A stunning frame from Prey (2022) |
Happy New Year!
For me New Year’s Eve is always about changes and setting new goals. Well, for
starters, I thought I’d change the way my posts work in Cinema Head Cheese. You’ll still be getting one post per month by
yours truly but for 2023 you’ll get A
Binge too Far posts on the 1st of January, February, March, May,
June, July, September, October, November, and you’ll get Static Age posts on the 1st of April, August, and
December (essentially becoming a quarterly column). In other words, every three
A Binge too Far posts, will be
followed by one Static Age post. I
decided upon this new arrangement in order for Static Age to grow even bigger and include more content each time
(I’m thinking more than 2,000 words and more than ten series tackled per post),
while of course A Binge too Far will
remain pretty much the same, with a special that’ll included a couple of
reviews in each post. Got it? This time we’ll take a
brief look on the two recent Predator
releases.
Reviews:
The Predator (2018) poster
The Predator (2018)
Another tagline
reads “You’ll never see him coming.”, to which I should add that we would
probably be better off if we didn’t anyway, but here we are with another Predator film (1987 – present) on our
hands. But is it any good? The short answer is, unfortunately not. Although
director Shane Black (who also co-penned the screenplay with Fred Dekker) went
for an R-rating (as promised in his interviews), and the beheadings and overall
mayhem are intact, there’s not much else to enjoy here. For starters, the plot
is thinner than the ones usually employed by SyFy product, and the acting is
bordering on the laughable. If you care to see it, all you need to know in
advance, story-wise, is that the film concerns a Predator that is on custody by
human scientists that keep him under heavy sedation, and – surprise! – he
escapes, and now humanity is in danger. Will we be able to save our asses?
Produced by
Lawrence Gordon (who had also backed the original film) on a $88 million
budget, this premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2018 before
embarking on a general theatrical release which doubled its money (it went on
to gross more than $160.5 million), so we might see more of the hard boiled
aliens. However, the film will remain immortal in popular culture memory solely
because of the controversy it caused to PC circles because sex offender Steve
Wilder was cast in a minor role, which was then left in the editing floor due
to the fabricated outrage.
Naru (Amber
Midthunder) is a young Comanche woman who faces sexism from her tribe who’d
prefer to have her as a cook due to her gender, but she wants to be a hunter
and becomes one of the best after meticulous training, which comes handy when
her small community in the forest is attacked by an alien predator.
Working as a
prequel, this fifth installment in the long-running franchise is both
entertaining (mainly due to its several outstanding gore and action set-pieces)
and masterful (due to several well-staged one-shots and a stunning
cinematography), resulting in what is possibly the best chapter in the series
since the original.
Directed by Dan
Trachtenberg (who also penned the story, with Patrick Aison, who in turn wrote
the screenplay), this started development during the production of the 2018 film
reviewed above and it was shot in Calgary in 2021 on a massive $65 million
budget. It premiered at the San Diego Comic-Con before receiving a release as a
Hulu original to positive reviews from fans and critics alike.
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