Alien: Romulus

The first film, Alien, ends with Ripley ejecting the alien out the airlock and putting herself into Cryosleep for the 57-year journey home. It's during that time that this inter-sequel is set. The Weyland company have found the remains of Ripley's ship with an extra-terrestrial presence, and are looking to exploit it for evil gains. This confused me, as in the second canonical film, Aliens, the company don't seem to know they've found an alien and start terraforming the planet (which was unbelievable even in that film).

In Romulus, a bunch of space-miners with nothing to lose, sneak on board an abandoned company ship for what ought to be a straight-forward mission to steal a few cryo-pods of their own. Obviously, lots goes wrong.

There are a few familiar tropes from the Alien franchise. There is a deep mistrust of androids, though sometimes they can surprise you and are helpful. I've also learned that as soon as someone gets infected by an alien, or even spends a short while near aliens, you should be extremely suspicious when they have cold-like systems. Waste no time investigating, but shoot and flamethrow them and boot them out the airlock.

Inside Out 2

This was always going to be a tough sequel to make. The appeal of the first one was the originality of setting the story inside a brain, and the fun of meeting each emotion. The novelty of the sequel is the introduction of some new emotions, which is a difficulty as in the first film we saw adults with just the usual five (Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, Anger).

As Riley turns 13 and goes to Secondary School she is taken over by Anxiety, along with Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui. These teenage emotions remove her from her happy self-confident self and make her desperate to make friends, at the expense of being nice. You can guess how it ends.

There are some good moments. Ennui is never bothered by anything, except when she loses her phone. I liked it when she introduced sarcasm too. But there's rather too much ice hockey and the extra bits about the brain don't add much.

Alex rated it as two fingers pointing at each other (middle-middle) and I'd agree.

    

Dune 2

I've been looking forward to this film since the first part was released in 2021. That had more House Atreides indoors; this one is nearly all out in the desert.

It's a similarly slow pace, as Paul and the viewers get to know the secret world of the Fremen. The gentle introduction is mixed with apocalyptic visions and very loud bits of music.

There's a lot of guerrilla warfare, viewed from the side of the insurgents. It's hard not to see the desert resistance as similar to Iraqis or Afghani's trying to force out the Americans extracting oil. There's also a shadowy group behind all major world events, but I think despite this the film isn't meant as a social commentary, just an exciting story.

Paul goes deeper into his own mind and emerges. The conclusion is inconclusive. I could certainly watch more. After two hours I checked my watch and was disappointed to see there was only one hour left.