Alien: Covenant (2/5 Stars)

In what is becoming an “Alien” franchise tradition, a subsequent installment cannibalizes a superior predecessor. I don’t mean that the sequel is inferior or simply does the same thing in an inferior way, I mean that is actually undercuts the pleasure of watching a previous movie. This happened the first time in Alien 3, when in between “Aliens” and “Alien 3” the movie actually killed off important characters that the viewer had come to know and very much like. “Alien: Covenant” does the same thing, killing off the main female lead of “Prometheus,” Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace. The ironic thing about the “Alien” franchises is that one of its major themes is corporate disregard for human life in the face of profit, and the main culprit of these in-between movie killings is most likely the waning stardom of previous main characters. At least that is what seems to be the main impetus behind the lack of Noomi Rapace here. In 2012 came out, Noomi Rapace, coming off the iconic “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy, was a the zenith of her star power. In 2017 she has become largely absent whereas Michael Fassbender, the other survivor from “Prometheus,” is still around. So “Alien: Covenant” kills off Noomi Rapace even before the movie starts and became the Michael Fassbender show. It is notable that this is the first canonical Alien installment that does not feature a strong female lead.

The problems start there and keep going. I am going to limit myself to just a few complaints, but not before noting that this movie was directed by Ridley Scott who directed both the original “Alien” and “Prometheus.” I merely point this out to state that he should know how to make a better movie than this one.

A large problem with blockbusters nowadays is that they use digital effects too much. Digital effects have their place, and that is when the filmmakers cannot make the thing they want to show without digital effects, like say a large crowd, or a landscape, or another world. When digital effects are used to make something really small and close, they should not be used at all. The filmmakers should just make the thing they want to be represented. Compare the baby-alien chest bursting scenes in the original 1979 “Alien” and the one this year in “Alien: Covenant.” Even though a span of thirty-eight years of continual special effects evolution has occurred, the 1979 version is more believable, more visceral, and more effective. It’s that way because they made a puppet out of real material and performed the operation physically. The same scene in “Alien: Covenant” looks like a digital recreation. It’s detailed but the audience can tell the difference. There is no financial reason to do it this way. In fact, a puppet is probably cheaper.

This movie breaks all the rules of the Alien. For it to be a believable story, the rules having been set down explicitly need to stay there. Here is a short list of broken rules in “Alien: Covenant.” One: Aliens can be killed by bullets from guns. Two: The Alien gestates in the stomach and bursts through the chest (as opposed to say, through the upper back vertebrae, which is novel but doesn’t make any sense). Three: The Alien needs time (maybe a couple of weeks) to impregnate the host, grow inside it, burst out of it, go into the wilderness and come back fully formed. In this movie, that whole process happens in a couple of hours.

Mr. Scott perhaps broke these rules because he felt the audience may have been impatient. Well, the first “Alien” movie was great because he took his time to establish the rules and follow them, which made them visceral and effective. If he couldn’t find a way to do it here, he should have gone back to the drawing board. After, the end product is an “Alien” movie that doesn’t have believable Aliens in it.

As far as the philosophical underpinnings of this movie, I am disappointed to relate that it did not follow through on the promises “Prometheus” made in what it was trying to accomplish here. I feel like “Prometheus” got thrown under the bus quite frankly. I’m not happy with this movie. Two Michael Fassbenders did not make it all okay.

Inherent Vice (5/5 Stars)

I have waited too long to review this movie. As I sit down to write I am reviewing in my mind what happened where when and how and this is a huge mistake because I hardly had a grasp on that when I was watching the movie in the theater. But dig this: during the movie I did not care because like the best of Chandler-esque pot detectives (see The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski) this movie makes its money moment to moment not in the grand scheme of things and boy is this movie filled from top to bottom with moments. It’s stacked with jokes like the flattop of Flintstone proportions that neatly sits on Lietuenant Detective (and SAG member) Christian F. “BigFoot” Bjornsen’s fat head.

Inherent Vice was adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is like a bonus movie from this guy in that his last two movies each took five years to make and market. Not only is this one coming to us within two years of his last (‘The Master’) but it is also a comedy and certainly the funniest P.T. Anderson movie to date. There has been an extraordinary amount of effort made here to include at least one visual gag in every scene. Some are very good like say the “welcome” “Doc” gets to the LA police department, Bigfoot’s son pouring him a drink, and the parking technique of his assistant. Roger Ebert once said of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean 11’ that it felt like a virtuoso classical pianist went down to the local honkytonk and started riffing on some ragtime melodies for fun. That’s what this feels like too. P.T. Anderson is slumming it with the low culture comedians. That’s probably why this movie will not be recognized for anything even though it should be on par with all his other high class movies.

Now for your reading enjoyment I will attempt to summarize the plot. May the gods of Imdb guide me! This movie is about Larry “Doc” Sportello a hippie private detective in the early 1970s of Los Angeles. I am assuming he got the nickname ‘Doc’ because he works out of a doctor’s office. One night Doc’s ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) shows up needing his help. Her boyfriend, the married real estate devloper Mickey Wolfman, may be the target of a kidnapping plot by his wife and her boyfriend. Doc can’t turn this request down as that girl has a hold of him the way that certain women often do. Thus the convoluted journey begins where a murder at a whorehouse brings him in contact with Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (a perfect Josh Brolin), which necessitates the appearance of Doc’s maritime lawyer Sauncho Smilax, Esq. (Benicio Del Toro) and his current girlfriend Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon). The FBI gets in on the case and something called the Golden Fang, which might be a boat or something bigger leads the increasingly convoluted storyline through other bright character spots such as Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd D.D.S (a manic Martin Short) and Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson). The conversation that Doc has with Coy is perhaps the low point of clarity in the movie since it takes place after at least an hour of hard to follow and might consist of codespeak. I don’t know I’m not sure because I probably would not know what they were talking about even if it wasn’t in code.

The confusing aspect of Inherent Vice is medicated quite a bit like the confusing way of The Big Lebowski is medicated: that is with lots of drugs and enough great stuff going on in the moment that the viewer does not necessarily need to have a big picture in order to enjoy himself. Perhaps the best self-contained ten minutes of the movie is the introduction and dispensation of Martin Short, a dentist who may or may not be one small cog in a vast conspiracy to get hippies on heroin and then sell them everything they need to get off of heroin (heroin apparently does awful things to your teeth). ANYWAY it is a manic creation of unbridled lust and hard drugs before we are informed in the subsequent scene that the dentist has broken in his neck in a trampoline accident. Of course it may not be an accident but we’ve already moved on.

I haven’t read the book but I get the feeling that it is an irretrievably unadaptable source and the fact that P.T. Anderson has made a good movie from it makes the adaptation itself extraordinary. He should at least get an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. The movie is filled to the brim with memorable characters but Josh Brolin’s performance is one flattop head above the rest. He too should get an Oscar nomination. Joaquin Phoenix does a wonderful job of holding his own among the nutcases. Oh and I forgot that the movie is narrated by a character that is kind of tangential to the whole thing. Someone explained to me that she knows everything via stoner ESP or whatever. It works just as well.

I liked this movie quite a bit and will probably have to see it again to get most of the jokes. I hope you see it at least once and don’t feel bad if you can’t entirely figure what is going on. I suspect nobody can, especially the hippies.