Although he has certainly given us many reasons not to, don’t let Corey Feldman keep you from celebrating The Birthday. The running time, too long by a quarter, might take care of that. 

Resurrected from oblivion by Jordan Peele, this 20-year-old film went unreleased after earning good notices on the festival circuit. It’s positioned as “the most amazing 117 minutes in the life of Norman Forrester,” a New York pizzeria employee (Feldman) who resides on the social ladder’s lower rungs. Not so for his spoiled, snooty longtime girlfriend, Alison (Erica Prior, Second Name), who comes from money. 

At a lavish birthday for her father (Jack Taylor, Pieces) at the grand hotel he owns, Norman is to meet Alison’s parents for the first time. Needless to say, he’s a nervous wreck. We’ve all been there, feeling like the fate of the world rests on our shoulders. 

Except here, it does. 

We know instantly that something about the night feels “off” for Norman, but it takes an hour to get to the why. Ironically, this first, more enigmatic half is close to terrific — as cartoony as it is menacing, bristling with the enough quirky energy as if retroactively campaigning to be the fifth segment of Four Rooms.

As the bombastic secrets spilled forth with hour 2, so goes the wind from these sails. Until the abrupt end, Norman’s extended nightmare starts to resemble a run on a treadmill, forever heading toward a destination without achieving an inch forward; that may be why the movie feels an act short of the standard three. The Birthday bears that first-film lack of discipline in wanting to throw everything into the mix in case another chance never comes. As unrestrained as Eugenio Mira’s hand is here, he had it figured out by his junior effort, the short, taut, high-concept hitman thriller Grand Piano.

And as for Feldman, his voice for Norman is a real choice, but he commits and delivers. It’s unfortunate The Birthday didn’t see release before now, because he’s given something the tabloid fixture hasn’t had since the days of Stand by Me: an honest-to-God role. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

I never thought a second civil war on these American shores was possible. But with the demonic enabler Donald Trump and his masturbatory emissaries of evil leading the charge against everything that is good, moral and right in this country — and possibly this world — I no longer think that.

This wrong-headed and criminally active idea is caustically brought to life (death?) in the 2024 dystopian travelogue Civil War. As speculative fiction, it’s a brutally entertaining movie, but as far as a precursor of hellish things to come, it is frighteningly plausible.

So cast your votes and get your bulletproof vest on, too, I guess.

In the not-too-distant future (concurrently?), America has torn itself apart. A civil war rages with mutually panicked civilians with no sides, brutally gung-ho soldiers of misfortune and a third-term president (a shrewdly cast Nick Offerman) who grinds the gears of the manufacturing of war.

In between it all, a small group of Associated Press journalists try to be impartial of the battle surrounding them as they try to document it. Lee (a hardscrabble Kirsten Dunst) leads her team of photographers into the belly of the beast, all trying to reach the endgame destination of war-torn Washington, D.C.

Along the way, we meet disaffected “patriots” who string up tortured bodies in an overpass, innocent kids still playing on a football field, a small town trying to distance itself from the war, both sides of the skirmish playing dress-up with bullets, and members of the unregulated militias doling out the most brutal justice in the lawless world.

Fuck Mad Max — this is the true vision of the apocalyptic future.

Written and directed by Alex Garland, it patiently stokes the already fanned flames of a country teetering on the brink of real soldiers, real bodies and real war. It’s a vestigial trope that Garland more than explores and, even better, excels in, given its distinctly European veneer.

Hopefully, our country will place this movie in the scarred waste bin of alternating timelines that we will never have to truly deal with. But, in case Civil War is a razor-thin dividing line between freedom and slavery, voting your conscious is not part of this world, but the only part of this world. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

In the ’90s-era rumpus-room of near-subhuman Oklahoma City, if you were a somewhat competent cinephile, your main outlet of cult oddities and underground filth was the long-gone Kaleidoscope Video on MacArthur Boulevard.

Here, as a disciple of Danny Peary’s Cult Movies, I typically rented his recommendations, at least the ones I could find. One was Privilege, the mid-’60s film promising the revolution would be sponsored by the British government. Sadly, as it began, the tape snapped, leaving me with a broken VHS cassette deemed irreplaceable.

Recently, I spotted Privilege in one of the always-stellar Kino Lorber sales, and snatched it up, sight unseen after 25 years. After watching it for a third time since purchasing, I have to say the wait was completely worth it. More than worth it.

In the fab-gear-beat 1960s of the near modernly dystopic future, the top teen idol is Steven Shorter (Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones), a dyspeptic sort with a chip on his shoulder. Though he is the idol of most teens, instead of rising to the top of the pops, he is instead crashing the controlled charts of the British government for their totalitarian means.

It’s a switched-on nightmare.

Shot in a faux-documentary style, Shorter’s stage show is one of guilt and repentance, with assigned bobbies bashing his adoring fans in the head. As the government sells him out to the corporation factions — most notably for the fall apple-picking season, making sure everyone eats six apples a day — Shorter is fine for the most part. But when the church tries to convert the British public to view him as a near-messiah, Shorter has a mental breakdown that leads nowhere but down, down, down.

Directed by the masterfully rueful Peter Watkins (of The War Game and Punishment Park fame), he brings Beatlemania to the masses — an act like a precursor to the cult of personality that rages to this day. A total indictment of British society and its hold on the youth market, it’s pop-art terror told with a twinge of the blackest humor.

As Shorter, Jones is more than suitable as the put-upon rock star, with Vogue it girl Jean Shrimpton as his somewhat love interest who seems to understand him. Together, they’re an aloof couple not meant to exist in this world.

While Privilege‘s pop-art world might seem orderly, quaint and tidy, at it source it’s a mean, ghostly and utterly prescient look at the modern iconoclasts who have traded their humanity for a recording contract, proving that the devil is deep in the details. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Depressed to a point of paralysis over his wife’s premature passing, the grief-stricken Ben (The Royal Tenenbaums’ Grant Rosenmeyer) follows an internet rabbit hole to a mysterious man offering an escape — not suicide, but the power to fly. Not of sound mind, Ben spends $5,400 on the shady self-help course.

Soon, the would-be guru appears at Ben’s door with a litany of tasks as highly unorthodox as his name: Mealworm. The ravings of a lunatic? The work of a prophet? Or perhaps all in Ben’s imagination? The answer awaits in The Secret Art of Human Flight, an ambitious fantasy from director H.P. Mendoza (I Am a Ghost) and first-time screenwriter/America Ninja Warrior contestant Jesse Orenshein.

When venturing into magical realism, some amounts of quirk and whimsy are expected — if not required — to pull things off. But leaning too heavily upsets the balance, sending viewers tumbling into the twee. That’s what happens here, following a promising start.

As Mealworm, Paul Raci (rightly Oscar-nommed for the powerful Sound of Metal) is excellent. In the moments Secret Art delights, it’s no coincidence Raci is onscreen. And when he’s not, the film often frustrates; Rosenmeyer’s character is simply not likable. A deep funk is a fine establishing point, but as the story progresses, and Ben is revealed to be even more of an asshole, cheering him on is too large an ask.

If nothing else, The Secret Art of Human Flight is worth watching for its end credits song, a slice of such pop jubilance that I would’ve sworn under testimony as the work of The Polyphonic Spree. Instead, it’s Mendoza, Raci and Rosenmeyer. If only the film the tune supports were as uplifting and transportive. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Almost 50 years removed from Ridley Scott’s Alien, H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon’s multimouthed space monster remains timeless. That’s not to say almost every sequel, prequel and whatever Alien vs. Predator is didn’t at least slightly chip away at the Xenomorph’s mystique. But those films didn’t completely diffuse what makes them iconic and terrifying, either. With Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) in the pilot’s seat of Alien: Romulus, however, it’s not a stretch to think this entry marks a true return to form for the “perfect organism.” So, is it?

Absolutely not. Not for a lack of trying, but more so for a lack of identity. Of course, it’s unfair to expect any Alien entry to ignite the same feelings of curiosity and terror as the first. The moment we saw, we were desensitized. That’s the tragic downside of iconic franchises: If your take is too similar, it’s derivative. And if it’s too different, it’ll be tonally alienating. Romulus, surprisingly, manages to do both.

Set some 20 years after the original, Alien: Romulus follows Rain (Cailee Spaeny, Civil War) and Andy (David Jonsson, HBO’s Industry), a miner and her adoptive robo-brother. Desperate to escape their colony’s harsh way of life, Rain humors her ex’s pleas to join him on a short flight to a nearby planet, where the titular space station promises a heaping helping of long-lasting cryo-sleep chambers. (It’s a little muddy in the first act, but these pods will ensure Rain and company can survive a multiyear flight to a more ideal colony.)

Still, they also need Andy, whose similarities to Weyland-Yutani droids should let him interface with the Romulus’ tech. Spoiler: It works a little too well, as Andy doesn’t just open doors, but accidentally awakens a hoard of everyone’s favorite parasitic horseshoe crabs, too.

Romulus’ first act oozes with potential. We get a real glimpse of life on the colonies, something absent from — though alluded to in — Alien and Aliens. This harsh reality makes it easy to attach to Rain and Andy’s plight, and even breathes life into the auxiliary alien fodder, though not to the same effect as the Nostromo’s crew.

As soon as they board the Romulus craft, it gets even better. Alvarez, a master in close-quarter horror settings, takes us into the bowels of a bleak and apathetic vessel lit by flickering consoles and weak fluorescent lights. To top it off, he relies primarily on animatronics, which gives his creatures significantly more weight than what we got in 2017’s Alien: Covenant.

Craftsmanship really is this movie’s saving grace. Because as soon as the plot starts to take off, it’s quickly suffocated by a mouse-shaped facehugger. Ian Holm’s likeness is reused in the form of Rook, an effective carbon copy of the late actor’s character, Ash, from the first film. Ethical questions aside, Rook sabotages and assimilates what could be a compelling character arc for Andy for the sake of hollow nostalgia.

The film then starts to recreate portions of other Alien flicks at such a rapid pace that it could’ve been alternatively titled Now That’s What I Call Xenomorphs Vol. 7. A pack of Xenos get mowed down à la Aliens. Another tries to lick Rain’s face like in Alien 3. We even get a callback (albeit way creepier and effective) to Alien Resurrection in the final sequence. Not everyone will digest this approach as soulless, but it feels like it almost aggressively strips away Romulus’ originality for cheap pandering. It also wouldn’t be so egregious if Alvarez hadn’t proved over a decade ago (in 2013’s Evil Dead) that he can operate in an established universe without needless allusions.

Alien: Romulus is unique — at least for this franchise — in how unoriginal it is. It’s fun and thrilling, sure, and those who aren’t immediately familiar with the rest of the Alien canon may hardly notice this sequel’s many seams. We who expected something with staying power, on the other hand, may wish to steer clear of this specimen’s acid blood. —Daniel Bokemper