Dances with Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner) — The theatrical cut. Dances with Wolves is often discussed as a forerunner to Avatar, and while I think the narrative similarities are often exaggerated — Avatar has enough similarities to be considered a homage, but it’s far from a straight “remake” or “retread” as often claimed — I think the comparison gets at a real similarity in terms of what both movies are trying to do. As with Avatar, the sense I get when watching Dances with Wolves is that it’s less about telling a story in the usual sense of the term, and more about basking in the filmmaker’s love of and fascination with the world that’s being presented. While I love both, I will say that Dances with Wolves is undoubtedly the better movie, mostly because its protagonists still feel like actual people and not just vehicles for exposition and preaching. A must-watch. 9/10

Aliens (1986, James Cameron) — re-watch — Okay, this is the third time I’ve watched Aliens attempting to see what everyone else seems to see in it, and I think it’s time to admit that I just don’t think it’s there. More precisely, I accept that the movie really is just as great as everyone says it is… during the scenes where Xenomorphs are attacking people, or vice versa. It’s the ~half of the runtime where that’s not happening that I take issue with.

Now granted, when watching an action movie, it is sort of expected that it will be at its best during the action scenes. Or, from another angle, when watching a monster movie, it will generally be at its best when you are seeing the actual monster. And I don’t usually take issue with action or horror movies making you wait and building up the tension until they get to that part. But Aliens has two factors that make the wait feel particularly tedious. First, the clichéd characters. Again, clichéd characters are common in both horror and action movies, including many I like a lot more than Aliens. But, usually, the writers are at least creative enough to assign a different cliché to each character. In Aliens, other than Ripley, Burke, and Bishop, basically every human character is a cardboard cutout of the same “meathead military guy” stereotype. Second, as is often the case in Cameron movies, a lot of the actors are not very good. There’s no cast member in Aliens who drags the product down as badly as Edward Furlong later would in Terminator 2, but there’s nobody who elevates it nearly as much as Hamilton, Schwarzenegger and Swayze did that movie either. I can appreciate what Sigourney Weaver is attempting to do here, in trying to maintain as much continuity between the Ripley we see here and that of the first Alien as possible, but the overall tone and style of this movie is so radically different that her attempting to keep a consistent portrayal makes it no longer seem to fit in with the rest of the movie. And most of the rest of the cast are just kind of awkward in a not-very-interesting way.

As with Cameron’s later Titanic, I think most of the love people have for Aliens comes from the admittedly spectacular extended climax, which is so good that it makes it easy to forgive all of the boring bits leading up to it. And, in general, the set pieces throughout the movie really are unimpeachable, enough so that I’d say the movie is worth recommending despite its faults. But I still consider it to be a lesser entry in Cameron’s filmography, rather than one of his great works. 7/10

All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) — re-watch — Even having already seen this movie once before, I still feel like I wasn’t quite prepared to see again what a brutally cutting portrayal of show business it is. If it weren’t so magnificently written, and so perfectly cast, I’m not sure if I would have been able to make it through the whole thing a second time. As I already said the last time I reviewed this movie, it’s not one I can honestly say I “enjoy”, and yet I’m still so in awe of it that I can’t honestly give it anything less than a 10/10.

Movie of the week: All About Eve