Movie Reviews

Alien: Romulus | Reelviews Movie Reviews

Published

2 years ago

August 18, 2024

(Contains spoilers about a certain cameo.)

A case could be made that Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus
is the third-best film of the nine movies to feature the infamous xenomorphs (with
the prequel Prometheus being the only one not to name-check them in the
title). Romulus, which is positioned as a “side-quel” set in between Alien
and Aliens, eschews some of the more ambitious plotting that
characterized the least-popular franchise entries in favor of a straightforward
narrative. Alvarez, obviously an Alien devotee, opts for an Alien/Aliens
“greatest hits” approach replete with Easter Eggs and instances of fan service.
It mostly works although the tension never quite escalates to the levels
reached by Ridley Scott’s original and James Cameron’s even-better direct
follow-up.

The time-frame is 20 years after the xenomorph rampaged
through the Nostromo before being blown out the airlock by Ripley. (This
event is explicitly referenced although Ripley is not named.) The body of the
alien is retrieved and brought on board the space station Romulus/Remus
for experimentation. Shortly thereafter, we are introduced to several workers
toiling away terraforming a rather inhospitable planet. Rain (Cailee Spaeny),
who has been harboring dreams of escaping the dreary world for someplace where
the sun shines, discovers that the Wayland-Yutani Corporation has unilaterally
changed her quota, pushing back her date-of-freedom for at least a half-dozen
years. Following this betrayal, she and her synthetic surrogate brother Andy
(David Jonsson) decide to join a small group of friends – her ex-boyfriend
Tyler (Archie Renaux), his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), her cousin Bjorn (Spike
Fern), and Bjorn’s girlfriend Navarro (Aileen Wu) – in an audacious scheme to
free themselves of Wayland-Yutani’s yoke.

Tyler and Bjorn have discovered the derelict Romulus/Remus
in high orbit above the planet and intend to take a small spacecraft to the
space station to salvage the cryostasis chambers that will allow them to travel
to a distant colony. Initially, things go as planned but, once the group boards
the station, it becomes clear that things did not go well for the previous
crew. The only “survivor” is the partially destroyed synthetic, Rook (which
uses the voice and image likeness of Ian Holm), who serves the Prime Directive
dictated by the Company. When an accident triggers the revival of a group of
facehuggers from their stasis pods, the stage is set for an impregnation and,
as always happens in an Alien movie, the subsequent “birth” results in a
fight-or-flight struggle for life between disadvantaged humans and the “perfect”
killing machine. In this case, as in Aliens, there’s more than one.

Some of the best bits of Romulus are direct
references to the beloved first two Alien films (although Alvarez also provides
more obscure callbacks to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and even the two
other sequels). Alvarez, a horror director by trade (having previously made Don’t
Breathe and the Evil Dead remake), knows how to set up a tensely
creepy scene (there are several of these, some involving facehuggers and/or the
mature alien) but isn’t as good when it comes to character development. One
area where both Alien and Aliens succeeded was in fleshing-out
secondary characters that would eventually become xenomorph-fodder. In Romulus,
the four supporting humans are paper-thin with one or two recognizable traits
each. Only Rain and Andy (and the relationship between them) seem worth the
screenplay’s time.

Set design establishes the divided space station Romulus/Remus
as another consistent module in the universe established by Scott and
embellished by Cameron. Everything here feels “lived-in” and borrows its aesthetic
not only from the previous Alien films but from the TV science fiction
series The Expanse. Creature appearance is faithful to that of
H.R. Giger’s original monsters with one new design. The decision to use Ian Holm’s
likeness (made with the agreement and cooperation of the actor’s family) is a
mixed bag. The way it’s used, for a half-destroyed android, diminishes some of
the downfalls of a CGI image recreation but it remains a distraction.

Cailee Spaeny, the young actress blazing a trail through Hollywood
(recent credits include Civil War and the title role in Priscilla),
fashions a character who’s more than a “poor man’s Ripley” but less than a
force of nature. It’s impossible not to compare her to Sigourney Weaver but
that feels unfair. (Ripley, for example, received most of her development in Aliens
– for the majority of Alien, she was part of the ensemble.) Spaeny does
what she needs to do in providing viewers with a port of entry into this world.
Her relationship with Andy, a glitchy synthetic refurbished by her father, is
more touching than any of the human/human pairings in Romulus.

Is Alien: Romulus the Alien film fans have
been craving since Ripley, Hicks, and Newt entered their cryo-sleep in 1986? Perhaps.
It contains most of the requisite elements and, if it doesn’t measure up to the
high standard established by Scott (who has a producer credit) and Cameron (who
provided suggestions to Alvarez), that’s only to be expected. It’s a good
showcase for the xenomorph in its various permutations and a solid horror/suspense
movie in its own right. The open question is whether it will reinvigorate the franchise
after numerous misfires and cash-grabs. Only time (and the box office) will
tell.

Alien: Romulus (United States, 2024)

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Movie Reviews

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

Published

45 minutes ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

by Sean P. Aune | May 9, 2026

Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.

This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.

Dangerously Close

I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.

An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?

The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.

Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.

Fire with Fire

Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.

Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.

This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’

Last Resort

Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.

George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.

There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.

Short Circuit

Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?

NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.

Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.

His whole character is mystifying.

Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.

1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: AFFECTION – Assignment X

Published

13 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026

AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.

There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.

Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.

But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.

The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.

Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.

Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.

The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?

AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.

Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.

We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.

As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.

Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.

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Movie Reviews

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

Published

1 day ago

May 8, 2026

Press Room

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:

Deanna: ★★★★.5

Allison: ★★★.25

Julia: ★★

To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.