Everybody just wants Ridley Scott to get on with it.
By that, of course, I mean wrap up the damn Alien trilogy he started with Prometheus and left dangling — quite unnervingly — nearly a decade ago with Covenant. But Ridley is a stubborn old director, and he’s going to make what he feels like making, even if he teases us sadistically with promises of “Maybe it’ll be my next film — I’m developing it.”
Kodak film from 1966 develops faster.
I am one of those people — a fan, if I’m being honest — who really, really, really want to see how David’s story resolves and how the Xenomorph actually comes into being, if that’s even the point anymore. So you’ll pardon me for going into Scott’s latest film, The Dog Stars, with a critic’s chip on my shoulder. I didn’t expect to be thrilled, interested, or moved. I didn’t expect to like it, even slightly.
But I did like it, more than slightly, which seems to put me in odd-man-out territory among my fellow critics, who are pummeling it — though I don’t know why yet, because I haven’t read their reviews. I’m just going by the big green splat on Rotten Tomatoes.
Based on Peter Heller’s bestselling 2012 post-apocalyptic novel, The Dog Stars is set in a not-too-distant future where a virus, along with a nasty blood disease, has erased most of humanity. What remains are gruff and grumbly survivalists; woeful leading men drowning in grief and loss; tattooed, feral rejects from an unmade George Miller Mad Max movie; out-and-out lunatics; and Mennonites.
Oh, and a delightfully loyal dog, whose fate I won’t reveal.
The Dog Stars is a parade of post-apocalyptic tropes that feel fresher than they should in Scott’s hands. The narrative is propulsive, flagging only during the long scenes of our melancholy leading man, Hig, taking his plane for a spin across the Colorado vistas. These flying sequences — of which there are at least eight too many — aren’t as beautiful as they might have been and seem to exist only so the studio can rationalize an IMAX release.
Hig and Bangley (Josh Brolin) fend off the ferals while protecting the dilapidated airfield they’ve commandeered — their small patch of tattered paradise. But a mysterious transmission from Grand Junction Airport draws Hig away in search of a shred of hope that humanity has fared better elsewhere.
The Dog Stars: Jacob Elordi and Jasper
An unexpected detour leads him to Cima (Margaret Qualley) and “Pops” (Guy Pearce, who matches Brolin gruff for gruff). After a peaceful respite, the movie hits super-high gear with two back-to-back action set pieces, the second even more thrilling than the first — it left me clenching the theater’s tattered armrests, gasping for air. Scott still has the goods. He also has terrific ingenuity and, at one point, puts infrared photography to great use, turning violence into luminous pop art.
A third set piece, set at Grand Junction Airport, is straight out of a Twilight Zone episode on poppers and features such an unforgettable performance by Allison Janney that you wonder why they’re not marketing a novelty popcorn bucket of her head.
There’s a lot to admire about The Dog Stars — the production design and score are particularly good — but the underlying themes of grief, survival, loss, and finding a reason to live in a demolished world feel a bit like being presented with overcooked, expired hot dogs, albeit ones salvaged by condiments. And as condiments go, Jacob Elordi is one of the best. The actor exudes perpetual melancholy as Hig, but he gives the movie its reflective, soulful center, keeping things grounded.
Brolin is a master of flinty stoicism. He’s perfectly cast as a man determined to live for no other reason than to… well, live. “This world suits you,” Hig says to Bangley. “Wake up. Defend. Survive. You like this shit.” Life is just one big shoot-’em-up video game to Bangley, and he’s good at it.
Pearce’s Pops is also a survivalist, but a more measured one. Qualley is… well, I’m still not sure what to make of Qualley. Her performance seems to waft in and out like a gentle Rocky Mountain breeze. She’s flat one minute and even flatter the next, leaving Cima frustratingly bland.
In The Dog Stars, bad luck arrives like a buffalo stampede — hard, fast, and without warning. Yet the movie retains a sense of promise for its bleak, obliterated world, as films of this genre tend to do. Such movies exist as guidebooks for us, hope-infused fantasies, because the next deadly pandemic — especially under this administration — is only a cough away.
The Dog Stars (★★★☆☆) is rated R and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.
"I want people to enjoy themselves," says Gregg Araki of his newest blast of a film, I Want Your Sex, in which a starkly gorgeous Olivia Wilde plays a super-trendy abstract artist -- she makes vaginas out of chewed pink bubble gum -- who takes her latest employee, a doe-eyed innocent played by Cooper Hoffman, on a carnal thrill ride that blurs the line between sexual harassment and sensual awakening.
"I remember when we first started screening the film when I was still working on the edit," says Araki, 66, "and people were surprised by how friendly it was. The sensibility behind I Want Your Sex is fun and pop. I want to bring a little bit of joy into the world."
Over the course of 30 years in Rajiv Joseph's two-hander Gruesome Playground Injuries, childhood friends Kayleen (Irene Hamilton) and Doug (Jimmy Bartlebaugh) both suffer more than their share of scrapes, bruises, and near-fatal events. The pair's complicated friendship likewise encounters a few close calls in their lifelong shared journey of hurt and healing.
Alternately brooding and lighthearted, the play hovers between heartfelt coming-of-age drama, star-crossed romance, and persistent gallows humor surrounding Kayleen and Doug's preponderance of painful, sometimes gruesome, ills and injuries.
E. Jean Carroll considers herself an eccentric personality, she says in Ask E. Jean, Ivy Meeropol’s brisk, engaging documentary about the larger-than-life former columnist and TV host, and, lately, persistent nemesis of Donald Trump.
Judging by her public persona, and this film, Carroll’s self-assessment feels correct. Some might even call her a kook, viewing her present-day hermit’s life deep in the woods somewhere, or watching her appearances on ’90s talk shows assembled here into a succinct introductory montage.
There she is on Oprah, counseling a couple on how to really enjoy sex, on The Charles Grodin Show, flirting with the host while seated between Montel Williams and Dick Clark, on her own live TV talk show Ask E. Jean, doling out frank love life advice to grateful callers.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.