The problem with the Alien vs. Predator series is that the humans keep getting in the way.
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is the second movie ripped off from the best-selling video game, which in turn was ripped off from separate Reagan-era monster-movie franchises. That's not necessarily a bad thing; an effective B-movie doesn't have to be original, just well-crafted. 2004's AVP: Alien vs. Predator, for instance, was proficient sci-fi/action snack food, nothing more or less. Requiem, by comparison, is a plate of nachos left too long in the microwave.
The problems with the movie are twofold and easy to spot: the acting stinks and you can't understand what's going on. Set in picturesque Crested Butte, Colorado (played by locations in British Columbia), the film kicks off with a Predator spaceship crash-landing on earth with a cargo of Alien lab specimens. As the critters fan out into the Colorado rainforest and begin their face-hugging, chest-cavity-incubating ways, a dreadlocked Predator blasts off from his home planet to clean up the mess.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
Your inner fan-boy may be interested; mine was. Shane Salerno's screenplay, unfortunately, plunks us down with a bunch of locals out of the US government's Daytime Soap Relocation program. Prodigal bad boy Dallas (Steven Pasquale of TV's Rescue Me), his lovelorn kid brother (Johnny Lewis), the lissome blonde he pines for (Kristen Hager), the beleaguered town sheriff (John Ortiz) - these are screenplay-software templates, not characters. A tough-mama Iraq War vet (Reiko Aylesworth), on the other hand, brings back fond memories of Jenette Goldstein's Private Vasquez in 1986's Aliens.
Requiem spends far too much time with these stick figures and not enough with the creatures, who lack motivation but are fun to watch. Or they would be, if directors Colin and Greg Strause used more than two 0.5m-candles to light the film. Either for budgetary reasons - ie, to hide the zippers on the rubber suits - or for purposes of mood, Aliens vs. Predator has been underlit to the point of incomprehensibility. Factor in hectic editing and a bombastic score, and you have an endurance test, not a movie.
As the town population gets thinned and the gore factor goes up, the Predator goes thingo-a-thingo with various Aliens, including what looks like a crossbreed PredAlien. Where he (she? it?) came from isn't very clear, although it may have something to do with a mysterious syringe that gets injected into somebody at some point. The Predator also carries a vial of glowing blue liquid that dissolves whatever it touches. I found myself craving a bottle of the stuff and devoutly wishing it were retroactive.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National
On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre