Alien: Covenant (**1/2)

What happened to the simple and effective horror movies like the original ALIEN from 1979? That is nearly a perfect film which has a simple story that engages its audience like no other. What about it's sequel, ALIENS, an action tour-de-force that begins with the slightest sense of dread and builds and builds with each new scene? "Covenant" isn't a remarkably bad movie if you look at it on its own merits, but it's nothing particularly good either. If the first two Alien movies were a bacon cheeseburger, then Covenant is a half-empty bottle of ketchup.

The movie serves as a direct follow up to Ridley Scott's "Prometheus", this time following a colonizing freighter as it journeys through space in search of a habitable planet called Origae 6. An android, Walter (Michael Fassbender), remains vigilant as he monitors the ship and its upkeep, but an unexpected accident forces him to wake up the small crew in order to mend damages and whatnot. Suddenly, they intercept a weak radio signal from a nearby planet (also inhabitable) that indicates human life. Logically, the ship carrying 2,000 souls makes an abrupt course change and decides that this new mysterious planet is a better option for colonization. In a mission that is 10 years long and with a ship carrying so many people and assets, the rationale is remarkably poor.

Of course they arrive and begin to explore the planet. It's lush, green, but under a constant ionic cloud that keeps the planet dark and prevents communication with the mothership waiting in orbit. From space it looks like a raging hurricane, but on land it's merely a slight cloud coverage. Nonetheless, those on the ground encounter a communications blackout. Convenient. As they journey through the forests to find the source of the signal, they notice that there doesn't seem to be any life whatsoever. No birds, no animals, no nothing. The group breaks up, can you believe it? One stays behind to collect samples from a nearby slop of mud, and the rest journey on to discover an abandoned spaceship and a host of spores, eggs, and dead bodies. Oh my!

The film is remarkably photographed, and I mean that in the best way. It's a gorgeously shot and paints a picture of a planet just off-center of ordinary. Likewise, there are some okay effects to behold, most remarkably a scene in which Walter meets David, the android from the previous film, and the two share a flute and play music. Obviously both are played by Michael Fassbender, but the way the camera moves back and forth and the two interact with each other, it's a remarkable moment of CGI that we barely even notice.

As for the movie itself, it's burdened with plot and backstory that expects us to use logical thinking to piece things together when all we want are some gooey, bloody monster action. In fact, the 2-hour film barely devotes the last 45 minutes to actual sightings of the actual alien, something the trailer made is so excited to finally see. the crew discovers an ancient alien race that has all but died on the planet, and they meet the android, David, who becomes increasingly unhinged in his discussions about alien life and his quest for perfection. When Fassbender isn't on screen (the actor being one of the film's big highlights) we face characters making dumb decisions, accidentally dying, or crying about what a mess they have found themselves in.

The first "Alien" kept it simple: run from the alien. It tapped into basic human fears of dark places and sounds in the night. I'm not sure what category "Covenant" falls into, because it's surely not horrific and it's far from being a thought-provoking piece of science fiction. I admired the film's first half, especially the opening scene in which David and his creator (Guy Pearce) discuss a search for God and life's ultimate meaning. It's good writing, and it posed a question I was looking forward to being analyzed in the rest of the film. Not the case. Here is a movie burdened down by characters with nothing to do, sets with nothing to see, and drama without any real stakes. It's all the more disappointing because the first hour is a perfectly suspenseful bit of dread and growing terror. Too bad that when it comes to a conclusion, we realize it wasn't so scary after all.

A Ghost Story (****)

A GHOST STORY closed out the final night of the Chicago Critic's Film Festival at my local Music Box Theater. I went in with no knowledge of the story, no images in my mind besides the one posted here. Was it a comedy? A horror movie? A man returns to haunt his wife after a tragic death, donning nothing more than the white sheet he was covered in at the morgue. As glacial as the movie is paced and as cryptic as large sections might seem, this was a movie that won be over despite its hero having no dialogue nor face with which to express emotions.

David Lowery is the mastermind behind this nearly genreless film, writing and directing a movie that is at times akin to something more experimental. The story is simple enough: Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara (curiously titled "C" and "M" in the credits, respectively) live in a small bungalow in the rural plains of Nowhere, USA. Despite plans to relocate to a bigger house, C's life is suddenly cut short offscreen in a violent car crash just outside his driveway. M goes to identify his body at the morgue, and no sooner does she leave than the body of C rises and slowly marches back home, invisible to everyone else, assuming the position of spirit or one who haunts those who survived him. He stands and watches M deal with the loss. He sees her friends come and go. He can do nothing but watch, listen, observe... Time is fleeting, and years pass by as though C is simply passing from room to room. When M moves out, C cannot. He watches at dwellers come and go, the house is destroyed, and the city slowly expands to replace a once country home with a towering skyscraper.

Despite the film's marketing and trailers, there's no way to advertise for a film so quiet, so internal. This is in many ways a story of a man who loves a woman even past the grave and yet it isn't a movie that lends itself to plot. The camera keeps rolling through long, motionless takes that make us question the very reasoning of it. In the film's most memorable scene, Rooney Mara eats nearly a whole pie on her kitchen floor in real time. Bite. By. Bite. I might question a director that makes such blatantly anticlimactic choices, but by the time the movie ended, it worked.

There are a couple scenes that attempt to dig out a deeper meaning, scenes that effectively blanched my ever-growing intrigue. The one that sticks in my mind shows a house party many years after C has died. He observes a drunk partygoer making existential remarks about the ultimate fate of humanity. The minutes-long monologue seems to work against the very grain of the script. We know C is a ghost, and we know why ghosts remain on earth. To waste valuable film time to simply address this very issue is counter-productive. It's repetitive. I'd much prefer the painfully slow shot of a M eating a pie.

As time progresses, so does C find he can maneuver back and forth through the eras. He even journeys back in time to find a pioneer family seemingly plotting out the land in order to build a cabin for themselves. C watches a young girl draw something, hide it under a rock, and then abandon it. It conjures up the memory of M leaving a note hidden behind the wall just before moving away. We want to know what is written here, what special message these two girls found so pertinent to have them remain hidden. In both cases, we will never know.

I found myself pondering the movie after it finished, and I will admit that I found the movie much more enjoyable as a whole than as separate parts. Each scene, whether brief or extended, builds up another block that ultimately leaves us with a surprisingly emotional climax in which a white sheet simply falls to the ground and the credits begin to roll. It makes sense if you have paid attention, and packs a punch in a way I wasn't expecting. Many movies have toyed around with the idea of life after death. Never before (I think) has it been so brilliantly analyzed by solely utilizing the way life continues on in death's absence. C ultimately discovers that despite how early his life was cut off, it wasn't all for nothing.

My Entire High School Is Sinking Into the Sea (***)

The high school comedy has become a staple genre for decades. From John Hughes and his breakfast club  to last year's amazing The Edge of Seventeen, there seem to be endless ways to tell a story of kids just going about the most important part of their lives: school.

"My Entire High School" is the feature debut of Dash Shaw, an animator who paints the film like it's a canvas - literally. He takes on a simple story: that of a seaside high school and the newspaper team facing bitter rivalry and internal competition. The hero, Dash, has a long-time professional relationship with his fellow classmate Assaf, but when Assaf is reassigned to cover a story of a rooftop auditorium, so launches an anger that ultimately leads Dash to a wild discovery: that the building's safety codes were forged and that even the slightest earthquake could break the cliffside building off into the ocean.

Well, there's an earthquake, and as predicted, the school becomes a floating island that is beginning a slow descent to the ocean floor. Floor by floor the saltwater rises, and students work their way up floor by floor in an attempt to meet a rescue team at the roof. Dash, Assaf, and their editor Verti work their way through the crumbling school, gathering together a crack team of misfits on a journey to find air in the ever-sinking school. They even join forces with the lunch lady, a brute woman who can lift 10 students at a time on her back and dreamed of becoming a master chef.

As you can see from the picture, the animation of the film is the main takeaway to note. Scenes are painted with crude black outlines, and the jerky appearance of characters and the amateur look of the film is quite nearly an offense to our senses. In closeups, you can quite literally see the brushstrokes of paint in the face. In wide shots, characters have the rendering of a kindergartener's free hand. It is clear that the director deliberately sought a disorientating style, but I will be first to admit that while the colors are vibrant and the scenes are as though dreamlike, it's hard to follow a plot when there is simply no rhyme or reason to what we are witnessing. I learned that the director used an animation feature in Photoshop to craft these scenes. There's an amateur look that is unlike anything you have likely seen in an animated movie.

The story is filled with a dry comedy that might find kinship with Wes Anderson, and even the way we pan over maps of the school and symmetrical framing might indicate that Anderson is more than a muse for the inspiration. There's violence that is never meant to be shocking (even though the popular girl is viciously torn apart by sharks near the student lounge and the principal falls to his death in a fiery plummet) and absurdity that shouldn't be overthought. The pitfalls I encountered with such a bizarre looking film were coupled with yet a greater sense of silliness. Perhaps the story is stretched too thin (and a small scene in which we see the Seniors have enforced martial law on the top floor is much too short), perhaps the quality doesn't muster enough for a 70-minute movie. Regardless, I laughed my way along and came out on the other side amused.

Snatched (1/2)

There may have been one or two moments that made me laugh in "Snatched" but make no mistake, this is far from a comedy. This is far from entertainment. This is far from many things. I'm not really sure how to classify it, but whatever category it falls in I think that it surely ranks among the best of them.... Or the worst.

SNATCHED follows a mother and daughter vacationing in Ecuador who are inexplicably kidnapped and brought to Colombia where they are held prisoners for no apparent reason. A local man later tells them that there is a big market in the underground sex trade in these parts, but that they needn't worry because they're so old, so ugly, so unsightly. Ha. The two women are played by Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer, two people that (debatably) have done better work in the past, and yet come together here as a comic duo that should defer comedians from making films for several years to come.

The film is remarkably bad. There isn't a shred of story that holds our attention or a memorable scene that sticks in my mind. Well, there is one: a bizarre scene in which Schumer comes down with a tapeworm and a local doctor lures it out of her throat by dangling raw meat in front of her mouth. A rope-like parasite squirms out of her mouth, and the scene divulges into a slap-fest that is quickly forgotten about seconds later. I won't say that this moment was the straw that broke the camel's back but I suspect the camel was long dead before they even started shooting the movie. Forget the simple improbabilities and inaccuracies here, what the screenwriter demonstrates is a basic lack of sanity.

Schumer's brother (played by Ike Barinholtz) is a shut-in who lives with his mother (Hawn) and calls the FBI in order to try and save his kidnapped family after receiving a telephone call about a required ransom. There are countless, pandering scenes of Barinholtz speaking to a black agent over the phone, over and over, scene after scene, sinking to the high-class of racial jokes and curse words. By the end of the film, the agent's only dialogue is "shut the fuck up" to this socially-awkward guy. We can't really blame him, because the brother calls his mom "ma-MA" over and over like a broken record and was designed head to toe to be that annoying character that's in the movie just to frustrate the audience.

Speaking of annoying characters, how could I forget a surprise appearance by Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack of all people, two vacationers who befriend Hawn and Schumer and come to their rescue in the film's climax. Cusack has designed for herself a character that will stand the test of time as one of the most baffling on-screen performances ever concocted: a former military spy who removed her tongue in order to prevent treason should she be captured by the enemy. Yup, there is a character in "Snatched" who is missing a tongue, the wide-eyed and dopey Joan Cusack. Sykes saves the day by delivering one of the film's funniest lines in which she claims that one out of 4 tourists is kidnapped. Looking around, she counts off herself, Hawn, and Schumer. "See, somebody's missing." Too bad that moment was also the funniest part of the trailer as well.

If you insist on going to see this over Mother's Day weekend with some friends or family (might I recommend instead a nice brunch, a walk, a good book, a nap... There are so many better ways to spend an hour and a half) then heed my warning and buy your tickets separately. Go dutch. Don't give someone the responsibility of having paid for two tickets to a movie that they will regret having even paid once to see. Likewise if you check your bank statement later and realize that you paid upwards of $30 to see "Snatched" for you and your mom, you will invariably suffer feelings of depression and anger for weeks to come. With all due respect, isn't life more precious than that?

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (***)

2017 may prove to be Marvel's most fruitful year to date. In the past 4 months they have already released their best film to date (Logan) and they still are slated for 2 more releases before New Years. Guardians falls in line as mere filling, a movie that fails to match the energy of the original nor contribute anything else to the overly-saturated genre. The original charm was a comedic meshing of 4 vastly different characters. Here, they use the same approach, and in the end, who really cares anymore?

The film opens with the gang battling a slug alien while Baby Groot (the marketing team's dream) dances around to "Mr Blue Sky." What a blast. The set up comes shortly after when we learn that the aliens who hired the Guardians to kill this monster (a tall, slender race of gold men and women) want revenge on the raccoon named Rocket (Bradley Cooper) who stole some valuable batteries from their inventory. This sets into motion a chase that leaves them stranded on a deserted planet with a broken ship and little hope of surrender.

Never fear! As you may have seen, the guys have been tracked by Ego, a god-like man played by Kurt Russell who we learn is Peter Quill's (aka Star-Lord aka Chris Pratt) dad. We learn the history of Quill's life on earth, how his mother and father met, and so on and so forth. Ego takes them to a beautiful planet that seems partially inspired by Heaven in "What Dreams May Come" and a father-son bonding experience begins.

Meanwhile, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is being hunted by her ruthless sister, Nebula (Karen Gillian) who seeks revenge for a childhood of abuse and torment. Als,, Rocket and Baby Groot are kidnapped by a crock of space pirates who wish to earn a bounty from those gold aliens earlier mentioned. There's a lot happening at any given moment in this film, and I have to admit that none of the storylines were particularly invigorating.

The appeal of the original film was it's originality, it's spontaneity. Casting Chris Pratt (the overweight star of Parks & Recreation) at the time proved to be a brilliant move, and his likability coupled with the over-the-top sights of a talking tree and raccoon set it apart as one of Marvel's riskiest (and most endearing) films. The sequel, while at times funny ("I'm Mary Poppins, y'all" is without a doubt the funniest one-liner) fails to match the energy of the original. Also, characters like Drax (Dave Bautista) laugh and laugh throughout the film, oftentimes unprovoked, oftentimes very loudly. It's as though filmmakers believed that in order to make a comedy, the characters must laugh at least once per scene. I am here to attest to the fact that this rule is far from true.

In the end, Guardians is still likable, and I would assume that fans of the comics may find a better appreciation in the material than a lay-person like myself does (these 'after-credits' scenes are practically cryptic to me). In comparing the first to the second (which isn't always a fare activity - we all know that it's a rare sequel to surpass the original) there isn't a contest. Between going to the movies and not going to the movies, this movie still (barely) makes it worth the trip.