Elle Fanning
“PREDATOR: BADLANDS” My rating: B- (Hulu)
107 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Having expanded the “Predator” franchise with “Prey” (set among 17th-century Native Americans) and “Predator: Killer of Killers” (an animated omnibus of yarns about predators visiting various cultures) , director Dan Trachtenberg swings for the outfield wall with “Predator: Badlands.”
Imagine your standard issue buddy movie — think “48 Hours” — as an interspecies dramedy.
Our Nick Nolte character is Dek, a member of the Yaujta race, a warlike bunch who make “Star Trek’s” Klingons look like Teletubbies. Dek is considered the runt of his predator clan; to prove his worth he decides to travel to the “death planet” Genna, where even the grass can kill you. His goal is to be the first to bring back the head of the Kalisk, a fearsome creature that has killed every Yaujta warrior who dared confront it.
The Eddie Murphy character is Thia (Elle Fanning), a humanoid robot who lost her legs in an encounter with the Kalisk. Thia is chatty, ironic, whimsical — everything the grunting, brusque Dek is not. But she knows the territory and Dek is smart enough to use Thia as a navigational tool and survivalist encyclopedia. He carries her around like a talkative backpack.
There are plenty of encounters with Genna’s deadly life forms. Along the way the grumpy Dek and Thia become friends of a sort. They become a trio when they’re adopted by a vaguely simian creature Thia names Bud.
Trachtenberg and co-writers Patrick Aison and Jim Thomas carve out some new ground here while cross referencing other movies and franchises. For starters, we’re meant to experience the story from the Predator’s point of view. Usually, of course, the Predator is the bad guy.
But Dek can talk (his voice is provided by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi; his physical form apparently is all computer-generated). We can understand him thanks to subtitles.
And then there’s Thia’s origin story. She was sent to Gemma with dozens of other humanoid robots as a project of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the villlainous entity of the “Alien” franchise.
Actually Fanning gets two roles here…as the goofy Thia and as her ruthless no-nonsense “sister,” Tessa. The rest of the robots are all played by Cameron Brown, which makes for some head-messing moments when Dek squares off against dozens of enemies, all of whom share the same face.
I found “Predator: Badlands” intermittently amusing and enjoyed the way the yarn expands the whole Predator/Alien mythology. But like just about every action movie, the final third is devoted to a massive fight sequence. I found my interest waning with the repetitive mayhem.
Still, geeks of the franchise will be in Yaujta heaven with this one.
Alexander Anderson
“YEAR 10” My rating: B- (Prime)
96 minutes | No MPAA rating
The Brit “Year 10” is a pretty good example of imagination trumping a nearly non-existent budget.
Writer/director Ben Codger’s post-apocalyptic drama takes place in the woods (not much required in the way of sets) and features a cast of unknowns.
What really makes “Year 10” memorable is that not one word is spoken in the entire film. Whether the muteness exhibited by the charactrers is the result of some environmental disaster or a survival technique is never explained, but the result is a movie that works entirely on the images it delivers.
Alexander Anderson plays Charger (we only know his name from the credits) who lives in a camoflaged hut with an old man (Ellis Jones) and a young woman (Emma Cole) who may be his lover.
As the film starts the girl is suffering from a wound that might kill her. Charger goes out scrounging for antibiotics, a dangerous quest since the woods are patrolled by members of a cannibal gang.
This is, of course, essentially the same world depicted by Cormac McCarthy in his Pulitzer-winning novel The Road. Well, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.
I found “Year 10” surprisingly involving. I was especially taken with the film’s heavy, the cannibal leader (Luke Massy), a sort of unstoppable malevolent force.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 