timmyhollywood

Creator, writer, director Noah Hawley's "Alien: Earth" is off to a good start. The auteur pays high compliments to Ridley Scott's original by recreating the aesthetic, while the story feels fresh and headed in an intriguing direction. Humans have been augmented into cyborgs, there are full synthetics, and there are hybrids - synthetics with human consciousness. The effects are well done, and the aliens - ever so important - look great. On with the show!

UPDATE: fell asleep halfway through episode 2.

There's no tension. No mystery. Another one bites the dust.

As with 2022's "Barbarian," writer-director Zack Cregger's powers of storytelling are on full display with the cerebral horror film "Weapons." Again he does what he's proving to do best: to take a premise and bury it. To entreat the audience with rich characters, intriguing situation, and loads of suspense because you have absolutely no idea where it's going.

In Barbarian, the premise is buried (literally and metaphorically) beneath an AirBnB in a derelict neighborhood. At first, the story seems to be about a woman and a man double booked for the same stay - and can the man be trusted?

In Weapons, a teacher's elementary class disappears leaving behind a sole student. Does the teacher know something she's hiding? What are the meanings of strange dreams, floating guns, clownish women in the woods? You have to watch to find out; and you'll want to. Creggers is a master at sustaining suspense, low-key conflict that boils away, switching POVs to keep it interesting, and a few well-timed jump scares - probably just because it's fun.

In a world of showbiz plagued with superhero movies and PC romcoms, horror is where artists have been breaking new ground. This kind of horror "flick" isn't about shlock or violence porn (though there are a couple of gory moments for sure), it's about great storytelling, great acting, cinematography, costuming, and all the rest. "Weapons" is suspenseful, unpredictable, even laugh-out-loud funny in places, and the end is exhilarating.

8/10 stars. Go see it.

Novocaine is a story of a man who feels no pain in a movie where that doesn't matter. Because it's a violence porn movie, where everyone can take a beating that borders on superhuman. So, in order to make the condition of Jack Quaid's mild-mannered bank manager relevant, the filmmakers have to come up with extra-special insane ways he would be otherwise hurt. "Have him stick his hand in a vat of boiling grease! Have him break his own thumb! Have arrows sticking out of him and bullet holes oozing blood!" Never mind that the story starts out with Quaid's character afraid to eat pie for fear he might bite his tongue and bleed to death, now he's in danger of going septic from his third-degree burns or festering bullet wound and doesn't seem to care or notice. That's when you realize that a movie that started out quite charming as a love story between Quaid and Midthunder, who plays a new employee at the bank, one with an interesting premise about a man isolated by a unique physical condition, has devolved into gory violent schlock that really serves only to deploy these outlandish ways Quaid might show off to the audience his imperviousness to pain.

There's one sequence where this kind of works - Quaid has to playact being tortured by a bad guy in order to draw out some time. Otherwise, the soundtrack is decent and Quaid and Midthunder are good as the leads, though I spend most of the time (given my mid-80s vintage) deciding which of Quaid's characteristics are like his father's (the smile) or his mothers (the sweetness).

5/10, barely worth watching for the opening sequence.