Alien: Franchise Breakdown

You have to give it to Ridley Scott. The man has been fighting tirelessly to revive the franchise that gave him a career. Alien was an instant classic; it made the words “A Ridley Scott Film” wholly important. Like Scott’s Prometheus, his latest inclusion to the franchise, Alien: Covenant, is being met with mixed reviews. And truly, if there was ever a franchise whose films are all over the map, it is this one. Note: this post contains spoilers for all Alien films, including Alien: Covenant.

In Character: Lili Taylor

Lili Taylor is one of film’s best living character actors, a distinction she’s held since she began appearing in films in the late ‘80s. She helped make the ’90s American independent film movement so iconic. When that movement dried up, Taylor moved to TV, delivering some of the best work of her career. In fact, her recent stint on the second season of American Crime is right up there with her best work. I love that Taylor is still going so strong; she makes everything she’s in that much more interesting.

In Character: Powers Boothe

We’ve lost another great one. Powers Boothe was a big man, a Texas man, an intimidating and charismatic man. His voice thundered and his fury raged. I say this a lot in these posts, but I genuinely liked Boothe in everything I saw him in. The performances below highlight his best work in rather fine films, but the man was no stranger to appearing in films that were not well received. Yet, he’s great in all of them. Red Dawn, Sudden Death, U Turn, MacCruber – line them up and I’ll watch them all, because Powers Boothe was the man. A sad loss indeed, but such a worthy career to revisit.

In Character: Tom Berenger

Tom Berenger is a guy I’ve always rooted for. There’s just something about him. He has an old school swagger but a thinly masked sensitivity. He’s tough yet vulnerable, mean yet melancholic. His career has twisted and turned, but he’s been in the game for 40 years, and I enjoy watching him today as much as I did when I was young.

Top 10 Persona-lite Movies

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is one of Top 3 favorite films of all time. It’s a fever dream masterpiece that I will continue to pick apart. Because, despite being only 83 minutes long, Persona is one of the most pleasantly complex films I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent more hours working over the film in my mind than I have actually watching the movie.

Classifying a film as “lite” in this post is not to suggest that the film is inferior to Persona. The purpose of this list is to draw attention to a particular group of films that remind me of a particularly unique film. Very few movies can even be considered in the same warped class as Persona, but these are a few of the best of them.