The latest film releases include Alien: Romulus, Rob Peace, Skincare, and Close to You. Weighing in are Alonso Duralde, film critic and co-host of the movie podcast Linoleum Knife, and Christy Lemire, film critic for RogerEbert.com and co-host of the YouTube channel Breakfast All Day.
Alien: Romulus
This seventh installment of the franchise follows space colonizers who are scavenging a derelict space station, where they find murderous aliens.
Lemire: “It is the best Alien movie since … James Cameron's Aliens. It definitely plays the hits, but finds its own way into them. And it is paced just exquisitely. It is so tense and so stressful and so much fun. So it's not exactly a sequel. It is very much of the Alien cinematic universe that we already know, but it's all new characters, for the most part, and it's younger characters. It is so well made in terms of its sound design and the expert use of silence to create tension. … It's gory in a great way, it uses the imagery we know, but in ways we've never seen. There is stuff here I have never seen. There is stuff here I can never unsee.”
Duralde: “This is The Force Awakens of the Alien franchise, in terms of it is a follow-up to the first movie that plays upon a lot of what makes the first movie work, but also moves the story forward. It goes into some areas that these movies never have before. So it's a mix of the familiar and the new. … What's cool about the Alien franchise is that you have two villains. You've got the monster, xenomorph, but then you also have the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which has an equal disregard for human life, and I'm glad they're keeping that anti-corporate vibe of 1979 alive.”
Rob Peace
This is based on the true story of a science whiz from Newark who tries to attend Yale while freeing his father from prison. It’s based on The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a bestselling book by Jeff Hobbs. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (who is also the director), Jay Will, Mary J. Blige, Camila Cabello, and Michael Kelly.
Duralde: “This is a movie that is steeped in the idea of systemic racism and everything that is involved in the structure of American life that is keeping these characters down. … I think the movie makes a mistake, unfortunately, of making Rob such a paragon. He's such a great guy, and even when he starts getting into illegal activity, he's doing it for all the right reasons, that it's hard to make dramatic tension out of that. There's got to be something here that maybe gives him a little more humanity, I think. And so you're left with this plaster saint. I think that the real Rob was probably more complicated than this, and maybe just deserved a more complicated portrayal.
Ejiofor, as a director, is not really reinventing the game here, but you do occasionally get these glimmers of style choices and shots that I think make me curious to see what else he'll do behind the camera.”
Lemire: “The film covers a giant swath of time. Jay Will’s gotta carry the big bulk of that, and show enthusiasm and hope and anxiety. But I wish it were … a little more complicated betrayal of this person, because you never feel any inner conflict.”
Skincare
Elizabeth Banks plays an LA skincare giant whose reputation is destroyed by a hacker. This also stars Nathan Fillion, Lewis Pullman and Luis Gerardo Méndez.
Lemire: “It holds out the promise of a dark and twisted LA horror comedy. I don't think it's noir. I think, if anything, it’s going for horror vibes. Elizabeth Banks in a darker role, I like quite a bit. And it gets some things about LA quite right, but then it gets some other things really, really wrong. For example, I don't think that the leading facialist to the stars would have her clinic in Crossroads of the World on Sunset Boulevard. … I think it would be in Beverly Hills.
Lewis Pullman, I thought was really good in this, though. He is the person here who represents what it gets right about LA, because he's … he's hustling her. He is a life coach with an emphasis in martial arts, which just seems like such a very specifically nonsense LA thing that you would just concoct for yourself. And this was a wiry intensity about him that I thought was very effective. So the pieces are there, but never quite came together for me.”
Duralde: “This movie is a mess in that it doesn't really ever decide what it wants to be. Because there are horror elements, there are psychological drama elements, there are LA satire elements, and none of them quite ever coalesce into anything, unfortunately.”
Close to You
Elliot Page plays a trans man who visits his family for the first time after his transition. It’s Page’s first film following his own transition. He and others improvised much of the dialogue.
Duralde: “I think it's a really engrossing film. And Page is terrific in the movie. And I think it's a very smart way to reintroduce himself to the film, going public. I think this movie nails so much that's true in the queer experience about dealing with family. Even when they are supportive and well-meaning, there's still those moments where somebody says the wrong thing or flubs it, and then you've also got an in-law who's very passive aggressive and touting that he's understanding of the situation, but is actually being a real ass about it. And I think the improvisational nature of the film makes those scenes play out in a very truthful way, because it is the way that certain conversations can turn on a dime.
… I think this is part of a wave of really terrific trans films we've been seeing of late. This is a much more straightforward narrative than a lot of those movies, but I think that for a lot of people, it's going to be a way to understand how trans people live, and what that transition does in terms of their familial relationships, their relationships with friends.”
Lemire: “It was really hit and miss. It didn't always work for me. So the scenes in the book, seeing his family and the awkwardness of that, that all felt very authentic and very true. And [director] Dominic Savage will let you sit in those moments. There are some very long takes in this film, and he will let you sit in the moment … just the awkward silences or the conversations that just build and build and get worse and worse. So those scenes worked pretty well as far as that approach to the dialog. But Elliot Page's character, Sam, and this woman that he knew from high school, they have essentially the same conversation four or five times. This becomes very repetitive.
… Anyway, [it]’s so great to see Elliot Page back on the screen again in a leading role. … That immediacy about his screen presence remains … even more powerful because he truly is being his authentic self now, and it's got to be quite liberating for him.”