Snowpiercer (2013)

Snowpiercer is a movie about a dystopian future, which means it's full of buckets and buckets of important social commentary and symbolism! We should really listen to this movie, because it's Important with a capital I!

Director: Joon Ho Bong

Starring: Chris Evans, Kang-ho Song, Ed Harris

IMDb

The movie begins with a bunch of poor, dirty looking people in rags living in the back of a giant train circling the wasted frozen carcass of the world forever. Boy, this gritty Thomas the Tank Engine reboot really isn't pulling any punches.

"My life is an endless train of misery..."

Our main character is Curtis, played by Captain America himself, Chris Evans, modeling for the 2013 Hobo Winter Catalog. He lives in the poor part of the train, apparently planning some kind of revolution, or something like that. In his spare time, he likes to try to negotiate with small children for food and he fails even at that. So this is truly a man I can get behind as the leader of a revolution.

"I'll give you five peanut shells and two mosquito wings for it!"

It turns out the police in this brutal train world are stealing the poor peoples' children from them for an unknown reason. One guy SURPRISINGLY has an issue with that, and tries to assault the main lady by throwing a shoe at her. They capture him and force him to stick his arm out the window into the freezing sub-zero weather, and then break his arm off. The crazy lady puts a shoe on the guy's head and delivers a terrible, annoying speech about how the poor exist to be stepped on and should be kept in their places. Wow, what a thinking man's movie this is. It's like the Hunger Games if it were told by a really angry teenager.

This whole time, they basically only haven't made a move because it's convenient for the script. Curtis, in all his wisdom, just keeps saying it's "not time" yet to make a move. Well, I guess their children getting kidnapped was enough incentive for them to finally make a fucking move, because they finally do. Glad you guys are so proactive! They figure out that apparently none of the guards who have been coming in have had bullets for some time now. They deduce that by saying that they've never seen them fire those guns. Well, good enough for me!

Next, they find this pair of badass Asian people who for some reason have been locked away in drawers for some time now. Naturally, given how they've been basically in hibernation for a while, the Asians prove formidable foes for Curtis and the others in the pointless fight scene that comes next. I sure am looking forward to the movie about the characters who have trouble beating up people who have been comatose in boxes for months. They also force Curtis to pay them in hallucinogenic drugs for their services, which, to be fair, is a pretty fucking good deal. That's the only way I'd hang out with this raggedy crowd.

I'm not sure why the bad guys they fight up next are dressed as ninjas. What on earth do you need ninja costumes for just to stand around guarding people on a train? What are you trying to blend in with by wearing those?

ISIS Junior Squad, at your service!

There's one part where they go into a classroom being taught by a woman who acts like a cartoon character. She has them reciting creepy cult-like chants about how the poor are all dogs and praising the holy hell out of the mysterious man who made the train. This whole sequence is about as entertaining as a pro-life protester outside an abortion clinic waving a bloody fetus picture in your face.

The dead soulless eyes, the vacant smile...yup, she does look like a pro-lifer.

Then we get a speech by Curtis detailing how awful it was living in the poor part of the train at first. He spins this whole dramatic story about how they had to start eating the weak, and how babies tasted the best. I think this speech really nails down what I hate about the movie, so bear with me here, I'm going to break character.

This whole scene is just so emotionally manipulative and trite. It's so over the top. They ate babies! They were killing mothers to steal their babies and eat them! Fuck off. My point is, every time a critic bashes an action movie, they get shit on for only wanting serious art house films or really depressing films, or whatever the strawman is. “Can't you just have FUN?” the detractors inquire. But movies like this, actual action movies, too often have these very serious overtones and overly grim, gratuitous parts. Lots of movies have some serious plot threads, that's how they keep you engaged – it isn't just something that French art house movies about postpartum depression made on shoestring budgets do or again, whatever the strawman is.

Snowpiercer's serious elements really want you to take away the pain and sorrow and unfairness of the way the poor people were treated. But it's so bad here. It's done in such a piss poor manner, with no subtlety or shade or nuance. They just shove it in your face. That would be fine if all this wanted to be was a loud, brutal action movie – but this very clearly wants to be a super grim social commentary and it wants you to take it seriously. You kinda need more complex writing if you want to do that. It's not really an optional thing.

This movie's only manner of getting you invested is to throw stories about dead babies at you. So, yeah, if I'm in the mood for horrifically depressing stories about bad things happening, I think I will take the pretentious indie arthouse flick next time. At least if my only other choice is Snowpiercer.

But I digress. They then immediately find the place where the Big Bad is, like right after that, because the script was getting long and they couldn't think of any more dead baby stories to tell. We find out that the man behind the curtain in this is actually Ed Harris with some 5 o'clock shadow going on, so they probably just dragged him out of his house while he was still groggy drinking his morning coffee, and just threw him on the set.

He just goes on and on for like fifteen fucking minutes about how it's necessary to keep everyone in their place on the train and everyone has to stay in their place. He says they have staged revolutions before and Curtis's was just one more to keep people in their place, because chaos needs to exist for people to be normal! Well, after even a moment of thought, that makes no sense. Ask the people in Brussels how well that chaos is helping them live normally. I guess I get what they were trying to say, but it comes off a bit weird to say the least...

He then gives Curtis the choice to choose whether or not to keep the train running. I don't know why he does this, maybe just because he's bored for shits and giggles. He says it's Curtis's destiny now, and he can either stop the train or keep it going by feeding it children from the poor section – yes, THAT'S why they were taking the kids in the beginning of the movie. I guess the movie wasn't quite out of dead baby stories yet. You know, those are the only way to have a deep story! Dead kids!

Then the movie ends in a true fitting fashion for such a thought provoking picture: Curtis beats the shit out of Ed Harris with his bare hands like a caveman. Yes. That really drives the point home: Ed Harris is bad. I think we've learned a lesson here.

Would've been better with the Captain America shield in the shot. You really missed that opportunity, you dumb movie, you.

The visuals are pretty good as the train comes off its tracks. So there is that. They crash land in some snowy mountainside, and I'm guessing most of the people who survived are just mad Curtis couldn't wait until they passed by the sunny tropics to crash the train.

I know the feeling.

Honestly, this movie sucks. It's just not a good story. While I liked the action and some of the visuals were nice, the writing was just terrible. Everything was suffocatingly grim and over the top, and the message conveyed was delivered in a clunky, cloying and overly obvious manner that left very little to the imagination. I can see this film was trying to do something a little different and I can appreciate that, but it just doesn't have the depth of writing or script needed to be really smart. Instead, it just comes off as grandiloquent, self-serving, huffing and puffing crap stuck up its own ass with how smart it thinks it is.

I just think this is telling about what the action movie genre's big problems are. You get movies like this and John Wick touted as these really great, serious new action movies, and it's a blurry line, because neither one is really that bad – they both have their moments. But the writing for both is just so shallow. There are very few relatable characters, very little of anything compelling or intriguing about the way these themes pushed forward. Both movies are as deep as kids' wading pools in a shitty hotel, littered with used condoms and beer cans. But people accepted them just because they were better than Michael Bay Transformers crap and something alternative to Marvel. Even though they aren't really that great.

I'm NOT saying these movies have to divert from the action to show us long artsy sequences of the characters' relationships or something. By all means, give us some great, high energy action scenes! More really good ones would be a plus! But if you're making these fucking dark, brooding, serious films, that frankly do carry themselves with the pretense of a social message or trying to be a “thinking man's movie,” then I think I'm in the right to expect some kind of quality writing or storytelling. Or are writing and storytelling arbitrary tools of the upper echelon bourgeoise, only for pretentious dickwads who hate fun? I dunno. Maybe they are, then.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

By this point, you've read enough about, and hidden from enough spoilers about, the new Star Wars movie, that I barely need to make an introduction. For a bit of background shading on my own history of Star Wars - because, really, this is one of those cultural touchstones that everyone's personal experience colors a bit - I grew up around the time the prequels were coming out, and by extension, I fondly remember watching old VHS rental and borrowed copies of the originals on my parents' living room TV and just letting the day bleed away as I marathoned the whole trilogy. That was a part of my childhood, which I lovingly returned the favor to by never watching them again for about 15 years. Which, eh, sounds kind of cold when I put it that way.

But I did see the original trilogy again recently, and I liked it. They're simple, fun, fast, unpretentious adventure films. I didn't really expect much out of The Force Awakens except a safe nostalgia cash-in, but I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised. I actually really enjoyed this movie.

Not to say that was a great feat of storytelling from director J.J. Abrams. He obviously intended to recreate the exact feel, style, temperament and storytelling devices that the original Star Wars used. This was a labor of love for him, though like I've been saying for months: Abrams couldn't mess this up. We were bound to get something like this, something so imitative and throwback-y, because if Abrams messed with the formula too much, he would be the most hated man in the world.

What surprised me was how well done it was for all of that. This was a seriously enjoyable, fun ride that didn't feel at all like 2.5 hours had gone by when I finally walked out of the theater at the end credits. Far from just using the surface aesthetics and some similar locations and plot devices, Abrams kept to the tenets of what George Lucas and company did back in 1977 on a deeper level. He made a fast, fun adventure, sometimes light on explanation and which worked on its simple emotional pull and explosive action scenes. That could be done at any time, but the feel is genuinely the same, which I don't think was as easy. It's got the same rugged, sort of dirty feel to a lot of it, and the same sense of wonder, yearning and adventure. It would have been easy to throw together a plastic commercial vehicle, but you can tell Abrams loved Star Wars and wanted to make something good.

For the first time in decades, you like these new Star Wars characters. Daisy Ridley as desert scavenger chick Rey is feisty and charming, and John Boyega will win your heart instantly as the bumbling, sometimes cowardly, but ultimately good hearted Finn. Both of these characters have distinct personalities and you want to see them evolve and change, like the characters from the originals. Perhaps the old Star Wars films felt a bit dirtier and grittier, a bit less cutesy with the characters' dialogue, but it's a minor nitpick and I found myself really enjoying these characters anyway.

The way you're drawn into the characters through simple, quick exposition in the middle of great action scenes is so basic, but it works. The fact that this seems so fresh to me now says a lot for the quality of other recent action films. And as an added bonus, we finally have new, cool characters and we don't know what will happen to them later. That's sad that I'm that excited about that. But fucking seriously. With all the Marvel movies being based on existing comic book stories, and films like the Hunger Games trilogy being set in stone from the novels, it's refreshing to have a new set of characters to follow. This is especially better than any prequel about an existing pop culture character. Can you get any shittier and less interesting than that? I don't think so.

The fact that Rey and Finn spend so much time in hushed awe of Luke Skywalker, speaking of him like he's a myth, and Han Solo, is telling - this is the first Star Wars film in so many years, and by having dialogue like that, the movie is letting us know that they have the spirit of the originals in mind and are taking them seriously - reverently, even. The fact that the movie does feel like the old ones affirms that.

Kylo Ren's tantrums and slavish worship of his grandfather Darth Vader, as well, could be seen as a look at the dangers of idolatry. He's a total entitled little douche, and he desperately wants to be as cool as Darth Vader, to claim some throne ages old that he never got to see. Sorta like fans get angry at Star Wars and other science fiction worlds, as some sort of futile way to attempt a power grab in their own lives. It's all rather symbolic. All of this stuff is obviously looking too far into things, but it's fun to think about anyway.

It was so good to see Han Solo and Chewbacca again, too. And Leia. And C-3PO. Carrie Fisher isn't given many good lines or room to stretch her acting chops, but watching Harrison Ford play Han again is like magic, and Chewbacca is also extremely enjoyable to watch.

Plot-wise, it's pretty similar to the 1977 original - an evil empire is searching for a droid, which falls into the hand of an unsuspecting chosen one on a desert planet. The settings are obviously retro homages to the ones from the original, right down to the Tatooine-like desert planet and the mechanical hell of a new Death Star. If that bothers you, well, I guess it bothers you.  People will raise problems and nitpick this, for sure. The plot is pretty convenient in a lot of places just to move it along, the story isn't particularly fresh or deep, and there are some points where it glazes over things or blatantly panders to the audience who loved the original.

But honestly, none of that mattered to me when I was watching this. For one, pandering to fans who loved the original is basically what we wanted. Let's not kid ourselves. If this had been anything like the prequels, or changed in some shitty way, we would have hated it. And all the conveniences and parts where things are explained too fast or not well enough - all that stuff was basically how the originals handled it, so it's not like I can come down on this one too hard for it. The originals were never exactly masters of elucidation.

(I know some people wanted the Extended Universe, but ssshhhhhhh.)

And really, the point of the movie was to get you caught up in the sweeping adventure and thrill of it all. That's what a movie like this is supposed to do. It was masterfully crafted in that way. I was entertained, and I didn't think about any of the movie's flaws or minor problems until after I had left the theater. That's the difference between a good movie and a bad one - suspension of disbelief. In a bad movie, you're taken out of the story by the plotholes. In a good movie, you don't notice any flaws until afterwards when you're actually thinking about it and dissecting it.

Originality is overrated. People who want every idea to be new and different are crazy. There's something to be said when there IS a great, fresh new idea for a story that nobody else has told before. But we've been making movies for 100 years, and telling stories to each other long before that. If your whole opinion of a movie is based on how original it is, you're not going to be easily satisfied and I think it's just needless nitpicking. I think there is room for a good story even if it's been done before. Execution matters. Spirit and attitude matter. Good, well written characters matter. The message matters. There's so much more to a movie than whether or not it's been "done before."

The Force Awakens works because it's a heartfelt, exciting action movie. The characters are wonderful and the world is expansive and engaging. I loved it and I want to see more films in this world again, which is as ringing an endorsement as there's likely to be.

Now, time for some spoilers!

SPOILERS

• So Han Solo died, I guess. It was a good scene. His showdown with Kylo Ren is pretty chilling even though you know it won't end well - or, because of that, rather. There's so much being communicated in their eyes as they stare each other down, so much rage and love unsaid - it's a quite masterful display of acting, especially for a sci fi action movie like this. I hope future films have Ren expounding on this plot, maybe feeling a bit bad, or even just going even darker and telling us why he hated Han so much.
• At the same time though, Harrison Ford has wanted them to kill Han Solo off ever since Empire Strikes Back in the early 80s. I'm glad he finally got his wish. I can picture how that conversation went with the producers. "PLEASE, KILL ME!" he pleaded. And they just sighed, threw up their hands, and said okay, we'll do it.
• That whole Death Star/Starkiller or whatever it was called at the climax was kind of lame. How many times are they going to try to make a Death Star? At some point, it gets redundant and even crazy. "I'm sure it'll work THIS time, even though it has never worked before!"
• The plotline about this map that leads to Luke at the first Jedi temple better be explained more later. It's kind of weird to have a map leading there that apparently no one can understand just because one piece is missing. Are they all just new to this part of the galaxy?
• At the end, there is a moment when R2D2 finally wakes up and C3PO slaps him on the head. I wanted him to just go back to sleep. That woulda been funny.
• Not much explanation for who the First Order is, or what they're trying to do aside from Kylo Ren and this Snoke character wanting that lightsaber. There should have probably been a bit more explanation of those things, even just a few lines.
• The plot arc as a whole would have been better if it was more about Finn and Han and Chewie saving Rey from the First Order. They tried to shove in a lot of crap at the end about this giant Death Star thing blowing up a planet full of people we never see. It feels like they tried to do a bit much. A smaller scope would have served the movie better.
• How cool is Finn's character arc? A Stormtrooper who grows a conscience and deflects from the First Order? Bad fucking ass. Rey, too, is immensely captivating. She's such a strong, cool character that you forget she's basically a very young woman who still has these hang-ups and wants to get home and wait for whoever abandoned her on that shithole desert planet. That's a simple arc but a powerful one.
• It was bizarre how Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) survived. That ship crash landed on that planet and sank into the sand. Then later, you just see him flying around in another X-wing. It's like what happened is too horrible to describe and he never wants to speak of it again. It's OK man. We're here for you.
• I can't believe "TRAITOR!!!" has become a meme. That wasn't what I expected.
• The final shot was very good. Brief, but it would have ruined the whole thing if they changed even a second of it.

Splice (2009)

Science is pretty great, and has given us innumerable achievements. Plenty of great things were accomplished with science in the past and there are still new things happening every day. But in Splice, the only thing science is good for is, apparently, working out your dead mommy issues or just making your own horrific alien mutant to fuck in a shed somewhere. Both of those things really happen in the movie. I'd say sorry for the spoilers, but I think we deserve an apology for the movie as a whole.

Director: Vincenzo Natali

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley

IMDb

Co-written with Colin and Michelle.

This is a rotten film with almost nothing good about it. I can't really think of a better way to describe this other than just diving right in, so hey, let's do that.

The movie begins with a couple of scientists, Clive and Elsa, played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. They are trying to create some sort of artificial life by combining a bunch of animals together, or some shit like that. I don't even know – it's barely even glossed over, what they're actually trying to do. I guess they just wanted to see two weird looking, vaguely penis-shaped worms do photosynthesis together or something:

"All my life, I have waited to see this."

I guess they're working for this big business suit guy, who tells them their experiments have been canceled by the company they work for because they don't want them to keep doing their weird ass experiments. What? Why not? Why can't we make an abomination that could potentially be the worst thing ever thought up by mankind???

But that doesn't stop them from doing it anyway and hiding their experiment away in some basement in the building. At home, they talk about moving in together and maybe having a child, which Elsa doesn't want to do. Okay, now it makes sense – creating a horrific scientific mutation is okay, but moving in together? Woah there, bucko, don’t get any crazy ideas!

"Before you touch my boobs, we have to create at least 50% of a completely amoral scientific abomination that most would call the living embodiment of Satan. I have spoken!"

But it's okay. After all, we can see their progress. Look, they made a gross thing in a tank that almost eats Elsa's arm! That's cool, right?

"Nope, still don't regret this!"

So, they made a living punching bag?

Eventually though, they make a baby that I'm sure the characters in Eraserhead would be happy to see, as it makes the baby in that movie look adorable by comparison. There are a fuckload of scenes in this film of these two taking care of their pet monster, and early on it’s mostly just the creature destroying things and vomiting.

Hooray for that!

We see her start to grow up and become an even uglier being, which they name Dren. There are a bunch of scenes of them playing with her in the lab, which would be touching if she didn't look like a human ass with eyes and a mouth.

Somehow, the fact that they put it in a dress makes it worse...

At one point, Dren gets sick and they try to bathe her in cold water. Clive gets the idea to push her head completely underwater, presumably trying to end the horror he brought into the world. However, that's the exact point she evolves to grow gills and is able to survive, miraculously coming out okay! Elsa congratulates Clive for his brilliant idea, and he grins weakly while thinking inside that he should have just shot Dren in the head.

"Uh, yeah, of COURSE I was trying to save her, and definitely not trying to kill her... heh heh heh...."

There is a scene where they present their two weird looking worm things in front of a live audience. But what they didn’t know is that one of them changed gender into a male! Now that both of the weird worm things are male, they stab the fuck out of each other with needle-like appendages and then knock the cage over, showering the audience in mutated worm blood. I guess that was exactly what Clive and Elsa were going for, so good job, guys!

The day will live on in infamy as the day Walgreens heavily reconsidered who it let do their pharmaceutical experiments for them.

Also, how did they not notice the thing changed genders? They must be bad scientists.

I guess they were busy, though, as they have kept raising Dren as their own child. They even move her into the creepy old abandoned farm barn that Elsa’s family used to own. There are some scenes that could have been affecting here, as the two become even more like parents raising a child. But it’s too little, too late - we’re almost halfway through the movie at this point, and we don’t know anything more about these characters or their relationship than we did at the beginning.

What DO we have, then? Scenes of Dren eating rabbits in the woods?

...okay. I guess if that’s what you want to show, go right the fuck ahead. Who am I to stop you?

This is really where the movie falls apart. There’s sort of a subplot about how Elsa was mistreated as a child, and is now taking out her inner anger on Dren. But the movie never details or explains what happened to Elsa, and it never resolves whatever she was trying to work out. Like, there’s one scene where Dren found a cat outside and Elsa takes it away, fearing Dren will kill it. Before leaving, she says “that’s part of growing up, you can’t always get what you want.”

What am I supposed to gain from that? Clearly she’s treating Dren like her mother treated her, in some fashion. But it’s never elaborated on. There’s no exploration of her character. The movie clearly wants us to glean something, some kind of point about who she is as a person, but it doesn’t bother to actually do any work on finishing that plot. It's like if you were reading a book, and then halfway through, the author stops midsentence and leaves the last 200 pages totally blank. It doesn't help anyone.

What do we get instead? Dancing scenes!

...whimsical?

In another horribly written plot, now Clive is actually sympathetic towards Dren, even though before he was obviously repulsed at what they’d done and how Elsa was acting. But now, he seems cool with her. Probably because she now looks like a fucking exotic supermodel or something. What can I say? Sometimes ugly children grow up into beautiful adults I guess!

He also finds out that Elsa put her own DNA into Dren. Oh wow, will this be expanded on at all? No. No it will not. This is the last we hear about it, actually.

The next day, Elsa goes to see Dren and Dren attacks her and tries to escape, wanting to go outside. Elsa subdues her and then does the sensible thing - straps her to a table and cuts off her tail, all the while talking like a scientist into a recorder with a smug look on her face. I like all of my scientists to do cruel things to their test subjects just to get out their own insecurities! So this scene is cool with me.

Ahh yes, now I see that they are catering to the market for people who like scenes that you're not sure you even want to watch, but can't quite turn away from.

There was… absolutely no build-up to this insane torture scene, and it isn’t talked about in depth by any of the characters later, which is becoming a running theme in this film. After all, so what if every single thing we do in the plot has no consequence? Fuck it, right?

In an apparent contest to see who can be the biggest douchebag in the film, Clive then comes into the barn, un-shackles Dren and then the two begin having steamy human-on-scientific-mutation sex... no, I'm not trying to make a joke, and yes, it does really happen in the movie.

He helped create her in a lab, but acts like her father, and she has DNA from Elsa, who is his girlfriend, so I don’t even know what angle to call this ridiculous from!

Adrien Brody like you've never seen him before!

I’d just like to point out that Adrien Brody won an Oscar in a movie about the Holocaust. I guess he really just wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. But uh-oh, Elsa comes in and sees him right as he’s fucking Dren! That’s super-awkward!

"Nope, it's not cold out here guys, this is totally realistic!" He would be saying that, but you can't hear him over the sound of his chattering teeth and freezing bones crackling.

They both go back to their apartment and cry about how they both fucked up raising a genetic experiment gone wrong. Oh, boo hoo, you fucking drama queens. Everything that happened is your own fault, and clearly, given what we've seen, it's good that all you did was create a creature in a lab instead of, y'know, actually having a goddamned child. You clearly wouldn't be any good at that, so this was a useful test run of sorts.

"Shush, I'm still trying to think of a way I can justify this and blame you instead!"

I also love the part of this scene where Clive actually manages to turn the argument around on Elsa and make it seem like it’s her fault the whole thing is happening. I slept with a weird alien monstrosity in your family’s barn? Fuck that! IT’S YOUR FAULT! What guy hasn't had to use this kind of mental manipulation on a loved one after sleeping with a genetically engineered monster?

The movie loses all sense of where it’s going, though, and instead of any kind of character development, it just gives us goofy action scenes. They rush back to the farm, where Dren has died, so they go and bury her in the yard.

"Well, I think we both agree that this has been a most unorthodox time in our lives."
"Yup. Oh well, you want to go get Chinese food?"
"Sure."

Conveniently at the same time, the businessman guy shows up, demanding in a loud voice to see Dren. They’ve conveniently just finished burying her when he shows up, for an extra dose of hack writing. But I guess they didn’t check that well to make sure Dren was dead, as she comes back to life and kills that businessman guy. Whoops!

You know, the old "thought my child was dead" mistake. It happens!

Oh, and Dren is actually a male now, having changed like the two worm monsters did earlier. With his newfound male-ness, he does the worst thing possible and rapes Elsa in the woods.

Then he kills Clive. Boy, I wonder what Clive’s last thoughts were. I bet they were a real gem. “At least I died looking at the last thing I fucked”? “Boy, I sure am glad we created this thing in a lab now, because this is exactly what I wanted to accomplish with this experiment”? I guess we’ll never really know.

Man. Dren raped her mother and killed her father. It’s Shakespearean, if Shakespeare had ever written a play about a genetically engineered accident created in a lab... which I totally think he should have! There’s my contribution to the Shakeapearean criticism conversation!

HE IS PROUD OF ME!

In one final scene, we see that Elsa is pregnant now, presumably with Dren’s child.

Great! Now they can have genetically engineered mutant sequels. Just what nobody in the world ever wanted.

This movie is steaming manure. The premise could work, in a vintage Cronenberg kind of way, but they don't really do anything with it. They try to tell this whole story of these characters creating a surrogate child and then failing to raise it because of their own insecurities and flaws, but there's no exploration of either of their characters, even when the film looks like it's about to start giving you some. Like the hints at Elsa's backstory with her mother abusing her; where the fuck did that go? You can't just hint at that and then never develop it! Are you crazy? That's not being subtle or smart, that's just being lazy, as well as obnoxiously and willfully obtuse.

As the film goes on, the characters just become more and more unlikable as they make dumb decision after dumb decision. The movie is more interested in showing gratuitous gimmick scenes than actually telling a good story, and so the characters come off as obnoxiously moronic rather than realistic, and it is impossible to really get invested in them. There's no exploration of why Elsa suddenly starts torturing Dren, or why Clive has sex with her - it's all just random scenes thrown in there haphazardly with almost no context, and there is no bigger story to distract you from that. This is all you get, and it's no good.

There’s a really forced commentary on the state of science, too, delivered with all the subtlety of an atomic bomb blast. Like, yeah, THIS movie will make us all reconsider our ideas about where science is going! It warns us that if we don't check ourselves, random white people will create a monster and then have sex with it. Uh, astute observation?

The acting is fine, especially from Sarah Polley and Delphine Chanéac as Dren, but it can’t save the bad characters, idiotic story and lame writing. Characters make dumb choices for no reason other than to further the plot, plot lines are dropped unceremoniously with zero resolution... I'm starting to think the movie itself was created in a botched freak lab accident. Basically, it fucking sucks.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

Species II (1998)

The first Species movie was already about as bad as you could get short of putting in scatological porn, Tyler Durden style, in the split second takes between reels. I really had no idea what to expect for this second one. What more could they do? They already ticked off every box of terrible filmmaking. It's kind of the movie equivalent of winning every race and then having nowhere else to go. But Species never wins anything, except maybe most disappointed family members of everyone involved.

Director: Peter Medak

Starring: Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen

IMDb

Co-written with The Observer.

But really, even though they had nowhere else to go, they tried anyway. God bless these plucky underdogs, coming back for one more round!

We start this sequel off with a ten minute dirge of a bunch of boring astronauts hangin' out in space, colonizing Mars or something.

"Wait, what do you mean we have to live up here forever? NOOOOO, WHY DIDN'T I READ THE CONTRACT BEFORE AGREEING TO GO ALL THE WAY TO MARS?!?"

I'm just amazed this movie had the attention span to actually stick to something this long with no boobs or violence shown, which is kind of made moot by the fact that this opening sequence is incredibly fucking boring. Also, what, did they just invent super light-speed space travel in the mid-90s that allowed them to get to and from Mars that fast? I mean, I am an expert on this. I've seen Interstellar; I know how tough space travel can be!

The Mars landing really important to all the people in this bar. Verdict's still out on whether or not they're actually cheering for the sports game on the other TV though.

What they don't show you is that this one bar was the only place anyone on Earth was watching, or caring at all, about the Mars mission. So sad, the decline of interest in things that matter...

There's this weird primordial alien ooze that sneaks into the ship and starts slowly creeping toward them – I love how fucking long this thing takes to get to them, like there's any suspense over what could possibly happen in this horror movie with primordial alien ooze in it. Ooh, maybe they'll get away! Oh wait, no, shit, it got them. If you’ve never seen a science fiction movie before, like Alien perhaps, or The Thing, well, I’ll spell it out—the alien is inside them now.

The astronauts actually black out for a minute, but never seem to question that at all. They have this whole process when they get back of having this doctor check them out, but he pretty much just gives them a clean bill of health. Even though they know they blacked out, the doctor just hand-waves that boring-ass shit away and tells them they're fine.

No quarantines? Not even gonna bother testing them a bit to make sure? Man, either that alien is just really good at hiding traces of itself, or the doctor was just waiting for an excuse to raise up the curtains and show the dozens of horny astronaut fangirls waiting for all of them, wanting to live vicariously because no doctor ever gets an entourage like that.

"I'll just pretend all of you are here to see me, like every other time a hot woman enters my office. Man my life is sad!" Also, I sure hope some of those chicks are lesbians and there to see the one lady astronaut. Otherwise that's massively unfair.

Either way, the “doctor” is so bad at his job, he was probably just some whackjob pervert off the streets and the real doctor is probably dead in the alley behind the building. Somebody go check!

Then we see a science lab where experiments are performed on a clone of the alien Sil from the last movie, though this time her name is Eve. I'm almost positive this had to be someone's fetish. I mean, look at this shit:

I wonder how that conversation went in the planning stages for this experiment...

“Hey, can we do experiments where we shower acid gas on her and see if the boils heal afterward?”

“Sure, why the fuck not?”

“Oh, and one other thing...”

“Yes?”

“Can we also have her naked and strapped into a chair with leather bondage stuff?”

“Why would that be important? Isn't she pretty much already under our control and won't escape or anything? Couldn't we just do this to one part of like, her hand or something? Does she have to be naked?”

“Woah, woah, woah! Don't question me!”

At this banquet thing for the astronauts as they come back, the one guy goes upstairs to find two women waiting to have sex with him. He complies, but not really in the way you usually do things when you have two women who want to have sex with you – he just fucks them one at a time. Which seems kinda like a waste of potential, you ask me, but then again, I'm not an alien possessing an extremely attractive man. So really what do I know?

But it does allow them to show off some grisly pregnancy type gore when his alien STD infects them...

This just goes back to what I was saying about that doctor – he couldn't tell there was something wrong with those astronauts? Really? It's one thing to make a small mistake at your job, and another thing entirely to make a mistake that results in people exploding from the inside out. Pretty sure something about that was detectable, guys!

And, hey, the way the woman astronaut dies while having sex is kind of like what I imagine Phil Robertson thinks happens every time people fuck.

For some reason, the black guy astronaut doesn't have the alien inside him, which they find out after they send half a dozen secret service guys to ambush him having sex with this woman on a boat.

"We just like to watch random people fuck! It's not weird!" 

How did they not notice the secret service guys standing there even while they were undressing and talking to each other? Are they deaf and dumb, or do the secret service guys just know how to tip-toe around really well? Eh, probably a bit of both.

We get several scenes in between these ones of Eve being tested in that research facility. My favorite scene is when she's just sitting there watching a baseball game on TV and she starts to get psychic visions or something from the deaths the other aliens are causing, and starts convulsing like she's overdosing on crack cocaine. This one woman scientist goes “I didn't know she liked baseball that much!”

That's the face of someone who really likes baseball.

Yes – you're clearly scientist of the year. I also love the completely random experimental priority these scientists have. One day, they're stripping her naked and showering her in acid. The next day, just hook wires to her head and let her watch TV. Makes sense to me!

I guess the plot is that the alien inside that guy wants to fuck as many women as possible, which immediately makes a child alien pop out of them. He’s trying to, I don’t know, make an army or something. I can’t even imagine the money he has to spend on diapers for all these kids though.

"Aw man, I woke up next to an eviscerated woman and then another 10-year-old boy popped up. What guy can't relate to this problem?"

The situation gets so bad that they have to bring in the only true expert, Michael Madsen. He spends his time defusing hostage situations now, or something like that, because Michael Madsen is the guy I'd go to for that.

Everyone else: "Wait, who is this asshole again?"

I especially love the way this government military guy gets him to come join the mission – he grabs Madsen's car keys and refuses to give them back. Because if you still had any doubts that this movie was stuck in 4th grade, well, I think they're quelled now! The idea of a high ranking military official pulling that stunt, like something your annoying older brother would try when you were kids, is just incomprehensibly hilarious to me.

"Dammit, I didn't really want to be in this movie."
"I know, but we all gotta make sacrifices in this economy."

He gets paired up with that black astronaut, because Lethal Weapon, and because I guess going up to space means the government can force you to participate in citizen manhunts for dangerous aliens. Why don't they have a team of professional military guys handle this? Oh right, because it's a dumb action movie, so we need to throw in a bunch of loose cannons.

I guess you could make the argument that these people know the alien because Madsen and the lab scientist lady fought her in the first movie. But that level of knowledge doesn't get them far, because even though they have experience and know what they're doing, the Big Bad Military Guy shoots everything they say down, because RRRARRRRR MILITARY! That's good storytelling!

"Look for me next month on Ancient Aliens! Isn't my crazy eye so cool?"

They hook up Eve to this machine that will allow her to see through the eyes of the other alien, but the downside is, it also makes her hormones and anger through the roof – why? Fuck it, we just need a way to move this ridiculous story forward! Don't ask questions. It's just a very weirdly specifically made machine with side effects that somehow align directly with the way this story was supposed to go.

"This was really just another excuse to have a really hot chick tied to a table!"

Madsen and the black guy chase the alien down to a grocery store, where he has kidnapped some woman to go rape inside of a stereotypical big black van, which I'm sure wasn't suspicious to anyone at all – and, apparently, despite my sarcasm, it wasn't. Nobody noticed it.

"Eh, we see that every day in redneck-ass Ohio."

Madsen and the other guy, clearly sensing the urgency of the situation, run after them like fat worn-out mall cops after too many donuts – yeah, guys, no pressure to actually catch them. They find a black van and bust out the window and point their guns inside, only to discover it's actually some completely random couple that decided to have sex in a creepy black van in the middle of the day in a grocery store parking lot. You know, like you do. What a coincidence!

"We're really taking this seriously! Honestly!"

"It's the danger that really turns us on. We do this in different parking lots every weekend. Think of it as the Mile High Club for poor people."

But Jesus, what do the Walmarts in this world look like if the random grocery store parking lots are prime locations for mid-day fucking in vans? They must be even more rampant with vans with people fucking inside. Let's take a look, shall we?

Yup, just what I thought. Gross.

The alien escapes, and Madsen reacts with all the candor and personal attachment of a guy who's had, really, a pretty good day at work – he looks fairly satisfied actually.

"All in a day's good work. Now that we're done handling important things, we can focus on the other identical black van that somehow ended up in the exact same parking lot!"

The alien makes his way back to the lab and stares at Eve through the glass, which I guess is supposed to signify that they've “found” each other – I suppose what they have in common is the fact that they were both directed to act like coma patients on Xanax in this movie. Which is really the only kind of bond, if you think about it.

"Neither of us have any character...I'M HORNY FOR YOU NOW!"

Eve breaks out, and of course despite having God knows how many military guys around with guns, she escapes relatively easily. Then it's up to Madsen and his motley crew to go hunt her down in the only style they know how – half-jogging like he forgot his kid's toy in the car at Golden Corral on a Sunday afternoon. Again, no need to hurry! Not like anything important is going on.

In the middle of all of this nonsense, the alien-astronaut-guy's father learns about the murders his son has committed, in the same room we've seen him in all throughout this movie – because I guess he never leaves.

"These are the crimes your son committed."

"Meh, I've done way worse in my time!"

Then the father goes and finds the son at the cabin where he's been keeping all his alien-spawn children that do nothing in this movie. He and his son hug and then the father dies, I guess, I dunno. This would have been a great dramatic scene in a movie without dumb alien sex spawn and goofy Michael Madsen moments, and overall a movie that wasn't this one.

Madsen and the gang get to the cabin too and have a showdown, which mostly involves a lot more weird alien sex and Predator rip offs.

This is what Predators jerk off to at age 13 - and yes, I did just ruin that franchise for you.

After it's all over and our main characters have very regrettably survived, the black guy gets put in an ambulance with this hot black woman, and they immediately get together without any conversation or doubt, because black people are automatically attracted to one another no matter what – it doesn't even matter what her life dreams, goals or aspirations are and his tastes and preferences don't mean jack shit. They have the same skin color, so they're perfect. Racism is fun.

Hooray for shallow attraction based on physical attributes! WOOHOO!

Well, that was Species 2. It was pretty stupid, nonsensical and plotless, but what did you really expect? I set my standards low for this and really, it wasn't any worse than the first one. Neither of these movies were good! If you want some pretty hilarious, unrepentant bullshit, this should suffice...I mean, it's so dumb it's honestly hard to hate. This movie knows it's awful, and for that, I don't really see a point in wasting my hatred on it. So really, if you just need to laugh...there are a lot better places you could get that, but I'll be honest - Species II isn't the worst place you could turn.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.