Today's News: lots o' trailers mostly

The latest crop of news of the past few days consists of mostly trailer material:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156970/nieuwe_trailer_serie_gotham

Seems somebody was inspired by Nolan's seminal Dark Knight trilogy. The whole look of this show, based on the trailers so far, screams Nolan in its display of realistic psychopaths and criminals and dark steel and glass canyons. No trace of the more outlandish, fantastic elements of Batman lore. Considering it's an origin show that can still come of course. You've got to show the everyday people behind these heroes and demons before going overboard with any otherwordly shenanigans they might offer. So for the time being, the villains to be set up will dabble in the more commonplace criminal enterprises instead of revealing their odd personality quirks out loud. I doubt we'll be seeing Poison Ivy controlling plant life with pheromones anytime soon, which is probably for the better. It seems that at the heart of the story remains young Bruce Wayne's loss of his parents and honest cop Inspector Gordon's subsequent quest to apprehend their killer, which forms a personal bond between the two of them based around their need for justice. That's as Batman as they come without introducing the alter ego of the Caped Crusader. It's also a basic element of the Batman make-up that the Dark Knight movies kinda raced through, which does make the show stand out more on its own. Question is, will Gordon catch the murderer, or will he fail at that, which makes the urgency for young Bruce feel all the more pressing? And how do all these token Batman villains, like Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler fit into the grand scheme of things? Despite the copycat style, still a lot to look forward to.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156979/eerste_trailer_outcast

Another medieval Sword & Sorcery flick starring Nicolas Cage as a wethered ex-crusader? Been there, done that, didn't work out so great before. It seems Outcast's plot just trades in the creepy witches and demons from Season of the Witch for angry Chinese overlords and royal family squabbles. And instead of Ron 'Hellboy' Perlman for a sidekick, we get Hayden 'whiny Anakin' Christensen. Also not much of an improvement. Cage's fondness of silly wigs remains, so at least there's some consistency to his career. The entire thing seems like a B-movie with a minute plot based around a string of action scenes, which is to be expected from a movie directed by a first-time director who usually deals with coordinating stunts only; though he has an impressive resumé in that department, no doubt there. Chances are that means the action scenes will be executed rather adequately, which seems like the least we should hope for in this film's case.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156980/eerste_teaser_woman_in_black_2_

The popular trend of giving succesful horror films a sequel of sorts that doesn't feature any of the characters from the previous installment continues, whether we like it or not. The Woman in Black was a very effective chiller, but its ending seemed fairly definitive, even though it was established that exorcising the vengeful spirit from the title didn't work. That's enough for any studio hungry to cash in on decent box office results (can't imagine they were stellar or anything), so the murderous ghost will soon be at it again. Hammer Studios has a history of fondly remembered horror movies and their many follow-ups, and in a way it's reassuring to know the recently revamped horror specialist studio isn't afraid to use its tactics of old. Do we want a second Woman in Black? Not particularly, but I'm all for period movies with Gothic looks. Hammer has always had a knack for those and the 21st Century seems no different for them in that regard. The premise isn't so bad either. Snotty kids evacuated from WW II London are relocated to a creepy countryside mansion, and instead of finding a delightful fantasy world in the cupboard they encounter a sinister spirit hellbent on enticing them to suicide there. Basically sounds like an evil Narnia, so what's not to like?

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156982/weaver_niet_in_expendabelles

This is quite a setback for the ExpendaBelles project. If you consider old grunts like Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose primary decade of fame and fortune was the Eighties, as the prime action movie stars of their day, Sigourney Waver was their definite female counterpart, thanks to the first two Alien movies - groundbreaking pictures in that regard - and Ghostbusters. There's not that many well remembered powerful older action gals around that remain as active as she is. Terminator's Linda Hamilton maybe? What has she been up to since then? For any other similar femme fatales, you'd have to look for more recent fare. Weaver would have been the project's greatest asset in iterms of casting, so who could fill her shoes now? Sure, there's plenty of grand dames of the cinema who could, but not that many with a memorable action movie background that would warrant their presence. It just goes to show how rare such roles were for females back then. Which made this female equivalent of The Expendables a risky venture to begin with, as there was always a realistic chance those few girl power women of old would turn down a part. Considering The Expendables 3 is not doing so well at the boxoffice - to say the least! - maybe it's a clear signal there's no particular public demand for this type of film at present. However, it's the female bits (no pun intended) that would have made the difference here, and I was quite intrigued as to how that would play out. It would have been great to see theatres hosting a Ladies' Night that doesn't feature a typical romantic comedy for a change. Guess that's gonna take a while longer to transpire, if it doesn't fall through at all.

Aliens

Rating *****/*****, or 10/10

Superb sequel utilizes a completely different style from its dark and brooding predecessor, exchanging the slow suspense for high action, to great results. Could very well be considered superior to Alien. After spending 57 years drifting through space in hypersleep, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver again) returns to Earth, where she soon finds herself asked to join a team of overly bold and raunchy space marines to LV-426 to check out whether there's any connection between her wild stories of monsters and the loss of contact with a group of colonists on that planet. Naturally, the settlement is overrun by the xenomorphs who soon turn the marines into a bunch of wimps, at which point Ripley has to take charge to get the team out alive, along with the lone survivor of the colony, a little girl nicknamed Newt, for which Ripley soon develops maternal feelings. A carefully crafted exciting sequence of action scenes culminates in the film's brilliant climax, Ripley battling a huge Queen Alien (another triumph of special creature effects work) with a power loader suit. Also featured is a surprisingly trustworthy android called Bishop (the impeccable Lance Henriksen), Bill Paxton as an hilariously loud mouth marine who wets his pants at the first sign of any real trouble and Jenette Goldstein as a very manly latina private. James Cameron, fresh off The Terminator, established himself as one of Hollywood's leading specialists in the field of sci-fi action blockbusters with this movie, which still remains the best in his oeuvre.

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen

Directed by James Cameron

USA: 20^th Century Fox, 1986

Alien Resurrection

Rating ***/*****, or 7/10

Fourth installment in the successful sci-fi thriller saga returns to the more action driven approach first taken by James Cameron for Aliens, though never reaches the same level of total immersion in the on-screen excitement. However, there's still plenty to enjoy in this rather comic book style flick, courtesy of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, though it's obvious the story isn't the main argument here. After 200 years, Ripley (still Sigourney Weaver) is revived by zealous scientists via cloning, in an attempt to harvest the baby Queen Alien inside her. The scientists, including the ever sinister Brad Dourif, soon find out they got more than they bargained for when both the xenomorphs and the resurrected Ripley herself turn out to be more dangerous and unpredictable than they ever imagined. Add to that a big ass military ship as the film's setting and an absurd but hilariously eclectic group of mercenaries armed to the teeth to combat the monsters, and you got yourself some terrificly entertaining action scenes at the least. Winona Ryder plays the obligatory android this time, and does a rather lousy, quite poorly acted job at it unfortunately.

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

USA: 20^th Century Fox, 1997

Alien³

Rating ***/*****, or 6/10

Slow paced second sequel to Alien (1979) returns to the stylistic roots of the series by focusing on eerie atmosphere and mounting tension more than relying on all-out action. This time it pays off less successfully, though this is partially due to the chaotic production history of this project. First time director David Fincher handles himself decently enough and gets a decent number of chilling scenes of suspense and compelling performances out of it all, but as a whole, this film is certainly not on par with the previous two installments of this franchise. While in hypersleep, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver again, believably introvert now, since she lost the few people she cared about) crashes on a prison planet where she finds herself confronted with another Alien soon enough, as well as untrustworthy inmates and a dark secret brooding inside herself. A so-called Assembly Cut of this film is available, running over 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, incorporating many different scenes as well as a less powerful climax: an interesting compendium to the original film worth checking out if you enjoyed the regular cut.

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance

Directed by David Fincher

USA: 20^th Century Fox, 1992

Alien

Rating ****/*****, or 9/10

Disturbing and claustrophobic space horror. The crew of the commerical towing space vessel Nostromo is sent to answer a distress call originating from a barren world, where they find a derelict extra-terrestrial vessel inhabited by a lone alien corpse long dead that ought to be a warning of the terrors to come. One of their party is subdued and impregnated by an alien parasite, after which a monstrous creature hatches from his chest in a graphic bloody manner and starts picking off the crew one by one. To make matters worse, there's a corporate agent in their midst who has been ordered to keep the alien alive and take it back to Earth for scientific study. Ridley Scott's breakthrough science fiction chiller is as powerfully scary today as it was over three decades ago. Also the movie that launched Sigourney Weaver to stardom thanks to her performance as the 'last man standing', except she's a woman, which at this time was still mostly unheard of in this type of film. The bizarre Alien creature (dubbed a 'xenomorph' in following sequels), a courtesy of master of grotesqueries H.R.Giger, still rules on an unsurpassed design level all its own, as do the evocative, sexually charged environments of the derelict and the iconic dead Space Jockey, as well as the realistic, claustrophobic 'used future' corridors of the Nostromo vessel.

Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm

Directed by Ridley Scott

USA: 20^th Century Fox, 1979