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.

 

Rye Lane: Definitely worth a visit!

Rye Lane (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor, brief nudity and constant profanity

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.31.23

This is such a colorful, effervescent sparkler: a truly giddy cinematic romp.

 

Director Raine Allen-Miller’s accomplished feature debut, a 2023 Sundance crowd-pleaser, has been dubbed the next evolution of romantic comedies. The elements are classic, but Allen-Miller’s execution gets much of its razzle-dazzle from Victoria Boydell’s kinetic editing and cinematographer Olan Collardy’s dynamic camera placement and lens choices, which take maximum advantage of the vibrant South London settings.

 

Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson) stumble their way into a relationship
against all manner of colorful and playful South London locales.

In lesser hands, the result would be a cacophonous mess, but Allen-Miller knows precisely how to structure each scene for maximum charm. The resulting film races through its economical 82 minutes, leaving us both breathless and wanting more.

(A refreshing change, that, given the bloat that afflicted so many recent high-profile Hollywood entries.)

 

Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) meet cute under awkward circumstances: in a bank of unisex toilets at his friend’s art exhibition, where he’s sobbing noisily in one stall, reeling from a recent break-up. Embarrassment prompts a rapid return to composure, of sorts, and that might have been the end of it. 

 

But Yas is buoyant, giddy and difficult to ignore; she also talks a mile a minute. Dom is transfixed: a moth hovering in her incandescent glow, and a spark ignites. They linger together long enough for him to pour out his troubles, because he’s that way: wearing his heart on his sleeve. Yas is a good listener.

 

But then he departs, reluctantly, for a final meeting with his ex, Gia (Karene Peter), to obtain closure of a sort. That’s a difficult proposition, given that she cheated with — and now is in a relationship with — his best friend, Eric (Benjamin Sarpong-Broni). It becomes clear, as this café encounter begins, that Gia is a self-centered bee-yatch who expects Dom to be comfortable with her version of their break-up.

 

Before Dom can humiliate himself further, by agreeing with this nonsense, Yas unexpectedly crashes the gathering. Pretending to be Dom’s new main squeeze, she turns things completely upside-down, with a breathtaking few minutes’ worth of snide comments, subtle put-downs, not-so-subtle digs and pointed accusations. Gia and Eric can’t quite fathom what has hit them (Sarpong-Broni is hilariously clueless).

 

We’re on the floor, laughing so hard that it hurts.

 

What follows borrows from the giddy, 24-hour “chat structure” of 1995’s Before Sunrise, as Dom and Yas navigate various parts of South London. But the atmosphere here is different than that of Richard Linklater’s earlier genre classic; Allen-Miller goes more for the magical intensity of succumbing to love, when every hour — every minute — seems timeless, and a single day feels like it’ll never end.