“Alien: Romulus” - You just had to make it weird (or Alien Re-Resurrection).

How did you feel about Alien Resurrection? Did you like it, hate it, accept it as good enough to scratch your Alien itch? Did you refuse to watch it altogether? Were you even alive in 1997? Short of rewatching Resurrection, Alien: Romulus is the next closest thing. Depending on how you answered my questions, that’s good, bad, or you’re not even old enough to have worried about Y2K.

In Resurrection, a group of corporate scientists are studying captured xenomorphs (the aliens referenced by the title) aboard a ship. A ragtag group of humans and one obligatory android are also on board. When the xenomorphs escape and start killing, the group is chased around the ship and picked off by the xenomorphs one at a time, all while a final countdown to the ship’s destruction ensues. At the end, there is a climactic fight between the last remaining human(s) and some new hybrid xenomorph.

In Romulus, a group of corporate scientists were studying captured xenomorphs (the aliens referenced by the title) aboard a space station. A ragtag group of humans and one obligatory android end up on board. When the xenomorphs escape and start killing, the group is chased around the station and picked off by the xenomorphs one at a time, all while a final countdown to the station’s destruction ensues. At the end, there is a climactic fight between the last remaining human(s) and some new hybrid xenomorph.

There are differences, to be sure. Romulus takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens. There are fewer characters in Romulus and none of them are literally Sigourney Weaver or Weaver’s Ripley. But there is a Ripley-analogue - Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny), a young miner caring for her android/surrogate brother Andy (David Jonsson). Yes, the android’s actual name is Andy. Andy the Android. Yeah, I rolled my eyes, too.

And the way they end up on the doomed vessel is slightly different. Rain is approached by ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) with a plan to escape their dead-end lives and flee to another planet. The three of them and three others - Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) - form the group that will definitely not all survive to see that planet. Unfortunately, none of the human characters are developed that well, so we don’t have much rooting interest in any them. Rain is the obvious protagonist and we like her because she protects Andy. But Kay is pregnant, so...yeah. The other three barely get names and are just there as slasher movie fodder. As for Andy, we’re told he is an old model refurbished to the point of being little more than functional and mostly reduced to telling dad jokes. See the problem here? We need another Ripley - a very capable and skilled person with leadership qualities and a badass streak who won’t leave a child or cat behind. Instead, we get Rain, who is really good at rebooting Andy and knows not to inject people with black goo. That’s about it.

Speaking of black goo, how did you feel about Prometheus and the whole xenomorph origin story? I thought it was half-baked and completely unnecessary. It’s one thing to give us the tale of how Darth Vader came to be Darth Vader (still unnecessary). It’s another to give us the origin story of a wild animal. Imagine if someone made a prequel to The Meg explaining the origins of megalodons. It’s a scary monster that wants to kill people. Got it. I don’t need more. As Patton Oswalt once joked when talking about the Star Wars prequels, “I don’t care where the stuff I love came from. I just love the stuff I love.” To be clear, I do not love The Meg or anything about it. The point is when the goo made an appearance in Romulus, I rolled my eyes again. Hard.

(Spoilers - If you want to be truly surprised and grossed out in the movie, skip the next paragraph.)

That goo was a key component in writer/director Fede Alvarez’s vision for Romulus. He definitely saw Resurrection, but took the wrong lesson from it. He saw the bizarre human-hybrid and thought “you know what this really needs? Graphic body horror.” Remember that pregnant girl I mentioned? She has one job in this movie - to give birth to that hybrid. And it’s a scene you can’t unsee. I realize that watching one of the chest-bursters explode through a rib cage is quite awful to watch, but watching one of the xenomorph eggs come blasting out from between that girl’s legs in an explosion of blood is over the top for me. Not because labor and delivery bothers me - I watched my son’s birth and it was super cool - but because it’s in the movie just for the gratuitous shock value. It’s also the point where the movie lost me, not just because of the gross-out factor, but because of the continued tie-in to Prometheus. I didn’t know it was possible to roll your eyes while trying not to vomit.

With that scene seared into my brain, followed by the silly hybrid and final fight scene, I was less than thrilled by the overall film. Don’t get me wrong, the movie prior to the pregnant girl’s big scene was very solid. It did what we want all Alien movies to do. It put a group of people in an enclosed space being chased by the scariest creature in movie history. It gave us another really good android character who garners more sympathy than the rest of the cast combined (not to mention Andy gets an upgrade for part of the movie that allows Jonsson to steal the show). It even did some creative things with the face huggers and acid blood to lift the tension. But Alvarez just had to make it weird.

Rating: Ask for four dollars back and a barf bag.

“Back to Black” - Tabloid fodder.

“Why does this movie exist?” - countless anonymous moviegoers.

I’m sure you’ve heard that question before, usually regarding sequels or remakes. Or maybe you heard it as a statement - “Nobody asked for this movie.” Or how about “who is this movie even for?” Rather than respond, you should ignore the person asking or just make a gesture at them that means “MONEY, FOOL!!” Yes, the gesture should infer all-caps. But after watching the new Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, I couldn’t help but wonder not “why does this movie exist,” but more precisely, “what was this movie trying to say?”

It only took a few minutes into Back to Black before I started to think it was trying to say Amy Winehouse is a shit of a human being, but with a great set of pipes. The film starts with Amy (Marisa Abela) looking through her grandmother Cynthia’s (Lesley Manville) memory box, asking if she can take it home with her, and Cynthia agreeing if Amy agrees to take special care of it. A brief while later, Amy randomly bursts into song in a room full of relatives enjoying someone else’s music. At the end of the night, her father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) drives her home, chiding Amy about forgetting the memory box after she exits the car and starts walking away. This, after the two get into an argument just moments before.

The next few scenes build on this depiction of Amy, creating a character who comes off as an entitled, immature, impatient brat pissing on everyone who is trying to help her get recognized and established as a singer. This includes her friend Tyler (Spike Fearn), who has been pushing Amy’s demo tapes and finally made a breakthrough with Island Records. Through all of this, she almost always has a drink in her hand, disdain on her face, and an ill-natured comment spewing from her mouth. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder of how this story ends, and feels like this movie believes that maybe Amy deserved it.

Because Amy can sing, her first album “Frank” is a success. But the record label wants to change her stage act to make her more marketable in the USA, essentially admitting they want her to show more of her body. This angers Amy (while also reinforcing her bulimia) and she storms out of a meeting while berating Tyler and informing him she’s taking a break to “live her music.” While cozied up to a bar nursing a drink, Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell) sashays into her life and Amy is immediately smitten. I’d like to tell you that Blake is a positive influence in her life, but Matt Greenhalgh’s script and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s directing are not the least bit interested in putting Amy in a positive light.

I should mention that I knew next to nothing about Amy Winehouse before this movie. I knew her name and that she sang an ear-wormingly annoying song called “Rehab” that a lot of people seemed to really enjoy. Going into this film, I was hoping to learn why so many people liked her and why her death was seemingly such a big deal. As the movie continued to paint Amy as the most unsympathetic person possible, I realized my hope was going to go unfulfilled. When Amy wasn’t screaming at people about not caring about money, fame, or even (at times) her music, she was beating up Blake, getting blackout drunk, and dismissing her roommate’s requests for Amy to be even mildly respectful of her. She even manages to come off as the jerk in a scene where she refuses to do cocaine with Blake.

As Amy continues to spiral toward her demise, the film refuses to examine any of the motivations behind Amy’s issues or how her music is connected to her life. When did the bulimia start and why? Why does she hate her parents but revere her grandmother? What is the relationship really like between Amy and her father? Once Amy hits it big with her second album “Back to Black,” the film’s only concern is tearing apart what’s left of Amy until a final title card appears informing the viewer of Amy’s death from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Dead grandmother, sudden jump into heroin addiction, marrying Blake and descending into a months-long blackout of alcohol, drugs, and abusing Blake, Blake going to prison and divorcing her, an extremely reluctant stint in rehab for Amy, barely being able to enjoy the most successful night at the Grammys for a British woman ever (5 awards) because she wasn’t allowed to be there (failed drug tests), performing “Rehab” in a way that can only be described as pure spite, and finally drinking herself to death after a paparazzo yells about Blake’s new family and child.

So...what was this movie trying to say? Movies typically try to get the audience to sympathize with the main character. Biopics in particular usually try to present their subjects in multiple lights, offering a mix of positive and negative things, from large events to the smallest nuances, in order to give the audience the ability to decide how they feel about the person presented to them. Back to Black actively wants the audience to hate Amy Winehouse. Almost everything we see is designed to turn the audience against Amy, including sometimes painting Blake and her father as victims of Amy. Throw in a deliberately vague and misleading timeline (one example - the film makes it seem like Amy wrote “Rehab” while in rehab, but she actually wrote and released that song prior to going to rehab) and it’s hard not to conclude this film was anything but a tabloidesque hit-piece of Amy. That and I still know next to nothing about Amy Winehouse.

Rating: Ask for all your money back and no further questions.