Drive in Saturday Tuesday Movie Review: Double Feature! “It Ends with Us” and “Alien: Romulus”

The Drive-In Saturday Tuesday Movie review series is, of course, named after the Bowie song but often has little more than that related to Bowie. For more Bowie, come back tomorrow…
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Movies: It Ends with Us and Alien: Romulus

Bowie connection: Michael Fassbender portrayed a character named “David” in two Alien movies and related promotional videos. Though the character was ostensibly named after Michelangelo’s David, Fassbender has said he took inspiration from Bowie’s character, Thomas Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. (And if you’ve seen Fassbender in the role, he seems to have adopted other Bowie-like qualities as well.) Unfortunately, neither Fassbender nor his character, David, appears in this particular Alien movie. As for It Ends With Us, the filmmakers bypassed several opportunities to include a Bowie song in the soundtrack. That said, the subject matter bears similarities to Bowie’s 1979 song “Repetition.”
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Experience

We decided to skip the standard drive-in dinner of heat-lamp hamburgers and went for sushi at Shogun in Delmar beforehand. We hadn’t been there in years, and it has a nice outdoor patio in the back. It’s also next to an Irish pub with its own patio, where a singer was performing—so we got some free music out of the deal, though no Bowie. Afterward, we headed to the Jericho Drive-in, my favorite because it has an ice cream stand. I’ve been working my way through the sundaes and opted for a Mint Kiss sundae this time, which I mostly ate on the street-facing side of the stand, where there’s a nice outdoor setup. As the temperature dropped, we decided to watch the movies from the car instead of using folding chairs. That might have been a mistake—despite the window screens, the car got stuffy. Still, we were comfortable, and luckily, there was no rain.

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Alien: Romulus Review

As with most horror and science fiction movies, this one analogized various things happening in culture and society that are present-day causes of anxiety:

– Faceless bureaucracy
– State-like corporations
– Being treated like a cog in a machine
– A suspicious vaccine
– Artificial Intelligence
– Environmental degradation
– And, of course, aliens

Some of the Alien movies have made an effort to be significantly different than their predecessors. Not this one– it seemed almost like a best-of movie. Or a movie like the joke about Taco Bell menu items– they all use the same five ingredients but present them in slightly different ways. This one included familiar scenarios and even familiar shots. The slightly different presentation in this movie included the absence of Sigourney Weaver and the tuning of the franchise conceits to evoke the aforementioned modern sources of anxiety rather than whatever it was we were scared of in 1979, etc. On the other hand, one of the seemingly unlikely recycled ingredients was Ian Holm, reprising his role form the original Alien movie. Except Holm has been dead for four years and he hasn’t looked like he looked in 1979 since 1979. The solution to this problem was a CGI-enhanced animatronic Ian Holm head. A neat trick that has its own set of creepy implications. Not to go on too long about this, but Ian Holm’s contribution to this part was so removed from the actual movie itself that his name does not appear on the cast credits.

Anyway, the larger problem with the movie was that it was so dark and murky that I usually couldn’t tell what was happening. It was atmospheric for sure, but after a while I really needed to have a better sense of why people were screaming. The clarity of the trailer attached to this post is far superior to the clarity of the actual movie on the drive-in screen. In this respect, Alien: Romulus turned out to be a bad match for the drive-in. At some point, I might see it again on a television to get a better sense of what I didn’t see this time.

Add to all that– the movie moved at a kind of glacial speed. I think the idea was to build up a sense of foreboding, but the result was plodding.

All that said, I didn’t hate it and, as I mentioned I kind of want to see it again. But I wouldn’t rank this high up on the list of Alien movies.

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It Ends With Us Review

If Alien was suboptimal for a drive-in because of the way it was filmed, this one was just a strange choice for a drive-in based on its subject matter. A very serious movie about domestic violence, it seemed out of place on a screen usually reversed for lighter fare. Much like Alien, I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. The movie kept my interest, but I would have preferred to see something with a werewolf or a superhero or maybe a giant shark.

The plot, based off a book by the same name that I haven’t read, was fairly straightforward: a woman gets into an abusive relationship then leaves the guy. OK, there’s some more nuances to it than that– the woman, whose name is Lily Bloom and is portrayed by Blake Lively, is a second-generation abuse victim. She watched her mother beaten at the hands of her father, who also beat a high-school boyfriend, Atlas, who later comes back into the picture. The implication is that she was conditioned to be attracted to abusive men (I think?) The abuser, named Ryle, is a rich, handsome, neurosurgeon with a body like an Olympic athlete. He’s supposed to be dreamy, on the one hand, but also the kind of guy who walks through life with a god complex. He’s introduced in the movie throwing a temper-tantrum, that should have been a warning sign for Lily but instead seems to have turned her on. Actually, the guy playing Ryle, Justin Baldoni (who also directed the movie), reminded me of the vampire Jerry Dandrige, played by Chris Sarandon in the 1985 (excellent) movie, Fright Night. Although that is almost certainly coincidental, I think the idea was for both characters to project an aurora of both being attractive and threatening at the same time.

So, predictably, Ryle turns out to be physically abusive. After three violent episodes, Lily wises up and gets out. Ryle even turns out to be understanding about her decision. Her relatively quick exit and his sane reaction don’t strike me as realistic, but there it is.

OK– so here’s my alternate take on what happened in the movie. I mentioned the old boyfriend Atlas– Atlas recognized the signs of abuse and warned Lily to get out even before the second episode. He’s portrayed as helpful and Lily’s true love. But his behavior comes close to stalking, and even after realizing that Lily is in an abusive relationship, he does a number of things that had the effect of provoking Ryle. Could this have been intentional, to drive Lily away from Ryle and to him? I’m guessing that most of the movie audience will not see this, and maybe it isn’t there. But I’ll tell you what– if the love of your life is married to a violent, jealous guy, don’t give an interview to a magazine about how much you’ve been pining for her.

Baldoni, as director, made use of a couple of storytelling techniques that I thought raised the quality of the movie, both of which had to do with deliberate ambiguities. The movie featured several flashbacks, including scenes of Lily and Atlas in high school. Livley looked just about the same, so I found the shifting timeframes to be somewhat disorientating. I’m pretty sure this was done on purpose to suggest that domestic violence is cyclical– the movie’s name is the conclusion the rest of the movie builds toward. So, I thought that was clever.

Similarly, the first two instances of violence perpetrated by Ryle against Lily either happened so fast that I didn’t see them or were not shown at all. The effect was to leave a little, tiny bit of doubt about what happened. The moment that differentiates an attack from an accident was left unclear during the period that Lily was making excuses. Ultimately, though, both incidents became the subject of another flashback, during which the assault was unambiguous. I think the intent was to simulate the world in which observers can choose not to see what was happening. I thought that was clever, too.

So, not a bad movie, but I’m not sure any of this is subject matter best explored under the stars. That said, the cinematography was much the movie was much brighter than Alien, and I could at least tell what was happening.

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Ratings: Alien: Romulus gets two non-Bowie-like androids and It Ends With Us gets two blooming lilies.