Alien Covenant - Movie Review

Starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demian Bichir, Carmen Egojo, Amy Siemetz, Jussie Smollett and Callie Hernandez.
Written by John Logan & Dante Harper.
Directed by Ridley Scott.

★★★

This is a sequel to Prometheus, while still being a prequel to Alien, and while the familiar xenomorph does show up, along with the face-grabber, this is still more in the vein of Prometheus.

At the end of that movie, the survivors Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David (Michael Fassbender) set out to find the home planet of the Creators, the large white creatures that apparently designed the aliens. We eventually learn their fate in this movie.

Meanwhile a colonalization crew aboard the Covenant is headed for a new planet to colonize, but they receive what may be a distress signal from a different, habitable planet that they were unaware of. The captain dies in his hibernation pod due to malfunction, and the second-in-command Oram (Billy Crudup) doesn't seem to be up to the job. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is his backup, and she happens to be the wife of the now-dead captain. This crew of 14 decides to explore the new planet, and if they like it, they may use it to settle as their new home instead.

And on that planet, they meet David.

Now the Prometheus crew has their own synthetic with them named Walter. Fassbender plays both, and he does a great job of making them two complete characters. We can always tell who's who when David cuts his hair to match Walter's. (Which seems a little weird that no one questions it.)

It features some pretty gory deaths once the action kicks in, aliens bursting out of people's chests, backs, and mouths, and then when the main alien grows to its usual height, more people die in body-shredding ways. This movie filled in some holes that Prometheus left, and it's still very open for another film, which director Ridley Scott plans to be the final bridge between these prequels and 1979's Alien.

My biggest problem with this is the giant fluxuations in continuity, as far as how quickly these aliens incubate and grow. Remember when John Hurt had that thing on his face for 24 hours before it let go, and it took a few more hours before something burst out of his chest? This one has a face-grab to chest-burst in about one hour. And I can't say it was that scary. It's monster-movie fun, with a Hammer horror flavor to David, but the first two movies may never be topped.

Sausage Party - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, David Krumholtz, Danny McBride, James Franco, Nick Kroll and Paul Rudd.
Written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg.
Directed by Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon.

★★★

Sausage Party is the raunchiest animated movie since South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. It's a spoof of VeggieTales and the Pixar canon that anthromorphizes everything from toys to cars. Beneath all the subversive humor is a direct attack on religion.

Seth Rogen voices a sausage named Frank who is in love with a bun named named Brenda (Kristen Wiig). They're packaged next to each other on a shelf in a grocery store called Shopwells. Each morning, all of the groceries join in a song that celebrates the Gods, aka the humans that shop there. It is the belief of the food that when they are selected by the Gods, they will go to Great Beyond, aka out the front door, where they will live in an eternity of joy and sexual fulfillment.

But when a jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride) is returned, he comes back with horrible tales. The Gods are monsters who plan to consume them. There is no happiness in the Great Beyond; there is only death.

Frank and Brenda escape their packaging and set out to find the truth, but the longer they search, the more doubtful Frank becomes, and the more fearful Brenda becomes that she is angering the Gods.

The movie is full of stereotypes and has fun with them. Frank and Brenda are joined by a Jewish bagel (Edward Norton) and a Arabic lavash (David Krumholtz), and they bicker about occupied aisle space. The lavash also dreams of being drenched in the Great Beyond in 77 bottles of virgin olive oil. The German sauerkraut screams about exterminating the juice. And so on.

The movie is filled to the brim with dirty jokes, many of which are funny. In fact, it's remarkable how freeing animation is for Rogen's pot-obsessed humor.

As for the atheist argument, let's just say Rogen does it in a funnier, less ham-fisted way than Ricky Gervais or Bill Maher are capable of. The movie winds up being a celebration of hedonism before it ultimately disappears up its own butt.