REVUE // SCI-FI DOUBLE FEATURE
REVUE // FRACKING
Alien / Aliens
Promised Land
Chills! Thrills! Xenomorphs!
Sun, Jan 6 (2 pm) Metro Cinema at the Garneau Alien Directed by Ridley Scott Originally released: 1979 Aliens Directed by James Cameron Originally released: 1986
A
cursory glance at the personnel involved in Alien serves to remind us just how remarkable this movie—at once science fiction, body horror, slasher flick and chamber drama—truly was. The cast included John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto and Ian Holm, while the director came fresh from his superb debut The Duelists ('77), and would thereafter make a little futuristic detective yarn called Blade Runner ('82). His name was Ridley Scott, and while time hasn't proved him the world's deepest director, the guy had style to spare and a cunning, merciless sense of economy. (For those with a weak stomach for busting stomachs, Alien is simply merciless, period.) The strength of the ensemble cast is emphasized early on, their first scenes being group ones, relaxed portraits of seemingly regular folks amiably bitching about their jobs. The film's hero only establishes
Trust in me, Matt Damon, dear small town folk. Trust only in me
herself roughly halfway through. We only really start to notice—if not entirely trust—Ripley (a long, tall and very cool Sigourney Weaver) after we see just how badly things go with the unidentified creature she alone insisted not be let aboard the spacecraft, the first major spasm of mayhem occurring in that still traumatizing "birth" scene where the only overtly sympathetic character dies writhing in his own blood. A showdown of intergalactic Darwinism locks the movie between its teeth, playing out on a brilliantly claustrophobic set from one of the great periods in sci-fi design, very tactile and unruly, with gear made of industrial strength material, stuff with actual weight, stuff you want to wrap your knuckles on. For so many reasons there is in Alien a sense of the real that's absent from virtually all contemporary digital effects-laden films of its ilk. In what seems to be turning into an annual event, Metro Cinema is offering a holiday screening of Alien in a double feature with Aliens. There are camps that claim the sequel superior, yet to my eye the relationship between the two is nearly identical to that between The Terminator ('84) and Terminator 2 ('91), which were both directed, like Aliens, by James Cameron. Aliens indeed establishes
its themes of ruthless maternal instincts more emphatically, and develops Ripley, awakened after a 57-year sleep to help fight an entire colony of aliens, into a fully fleshed out character. Yet after Scott's style and economy we go straight to Cameron's workmanlike, more genre-bound flabbiness—like T2, another two-anda-half-hour mega-budgeted movie full of over-cooked sequences and abundant redundancies. (Something about the lower stakes of the original Terminator production lent that movie a charm that Cameron's never been able to recapture.) The climactic scene where Ripley escapes from the queen mother's lair is masterfully handled—too bad we're then forced to sit through a "surprise" second ending that's not half as thrilling and just takes forever to wind down. There are concessions, like a sinister Paul Reiser as the corporate weasel, Bill Paxton, fresh from playing Chet in Weird Science ('85) and reveling in portraying a babbling human Nerf ball, and Lance Henriksen, proving robot scientists can actually be nice guys. For better or for worse, there's more of everything in Aliens, though I'd pick its predecessor for the stronger, meaner chills and thrills any day of the week. JOSEF BRAUN
// JOSEF@VUEWEEKLY.COM
Opens Friday Directed by Gus Van Sant
E
nvironmentalist ideals and capital greed collide in Gus Van Sant's Promised Land, as big-city salespeople Steve Butler (Matt Damon) and Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand) arrive in a small rural town, quickly setting to work promising lucrative deals to the townspeople in exchange for drilling rights on their land. Eager for any monetary gain to soothe the impact of steady economic decline, many residents are quick to sign the contracts without being provided all of the facts, the implications of this decision glossed over by Butler and Thomason with the promise of a profitable future. At the film's opening, Damon comes across as a fast-talking, charismatic businessman chasing a hefty paycheque, as he attempts to pay off the mayor to allow the deal to pass. However, the pair's progress is halted following a town meeting when a high school science teacher and retired Boeing engineer Frank (Hal Holbrook) pipes up regarding his disdain for fracking and the potentially dire consequences it has on the town's land. Further complicating matters is the arrival of a pesky and all-too-chipper environmentalist Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), bringing with him heartstring-tugging stories of farms, cattle and livelihoods lost at the hands of fracking companies he feels preys on blue collar communities.
VUEWEEKLY JANUARY 3 – JANUARY 9, 2013
Once Promised Land's conflict gets established, the steady pace of the first half feels as though it stagnates as Butler and Thomason try to sort out their next move. Added to the mix is a gratuitous and lackluster love interest between Butler and an elementary school teacher, Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt). The pair's chemistry is tedious and does little to advance the plot aside from Butler trying to convince Alice that he's really not the bad guy, while Noble attempts to swoop in and steal her away—although Butler doesn't put up much of a fight on that front. It's entertaining to watch Butler and Thomason flounder as they go headto-head against Noble, with small amounts of humour injected into a dialogue and ideological heavy script, particularly when it comes to the beatup old truck they cruise around in that refuses to start each morning, coupled with the swift banter exchanged between the colleagues. Despite his lack of romantic flair with DeWitt, Damon—who assisted in writing the script along with Krasinski and Dave Eggers—does a noteworthy job at providing a friendly face to a character who could have easily become a clichéd money-hungry villain. His moral conscience begins to get the better of him, boiling down to a predictable change in heart, complete with a heartfelt speech and numerous emotional close ups to drive the point home. MEAGHAN BAXTER
// MEAGHAN@VUEWEEKLY.COM
FILM 9