Alien: Covenant is the eighth movie in the 38-year-old sci-fi horror Alien franchise. Following 2012’s Prometheus, the financially successful but fan-loathed prequel, Covenant tries to walk a fine line: The film throws enough red meat to ravenous Alien fanboys with stomach-bursting, face-sucking, don’t-go-in-the-basement grotesquery to get away with continuing Prometheus’ much-maligned, but wildly ambitious origin…
Bryan Singer directed the first two movies based on Marvel Comics’ mutant superhero team the X-Men. Brett Ratner directed the third film, The Last Stand, which is loathed by fans and critics alike. The franchise was then rebooted with Matthew Vaughn’s First Class, and Bryan Singer returned for the second film in this cycle, Days…
dvd of the week Michael Fassbender was nominated for an Oscar playing Apple founder Steve Jobs, who is on screen at virtually every moment in the film written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle. Few of his dialogue partners – played by Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels, among others – are…
As I’ve written before, no one should ever expect historical accuracy from a feature film that is “based on a true story.” I can’t fault the total fantasy of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for Steve Jobs, the new biopic about the co-founder of Apple who is constantly referred to as a genius, a visionary and an…
dvd of the week In Bryan Singer’s latest X-Men movie, his third and the franchise’s seventh since 2000, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to 1973, when shape-shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is going to kill Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the inventor of mutant-hunting robots called the Sentinels. The film includes every single X-Men…
When Jon Burroughs (Domhnall Gleeson) first sees Frank (Michael Fassbender), the lead singer of a ragtag little rock band for which he is randomly hired to play keyboards, his reaction is probably that of most of the audience watching the film Frank: What the hell? Here is a man with a giant, cartoonish fake head…
The X-Men storyline called Days of Future Past appeared in issues 141 and 142 of The Uncanny X-Men in January and February, 1980. I first read it in mid-1980s when I was 12 or so and had just discovered the comic about outcast mutant superheroes. The story has haunted me ever since. It is set…
dvd of the week Steve McQueen’s remarkable 12 Years a Slave is based on the 1855 autobiography of Solomon Northup, played in the film by the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Solomon was born free and educated in upstate New York, and while his wife and children are away, he is kidnapped and sold into…
I think it is possible to write a review of 12 Years a Slave and focus solely on its merits as a film, whether it will win Oscars, and how it could be already a classic. I think that would easily elide what the film and what films like it do to and do for…
Oblivion The screening at which I saw Oblivion was, as many advanced screenings are, hosted by a local radio station that had given away passes to contest winners. Usually, someone low on the totem pole at the station gives away T-shirts and tries to get the crowd excited that they got to see a movie…
