Tag: Aliens

Pants make Earth Special

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I recently caught the end of “Cowboys & Aliens” on cable again and as I watched the climatic battle I remembered the bit of my original review about how Hollywood was getting in a rut with its aliens:

Grey, hairless, oddly-bent knees, big teeth, covered in mucus  and dripping with drool.  It started with “Aliens” of course but then we got “Battle L.A.”, “Super 8″, “Independence Day”, “Skyline”, “Pitch Black” and everything from “Avatar” that you weren’t supposed to want to bang.

As I watched the sequence again I was struck by something that solidified my problem with all of these designs.  The one thing that neatly represents all my complaints and frustrations.

Where are all the pants?

These are advanced civilizations.  They’ve perfected space travel, energy weaponry and (I assume) fiscal accounting policies and practices.  Don’t any of them wear pants?  Togas?  Kilts?  Uniforms of any kind?  Even if only to tell the grey, backwards-kneed space janitors from the grey, backward-kneed space generals?  Do aliens really not have a bikini area?

Movie Review: The Watch

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IMDB, The Watch“The Watch” on IMDB

Comedy, 102 Minutes, 2012

Ben Stiller [IMDB] has been more “miss” than “hit” lately.  Well – to be fair – more “average” than “amazing”.  His last few movies, including this one to some extent, have been a little uneven, silly and too dependent on deus ex machina.  This one is saved in the end by some slick special effects and some fun (if completely immature) gags, but it is a bumpy ride.

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Movie Review: I Am Number Four

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“I Am Number Four” on IMDB

Sci-fi,  109 Minutes, 2011

A race of evil teethy, gill-faced aliens with big guns invade a planet and destroy it.  The only survivors are nine magic kids and their guardians who move to Earth and go into hiding.  The aliens send a team of bounty hunters to kill the kids because, for some reason, the kids could stop the aliens from destroying Earth even though they couldn’t do anything to save their own planet.

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Movie Review: Infestation

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“Infestation” on IMDB

Horror, 91 Minutes, 2009

I really adore classically staged monster movies.  The kind where everyday people have to deal with giant things – worms, bugs, crocodiles, lemurs, etc.  Whatever they are, they’re big and they’re nasty.  Classics like “Tremors” [IMDB] or “Eight-legged Freaks” [IMDB] are just plain fun.  The scares tend to be more of the shock than gore variety (although there’s a little of that as well) and generally things are more family friendly.

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Movie Review: Starship Troopers: Invasion

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“Starship Troopers: Invasion” on IMDB

Sci-fi,  90 Minutes, 2012

Hells yes, people!  This is, finally, the sequel that the original “Starship Troopers” [IMDB] deserves.  It’s an animated film – a beautiful, intricately-detailed computer animated film to be exact.  (If you still need to be told that animated films aren’t just for kids then call over whoever let you on the Internet and tell them you aren’t ready for it.)

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Movie Review: Men in Black 3

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“Men in Black 3” on IMDB

Sci-fi/Comedy,  110 Minutes, 2012

The original “Men in Black” [IMDB] has always been one of my favorite movies.  It was irreverent, bombastic and populated with insanely likable characters.  (It was also based on a comic book – so if you liked it too maybe you should bolster the flagging comic book industry and buy some?)  The effects were bright, innovative and wonderfully cartoonish in all the right ways.  Most of all it was just plain fun.

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Movie Review: Battleship

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“Battleship” on IMDB

Action,  131 Minutes, 2012

It should be obvious that making a movie based on Hasbro’s “Battleship” should result in disaster.  The game itself has no story or plot and the absolute simplest of mechanics.  There’s also the rather important fact that it’s not really all that fun.  Nobody was more surprised than me that the movie based on this silly little game was surprisingly good.

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Movie Review: Prometheus

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“Prometheus” on IMDB

Sci-fi, 124 Minutes, 2012

This is difficult to review. It has to be considered a stand-alone film (because that’s what Ridley Scott’s been screaming at anybody who’ll listen) but dammit, it isn’t a stand-alone film. It’s a prequel to Alien [IMDB]. Telling people to forget it doesn’t change it. So, as a stand-alone film? Not a bad popcorn flick, but tremendously flawed intellectually. As a prequel to “Alien”?  Well… then it sucks and blows.

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Movie Review: John Carter

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“John Carter” on IMDB

Sci-fi/Adventure, 132 Minutes, 2012

I’ve always been a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories ever since I first read them as a teenager.  Pulp fiction (the genre, not the film) has always been a favorite and Burroughs is one of the best.  I also truly adore turn-of-the-(last)-century science-fiction.  Reading about the advances that authors from the pre-transister-age invented has always been a joy.  So when I found out that Disney was going to celebrate the centenary of the character (yes, John Carter is 100 years-old this year) with a big-budget blow-out written and directed by Andrew Stanton (“Wall-E” [IMDB], “Finding Nemo” [IMDB]) I was more than a little interested.

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