It has been a long and tiresome hunting season for the Predator; two films and two rotten-to-the core crossovers later, and the titular alien menace is still being called up by Hollywood to don the ol’ metal faceplate and perm the dreadlocks. The good news for our alien trophy-seekers is that Nimrod Antal’s Predators is as close as they have come to a worthwhile fight since the original. Not as perfectly paced or creatively charged as John McTiernan’s 1987 action classic, Predators is still up for giving die-hard audience members a chase worth getting in line for.

Producer Robert Rodriguez has long talked up his concept for a third Predator film, with the humans being beamed directly to an alien game preserve where they could be hunted at leisure by faster, shinier, more menacing variations of the same sinister species that provoked Schwarzenneger all those years ago. As it turns out, this idea works well for rebooting the franchise and wiping away the sting of Predator 2 and the dual tragedy of Alien Vs. Predator and AVP: Requiem (cue snickering). The script even remembers those events from Predator 87, but mercifully it seems amnesiac on the rest of the lot.

Falling one by one out of the sky, a varied and mysterious team of death-mongers—Yakuza, death-row inmates, mercs, and a wayward scientist—find themselves in a place that looks similar to a jungle on Earth. Adjusting to their surroundings and each other, it isn’t long before the revelation of multiple moons and vicious, other-worldly fauna cause them to question exactly where in the universe they are.

When they start getting gruesomely picked off by shadowy creatures in the dark of the jungle, the movie ramps up and delivers the thrills and kills the faithful have been waiting for. Those looking forward to intergalactic bloodshed won’t be disappointed; spinal cords are ripped, green blood runs as freely as red, and there’s even time for some predator on predator violence. When it comes to full-bore mayhem, the contained hunt of Predators easily bests the near apocalyptic onslaught of other blockbusters.

The cast pulled together here does a commendable job of portraying individual grit and together as a team, begrudging endurance as a fighting unit. Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, and Topher Grace sound like an unlikely group, and that in many ways is the point. With Brody’s loner mercenary at the forefront, this eclectic assembly isn’t by accident.

The predators have rigged the jungle, rallied their alien bloodhounds, and even remembered to internally snag their prey by hand-picking not just for battle aptitude but for disparity that might detonate them from within. When Laurence Fishburne’s crazed survivor, too long hiding out in the jungle shows up, Antal and company explore another dimension to the picture that focuses on the predators themselves and the curious tribalism that defines their species.

As an action director I really dig the style of Nimrod Antal, but I’d much prefer to see him tackling films in his own country again, since his debut, Kontroll, is far more powerful and hard-hitting than anything he’s done over here. Antal is the very definition of a journeyman director, taking big gigs and doing a solid but often unremarkable job of them. He gets the pacing, the special effects, and the character interaction down perfectly, but he’s also not bringing anything extra or inspiring to the table. This is less his fault and more the work of the scripters who came before him and decided to write Predators so closely to the original film that almost any legitimate suspense or ingenuity has been wiped away.

The monsters are well designed, and the alien critters who run down the survivors for their Predator masters are believable and threatening. Breaking the predators into two camps, one an older, more worn down caste (the dude who fought Arnold was one of these) and the other a virile and more aggressive contingent, is pure fan boy pandering all the way. Here’s the thing, though. It works.

Adrien Brody, who seems miscast at first, gives his mercenary a welcome sense of cold humanity. Physically, he’s not as imposing as the big Austrian who tussled with these guys the first go-round, but he’s toned up not just his body but also his adrift nice-guy persona to give a turn as a man who doesn’t need to fight the predators with brawn if he can utilize his wits and the predators own cultural hang-ups against them. It’s never going to come down to a one on one fight this time, so Brody stacks the deck in another way, and it leads to the goofy fun third act that betrays the slow build of the earlier sections at the same time it’s giving us just what we want from a movie about alien game hunters tracking hapless human prey.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

  Forget the misleading trailers that suggest we have another ‘Species’ on our hands. Vincenzo Natali’s new thriller Splice has more in common with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or the body horror of David Cronenberg. Instead of a throwback monster movie or a tautly wound science fiction thriller, Splice delves into a morally chilling, psychologically twisted tale of two scientists and their conflicted relationship with their creation; a biologically morphing animal called Dren that starts life as a phallic baby and quickly evolves into French hottie  Delphine Chanéac.

Despite early promise, and a relatively strong cast and haunting visual effects, Splice quickly derails, delivering a limp and ineffective final third. Like the monster at the heart of it, this Splice is a mixed up menace that chatters away but can’t muster much of its own humanity.

Things start out well enough. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play a pair of scientists who not only share a common scientific goal, but also a bed. Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley) are looking for a way to replicate proteins in order to create medical drugs for use with cattle, and in their quest they bring to life ‘Fred’ and Ginger’, two animals that most closely resemble chicken mcnuggets by way of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. As the project is threatened, Elsa foolishly mixes some of her own DNA into the already successful creature cocktail and the resulting product is an animal more agile, intelligent and scientifically compelling than the original prototypes.

With a strained personal relationship between them (it’s hinted that Elsa had a difficult childhood and doesn’t want children) , Elsa and Clive become a kind of surrogate parents to their rapidly growing ‘child’, who leaps and climbs around the lab and pushes scrabble tiles around in an attempt to communicate. When it begins racing through a cruel parody of human development, Elsa and Clive move their operation to the a country farmhouse; it is revealed this was Elsa’s childhood home. The very alien Dren (it’s nerd spelled backwards, which is the acronym of the company Elsa and Clive work for) keeps developing until it’s no longer just cgi, but Delphine Chaneac. a French actress whose haunting soulful eyes have been augmented by speciall effects so they sit at far opposite sides of one another. Bald, winged and potentially carrying the capability to change gender, Dren doesn’t appear mentally or emotionally capable to completely understand her/its situation.

She isn’t a sexy seductress like Syl from the Species films, and certainly not the tortured, questioning creation from Frankenstein. For the purposes of the film, Natali keeps Dren essentially an animal. Yes, she’s an animal with a healthy curiosity and the ability to replicate and mime human behavior, but the film keeps reminding us both visually and thematically that she is far from human. With a pair of wings, a barbed and deadly tail, and legs that would make the aliens from The Arrival jealous, Dren is a creepy and disturbing chimera. At first, the film relegates her to the role of an out-and-out mutant, and for a time that works. When she’s finally being played by Delphine, there’s an attempt to give a dark allure and mine the film for sexual unease. It’s here that Splice unravels.

As I mentioned before, this isn’t a monster movie in the sense that the creature takes center stage. Natali seems so afraid of having the movie been seen as such, that he shrinks Dren and her role in the movie to a catalyst for the emotional unveiling of Elsa and Clive’s own interior natures. Splice wants to be a dark and disturbing cerebral exploration of how each of us categorize and understand our concept of humanity, and how we sometimes impose our notions of morality and intelligence on scenarios where doing so might be dangerous or negligent. Dren is made to be a sympathetic innocent initially, and watching Polley exploit her, despite the fact they share DNA, is difficult to watch. Later, when Clive actually gets physically intimate with Dren, presumably because he’s reacting to those flashes of Elsa he sees, the film collapses like a poorly made house of cards.

The reason for this is that Natali fails to connect all of the dots, and his ambition for the picture is of a higher caliber than the actual writing. There are plot threads that go nowhere, and at first Clive and Elsa are written like the usual devil-may-care edgy scientists in  a horror movie. That would be fine, except Splice wants us to relate and empathize with them, and despite fine performances from Brody and Polley (it’s not her fault Elsa is so implausibly written) it never fleshes them out at the start and then makes them so wholly unsympathetic due to their relationships with Dren. Elsa’s unexplained childhood, Dren’s mysterious nature, and no plausible explanation for why Brody would bang the experiment aren’t just minor plot holes, they are also thematic minefields.

Instead of recovering and drawing the pieces together, Splice becomes the very thing it’s trying to avoid in the final section; a big, goofy creature feature. There are chases, special effects, people screaming in the dark waving flashlights, and tragic comeuppance for the whole trio. All of it ends with one of the more daffy and inexplicable endings I’ve seen in awhile.

As I mentioned early on, Splice feels like it wants to be Cronenberg, but I believe Natali is too literal minded to make his film work in the same way the Canadian director brings together his strange odes to body horror. Cronenberg dives into the dark current of human subconscious and desire, and he can bring frightening metaphors about man’s relationship to himself and his society to life without needing them to reflect pure reality. It explains why we can watch something as bizarre as Videodrome and not question or balk at every odd thing that happens. Here, though, Natali doesn’t get beyond the surface leve of events. We aren’t seeing a grand and elegant allusion to the destruction and conquest of the natural world through science when Brody decides to get it on with Dren. No, we are watching an unpleasant and repellent scene of a man committing bestiality.

The difference is an important, one and despite its best efforts to do so, Splice is nowhere near as sophisticated enough to carry the   burden it sets up for itself. Like the alien curiosity at its heart, this is one weird mix and mash that, in the end, never should have been.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Woody Allen announced today the full cast for his upcoming MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. This is his latest film which is now in pre-production. The film stars, in alphabetical order:  Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen and Owen Wilson. Co-starring in the film, in alphabetical order, are:  Nina Arianda, Kurt Fuller, Tom Hiddleston, Mimi Kennedy, Alison Pill and Corey Stoll. The film shoots this summer in Paris.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is a romantic comedy that follows a family travelling to the city for business. The party includes a young engaged couple that has their lives transformed throughout the journey. The film celebrates a young man’s great love for Paris, and simultaneously explores the illusion people have that a life different from their own is better.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is produced by Letty Aronson, Steve Tenenbaum and Jaume Roures. It is part of a three-picture financing deal between Allen’s Gravier Productions and Mediapro, the Spain-based company which also funded Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and the upcoming “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” to be released domestically by Sony Pictures Classics this fall. Imagina International Sales is handling international sales for MIDNIGHT IN PARIS for most territories.

What do you think? With a cast like that it should be a home run right?

Atomic Popcorn has teamed up with the folks at Warner Brothers to bring you a screening of Splice in Washington DC on June 1st. The upcoming thriller has been slowly getting phenomenal praise from the test screenings. This movie begs the question; You know I love you. Well watch the trailer below to see what I mean!

Don’t miss out on your chance to see it before all of your friends do!

Film Synopsis:

Superstar genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) specialize in splicing together DNA from different animals to create incredible new hybrids.  Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine.  But when the pharmaceutical company that funds their research forbids it, Clive and Elsa secretly conduct their own experiments.  The result is Dren, an amazing, strangely beautiful creature that exhibits uncommon intelligence and an array of unexpected physical developments.  And though, at first, Dren exceeds their wildest dreams, she begins to grow and learn at an accelerated rate—and threatens to become their worst nightmare.

Film Trailer:

SPLICE Opens nationwide in theaters on Friday, June 4

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR PASS: and enter

02PM17HQ for the RSVP code!

Make sure you check out our other free screenings in the Baltimore and DC Area.

Atomic Popcorn has teamed up with the folks at Warner Brothers to bring you a screening of Splice in Baltimore on June 1st. This is a movie that needs to be seen, and in the theater. Check out the trailer below for your self but the critics are already raving about this film!

Don’t miss out on your chance to see it before all of your friends do!

Film Synopsis:

Superstar genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) specialize in splicing together DNA from different animals to create incredible new hybrids. Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine. But when the pharmaceutical company that funds their research forbids it, Clive and Elsa secretly conduct their own experiments. The result is Dren, an amazing, strangely beautiful creature that exhibits uncommon intelligence and an array of unexpected physical developments. And though, at first, Dren exceeds their wildest dreams, she begins to grow and learn at an accelerated rate—and threatens to become their worst nightmare.

Film Trailer:

SPLICE Opens nationwide in theaters on Friday, June 4

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR PASS: and enter

9QH8A5U3 for the RSVP code!

Make sure you check out our other free screenings in the Baltimore and DC Area.

Here’s the first movie trailer for writer/director Vincenzo Natali (Paris, je t’aime): Splice, starring Academy Award winner Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.

Official synopsis: Two young scientists (Brody and Polley) achieve fame by splicing human DNA with the DNA of different animals to create a new creature. In the process they ignore their society’s ethical and legal boundaries. The scientists name their creature “Dren”, which is initially a deformed female infant; however it rapidly develops into a beautiful but deadly winged human-chimera.

In case you were wondering as I was, a Chimera is a mythological creature that has the head of a lion (guessing a male lion) the body of a goat (probably doesn’t matter male/female) and the tail of a snake (where does a snake’s torso end and tail begin?) if that’s not bad enough the Chimera also breathes fire. Watch the trailer below and tell me what you think.

I was hooked until the creature started looking like a beautiful woman because I could rent Species for less than the price of admission to my local cinaplex and Species starred two Oscar winners- Sir Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker whereas Splice, in theaters June 4, 2010, must share Oscar winner Adrien Brody with another sci-fi summer release Predators (July 9, 2010). What do you think?

In January, Splice, Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi horror film, premiered to good reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as scientists who take bioengineering too far. After being shut down for wanting to create an animal-human hybrid, the duo takes matters into their own hands.

Most reviews were positive, although many were quick to note that this isn’t just a simple horror flick. Dave Chen of /Film called it a “quasi-serious exploration into the implications of playing God.” Sounds like a modern-day Frankenstein to me.

At the festival, the film was picked up by Warner Bros. and an early summer release was planned. The director was required to do some edits, but he claimed they were simply cosmetic. Now, the film has a trailer, embedded below.

This looks like a very solid, thinking man’s horror film, so I wonder how it will do at the box office? I have not seen the movie, but WB seems to be confident that it can perform well, even among heavy competition during the summer.

Splice hits theaters June 4th.

Last weekend Robert Rodriguez debuted a new poster and footage for his highly anticipated Predators, the latest addition to a sci-fi film franchise that began with Schwarzenegger in 80s.

Today, we have a full blown trailer for the movie, and it looks amazingly faithful to the spirit and sense of adventure of the original. In fact, this looks like the sequel we wanted all along.

Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne and Topher Grace may not initially sound like they belong in the arena with the galaxy’s most fearsome hunters, but once you get a look at Brody, grime-covered and sweat stained, battling it out with the titular beasties, any thought of improper casting goes out the window. Throw in the always welcome Danny Trejo as a gnarly warrior and it’s gonna be a good time for sure.

I’m personally digging Fishburne in the hardened survivor role. The plot isn’t anything amazing, and the Predator home world looks surprisingly like the jungles of the first film, but there’s an old school feel to the fx, the cinematography and even the acting style that suggests a return to the basics.

I’m guessing Nimrod Antal, the director, is more responsible for this than Rodriquez. Antal, the foreign filmmaker who gave us the exquisite Kontrol, and the serviceable American thrillers Armored and Vacancy, has an artist’s touch for gritty and believable settings.

Personally, this has just jumped to the very top of my summer must-see list.

What do you think? Adding an s  to the title worked wonders for Alien back in 79. What will it do here?