Review: "Alien: Covenant"

The thrill is gone.

Ridley Scott's Alien is among my all-time favorite films, a taut, splendidly acted thriller that to this day scares my pants off. James Cameron's Aliens, while more amusing than downright terrifying, marks a plenty worthy sequel, paced like a rollicking roller coaster ride and sporting one of Sigourney Weaver's finest performances.

Since then, I'm afraid, it's been all downhill.

Alien: Covenant, Scott's third contribution to the series (following Prometheus in 2012), delivers none of the thrills or chills you'd expect. Unbelievably, it's a picture so slapdash and hackneyed, you'll be tempted to look back and admire David Fincher for at least having an intriguing vision for the cinematic catastrophe that is Alien 3. Single-handedly on the strength of one performance, Covenant does not quite sink to the same bottom of the barrel as the Fincher film but boy, it's still rough stuff.

This sixth entry in the franchise finds the crew of the colony ship Covenant, en route to a remote planet, diverted to what appears to be an undiscovered paradise. Among the explorers are terraforming expert Daniels (Katherine Waterston), first mate Oram (Billy Crudup) and synthetic android Walter (Michael Fassbender). Complications arise when two crew members fall gravely ill and then there's the introduction of synthetic David (Fassbender again), the sole survivor of the Prometheus mission, who now resides on this mysterious planet. Before long, of course, those pesky extraterrestrial creatures say hello, ready to lay eggs inside their prey and make mincemeat out of those who stand in the way.

When the monsters aren't gracing the screen, Covenant is, for the most part, a real snooze. The humor of Aliens is sorely missing and none of the characters here are nearly as expertly drawn as in the first entry. Problem is, the proceedings aren't all that exciting even when the aliens are doing what they do best, as the action here much more recalls that of Alien 3 than the first two entries. As was the case in the Fincher flick, these CGI creatures aren't the least bit convincing.

Keeping the picture from being a complete bust is Fassbender, marvelous in duel roles. While the rest of the ensemble struggles to make anything of their cookie-cutter roles, he at least seems to be having a blast and frankly, his David is a far more riveting foe than than any of the gnarly beasts who roam this picture.

Fassbender's impressive turn aside, however, Alien: Covenent is among Scott's worst pictures to date.

C

Review: "Snatched"

Growing up with a mom who adores Goldie Hawn, I had seen the bulk of the Hawn filmography by age 10.

Foul Play, in particular, was a mainstay at the Carden household, rented out countless times at our local library. Much as I enjoyed that one, Death Becomes Her won me over even more. In hindsight, I don't think I've ever disliked a Hawn picture, sans maybe Town & Country, in which she has a modest supporting role. With her presence, she has brightened up even the most middling of comedies, turning the likes of Protocol and Wildcats in something worthwhile.

Hawn's latest picture, Snatched, once again finds the actress in rich form, making the most out of rather uninspired proceedings. She and fellow leading lady Amy Schumer have a blast here and, for their ebullience alone, the film is worth a look.

After Schumer's Emily is dumped by her wannabe-rock star boyfriend (Randall Park), she finds herself stuck with a nonrefundable vacation to Ecuador. With no interest from friends in joining her on the trip, Emily turns to mom Linda (Hawn) to venture on this journey. Overseas, Emily falls for the dashing James (Tom Bateman) but their excursion, alongside a hesitant Linda, into Colombia for a day trip turns treacherous as the mother and daughter wind up at the center of a kidnapping plot by (painfully nondescript and one-note) South American criminals. They manage to escape but, with the State Department of scant help, must rely on their own wits to somehow get to the nearest U.S. embassy, in Bogota.

Comparisons have understandably been made between Snatched and 1984's Romancing the Stone, which sent Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner on a wild Colombian adventure. The tone, humor and violence of Snatched, however, rings much closer to something like 2015's Spy, though this picture isn't nearly as successful as the Melissa McCarthy one. This film even has its own deadpan middle-aged badass (Christopher Meloni), like Jason Statham in Spy.

Hawn and Schumer are a delight to watch here, even when the material is so slapdash. The supporting cast is game too - Meloni is a hoot as a Trader Joe's manager-turned-jungle warrior; Joan Cusack and Wanda Sykes are a welcome presence as a special ops team keeping an eye out for Emily and Linda; and Ike Barinholtz and Bashir Salahuddin deliver some of the film's funniest moments as Emily's obnoxious brother and a government employee with negligible interest in saving the gals. 

Like Schumer's Trainwreck, which I also gave a B-, Snatched evokes nearly as many sighs as it does laughs. Still, it's not bad and it's most certainly worth checking out, if exclusively for Hawn's first big screen appearance in 15 years.

B-

Review: "Logan"

For someone who grew up head-over-heels for comic books, it's remarkable and kind of infuriating just how underwhelmed I've been by the genre's offerings on the big screen over the past decade or so.

I was raised on page-to-screen adaptations of the likes of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy and Tim Burton's Batman flicks, plus the first two Christopher Reeve Superman pictures. I still adore those films to this day, and was quite fond of Christopher Nolan's vision for Batman too. But Zach Snyder's DC productions? Don't even get me started. And while Marvel's offerings have certainly been less headache-inducing than Snyder's assault on the genre, few of those films have left me much invigorated either. Perhaps I'm just tiring of the focus on wall-to-wall CGI, in place of compelling storytelling.

The X-Men franchise, for the most part, has never left me with strong feelings one way or the other. I was enamored with X2, admittedly mostly on account of Ian McKellen's delicious performance, but the other pictures struck me as little more than serviceable.

Logan, the latest picture in the series, is decidedly a hell of a lot more than just by-the-numbers. It's the strongest of the X-Men films by a country mile and should titillate even viewers who are not fond of or familiar with the franchise. I suspect moviegoers who got more of a kick out of Mad Max: Fury Road or True Grit than say, Guardians of the Galaxy, will be especially delighted by this picture.

Hugh Jackman, in the finest performance of his career, returns as Logan who, in the not-so-distant future, is emotionally drained and at his least able-bodied. He cares for the unwell Professor X (Patrick Stewart, also fantastic) at a remote location on the Mexican border, earning cash as a limo driver with the goal of amassing enough to buy a boat and sail off into the sunset together. At this point in time, mutants are on the edge of extinction, so Logan is caught plenty off-guard when the young Laura (Dafne Keen, in a sensational feature film debut), who has powers not unlike Logan's, enters the picture.

Logan has been tasked with escorting Laura to a place in North Dakota called "Eden," where, to his great skepticism, she'll apparently be safe. All Logan, Laura and Professor X need to do is somehow make the road trip while warding off the deranged Reavers who have committed their lives to the destruction of mutants and Logan in particular.

The picture, directed by the hit-or-miss James Mangold, delivers all of the violent, exhilarating, well-orchestrated action you could ask for but Logan is ultimately so much more than that. The relationships between Logan and Laura and Logan and Professor X are fascinating ones and there are nearly as many scenes that tug pull at the heart strings as get the heart racing. The film was co-written by the brilliant Scott Frank, who not only has credits on fabulous motion pictures like Out of Sight and Minority Report but also penned TV episodes on series like The Wonder Years. His contributions are greatly felt here.

Logan isn't quite a perfect picture - the Logan vs. X-24 battles, for one, gave me nasty flashbacks to Superman III - but I wouldn't hesitate to rank it at least among the top 20 or so comic book films to date.

A-

Review: "Kong: Skull Island"

Ah, Kong, It's so nice to have you back where you belong, even if it is in a witless and familiar picture that most recalls a low-rent Irwin Allen flick.

I've long been a fan of the King Kong films, warts and all. The original 1933 Kong adventure is a truly dazzling piece of cinema, I would argue among the finest pictures of the pre-Code era. The Dino De Laurentiis remake from 1976, while hardly a flawless film (somehow, I think the visual effects are less convincing here than they were four decades prior), is not without its pleasures, among them Jessica Lange's exquisite film debut. As for Peter Jackson's 2005 ginormous-budget effort, I think it's a epic that often exceeds the original in impact, even with its absurd length.

There have, of course, been other Kong films too, minor B-movies like Son of Kong and King Kong Lives, none of which were in the same class as those three pictures but at least had some value to those who find the gargantuan gorilla an irresistible charmer.

Kong himself looks more convincing than ever in his latest picture, Kong: Skull Island, and is surrounded this time around by a plethora of spine-tingling CGI monsters, including a spider with legs the length of palm trees and reptilian "Skullcrawlers" that devour humans like potato chips. Whenever the focus turns exclusively to these gnarly creatures, Kong: Skull Island is a lot of silly fun.

Much less compelling, I'm afraid, is virtually everything else in the picture. Like those aforementioned Irwin Allen disaster films, Kong: Skull Island takes one hell of an all-star cast and gives them absolutely nothing to do. Even Samuel L. Jackson, who valiantly tried to make movie magic out of Snakes on a Plane, looks bored.

The plot feels derivative from the get-go. Toward the close of the Vietnam War, a government agent (John Goodman) recruits a team of soldiers and scientists (among them, Jackson, Tom Hiddleston and Corey Hawkins) to explore an uncharted island in the Pacific known as..wait for it, wait for it...Skull Island! Their helicopters go in, drop explosives to determine if the island's ground is hollow and, to the great pleasure of the audience, Kong is quick to greet them and smack down the copters left and right. The survivors, among them a photojournalist (Brie Larson), wind up split into two groups, with each having very different plans moving forward.

Kong: Skull Island is a pretty grueling exercise when the big ape on campus isn't around. None of the actors seem to be having any fun, with the notable exception of John C. Reilly as an oddball former lieutenant who's been stranded on the island since WWII. Problem is, Reilly doesn't enter the picture until about the halfway point, so we're stuck for a while watching Hiddleston, Larson and Jackson sleepwalk their way through the dull, uninspired screenplay. Filmmaker Jordan Vogt-Roberts, whose The Kings of Summer was the toast of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, shows negligible directorial flair here, with a by-the-numbers vision reminiscent of Colin Trevorrow's on the recent Jurassic World.

Oh, and I am legit throwing my popcorn at the screen the next time a '70s-era picture plays "Bad Moon Rising" to remind us of the decade in which the film is set.

C+

Review: "Get Out"

Ever wondered what the result would be if say, Wes Craven opted to direct a film half Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and half The Stepford Wives? I imagine not but, if you somehow did, the final product probably would've looked something a whole lot like Get Out, the incredible directorial debut of actor/comedian/writer Jordan Peele (of TV's Key & Peele).

What Peele has done in Get Out is something truly remarkable. Unlike the bulk of horror comedies, which tend to veer heavily on the campy and over-the-top, Peele's picture is a pitch-perfect mix of scenes laugh-out-loud hilarious and moments downright terrifying. This ain't a cheesefest that spends its time constantly winking at its audience.

The film opens with couple Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) - he's black, she's white - taking a road trip from the city out into the suburbs for that grueling, time-honored tradition of him meeting her parents. Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener) seem perfectly nice and normal at first, if perhaps a tad ill-at-ease about their daughter's interracial romance, but Chris soon finds himself a bit perplexed by his surroundings. There's the family's maid (the scene-stealing Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper (Marcus Henderson), both African-American and both acting like some sort of batshit robots. Then, there's the oddball guests who visit for a grand party at the family estate, including another person of color (Keith Stanfield) who also ain't acting right. Most concerning is the terrifying dreams Chris has been having...or are they really dreams?

To go any further into the plotting of this ingenuous film would be a travesty - this is not one to be spoiled. Let's just say there was of course twists and turns but furthermore, Peele does a sensational job here anticipating what his audience expects around the corner in terms of twists...only to turn that on its head and deliver genuine shockers.

Kaluuya is a real find and a natural leading man. He's surrounded by a dynamite supporting cast, one which also includes the uproariously funny Lil Rel Howery as Chris' best friend who, even hours away in the city, suspects something is up in a bad way in the suburbs. Get Out is frontloaded with lots of laughter out of the starting gates but by the hour point of this thing, you'll be hanging off the edge of your seat.

Get Out marks the first truly great film of 2017.

A-