fakeness" strand of the virus that, instead of making them allergic to sunlight, only made them allergic to looking like real lions?
All in all, a shocker of a movie.
AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)
This could even make a Predalien cry
I was amazed twice tonight. The first was seeing how absolutely dreadful this movie was. The second was seeing that the rating for this film is hovering above the 7 mark!
It all started out so well. The opening scene continues on from where the first AVP finished -- with the birth of a Predalien. But it all goes downhill rapidly from there. Nonsensical plot lines, tedious cardboard-cutout characters, blatant stupidity by both human and alien protagonists... the list goes on.
Some of the "positive" reviews comment on how AVPR is superior to AVP, but it was hard to see any improvements whatsoever. If anything, the plot, and what could laughably be called attempts at acting, are considerably worse. And while AVP tried to do a few original things, this one ripped off so many things form "Aliens" (including the sound of the motion-trackers, a device that make no appearance in this film!) that what others have generously called a "homage" should really be called "plagiarism".
It seems that the Strause brothers made their name by being special effects wizards -- good on them. To be honest, the effects in this film were actually quite decent. Too bad that everything else about the film was not. Why on earth did anyone think that being able to do effects qualifies them to direct a movie? Out of all Alien and Predator movies to date, this is by far the worst. My only hope is that the franchises continue to be successful enough through other media so as to allow for the possibility of a further (watchable) sequel.
Metamorphosis (2007)
Flat Bathory
If you don't understand the summary line -- watch this movie.
Three young Americans travel through a random part of Hungary, because one of them is rather improbably trying to write a book about the Bathory legend. They quickly manage to be obnoxious and annoying towards the locals, and run afoul of a *spoiler* vampire who has a warped dress-sense (what is up with that bodice, and will she have to wear it forever?). The story quickly degenerates from here, especially once Christopher Lambert makes a surprise comeback appearance.
As the blurb on the back of the DVD says: full of twists. Too bad they're either incomprehensible, or just blatantly obvious.
This film leaves the audience in Purgatory.