Deadpool - 6/10
I resisted the urge to turn this off after the first 5 or 10 minutes, as I was thinking 'here we go again, another wise-cracking, cocksure spandex ass-kicker'. Instead, I stuck with it, and ended up quite enjoying it, contrary to expectation. The film quickly gets into the character's back story and over the course of the film, I found myself warming to him. Sure, Wade Wilson starts off as an insufferable prick, whose geekiness is only matched by his dedication to bodybuilding (a combination that only happens in the movies) - but the travails he undergoes at the hands of Ajax, made his ascent to superhero status a lot more palatable.
Marvel are a bit late to the party with the whole post-modern shtick though and for all its fourth-wall breaking, self-referencing smarts, it's still a pretty conventional superhero film. It's more like a new flavour of drink, rather than a new take on drinks altogether. Subversive it ain't - Marvel are having their cake and eating it with this film, irreverently sending up many of the tropes they themselves have established, while still employing them to the full. It's slick and cynical, but entertaining, in a puerile kind of way; despite some eye-rolling at the more heavy-handed touches - especially the opening credits - there's also a few laughs along the way. It feels darker and dirtier than most of Marvel's recent offerings too, which is a good thing in my book after asinine fluff like GOTG, but it's hard to escape the fact that the studio is still just cleaving to its formula, albeit with a nudge and a wink this time round.
Alien - 10/10
You would have to have been living under a rock for the last 40 years to be unaware of this film and its cultural legacy. I've seen it many times myself but jumped at the chance to see it for the first time on the big screen last night. I was a bit disappointed it wasn't a digital restoration rather than the original print they screened, but that didn't prevent me being immersed into its world again.
It's one of those rare moments in cinema where all the elements combine to make something really special - an array of acting talent, including the classically trained John Hurt and Ian Holm, a fantastic, understated and eerie score by Jerry Goldsmith and set design from the wild imaginings of H.R. Giger, combined with Ridley Scott's scrupulous attention to detail. As with
Blade Runner, it's that attention to detail that really makes the environment believable and the feeling of immersion into the world total. To say it's atmospheric is an understatement. Less is more is the watchword: you only glimpse the alien a handful of times but its enough to infuse the film with tension for all the time that it's not on screen.
Where the sequel is often described as a war movie in space,
Alien occupies that liminal space between sci-fi and horror, probably more perfectly combining the two genres than any film before or since. It has all the tension of a great slasher film, but also asks the question of what it means to be human, when faced with another dominant species, that has perfected the art of survival, a creature Ash admires greatly for its 'purity'. Ash though, is merely a proxy for the company, who want to get their hands on the ultimate biological killing machine, stopping at nothing to ensure its delivery. As much as the film is forward-looking, inspired by the success of
Star Wars, the unseen but ever-present shadow of 'the company' also harks back to the dystopian sci-fis of the earlier part of the 70s, where Kafkaesque paranoia about hidden structures of control and subjugation reigned supreme.
Watching it back again, you realize how many iconic scenes and moments there are in this film, which have been etched into the cultural subconscious.
Alien has inspired so many imitators, but none that have surpassed it, and only a handful that got close.
