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Movie Review: Alien: Romulus

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Somewhere in the world, there are companies that warehouse and store movie sets and equipment used in past films. From the opening scenes of the new movie “Alien: Romulus” it was like revisiting the sets of the original Alien (1979) or the sequel Aliens (1986), including the old computer monitors and related equipment. Regarding science fiction movies and arguably the greatest Alien creature ever created, these first two Alien films are the all-time standards and the beginning of the almost 50-year franchise of Alien movies.

The latest Alien movie “Alien: Romulus” has many reminders of the first two Alien movies and a character from the original movie named Ash, who is an android played by the late Ian Holm, using AI. From my memory of the original Alien from 1979, I remembered that the spaceship that Ash was on blew up. Given this fact, how could he now appear in this movie – with a timeline some 20 years after the original story?

This story is about a group of younger astronauts on a ship some 67 light years from Earth. Their mission is about trying to retrieve a valuable specimen on their space station called Romulus. Soon after they dock with another space station, where they encounter deadly alien creatures known as deadly Xenomorphs and face-huggers, that attach themselves to the face of a human host where they implant an alien that grows rapidly and explodes from the chest of the victim – one of the most impressive ideas in the history of horror movies.

That cast for this latest Alien installment includes Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny – who has an impressive start to her young acting career – having appeared in several major movie releases in the last 2 years. The android character of Andy is played very well by David Jonsson, who is close friends with Rain. The other characters have relatively small roles including Kay, played by Isabela Merced. Because Kay is pregnant, the new idea introduced in this story is that when a human is implanted with an Alien while pregnant, a new combination of Alien/Human creatures is created – something never seen before in all the many Alien movies. This idea is the only original one within this entire film.

Towards the end of this story, the climax includes too many ideas from the second Aliens movie, that I thought were contrived and lacked any attempt at originality.

Overall I thought this latest Alien movie was just OK, and I was surprised at the high 82% rating for this movie, with my rating about 70% and a very marginal recommendation only for fans of the Alien franchise.

Movie Review: It Ends With Us

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For the movie career of Blake Lively, the new movie “It Ends With Us”, represents the first time she has been the lead actor in any major motion picture. It Ends With Us, is based on the best-selling book, written by Coleen Hoover. This is a love story, a story about friendship and domestic abuse.

This movie will remind most of one of the many Lifetime romantic movies and during this film, the story seems to struggle when trying to be more than just another TV movie. The message of this story of domestic abuse with the main character Lilly Bloom, played by Blake Lively trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband Ryle Kincaid, played by Justin Baldoni, is that people stay in bad relationships because they believe it is the path of least resistance. Far too often this turns out to be the exact wrong decision.

The signature moment of this story is when Allysa, Lilly Bloom’s friend, played by Jennie Slade, asks her, why do you stay the victim of a domestic abuser? Her answer was simple and profound, “It is easier to stay”. How many people in the world ruin their lives by staying with the exact wrong person, risking verbal and physical abuse because the logistics of separation and divorce seem worse than the abuse they are suffering? Many of us know of situations like this firsthand, a tragedy that happens far too often, resulting in lifelong damage to the children within an abusive marriage. The other message of this story is that Lilly Bloom’s mother was also a victim of domestic abuse and history repeats itself with Lilly’s husband Ryle.

All of the domestic violence in this story has to do with her husband’s jealousy of Lilly’s boyfriend from her teenage years, Atlas, played by Brandon Sklenar. After Lilly opens a flower shop in Boston, she runs into Atlas who runs a restaurant nearby unexpectedly, and this causes great conflict between Lilly and Ryle leading to every incident of domestic violence, due to Ryle’s jealousy.

In the beginning, the violence Lilly endures seems accidental, but later more intentional, as her husband promises, “This will never happen again”. The ending of this movie was also profound, with a perfect conclusion that ends with the line that is the title of this movie “It Ends With Us”. I also thought that the acting was good throughout, even though there were too many times when this story seemed more like a Lifetime TV movie rather than a major motion picture.

I am sure that the screenwriters of this film, including Colleen Hoover were hoping to win a best adapted screenplay Oscar for this movie, but unfortunately the Rotten Tomatoes overall low critical ratings of only 57%. have probably killed any chance for a nomination. I thought this movie was good, with a powerful message and solid acting with my rating of 82% and a recommendation.

Movie Review: Trap

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The M. Night Shyamalan trend since “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and “Unbreakable” (2000) were released as great movies continue. After hitting his peak with these two movies from 25 years ago, Shyamalan has continued to make mediocre or bad movies ever since. His latest release “Trap” is not only a bad movie, it is amazingly stupid – and could be ranked as the dumbest movie ever made.

The main premise of “Trap” is probably inspired from the success of the recent and hugely popular Taylor Swift world tour, about a serial killer known as “The Butcher”, played by Josh Hartnett who is at a concert of a major female singing star with his daughter and the police know he is at this concert – so they set some kind of undefined trap to catch him. What follows is a series of stupid events, that make no sense. Towards the end of this disaster is a meeting between Cooper, played by Hartnett, and the singer Lady Raven, played by Saleka Shyamalan, the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan – where Raven is by herself talking to Cooper within an isle in this huge stadium and later in a separate room and inexplicably Raven’s entire security team is nowhere to be found. This is the star of a huge concert with over 20 thousand fans and her security team is not anywhere near her. How could such a glaring and obvious error get past the writer and director of this bad movie? What is Shyamalan thinking?

Cooper and Raven eventually wind up at his house with his wife and 2 kids and once again, her security team is nowhere around them. I could not believe that a director and screenwriter who once was as great as Shyamalan could fall this far. The level of illogical stupidity of this story is extremely hard to understand.

It was also hard to understand why Josh Harnett who is attempting a comeback as a movie actor would choose a movie this bad to make his return to movie acting. Hopefully, Hartnett can recover from this bad mistake.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics are way too high 48% with my rating of 10% and a run for your life miss this horrendous and very stupid mess of a film.