Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | New Year New thread

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The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998) - 6/10

FBI Agents Mulder and Scully investigate a mysterious bomb threat.

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny reprise their TV roles. With the X-Files department closed, the agents are sent to Dallas to investigate a bomb threat against a federal building. When no bomb is found in the building, an unexpected turn of events has the agents' actions questioned by an FBI panel. As Scully digs to uncover evidence, Mulder is approached by a mysterious author (Martin Landau) who claims to have evidence of a government conspiracy...

The X-Files: Fight the Future was directed by Rob Bowman and written by Chris Carter. The movie, which was filmed prior to Season Four of the TV series, hit theaters between Seasons Five and Six. The original intention was for Fight the Future to serve as both an ending for the series and a launching point for a series of X-Files films. However, studio owner Fox didn't want to do this, as The X-Files was too popular and lucrative in television form. As a result, the film acts as a bridge between Seasons Five and Xix, while also telling its own story. How does Fight the Future fare?

It's an okay film. Fight the Future feels like a legitimate movie, rather than just another episode of The X-Files. The budget is bigger, the language and humor are coarser, and the story is more bombastic. This is definitely a movie "for the fans" though, as there is a lot of fan service and easter eggs. Series regulars The Lone Gunmen (Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood), Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), and the Smoking Man (William B. Davis) all have supporting roles.

Fight the Future's story is servicable and the first act is strong, sucking you in right away. But like the mythology of the TV show, the more the layers of the mystery are peeled back, the less interesting things become. At slightly over 2 hours in length, by the time Fight the Future's third act rolls around, I found myself zoning out, despite the stakes being at their highest point. The film's ending is tropey and devoid of real tension, though, as we know they aren't going to kill off the lead characters. Another criticism is that if you don't refresh your memory of Season Five of the TV series, you're going to get lost - fast.

Overall, The X-Files: Fight the Future is a movie for the fans. As a science fiction film it's relatively generic, but my God, did you see the moment when Mulder and Scully almost kissed!? A light 6 for me, Fight the Future has a 7.0 on both IMDB and Letterboxd, so take this review with a grain of salt. The film was a box office success, earning $189M against its $66M budget.

 

[kihei]

Presence (2024) Directed by Steven Soderbergh 3A

Finally caught up with this one. Presence is ostensibly a horror movie, seen from the point of view of the "presence" that is haunting a suburban house inhabited by a family in crisis. In other words, the camera is the presence's "eyes" and we go where the presence goes. Initially I was sort of surprised the presence had to seemingly "walk" downstairs--what's the fun of being a presence if your locomotion models that of humans. However, this concern was quickly overwhelmed by boredom. Presence is neither scary, not horrific, nor spooky, nor creepy, nor gory, nor much of anything at all. I'm not sure what director Steven Soderbergh was going for here, maybe an anti-horror horror film? Don't know, and have been given no reason to care. All I do know is that the movie didn't work for me at all.