I recall the book as fleeter, more darkly comic; a commentary on the battle of the sexes from the front lines of the recession, and it possessed a wonderfully knowing sense of genre and how to mess with audience expectations.
This feels more like a routine mystery, a “wronged man” movie that could have been part of the flight of misogynistic paranoid thrillers from the early 90s.
The casting is spot on. Career best from Affleck? Rosamund Pike is picture…
Dodgy as hell but man oh man what a piece of ultra-violent, ultra-sweaty action-adventure cinema. Nobody has ever looked tougher in white knee-high socks than Rod Taylor. It’s absurd on every level (Jim Brown as an idealistic Congolese soldier, Yvette Mimieux as whatever she’s supposed to be, Jamaica subbing for Africa), not to mention somehow simultaneously racist, anti-colonialist, pro-violence, anti-war, cynical, and romantic. Looks incredible except for the awful process shots. Hard to believe this came out before The Wild Bunch or Duck You Sucker. A must-watch for fans of the genre.
Dull heroes dampen this effectively plotted and produced low budget sci-go horror. There are hints of conflict between the press (freedom of expression), the researchers (amoral scientific expertise) and the military (security at all costs), but they all quickly resolve in favour of the guys with the guns.
Margaret Sheridan is the only source of life or heat in the sterile outpost. Her performance transcends the material: you can see why Hawks thought she’d be a big star. She’s magnetic.…
Surprisingly sophisticated for a movie about giant irradiated ants, with a memorable visual style and tight plotting, all played straight. The characters are cutouts, except for doddering scientist Edmond Gwenn — and James Whitmore achieves a certain nobility with his depiction of a lug cop who (**spoiler**) sacrifices himself to save some trapped children.
Good build up to the first reveal of the ants, and some genuine tension in the scenes of the scientists and soldiers delving deeper and deeper…
Literally no one in this movie has pants. It is an endless parade of rotoscoped crotch and butt shots of men, women, beast-men and beast-women.
But don’t let that fool you—it's not very good. Even the conceit of a Conan/Tarzan team-up, with Elric tossed in as the villain for good measure, can’t save it. And I’m a sucker for dinosaurs mixed with magic and crumbling sorcerer’s towers.
While it wonderfully captures the visual flavour of classic pulp—with Frazetta’s artwork, how…
Shoestring budget sci fi—basically a glorified student film, with sophomoric humour to match. Seems more like a starter for Bannon than Carpenter—it’s a dry run for Alien, with a beach ball instead of a xenomorph—but you can see where the two men’s concerns overlap: working class heroes, and hard genre mixed with camp and dark humour.
Finding this on VHS in a mom and pop video store in the mid-80s was a thrill though and that earns it a full extra star.
Corny and stagey, but it gave us Bogart. Leslie Howard plays a speechifying, glassy-eyed tramp. Bette Davis is appealing as a waitress who dreams of escaping to France (she’ll have a few good years before the Occupation). Bogart, with a shock of dark brown hair and strange physicality modeled on John Dillinger, is electric. But the script, based on a play, is risible, filled with soliloquies on art and the meaning of life. Besides Bogart, Slim Thompson playing one of the robbers is a small highlight (great screen presence and he kind of looks like Snoop Dogg).
Too much fan service spoils some effectively tense sequences. The series has been moribund since Aliens, despite some interesting ideas / sequences / production design in the later installments. This one contributes nothing new and looks surprisingly cheap. I couldn't understand a word that one English guy said.
Breathless, depthless, a shot of adrenaline, it breaks the rules in a 90s sort of a way; which is to say, it breaks rules that were already broken, but set to a new soundtrack. It's not really about anything, and the central relationship between Lola and Manni isn't deep or interesting enough to sustain any thematic weight or even projections of thematic weight.
But it's great fun to watch.