Movie Reviews

Aliens: Expanded (2024) – Movie Review

Published

1 year ago

July 16, 2024

Aliens Expanded, 2024.

Directed by Ian Nathan.
Featuring James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, Mark Rolston, Jenette Goldstein, William Hope, Carrie Henn, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Robert Skotak, John Lee, Graham Hartstone, Alan Dean Foster, Mark Verheiden, V. Castro, Charles de Lauzirika, Derek Dafoe, Drea Letamendi, and James Dyer.

SYNOPSIS:

How much do you love the movie Aliens? If your answer is “It’s one of my favorite movies!” then the new documentary Aliens Expanded is for you. It’s nearly five hours (yes, five hours) long and features plenty of commentary from director James Cameron, producer Gale Anne Hurd, the primary cast members, and plenty of other folks. Highly recommended.

One of the great things about the modern era is the ability for people to be not only fans but super fans of whatever interests them, thanks to the Internet. If you’re one of those Aliens super fans, then you’ll want to check out the nearly five-hour Aliens: Expanded documentary, which plumbs the depths of the film in an exhaustive look at the making of it and its legacy.

Sure, we have Charles de Lauzirika’s excellent Superior Firepower: The Making of Aliens documentary, which has been kicking around on home video since the DVD days (and he shows up in this documentary), but I’m sure you’ll learn some new stuff here and there in Aliens Expanded. I think the running time just about guarantees it.

And even if you already know many of the making-of stories, there’s something to be said for just soaking in a lengthy discussion of a movie you love and revisiting the era in which it came out. I was a teenager when Aliens was released, so I can remember a simpler time when you could go to a movie, enjoy it, and chat about it with people afterward without getting distracted by the Internet, or even seeing spoilers online before you could get to the theater.

The usual suspects show up here, including, of course, writer/director James Cameron, producer Gale Anne Hurd, Sigourney Weaver and the rest of the cast, and some of the special effects guys. However, Aliens Expanded goes beyond that to serve up thoughts from people like Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the novelization (along with the novelizations of many classic science-fiction movies of that era), comic book author Mark Verheiden (he wrote a bunch of Aliens comics for Dark Horse that were, unfortunately, rendered moot by Alien 3), and even psychologist Drea Letamendi.

The documentary takes us through the making of the movie from its earliest days to its release and its legacy. James Cameron in particular doesn’t seem to mind giving his unvarnished thoughts on those days, including his low opinion of producers David Giler and Walter Hill and his observation that the British crew members at Pinewood Studios were “on a different wavelength.”

Cameron is also willing to put some blame at his own feet, however, such as his telling of the story of the tea lady and her trolly. (I won’t spoil it.) He acknowledges that he wasn’t always very diplomatic, an observation echoed by others; however, the consensus seems to be that he could be blunt because he was so obsessed with every detail of making the film.

There are plenty of other great stories told during Aliens Expanded, and there’s even a moment where conflicting tales pop up: Lance Henriksen says that he brought a case full of knives to England so Cameron could choose one for that famous scene, and when he was detained by the authorities, Gale Anne Hurd arrived to save the day. Hurd’s version of the story, though, is one where she was with him at the time but they both worried about the case being opened and were relieved when it wasn’t.

I don’t point that out to throw shade at anyone, of course. It’s now been close to thirty years since that incident happened, along with many others discussed in this documentary. Heck, I can’t always remember what I had for lunch the previous day.

I should also note that the two primary cast members no longer with us — Bill Paxton and Al Mathews — get the recognition they richly deserve.

The framing device for Aliens Expanded revolves around accessing computer files, unsurprisingly, with animations that introduce each chapter and provides bridges to side stories. If I want to pick any nits with this documentary, I’d say that sometimes the transitions between topics are abrupt, and sometimes a topic is discussed before segueing to something else and then looping back around to the original subject.

But those are minor issues. This documentary had to be a huge undertaking, and the fact that it simply exists, with participation from so many key people, is a testament to the filmmakers’ resolve.

The fans also got involved in this one, funding it during the development stage and getting their names in the lengthy end credits. Stick around through the credits to see clips of various fans talking about their love of Aliens.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Brad Cook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review | Sentimental Value

Published

7 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Press Room

Sentimental Value (Photo – Neon)

Full of clear northern light and personal crisis, Sentimental Value felt almost like a throwback film for me. It explores emotions not as an adjunct to the main, action-driven plot but as the very subject of the movie itself.

Sentimental Value
Directed by Joachim Trier – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

The film stars Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg, a 70-year-old director who returns to Oslo to stir up interest in a film he wants to make, while health and financing in an era dominated by bean counters still allow it. He hopes to film at the family house and cast his daughter Nora, a renowned stage actress in her own right, as the lead. However, Nora struggles with intense stage fright and other personal issues. She rejects the role, disdaining the father who abandoned the family when he left her and her sister Agnes as children. In response, Gustav lures a “name” American actress, Rachel Keys (Elle Fanning), to play the part.

Sentimental Value, written by director Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, delves into sibling dynamics, the healing power of art, and how family trauma can be passed down through generations. Yet the film also has moments of sly humor, such as when the often oblivious Gustav gives his nine-year-old grandson a birthday DVD copy of Gaspar Noé’s dreaded Irreversible, something intense and highly inappropriate.

For me, the film harkens back to the works of Ingmar Bergman. The three sisters (with Elle Fanning playing a kind of surrogate sister) reminded me of the three siblings in Bergman’s 1972 Cries and Whispers. In another sequence, the shot composition of Gustav and his two daughters, their faces blending, recalls the iconic fusion of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson’s faces in Persona.

It’s the acting that truly carries the film. Special mention goes to Renate Reinsve, who portrays the troubled yet talented Nora, and Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav, an actor unafraid to take on unlikable characters (I still remember him shooting a dog in the original Insomnia). In both cases, the subtle play of emotions—especially when those emotions are constrained—across the actors’ faces is a joy to watch. Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (who plays Agnes, the other sister with her own set of issues) are both excellent.

It’s hardly a Christmas movie, but more deeply, it’s a winter film, full of emotions set in a cold climate.

> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Laemmle Glendale, and AMC The Americana at Brand 18.

Movie Reviews

No More Time – Review | Pandemic Indie Thriller | Heaven of Horror

Published

19 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Press Room

No More Time – Review | Pandemic Indie Thriller | Heaven of Horror

Where is the dog?

You can call me one-track-minded or say that I focus on the wrong things, but do not include an element that I am then expected to forget. Especially if that “element” is an animal – and a dog, even.

In No More Time, we meet a couple, and it takes quite some time before we suddenly see that they have a dog with them. It appears in a scene suddenly, because their sweet little dog has a purpose: A “meet-cute” with a girl who wants to pet their dog.

After that, the dog is rarely in the movie or mentioned. Sure, we see it in the background once or twice, but when something strange (or noisy) happens, it’s never around. This completely ruins the illusion for me. Part of the brilliance of having an animal with you during an apocalyptic event is that it can help you.

And yet, in No More Time, this is never truly utilized. It feels like a strange afterthought for that one scene with the girl to work, but as a dog lover, I am now invested in the dog. Not unlike in I Am Legend or Darryl’s dog in The Walking Dead. As such, this completely ruined the overall experience for me.

If it were just me, I could (sort of) live with it. But there’s a reason why an entire website is named after people demanding to know whether the dog dies, before they’ll decide if they’ll watch a movie.

Movie Reviews

Film reviews: ‘Marty Supreme’ and ‘Is This Thing On?’

Published

1 day ago

December 14, 2025

Press Room

‘Marty Supreme’

Directed by Josh Safdie (R)

★★★★

The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie
since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.

Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”

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‘Is This Thing On?’

Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)

★★★

“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”

The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”