This Week in Cinema, I Learned…April 07-13 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
Welcome to Science Fiction Week! With the exception of two films this was a stellar week for the 2024 project. Honestly, even the two films that didn’t score as high weren’t bad per se, they just weren’t really my cup of tea. This was an impressive week overall, several films again blew my expectations out of the water. Four of the seven films are either directly or subtly about Aliens in some way shape or form while the remaining flicks hold sci-fi concepts both immersive and yet somewhat bland in a few cases. Films that travel into the great unknown of outer space are often fascinating to me, and while none of this week’s films truly leave the planet behind, a good chunk of these films consider what our response would be to the unknown coming to our doorstep. Hopefully, you’ll find something worth watching below, come back next week for the third genre of April, Thrillers.
April 7th
Bumblebee (2018)
4/5
I went into this film with cynical trepidation if I’m being honest. In fact my opening note as the film was starting was “How stupid will this get?”- The answer? Surprisingly little stupidity. In fact not only was this film a glorious reprieve from the Bayformers variant of Transformers- it was the best Transformers movie so far. Set in 1987, the film is an excellent adaptation of what made the Transformers cartoon any sort of entertaining in the first place. It’s a simple story with a script that actually cares about its characters. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Charlie Winston, the teenage girl in a family where her father passed away years ago and her mother remarried, making for an awkward family dynamic at times. As the story is a reimagining of these characters it’s an excellent chance to make Bumblebee a more effective character overall- he actually has a voice until it’s ripped out of him in one of the opening scenes set on Earth.
With only two major villains in the form of a handful of Decepticons and a military operative, Agent Burns played with a solemn menace by John Cena, there’s more time to engage in good character stuff between Charlie and her community. I was constantly aware of how many explosions weren’t happening in this movie, I mean, believe me there’s robot action and explosions- but this is the quietest Transformers movie and the only one with real heart. What a surprising change of tune for the franchise- too bad they squandered all this good faith with the deliberately stupid next film in the series, last year’s Transformers: Rise of The Beasts. Hopefully they can return to the level of quality that this film brought to the series.
April 8th
Dogora (1964)
3.5/5
Directed by the legendary Ishiro Honda, Dogora is one of the more unique takes on a Kaiju movie within the subgenre of films. The titular Kaiju itself is more of a phenomenon than an individualistic creature that takes out its anger on Humanity’s cities and beachfront properties. When a Japanese satellite collides with an amorphous floating blob it transforms Dogora into a light-blue mass that consumes coal, and diamonds. Naturally, the presence of Diamonds being stolen around the globe prompts international forces and Japanese jewel thieves into assuming that a new, more cunning and evasive band of thieves has encroached upon their territories. Strange happenings with gravity plague the main cast of characters until they figure out the source of these peculiar manipulations. Meshing crime genre character archetypes and story tropes with the mystery of the unknown in Dogora raises the level of intrigue up a few notches to make this an entertaining and easily consumable Kaiju heist flick that I recommend in earnest.
April 9th
Boss Level (2020)
3/5
Okay, so Boss Level has a sci-fi concept at its core, but the film is far more focused on the action of each scene than anything sci-fi, but I can forgive the lack of spectacle as it’s an entertaining riff on Groundhog Day a la the Happy Death Day films, though those films are tighter and more well realized in execution. The hook is that Roy (Frank Grillo) is caught in a time loop in which many skilled killers attempt, and often succeed in killing Roy in hyper-violent fashion. After about 140 deaths, in which he has analyzed this day of death down to the very last detail, he begins to figure out why this is happening to him. It’s all mostly an excuse to have fun and competently directed action sequences with Grillo performing admirably given the circumstances, but it never truly feels like anything more than your average direct-to-streaming action vehicle. The cast is rounded out by some great actors including Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh, Will Sasso, and a sprinkling of Mel Gibson as the villain. The script is the weakest part of the film though, the actors all do what they can with the material but it’s mostly a paint-by-numbers script that keeps things moving, but the structure is rather clunky and bland if I’m being honest. However, if you’re looking for a better action/thriller film from director Joe Carnahan, I do recommend his 2021 film Copshop. Boss Level should satiate enough as a dollar store Extraction clone with a sci-fi edge and lesser quality action scenes, though lower expectations will be rewarded.
April 10th
Tank Girl (1995)
2.5/5
Having no frame of reference for the property that is Tank Girl, I could only rate this experience based on the film I saw. The film I saw, well, it didn’t connect with me. It’s a post-apocalyptic feminist-themed film (which isn’t one of the film’s problems) wherein the titular Tank Girl (Lori Petty) rebels against the evil conglomerate Water and Power, which functions essentially as the only government in a barren world where water is more valuable than gold. The filmmaking team certainly put a lot of effort into the film, but almost none of the execution landed. The Kangaroo-infused DNA super soldiers called ‘the rippers’ were a neat touch as they were depicted solely through some impressive practical effects, and Ice-T portraying the most talkative one of the bunch was a fairly entertaining concept, but it wasn’t enough to sway me into the positive camp with this one.
A lot of my displeasure with the film comes down to Lori Petty’s performance and the writing of her character. Frankly, it was a grating performance and I never quite understood why all of her pop culture references, and there are many, were from the late 1980s to the 1990s- I get that the film came out in 1995 but why would you have her be such a TV aficionado if the film takes place in 2033 when the devastating meteor hit the planet roughly twelve years prior? Maybe that’s just a small gripe but it stuck with me. Malcolm McDowell knew what movie he was in and played a solidly hammy villain that fit the mold, while a young Naomi Watts starred as Jet Girl, one of Tank Girl’s key allies in her fight against the super corrupt and blatantly evil bad guys. Again, you can’t blame the movie for a lack of trying, they threw everything they had at the wall- it’s just that almost none of it stuck.
April 11th
Westworld (1973)
3.5/5
Having seen a good portion of the HBO adaptation of Westworld I figured now was as good a time as any to dive into the source material. Immediately I was taken aback when I saw that Michael Crichton not only wrote but directed the film too. I hadn’t known of Crichton’s film work before this, only his more famous novels like Jurassic Park. Westworld definitely shares that same sweaty anxiety with Jurassic Park when it comes to scary technological advancement, but I was surprised to find that the film differed a good amount from what HBO would riff on decades later. Whereas HBO’s show took a scalpel to finely carve out its emotional trauma inflicted on the robots portraying cowboys, the film opted for a sledgehammer to smash you over the head with how Terminator-adjacent its robotic villains were once enough errors had flooded their systems. I was also surprised by how much time the film spent within the two other parks in the system. One world is a medieval romp in King Arthur’s court and another in the enticing baths of Rome. Westworld shows its age in the first half of the film with its heavy-handedness in trying to explain the sci-fi concept to audiences of the time, but once things begin to go wrong- and indeed they do, the chaos is inherently thrilling. It’s definitely worth a watch.
April 12th
The Vast of Night (2019)
4/5
I was quite impressed with The Vast of Night. As a story about Alien visitors set during the 1950s in New Mexico, you could do far worse than this film with the material at hand. In fact, this film relies heavily on my favorite technique in all of cinema, simple yet compelling storytelling. Multiple characters recount chilling and hair-raising stories to our two leads as they inch closer to the truth when they pull at audio frequencies with unknown origins. Speaking of the two leads, Everett (Jake Horowitz), the local late night Radio DJ, and Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) the small town’s evening phone line operator, they were believably authentic in their small-town mannerisms and truly interesting as they unravelled each new piece of the mystery. It’s a small film that does big things, which is especially spectacular since the budget was a reported $700,000 which is basically like trying to make a movie with a piece of string.
The cinematography even incorporated a superb one-shot that wasn’t just styled for style’s sake, it visually connected the townsfolk at the basketball game with Fay and Everett at their respective stations. The story itself isn’t all that complicated or original, but the filmmaking and performances on display elevate this first feature to dizzying heights of quality. The director’s next feature is reportedly titled The Rivals of Amziah King with Kurt Russell and Matthew McConaughey starring in it, so color me intrigued. I’ll be keeping an eye out for that one.
April 13th
Attack The Block (2011)
4/5
Attack The Block is a film I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time now. I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi comedies and a good action flick every once in a while and when all of these things combine I try to set bias aside because this is 100% my jam. Bias or not, Attack The Block absolutely rules. The film dares to ask the question, “What if we made an alien invasion flick but all the characters were teenagers and/or idiots?” I say this with absolute endearment because the characters grew on me as the film rolled on but when they saw an Alien crash land in their neighborhood, they immediately went to kill it- because you know, for ego’s sake. This was the stepping stone for John Boyega, who starred as Moses, our lead character of a gang of teens intent on mimicking male bravado while full of angst and machismo.
The cast as a whole was cheeky yet charming in their adolescent ways, also Nick Frost shows up as the British stoner comic relief and I quite enjoyed that. The aliens in question had a fun design that I appreciated, instead of something generic or dull which happens more often than not. The kids called them “Gorilla Wolves”, and they were essentially Vanta-Black in coloration with turquoise bioluminescent mouths that glowed wildly. One of the aspects I appreciated most was the near-constant use of “Set up and pay off”- it's ALL over the film and I just adored the whip-smart scripting and chaotic yet under-control flow of the story. There are even a few lines and beats devoted to social commentary on how social barriers dissolve when survival is at stake. It's all quite good and I sincerely hope that recent talk of a sequel does get some solid footing and production rolling because I need more of this sort of film in my life.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.