Saturday, June 24, 2017

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer / * (2006)

Life began as a cold and desolate void for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Born in a moment of passive biological routine on the floor of a fish market, his cries of uncertainty were a sound unknown to an emotionless mother, who previously birthed four other children that were all stillborn. Confusion in the moment lead passers-by to assume the worst of his strange arrival, and soon his poor mother was sentenced to hang after others mistakenly assumed she tried to kill him. Fate then reduced his purpose to mere existence – first at an orphanage where young boys attempted to smother him, and later at a Tannery where 16-hour work days were interlaced with physical abuse – and all indications suggested he would die out well before his time, another lowly statistic in the unforgiving shadow of French poverty. But destiny seemed to intervene just as fortune evaded him, offering talents so precious they could have, quite substantially, given him the power and prestige to command a generation of thinkers eager for sensation. It was just that pesky notion of murdering women that would louse up all those lofty agendas as the years rolled on.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Alien: Covenant / *** (2017)

If H.R. Giger’s most famous creation has lingered as a symbol of interest in the minds of movie audiences over the last 40 years, it perhaps has less to do with its anatomical ambiguity and far more to do with the relationship it carries with a growing ensemble of dimwitted human bystanders. Think long and hard about those it has encountered and you begin to sense the irony. Here was a being who emerged from the shadows not because it was destined to, but because it lucked out with the misguided curiosities of those who chose to wander too close to investigate. And once it emerged in the full splendor of a dangerous chase, it became the target for which an upper tier of even more foolish sorts hoped to harvest its abilities for some vague military agenda. Only one among a plethora of screaming ignoramuses had the foresight to sense the impending catastrophe, and it was an instinct so precise that she became the sole survivor through several separate bouts with the alien – so convincing as such that when she selflessly took her own life for the endurance of mankind, they were dumb enough to resurrect her for more misguided encounters.