Alien: Romulus — Been there, endured that

Alien: Romulus (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for gory violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.1.24

This is what happens, when children recklessly steal a spaceship...

 

I greeted this ninth (!) Alien entry with a weary sense of Seriously? Must we do this again? 

 

Needing to reach another portion of this enormous space station, but with their sole path
blocked by scores of adult xenomorphs, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson)
consider their limited options.

This franchise envisions a bleak and depressing future; most characters inevitably die horribly; the eponymous xenomorphs always rise again (if not in a given installment, then elsewhere in the universe); lather, rinse, repeat.

No matter what the set-up, the execution is resignedly predictable.

 

That said, and for the benefit of those who might be approaching this as their first Alien saga...

 

To his credit, director/co-scripter Fede Alvarez delivers a solid first act populated by a handful of reasonably well-crafted characters. (But given that every member of this small cast is in his/her early or mid-20s, one is tempted to re-title this film Alien: 90210.)

 

The second act also features a very clever nod back to the film that begat this franchise, accompanied by several familiar bars of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for that 1979 classic.

 

However ... Alvarez and co-scripter Rodo Sayagues then squander that good will with an eye-rolling third act that piles ludicrous atop preposterous, with a soupçon of ridiculous tossed in for bad measure.

 

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

 

Alien and 1986’s Aliens were game-changing events.

 

This is just a routine horror flick, albeit with impressive sci-fi trappings.

 

The year is 2142, which — in the series timeline — is one generation after Alien (2122) and not quite two generations before Aliens (2169). The setting: Jackson’s Star, a mining colony on a ringed planet with an atmosphere so thick that sunshine never penetrates. The vast majority of the colony’s inhabitants are underpaid laborers indentured to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (the mostly unseen villains throughout this entire series).

 

The corporation has a nasty habit of changing the rules as it sees fit, which Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) discovers, to her dismay. She happily believes that — having served her required contract work hours — she now can travel to a much more hospitable world ... only to be told that her contract requirement has just been doubled. (Given Rain’s obvious youth, and the length of time necessary to hit her initial quota, we’re also clearly dealing with violations of reasonable child labor laws.)

 

Depressed beyond words, she’s susceptible when fellow miner and ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) proposes a risky means of escaping Jackson’s Star. He and three others — his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), fellow miner Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and tech-savvy Navarro (Aileen Wu) — have detected a derelict Weyland-Yutani spaceship in descending orbit around the planet.

 

The hope is that it’ll contain functional cryo-pods, for the suspended animation sleep necessary during a lengthy journey to their desired distant planet. The plan, then, is to “borrow” the Corbelan — one of the mining operation’s utilitarian spaceships — to reach the derelict vessel, transfer its cryo-pods to their ship, and then just keep going.

 

The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A heady brew

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and war violence

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Fiction doesn’t hold a candle to this particular slice of dog-nuts truth.

 

In November 1967, on little more than a dare, 26-year-old John “Chickie” Donohue impulsively decided to bring some Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schlitz beers to the neighborhood buddies who were serving in Vietnam.

 

When the hell of war suddenly breaks out, Arthur (Russell Crowe, left) and Chickie
(Zac Efron) are torn between witnessing and recording events, and running for safety.

His subsequent four-month journey throughout that war-torn country eventually became a 2015 documentary short sponsored by (who else?) Pabst, and then a 2017 book co-written with New York Daily News reporter Joanna Molloy.

And now a thoroughly engaging film by director Peter Farrelly.

 

Given the larkish marketing art, and recalling the lowest-common-denominator oeuvre of the Farrelly brothers as a team — There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, The Heartbreak Kid — one is tempted to dismiss this project as a similarly dopey comedy. That would be a mistake; we must remember that Peter Farrelly, on his own, brought us the Academy Award-winning Green Book.

 

While this new film doesn’t approach that level of quality, it’s nonetheless entertaining, thoughtful and sneaky: the latter due to an initially light-hearted tone that suddenly turns deadly serious in the third act.

 

Zac Efron, with the High School Musical trilogy now a thoroughly distant memory, is spot-on as Chickie: introduced at loose ends, between hitches as a Merchant Marine. He’s living with his parents and younger sister Christine (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) in their upper Manhattan Inwood neighborhood, and doing little beyond hanging out with friends each evening at Doc Fiddler’s Saloon, where George “The Colonel” Lynch (Bill Murray, grizzled and irascible) holds court.

 

The Colonel and his patrons, dyed-in-the-wool supporters, are annoyed by protesters whose “antics” are broadcast all over the world; Chickie confronts it more directly, because Christine has joined the local anti-war brigade.

 

These early scenes — particularly Chickie’s argument with his sister — aren’t directed very well; there’s a strong sense that Efron and Serkis are “acting” and merely spouting lines, rather than sincerely inhabiting their characters.

 

Fortunately, matters subsequently improve, particularly when The Colonel — in a mild huff — growls, “I’d like to go over to Vietnam, track down all the boys in the neighborhood, and just give ’em a beer.”

 

“I could do that,” Chickie replies, a thoughtful look on his face.

 

That’s how it starts.