SYNOPSIS: In “Ella McCay,” a new dramedy written and directed by sitcom legend James L. Brooks, and now playing in theatres, the idealistic 34-year-old titular character must juggle family, marriage and responsibility when she becomes governor of her state.
CAST: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Julie Kavner, Spike Fearn, Rebecca Hall, Albert Brooks, and Woody Harrelson. Written and directed by James L. Brooks.
REVIEW: A mix of family drama and political underdog tale, “Ella McCay” is a kernel of a good idea with a good cast wrapped up in an over-stuffed melodrama.
British actress Emma Mackey plays all-America go getter Ella McCay. She scored top marks in class, became a lawyer, married her high school sweetheart and unexpectedly became governor of her state when the sitting governor (Albert Brooks) is offered a cabinet position in the federal government.
As she works to secure free children’s dental services, among other pet programs, family drama threatens to undo everything she’s worked to achieve.
In a story about a dysfunctional family, the most dysfunctional thing about the story is the script, written by James L. Brooks, who also directs.
Brooks specializes in television shows (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Taxi”) and movies (“As Good as It Gets” and “Broadcast News”) that effortlessly flip flop between humor and heartache. Those elements are all present in “Ella McCay,” but they feel strained and unfocussed, like puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. The idiosyncratic script veers all over the place, leaping from one contrived situation to another, never finding an overall tone to tie the episodic story together.
As a result “Ella McCay” makes for baffling viewing.
Despite handing in a committed performance as the title character, Emma Mackey battles against overwritten dialogue in a movie that wants to be a character-driven look at life, love and loyalty, but is, instead, a collection of feels, raked up like fallen leaves in the fall, and thrown haphazardly at the screen.
Like the title character, the movie “Ella McCay” wants it all, but succeeds only in proving that sometimes, more is less.
Recently Cailee Spaeny played the wife of one of the most famous musicians on the planet as the title character in “Priscilla.” In her new film, “Alien: Romulus,” a standalone “interquel” set between the events of “Alien” and “Aliens,” she trades her ex-husband Elvis’s Graceland for another weird, otherworldly place—outer space.
In the new film, the seventh installment in the “Alien” franchise, Spaeny plays Rain Carradine, a new style Ellen Ripley, and one of a group of space scavengers fleeing their home planet, a dystopian hellhole run by a company whose ironic slogan reads, “Building a Better World.”
“The company is not going to give us anything,” says Bjorn (Spike Fearn), “we have to take it.”
To avoid working in the company’s mines, a small group, including Rain, her model ND-255 synthetic “brother” Andy (“Industry’s” David Jonsson), her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux), mine workers Bjorn and Kay (Isabela Merced) along with pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu), set off to rummage parts from a decommissioned space station. But instead of space pods and spare parts, they discover the universe’s most horrifying life form, the Xenomorph.
A horror film set in space, “Alien: Romulus” is a back-to-basics movie that owes a debt to the first two films in the franchise. The first part is all atmospherics and world building, reminiscent of the creeping dread that defined the original film. From the forty-five minute mark—the first Facehugger sighting—director Fede Álvarez amps up the action and the stakes, dispensing the fast-paced intensity of James Cameron’s “Aliens.”
The result is a movie that finds a way to use our nostalgia for the original films as a springboard for some new ideas. Álvarez, along with co-writer Rodo Sayagues, steers the story to a wild final act that stays true to the franchise, but combines sci fi and body horror in an unforgettable, spine-chilling fashion.
Seven movies in (plus two “Alien vs. Predator” crossover flicks) nothing will ever beat the original chest-bursting scene for sheer shock and awe, but “Alien: Roimulus’s” aggressive Facehuggers and Xenomorph are still potent horror images.
They’re iconic in their hideousness, drip acidic blood, and, if that wasn’t enough, force their proboscis down throats to impregnate their victims. Álvarez uses them to unnerving effect, mixing the creatures with a zombie synthetic character, some House of Horrors visuals and enough graphic, gory and grim practical effects to provide a pedal to the metal thrill ride.
“Alien: Romulus” doesn’t have the thematic depth of some of the other films in the series, but it delivers a crowd-pleasing and exciting link between the first and second movies on the “Alien” franchise timeline.
