Yeah. Spoilers. If spoilers keep you from seeing a movie, keep reading.

I still remember the review I read of Alien from 1979 — Richard Schickel in Time? That part I don’t remember — wondering if the movie was supposed to be a thinly veiled satire of corporate life, because the ship’s crew members were so interchangeable and personality-free and we just didn’t care when the Alien ate them. 

I wonder what the same reviewer would make of Alien in comparison to Prometheus, because the former is a finely-crafted character study in comparison to the latter. It’s a finely-crafted everything in comparison to the latter. 

Prometheus is a bad film. Not everyone in my household believes this, but Darin is just wrong this time. Ridley Scott clearly had a huge budget and he forgot to spend any on writers — of course, as Darin says, “Did you miss the part where it said ‘A Ridley Scott Film’?” Okay, he makes a fair point. Characters are not Scott’s forté. 

Going by this movie, the only thing that is Scott’s forté is lens flare.

From beginning to end, this movie makes not a goddamn bit of sense, either on a macro story level, or an a micro individual-scene level. The characters are crap (what there is comes solely from the actors and not a bit from the dialogue or what the characters actually do). The tension varies between boring and someone’s-going-to-die, only I don’t care that they’re going to die because everyone’s acted like an idiot up until this point.

Case in point: We have an extended sequence in which two horrible things are going on: the leader of the scientific expedition has been impregnated with an alien and has to do a grisly self-surgery on herself to get it out, and a former crew member, reanimated by Something Awful, has come to the ship and starts killing people. On a ship of 17 inhabitants, 3 or 4 get dispatched during this scene. I’m going to assume that for a deep space expedition, millions of light years from home, that every person you bring with has a goddamn purpose. You’ve just lost 3 or 4 of them. 

The surgery is dealt with. The zombie has been dealt with. What’s the next thing the people on the ship do?

1. Get the hell out of Dodge and warn the people of Earth never, ever, ever to go anywhere near this verkakete planet again, or
2. Suit up and take everyone, including the ship’s captain, to the place where the zombie came from. 

On the macro level, though, the movie is even more offensive. There’s a whole theme strand about religion: the leader of the scientific expedition wears a cross, which is the lazy filmmaker’s way of indicating she’s wants to find God. Primitive peoples all over the world have led her to this place — a plot thread that, given what they tell us about the aliens from this world, makes no damn sense whatsoever either — where she’s going to find the Engineers (an unbelievably pretentious title) who made us. Except the film has nothing to say on any of these elements. They’re just thrown out there, as though mentioning them is an adequate substitution for taking a stand on them. 

I loved this quote from Ben Owen at Parabasis blog in his fabulously titled “Gay British Androids Monitor Your Dreams: Some Thoughts on Prometheus”:

Having your characters talk constantly about whether they have faith or not doesn’t mean your film has anything interesting to say about theology.

(Actually, his entire entry about the film is marvelous and correct and I won’t hold it against you if you go read him instead.)

I’m glad Prometheus is finally in theaters so I don’t have to suffer through its migraine-inducing flashy-flashy trailer again. But this movie is a stinkin’ pile o’ poo.

By the way, in our theater, after the final scene (in which the familiar HR Giger alien makes its first appearance), people laughed. If that’s happening a lot…oops. Bad call, Ridley.

Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) is a sweet, mild-mannered funeral home director in Carthage, Texas. He is universally beloved by everyone who knows him, and he goes out of his way to help everyone he can, particularly in their moment of grieving and pain. He leads choirs, he volunteers for every possible charity, and he may be a closeted homosexual — if he does date, no one knows about it.

Marjorie Nugent (Shirley Maclaine) is as universally despised as Bernie is loved. She is a cranky old woman, mean to everyone, and miserly with the money with her late husband left her. She never has a nice thing to say to anyone, and she has no family who want to talk to her except via lawyers as they sue her to get at their inheritance.

Bernie, by Richard Linklater, is the true story of how Bernie and Marjorie meet and become friends, and how Bernie ends up murdering Marjorie and hiding her body. The absolute best thing about this movie is that all of the interviews with the townspeople of Carthage apparently are real, actual interviews — those are the real townspeople giving their memories of Bernie and Marjorie. A couple of these people end up filming scenes with the actors and they are all very good. I would, in fact, credit the director with an amazing touch here: these people are by far and away the best part of this movie. 

Darin and I split on how we felt about this movie, which we both had reservations about. Darin said he had no idea who he’d recommend this movie to or why (except for the interviews), because it’s so weird: how are we supposed to feel about this guy who murdered someone and then hid her body? 

My problem was that I couldn’t get past Jack Black in the title role. 

The movie opens with one interview after another about how wonderful and sweet and kind and caring Bernie was. When Jack Black shows up, my initial reaction was, “But you know he’s playing y’all, right?” Black actually does a very good job as Bernie — he doesn’t mug at all, he sings very earnestly and sweetly, and he plays Bernie as very soft and caring. I just didn’t believe him in the role of a selfless, supportive, wimpy guy. I kept expecting him to break character or do a double-take or whatever. So the spell never worked on me and I couldn’t quite understand this character.

But the townspeople are great. If you have any interest in seeing Bernie, I recommend it for them. 

During the movie I thought maybe I’d go out to the lobby and get a box of Red Vines or something. Those Reese’s Pieces Simon had sure were tasty.

After the movie, Sophia said, “That’s my favoritest movie ever!”

Darin added, “Yeah, I think that was better that the first Men In Black.” 

My take-away from this is

1. Opinions differ, particularly based on a) age and b) memory of the previous films. (I don’t remember the first one particularly, although I remember enjoying it. Darin’s memory tends to be better than mine these days, so if he says MIB3 is better than MIB1, I see no reason to doubt him.)
2. It’s not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. Except if you’re 12. Then it might be the bestest thing ever.

It’s late May. We should be in Amazing Movie Season. And yet each week we’re scrambling to find movies to see.

(Yes, we’ve seen The Avengers. Twice, in fact. I see no reason to even have an entry about it here, because everyone else in Christendom has seen it too (twice).)

We saw Men In Black 3 this afternoon and already it’s faded from my mind. And I wanted to write movies?