Life (2017)

[CJohn]

Discuss it

[CJohn]

A terrifying and well crafted sci-fi space movie like we haven't seen in a long time. Maybe Scott should just let Espinoza direct the next few Alien movies. Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson are great, Ryan Reynolds is a lot of fun (even if he is only in it for 40 minutes lmao, he is the first to die). The ending left me legit shook. I highly recommend this movie.

[aabattery]

46 minutes ago, CJohn said:

A terrifying and well crafted sci-fi space movie like we haven't seen in a long time. Maybe Scott should just let Espinoza direct the next few Alien movies. Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson are great, Ryan Reynolds is a lot of fun (even if he is only in it for 40 minutes lmao, he is the first to die). The ending left me legit shook. I highly recommend this movie.

 

was it a venom prequel 

[CJohn]

7 minutes ago, aabattery said:

 

was it a venom prequel 

Yes

 

Spoiler

(It can work as that if Sony actually intends to use it as such, but it clearly isn't it main purpose lol). 

 

[baumer]

I can't give a full review tonight but I Echo cjohn's review. I'm not sure if it's a 9.5 out of 10 or a straight ten out of ten for me. It's one of the more intense films I've seen and it starts right at the beginning and goes right until the end. And that ending left me floored and shocked and a little bit shaken. Daniel Espinosa has definitely got a future in Hollywood.

[DAJK]

I kinda already spoiled it for myself. I don't care I am incredibly hyped to see it. Road trip planned next Thursday, couple friends may skip D Block at school and go get lunch first but we'll wait and see

[BoxOfficeZ]

Love how creative the design was for the creature. Reynolds death WTF. Absolutely brutal. 

 

That ending was predictable, but nevertheless liked it.

 

Not a fan of how the drama was driven by stupid mistakes.

 

B

 

 

[WrathOfHan]

I was loving the majority of the movie, and it was even in the running to be my favorite of 2017 so far. The cast gives excellent performances, Espinosa's direction is great, and the technical aspects are stunning. However, the ending feels incredibly rushed and lowered the movie half a grade for me. Still, this is one of the year's best flicks so far. Highly recommended. 9/10 | A-

[Jake Gittes]

Imma just break down why the ending fucking blows.

 

1) This movie - in the writing, the direction, the work of the cast - spends 99% of the runtime getting you to care about the characters and their situation, and does a pretty decent job doing it. The cast has chemistry, the tension is there, the sense of a threat is there. For a movie that's basically Pretty Hollywood Types vs Indestructible Space Squid it takes itself seriously enough to make you care, but not quite so seriously that it becomes a The Thing-esque lovecraftian horror that sets up the possibility that literally everyone is doomed. Everything up to and including Gyllenhaal and Ferguson's desperate final plan points to an eventual hard-won victory, where only one person survives, and, just for kicks, there's a remote chance that Calvin will someday encounter some other civilization or something and wreck havoc there. But, the point is, the movie doesn't just promise, but actively makes it look like those other five people didn't actually die for nothing. 

 

... Except they totally did! So what's the fucking point of the entire thing then? The twist doesn't just add anything to the movie, it goes in the opposite direction and cheapens it. The movie spends 100 minutes playing fair, and then kicks you in the balls and laughs at you. It's exactly what a nihilistic 13-year-old who thinks he's way edgier than everyone else would think of - "What if it's like Alien or The Thing, except - get this - EVERYONE TOTALLY DIES LOL? And then some upbeat old song plays over the end credits! Like in Reservoir Dogs or something! Because irony!"

 

2) To make it even more pointless: taken just by itself, the ending sets up another cool movie... that no one involved has any intention to ever make. In the world of the movie, what must follow is humanity's desperate battle with an indestructible squid from Mars who's presumably only gonna get bigger and bigger. How awesome does that premise sound? It sounds like the best thing ever. But you're not getting that. What you're getting instead is a pointless feature-length prequel about how that squid got here, starring characters who try their best and still all die for nothing, with no reward or payoff of any kind. 

 

I haven't seen a movie shoot itself in its pretty little head in the last two minutes like this in a long, long time. 

[Arlborn]

1 hour ago, Jake Gittes said:

Imma just break down why the ending fucking blows.

 

1) This movie - in the writing, the direction, the work of the cast - spends 99% of the runtime getting you to care about the characters and their situation, and does a pretty decent job doing it. The cast has chemistry, the tension is there, the sense of a threat is there. For a movie that's basically Pretty Hollywood Types vs Indestructible Space Squid it takes itself seriously enough to make you care, but not quite so seriously that it becomes a The Thing-esque lovecraftian horror that sets up the possibility that literally everyone is doomed. Everything up to and including Gyllenhaal and Ferguson's desperate final plan points to an eventual hard-won victory, where only one person survives, and, just for kicks, there's a remote chance that Calvin will someday encounter some other civilization or something and wreck havoc there. But, the point is, the movie doesn't just promise, but actively makes it look like those other five people didn't actually die for nothing. 

 

... Except they totally did! So what's the fucking point of the entire thing then? The twist doesn't just add anything to the movie, it goes in the opposite direction and cheapens it. The movie spends 100 minutes playing fair, and then kicks you in the balls and laughs at you. It's exactly what a nihilistic 13-year-old who thinks he's way edgier than everyone else would think of - "What if it's like Alien or The Thing, except - get this - EVERYONE TOTALLY DIES LOL? And then some upbeat old song plays over the end credits! Like in Reservoir Dogs or something! Because irony!"

 

2) To make it even more pointless: taken just by itself, the ending sets up another cool movie... that no one involved has any intention to ever make. In the world of the movie, what must follow is humanity's desperate battle with an indestructible squid from Mars who's presumably only gonna get bigger and bigger. How awesome does that premise sound? It sounds like the best thing ever. But you're not getting that. What you're getting instead is a pointless feature-length prequel about how that squid got here, starring characters who try their best and still all die for nothing, with no reward or payoff of any kind. 

 

I haven't seen a movie shoot itself in its pretty little head in the last two minutes like this in a long, long time. 

Brutal take.

 

And that's why I don't bother with horror movies in general, I just knew they'd all die for nothing from the moment I saw the first trailer. Oh well, I was curious about the ending, thanks for explaining it.

[4815162342]

I didn't really have a problem with the concept of the ending.

 

The problem is how they execute it.

 

 

When Ferguson detaches from the ISS (about a minute or so after Jake does), you see a shot from Jake's capsule showing him getting a decent distance from the station, heading away into space, and you see Ferguson's capsule detaching down from the station and from a different part of it. In fact you get several shots beforehand showing that the capsules are not near one another on the station.

 

Then, suddenly, you get a shot showing the capsules almost side by side flying in the same direction, even though we have already seen Jake disable autopilot and thrust his capsule away from the station, and Ferguson keep autopilot which would have the capsule heading towards Earth on a normal reentry.

 

The film essentially has a major continuity/physics error that no one caught, or the film flagrantly cheats and uses magic plot power to smush the two capsules parallel to one another so they can use editing misdirection to do a gotcha ending.

 

 

Took a 8.5/10 film to about a 7/10 film. Having Jake succeed and Ferguson get home safely would have been very satisfying.

[dxmatrixdt]

I give it a solid B.  It starts of well and gets better.  I was able to take the whole thing seriously.  Rings started off better and got worse.  Alot of horror films seem like this.  I thought I was going to like A Cure for Wellness more than Get Out and Split at first, but then it dragged down to a C. 

 

I want to talk about the last 10 minutes and what I was thinking.  I was thinking, okay they are going to get tricky with the edits.  Remember Dark Knight Rises.  It shows the bat, then the timer, then the bat, then the timer.  time could have happened in between edits for batman to eject.  anything could happen.  that is trickery in filmmaking,  I was thinking something was going to happen in between all those edits between the two escape vessels.  I was certain that Calvin was definitely going to end up on Earth.  But i was expecting a second alien to emerge behind the lady.  Maybe Calvin copied himself on the black man and that was why that one entity was coming off his leg.  because there was the initial incident scene in the lab where it cuts and you never see what happens.  The other thing i was thinking was that the lady was so determined for there to be no contamination on Earth that she would not risk anything.  SO she transmits that warning message, then steers into deep space to die willingly.  If that was true, then i am confused why she was freaking out when they show her spinning out to deep space.  Maybe she saw that Jake's vessel was heading towards Earth.  Or she truely intended on going to earth and the collision between vessels sent her off course and into hysteria.  Either way i was certain she was going to commit suicide and Jakes intention was to commit suicide too until the alien overrode the controls. 

 

I want to give this a higher B but I need to be stricter this year and not end up with 50 A's for 2017 by some time next year.  It is definitely in the upper B range for the reasons I mentioned.  Progressively got better and I was actually able to take the movie seriously.

[dxmatrixdt]

1 minute ago, 4815162342 said:

I didn't really have a problem with the concept of the ending.

 

The problem is how they execute it.

 

 

When Ferguson detaches from the ISS (about a minute or so after Jake does), you see a shot from Jake's capsule showing him getting a decent distance from the station, heading away into space, and you see Ferguson's capsule detaching down from the station and from a different part of it. In fact you get several shots beforehand showing that the capsules are not near one another on the station.

 

Then, suddenly, you get a shot showing the capsules almost side by side flying in the same direction, even though we have already seen Jake disable autopilot and thrust his capsule away from the station, and Ferguson keep autopilot which would have the capsule heading towards Earth on a normal reentry.

 

The film essentially has a major continuity/physics error that no one caught, or the film flagrantly cheats and uses magic plot power to smush the two capsules parallel to one another so they can use editing misdirection to do a gotcha ending.

 

 

Took a 8.5/10 film to about a 7/10 film. Having Jake succeed and Ferguson get home safely would have been very satisfying.

 

Maybe she wanted to turn away and commit suicide because she was devoted for no contamination on Earth.  Then she was freaking out because she saw the other vessel head towards earth.

[4815162342]

Just now, Matrix4You said:

 

Maybe she wanted to turn away and commit suicide because she was devoted for no contamination on Earth.  Then she was freaking out because she saw the other vessel head towards earth.

 

Except nothing in the film indicates that as well. She is clearly determined to get back to Earth.

 

Also, if she intended to turn the capsule away from Earth, she would not have done a recording into the capsule's black box. The whole point of that was even if she did not survive reentry, there would still be a recording that would be recoverable on the ground.

[dxmatrixdt]

4 minutes ago, 4815162342 said:

 

Except nothing in the film indicates that as well. She is clearly determined to get back to Earth.

 

Also, if she intended to turn the capsule away from Earth, she would not have done a recording into the capsule's black box. The whole point of that was even if she did not survive reentry, there would still be a recording that would be recoverable on the ground.

 

maybe she was transmitting the message? 

[4815162342]

1 minute ago, Matrix4You said:

 

maybe she was transmitting the message? 

 

She wasn't. She said "black box."

[DeeCee]

I mentally prepared myself for this by expecting there to be some stupid character decisions mainly because of the physics of capturing a capsule entering orbit from Mars seemed rather dubious. 

 

Accepting this I really enjoyed it as an intense well structured thriller. Granted there were a few annoying moments that others have pointed out. 

 

Hasn't any of these people seen an Alien movie?

Edited March 25, 2017 by DeeCee

[dxmatrixdt]

1 minute ago, DeeCee said:

I mentally prepared myself for this by expecting there to be some stupid character decisions mainly because of the physics of capturing a capsule entering orbit from Mars seemed rather dubious. 

 

Accepting this I really enjoyed it as an intense well structured thriller. Granted there were a few annoying moments that others have pointed out. 

 

Ryan Reynolds was the engineer in Adventureland.  remember?

[Nova]

Okay so I really loved loved this movie but the ending was just brutal. 

 

I just....Im at a loss for words for why they would decide to go that route. 

[filmlover]

An entertaining and very gory Alien-esque thriller that unfortunately is nearly undone by an ending that was clearly designed just to shock the audience without giving much thought as to whether how it gets there would make sense or not. It's too bad that it feels so unearned because normally I would've applauded a major studio release for ending on such a grim note. Until then, the film is a fun enough ride that definitely isn't for squeamish stomachs and least it doesn't overstay its welcome at just 100 minutes. Calvin is a very impressive special effects creation, although he's more intimidating when he starts out small before becoming an alien version of Freddy Krueger as the film goes along, and the rest of the production values are also excellent considering the movie's mid-sized budget. The actors, including Jake Gyllenhaal (even if it's weird seeing him in a pure B-movie like this) and Rebecca Ferguson, give the most they can to roles that aren't exactly well-developed. And if you're planning to see this for Ryan Reynolds, don't: his role amounts to a glorified cameo. Not a new sci-fi horror classic, but I'm always down for a sci-fi thriller and this one checks off enough boxes to succeed. B-