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Vulture:

Scott teases the spaceships and caves filled with ominously gridded egg placement that you might expect from a movie that “shares DNA” with the Alien series, but there’s also waterfalls, dust storms, and a very intriguing plot hint: This team of spacemen (which includes Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, and Idris Elba) goes looking for the beginning of life itself, and instead finds something epic that will probably pick them off one by one[.]

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This is NOT a prequel to “Alien.”

Well, it’s 95% not a prequel…

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RIDLEY SCOTT SIGNS ON FOR “BLADE RUNNER 2″

Scott is a top-shelf filmmaker, the concept is sound and the source material as good as it gets. This one, unlike “Austin Powers 4,” feels right. The most positive aspect is that Scott apparently has a real fire in the belly for the project. He’s been fiddling with the original — director’s cuts, etc… — since the beginning of home video, which is a good sign the creative energy and inspiration are in plentiful supply.

Furthermore, Scott can do any picture he wants. He’s not some “auteur” on the downslide and desperate for a return to the glory days of yore. Translation: he’s doing this for all the right reasons: passion, love, creative energy…

Yep, this feels right.

On the other hand…

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The critical moments of a movie are the first moments, the first few minutes where it either grabs you or loses you for good.  That’s what we mean when we talk about the movie experience, the wonder and delight of the shapes flickering across the screen that overcome you, and you think, “Oh yeah, this is going to work.” 

Contrast that to the soul-crushing dismay when you realize that what you hoped would be a great couple of hours is instead going to be a dreary death-march of clichés, lazy writing and bad music broken only occasionally when you glance longingly at your watch and wish you could have your $11.50 and two hours back. 

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You know a great opening when you see it; if fact, you feel it.  My definition of “opening” is rather loose.  An opening can go up to, or past the credits, or it may just be the credit sequence itself.  Some openings are rather long, 10-15 minutes.  Some are just a couple of minutes.  There is no one formula for a great opening – the ten listed here as my personal favorites are as different from each other as Democratic Party governance is from competent leadership.  But there are some common threads.  A great opening tells you something about the story you will see.  It might be in words of formal narration, or a sequence that takes you into the story, or in some cases it’s just a few images.  There may be prominent music, or little or none.  But when the opening is over, you are ready – you understand enough to begin the journey.  And, more importantly, you are eager to go. 

It’s easy – and serves an important purpose – to point out where Hollywood fails.  But it’s a special pleasure to point out where it got it just perfect.  Here are my Top 10 favorite movie openings: 

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“Filmmaking is a trauma that is akin to combat,” says James Cameron. Anyone who has ever attempted to make a movie knows exactly what he is talking about. Loads of money is on the line with little guarantee of success. Dozens of personalities need to be managed, many of them with ideas and egos in conflict with the director’s vision for the picture. The hours are brutal, the conditions often cold, hot, dirty, or dangerous, and before long everyone is perpetually exhausted. On a film set, a particularly nasty strain of Murphy’s Law reigns: anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at exactly the most inopportune moment.

The vast majority of people making movies soon find themselves happy to get any semblance of a decent shot in the can for editing later — never mind genius imagery, they’re just happy to have escaped with their lives. That genuine entertainment, never mind genuine art, is created in this environment is nothing short of a miracle. It takes a person of singular mind and indefatigable intensity, someone who refuses to accept defeat or take “no” or “impossible” for an answer, sometimes dozens of times every day for months on end.

In the documentary Superior Firepower: The Making of ‘Aliens’ (found on some DVD versions of the movie), one can see various members of the crew gingerly handling the subject of James Cameron’s reputation as a hard, unforgiving taskmaster on his sets.“He didn’t know any other way to work,” said Jenette Goldstein, who played Vasquez in Aliens. “He wasn’t going to waste anyone’s time or money. And he expected no one to waste his.” Prompted to explain the crew’s animosity towards Cameron, Sigourney Weaver deadpanned that, “They were big Ridley fans.” The late Stan Winston, special effects and creature creator extraordinaire, called Cameron’s Aliens set a “tough, demanding atmosphere,” before musing that the director was “cursed with a vision.” In the thick of war, little heed is paid to how genteelly orders are given — why would filmmaking be any different? (more…)

“And then some bulls*** happens.”

That’s how the initial treatment of Aliens (then called Alien II) tapered off after a mere twenty pages. Producers David Giler and Walter Hill had done little more than describe the basic setup: “Ripley and soldiers” versus the eponymous creatures. The rest, they decided, was for the guy who wrote The Terminator to flesh out.

Getting fired from Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, a schlocky job-for-hire, convinced James Cameron there was only one way he could make his Hollywood dreams come true. “I knew I was never going to be offered another movie,” he later explained about that time, “unless I came up with something myself. I had to write a film that made sense for me as a director. I thought it had to have effects that would justify my existence on the project, and I also had to not price myself out of the kind of budget that studios were likely to trust me with.”

So a guy who already specialized in sci-fi special effects and production art decided to add screenwriter to his list of talents. Using his fiery fever-nightmare about a killer robot as his jumping off point, and calling on many of the seminal sci-fi influences of his youth, he proceeded to write The Terminator. Each effect and action scene was thoroughly dissected on paper: Could I do this on a micro-budget? What special effect tricks could pull it off? Just like his early demo-film Xenogenesis, this would be a movie designed not just to entertain, but to show Hollywood what he could do. (more…)

One of the things that I find most unpleasant about the current movie-going experience are the trailers. They’ve become slicker and louder than ever, but nevertheless a relentless homogenization has set in. The reason that a spoof video called A Trailer for Every Academy Award-Winning Movie Ever Made went viral earlier this year was because it deftly mocked a great number of the tired conventions used by modern-day Hollywood’s editors and marketers. See for yourself:

YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen

The above short wouldn’t be so funny if the horrid little things weren’t so ripe for parody. To be fair, the trailers of old were just as bad in their way — if you watch classic film DVDs and take the time to run the special features, you’ll soon grow weary of seeing every film advertised as the GREATEST CINEMATIC TRIUMPH EVER! But we’re supposed to be better than that these days, we’re supposed to have evolved, right? In truth, our stuff’s just as cheesy, and will be revealed as such in a couple decades, when people yet unborn will watch them on some as-yet-unfathomed format and chuckle at how predictable and “of their time” they are.

Every once in awhile, however, a trailer comes along that’s startling in its freshness, that manages to break all the rules and become memorable in its own right. So it was with the two-minute teaser to Aliens, first spied by my then fifteen-year-old self in the spring of 1986. Can’t remember which movie I was at — Cobra probably, or maybe The Karate Kid Part II. But I’ve never forgotten that daring, brilliant bit of marketing: (more…)

When many people think about “Robin Hood,” they probably conjure up images of a rebel causing trouble for the sake of his fellow man in the forest. They probably imagine a strong and charismatic leader standing up against a cold and overpowering government. The idea and the legend of “Robin Hood” are powerful and inspirational but unfortunately, the new movie about the famous outlaw is bleak and disappointing.

The new Ridley Scott film tells the story of Robin Hood in the period before he was known as an infamous outlaw. Oscar winner Russell Crowe plays Robin Hood, a brilliant archer and warrior. After a dying man asks Robin for a favor, Robin fulfills his duty to him and eventually becomes involved with the dead man’s wife, Marion Loxley (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett). After their romance grows, Robin Hood returns to battle to fight for the country he loves against forces that wish to undermine it.

Unfortunately, the movie has little sense of the adventure that Robin Hood is often known for and the characters in this film are not well-developed. For example, I was struck by the frantic pace of one of the early battle scenes and how little I cared about the characters battling in it. Many of the figures in this story are well-known but this movie fails to bring them to life. Although there were some strong supporting actors in this film (including William Hurt and Max von Sydow), the leading actors were disappointing. For one, Russell Crowe is far too serious in this film to have a good time with the role and he fails to create a memorable depiction of Robin Hood. (more…)

With a reported $225 million budget and a timeless tale at his disposal, for whatever reason director Ridley Scott chose to spend all that cash and legend on a hopelessly dreary prequel and origin story. On paper, the idea itself is an interesting one, and while the execution looks great – looks like $225 million — the telling fails where Robin Hood should most shine: The Department of Rousing. The point of the Robin Hood legend is not just to encourage us to fight for our God-given right to liberty, but also as a reminder that at every chance we have a duty to mock wrongful authority, ridicule pomposity, and give tyranny the high, hard middle finger; all while wooing a fetching Maid Marion, of course.

Robin Hood is about righteous defiance as practiced by a charming scoundrel. But unfortunately for those moviegoers expecting summer adventure and laughs, what you would think would be the obvious is completely lost on Scott and his screenwriter Brian Helgeland.  Instead, they allow the story to get bogged down with a protagonist exhausted by war, no villain for him (or us) to focus on, and a needlessly complicated narrative involving false identities, palace intrigue, double agents and two wars.

Things open on a promising note.  The date is 1199 and Robin (Crowe) is an archer for King Richard who is pillaging his way through France on his way back to England after the Crusades. Nothing happens you haven’t seen a hundred times before in one of these Medieval romps, but Scott knows how to structure, shoot and edit big action set-pieces like few others so the ole’ castle storm is exciting. 140 minutes later, however, you discover the hard way that this is where it all peaked. (more…)

Go ahead and file this in your “unlikely” drawer:

You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

So is “Robin Hood” one big medieval tea party? Kind of…

As you probably know, the Breitbart team frequents these Tea Party rallies, and we’ve yet to come across the “disillusioned war veteran just back from a distant, violent campaign against Muslims” tea-partier that Russell Crowe allegedly portrays in this year’s “Robin Hood.”  Scott neglects to mention this inconvenient theme in his review.

We’ll report back and let you know if Robin Hood more closely resembles a libertarian rebel, as Scott suggests, a forward-thinking, spread-the-wealth around type of revolutionary, or somewhere in between.  We have our suspicions what he will be, but according to Scott, the films does pick on the French. (more…)

Yesterday Russell Crowe, star of Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood,” floats the absurd idea of what’s essentially a reverse-Robin Hood tax, where the government takes from the productive to give to the non-productive…

Today, we get yet another politically divisive statement, this time from the film’s screenwriter, who assures the L.A. Times that “Robin Hood” is not a Tea Party movie: [emphasis mine throughout]

Whatever you say about Russell Crowe’s up-with-people campaign against unresponsive, property-grabbing government in ” Robin Hood,” don’t suggest to its makers that the historical epic is the first Tea Party movie. “No, no,” says screenwriter Brian Helgeland. “That would not be good.”

If you read between the lines, you can tell that was a pretty big concern for the L.A. Times writer. “Please, please, please tell us ‘Robin Hood’ doesn’t inadvertently reassure the tea baggers.”

Whew.

But that’s the least of the story. Read on and then thank me for saving you ten bucks: (more…)

The payoff for sitting through a dozen craptacular releases is that one movie where you actually say, “Damn, that was worth the $11.50 and the kidney I spent to see it.”  As a modern moviegoer, you must be an eternal optimist.  You must hope against hope that the trailer you liked didn’t contain every single good scene and funny joke in the movie, and that the reviewer who raved isn’t covering up some pinko agenda that’ll make you choke out on your Goobers. 

You have to believe that out there somewhere is an action movie director who knows what a tripod is.  That there is a young lead actor who has never starred in a CW television series about beautiful but sensitive teenage male models with supernatural powers.  That there is a comedy screenwriter who can imagine a “funny” situation not involving a bodily fluid.  That Michael Cera will one day play a different character.

In that spirit, a spirit of Pollyannaish hope in the face of overwhelming evidence indicating that Hollywood’s product will almost certainly continue to demonstrate that evolution is a two-way street, I present ten movies that are coming within the next six months that might actually be good – or at least not make me throw things at the screen and slap around the ushers. (more…)

Ever since the advent of the modern motion picture industry, critics have praised directors as the key to great film.  The auteur theory of cinema is idiotic, since writing is truly the key – no director could make a masterpiece out of “The Ugly Truth.”  It is one of the great travesties of artistic justice that no one remembers the writers of great movies – nobody knows Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, for example, but everyone remembers Frank Capra.  Together, those three wrote It’s a Wonderful Life.  (Together, Goodrich and Hackett also worked on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Thin Man, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Father of the Bride.) 

Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong.  There are certain directors, however, who get credit even when movies go wrong.  Here, then, are my top ten overrated directors of all time… 

10.  Ridley Scott:  Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.  He’s made one entertaining film, Gladiator, and a host of second rate films masquerading as masterpieces.  Blade Runner is a bizarre and massively overpraised mess.  Thelma and Louise is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.  White Squall is the single most depressing film ever made.  Black Hawk Down is loved by conservatives because it isn’t anti-military, but that’s about the only praiseworthy element to a film that is an endless series of quick cuts between white guys who look alike in their helmets.  Who’s been killed?  Who’s still alive?  You have no way of knowing.  Then there’s Kingdom of Heaven, which is an homage to the “religion of peace” and a slap at Christianity through and through.  Alien is slow.  GI Jane is hysterically terrible.  Plus, it’s got Orlando Bloom, who has about as much charisma and credibility as Al Gore.  Scott is a key player in the rise of the infernal shaky-cam, which is not only biologically inaccurate (the human eye adjusts for bodily movements), but incredibly annoying.  For that alone, he should be exiled to a land without cameras.  (more…)

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“Gladiator” meets “Braveheart” — Nothing wrong with that.

The Sun says “Lord of the Rings”: (more…)

The members of the ruling class of the British Isles seem to be committed to demonstrating that they are nothing but hopeless neo-socialists busy sacrificing their green and pleasant land on the altar of nanny-state multiculturalism.  It seems that every day there is a report of some new Labor assault on free speech, a fresh disaster in the decaying single-payer health care system, or another craven surrender to domestic jihadism. The latest atrocity is Scotland’s politicians’ ”compassionate release” of Lockerbie mass-murderer Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, a shameful maneuver that managed to combine greed, cowardice and self-righteousness all into one gutless package. I used to emphasize that I was 25% Scot and not mention my 12.5% French ancestry.  Now?  Well, can you say, “Bonjour?”  At least the “frogs” leadership will take their own side in a fight.

But the people of the British Isles – the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish – are a proud, tough bunch ill-served by their shabby politicians.  And nowhere on screen can you see their heart and glory displayed better than in 1964’s war epic Zulu.

Understand that Zulu is a true story.  In January 1879, a column of about 1500 poorly-deployed British troops was overrun at Isandhlwana by the 20,000-man Zulu army of King Catshweyo. After that slaughter – the Zulus did not bother with niceties like taking prisoners – the Zulus turned their attention to the nearby mission station at Rourke’s Drift, defended by about 100 Welsh infantrymen and their English officers. The desperate battle against overwhelming odds that followed became a legend. (more…)