Alien: Romulus “Review”

Release date: August 16, 2024 (USA)

Director: Fede Álvarez

Distributed by: 20th Century Studios

Based on: Characters; by: Dan O’Bannon; Ronald Shusett

Budget: $80 million

Cinematography: Galo Olivares

It’s been a minute since I’ve watched anything Alien. That changes with Alien: Romulus as I’ll be going back too Prometheus and rewatching this series again for all those juicy easter eggs and awesomeness.

Was there scenes that had my mouth a jaw….YES!

Was there scenes that had me cheering for our crew….Hell Yea!

Do I recommend you watch this in IMAX…..JUST DO IT!

Haha seriously there was some scenes in IMAX that had me feeling I was in 4DX because how visually beautiful the image and sound was working in unison.

I watched some scenes while at Comic Con that got me intrigued for this feature. I watched the trailers and was intrigued. I listened to the cast during Comic Con Hall H and felt like they were rather young group of individuals but was intrigued. Nothing really set my expectations to a high just at a good level.

After watching this movie I was honestly blown away. The cast was great and loved getting to know them…if not for long :S. Loved David Jonsson whom plays Andy which was incredible! Cailee Spaeny did a great job as Rain Carradine, these two are setup as siblings in the movie with Rain’s friends getting them involved in a mission to get them off a mining planet.

Not going to get into spoilers. Just go watch this movie and have a blast!

Awesome alien scenes, great tension and awesome use of sound. Tons to dive into if you’d like to talk easter eggs / spoilers but that’s for another section.

Summer isn’t over yet with Deadpool & Wolverine being out as Alien: Romulus is here to party and has a pretty nice window to own the month until Beetle Juice 2 arrives in early September.

There was moments of placing this in the 9/10 bracket for 2024 however with some tid bits without saying much of the middle/end this title became a 8.5 sitting nicely with Dune Part 2 which is incredible! I’d get these two titles in Blu-ray for sure.

Thank you all for coming by Popped for my “Review” which is more of less just a message of hype to get out and watch this epic edition to the Alien franchise. May more titles like this come which fits in-between and around the main Alien franchise. Love the world building and how much this creator captured the essence of Alien within Romulus.

Cuckoo “Review”

Release date: August 9, 2024 (USA)

Director: Tilman Singer

Distributed by: NeonWeltkino Filmverleih

Budget: $7 million

Music by: Simon Waskow

Produced by: Markus HalberschmidtJosh RosenbaumMaria TsigkaKen KaoThor Bradwell

WOW! Just seeing this cost 7Mill compared to Borderlands 100+ Mill is insane. This is a great film straight up. Great characters, excellent suspense and actually an evil that is scary.

Going to be vague to allow mystery for your viewing experience. No spoilers here. One of my fave Neon movies in quite some time.

Little about the story setup: Seventeen-year-old Gretchen reluctantly leaves America to live with her father at a resort in the German Alps.

Some unsettling scenes, twisted and creepy characters mixed with great writing. Character growth and development. It was such a great breath of fresh air after watching Borderlands.

Plagued by strange noises and bloody visions this resort has some deep layers to pull back truly Alice in wonder land style with how deep does this rabbit hole go.

It’s been a minute that I’ve felt uneasy and a little scared in a horror movie. I’m happy this film brings that feeling back and gets an almost perfected batch of popped popcorn in horror granted to this feature. I was close to giving this a 9/10 however some flaws weakening the end with such a strong beginning and middle. I dropped it down to a 8.5/10 as it ends solidly despite a slight hiccup.

Save your Borderlands money and go watch Cuckoo. Thanks for coming by Popped for your movie “Reviews” and I’ll see you again real soon with Alien.

Borderlands “Review”

Release date: August 9, 2024 (USA)

Director: Eli Roth

Budget: $110–120 million

Distributed by: LionsgateLionsgate Films

Based on: Borderlands; by Gearbox Software

Music by: Steve Jablonsky

Short “Review: So bad it’s good? So bad don’t waste your time?? So bad go watch the next movie I post about??? Go play the games and don’t waste your time nor money on this feature???? Watch the first 15 minutes and bounce??


Main “Review”:

Okay you’ve got the picture from the above. Lets begin the “Review”.

From 0% RT Score to currently standing at 6% this is a movie that starts surprisingly strong…..for 15 minutes and then jumps into a train and drives eyes wide open into a wreckage of steaming thresher sh*t.

Cate Blanchett playing Lilith started strong and held this movie up for the majority of the film. Ariana Greenblatt playing Tiny Tina which I didn’t even know was Tina from Tina’s Wonderland was a cool surprise. I’ve always been interested in the games without playing them so I didn’t get all the easter eggs and surprises but the writing for this film was awful.

Meeting Claptrap voiced by Jack Black was 20% okay and 80% annoying! This was just before we met backup with Tiny Tina due to her dad in search for her and requested the aid from Lilith to recover her from Kevin Hart’s character Roland & Florian Munteanu playing Krieg.

I have no idea if the backdrop was green screened/CGI or what not but these scenes were so off. The explosions that Tiny Tina controls with her stuffed rabbits and the cars interacting with terrain was odd.

The actions scenes were paired with great music but the scenes felt like riding the transformers ride at Universal Studios. No danger was felt, just buckle up in this simulated ride and watch the explosions and actions go by as you jam to the music.

The first few scenes within the 15 minute mark I was honestly having a good time like a 7/10 and was confused how this got a 0/100 %. I kept watching and I kept buckled up on this trainwreck of a ride.

20 Minutes into this movie I went down to a 5.5/6 out of 10. Krieg felt like a knock off Drax found on temu. By 45minutes I was getting bored. Some good scenes here and there but that mostly ends when we connect the entire group. I’d love to have a bounty hunter movie based around Lilith and ignore the rest of the cast. Writing is just awful and continues to get worse as the trainwreck continues.

By the hour mark I was down to 5/10 then 4.5/10. Forceful emotional scenes despite not creating any connection to characters. By the time they attempt to do such connection the movies to far gone and I just couldn’t care less.

Tools and pieces of the movie to progress the story was just handed over to characters. Nothing was earned, gained or rewarded just handed over within seconds of requiring said item. Such awful development for both story and characters. Such terrible writing and script this movie had. Good thing we have Cate Blanchett right…..right!?

Bad guys just switch sides for no reason given as their immediately killed providing NOTHING to the scene nor story. 4/10 WTF. How and Why was this movie made? Go make the Warcraft sequel rather than making this BS.

Cate Blanchett saves us from this movie please end good……..Cate…. Cate!! No Cate they got you to! Awful twist fucking terrible let this trainwreck continue to fly into the poop. 3.5/10. You started at a 7 come on!

You ruined the progression video game movies climbed up and succeeded to finally be seen as good. Now were two steps forward 5 steps back. Please don’t mess this up for Sonic 3 at the end of the year. I’ll be PISSED! This movie disrespects the viewer and throws thresher piss all over them.

We’ve entered stream or walk out territory. I honestly can’t place a score between 1 – 3 out of 10. I’ll say just place it in the background at home and watch it. If you like it then cool. If not, you didn’t waste your time nor money on this awful film. I can see why it’s sitting at a 6% on RT and applaud all those that make it through to the end of this feature.

If you choose to watch this title still then good luck, have fun and I’ll see you on the other side. Kind of curious to check out the steam sale currently going on for the borderlands franchise to see how it compares.

Thanks for reading and coming by Popped for your movie “Reviews”. Stay tuned for Cuckoo coming right up next.

Trap “Review”

Release date: August 2, 2024 (USA)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures

Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

Music by: Herdís Stefánsdóttir

Production company: Blinding Edge Pictures

How should we start this “Review”. It’s M. Night Shyamalan’s best movie post 2020? Not on the level of Split but maybe Glass? If that gives a pictures lets open the door to Trap.

I applaud the trailer for setting up this movie. It does a great job of setting the scene and informing the viewer what this movie is about. The movie dives a little deeper in than the trailer reveals but the intro and the trailer work nicely hand in hand to one another without revealing anything futher.

Thoroughly enjoyed the dynamic relationship between the daughter and her dad as we navigated the scenes developing during this feature. I can’t go into much detail to contain the trap and the inner webbing of threads revealed throughout the movie.

I was very entertained throughout the majority of this feature. Hitting 8/10. Sadly without going into much detail the “plot twist” that M. Night placed on this movie could have audiences split. It brought my score down to a 7.5. However depending what they do next with this world/universe could bring it up or drop further without some solid writing.

I recommend everyone interested in the trailer / film go watch it. Then lets discuss the feature afterwards because there’s a lot to be discussed. A small post feature scene before the credits fully role. Nothing to stick around for at the end of the credits. Save yourself 5 minutes :D.

Appreciate you for reading this Popped “review” and next up should be Borderlands next week sometime after the movie premiers Thursday 8th.

A WordPress.com Website.

Up ↑