Letterboxd 5019o audreyv🏳️‍🌈

Running Scared 1k6m4p 2006

Tue, 27 May 2025 21:09:54 +1200

4v291o

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

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Jaws 4m1w4b 1975

Tue, 27 May 2025 13:03:43 +1200

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

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Resident Evil 131k2r Afterlife, 2010

Tue, 27 May 2025 06:33:03 +1200

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

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Resident Evil 131k2r Retribution, 2012 - ★★★½

Tue, 27 May 2025 06:31:25 +1200

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

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What Lies Beneath 2r4x5f 2000

Mon, 26 May 2025 15:45:39 +1200

Watched on Sunday May 25, 2025.

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Acting on Impulse 6w454v 1993 - ★★★½

Mon, 26 May 2025 15:14:41 +1200

Watched on Sunday May 25, 2025.

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The Philadelphia Story 5p3h3q 1940

Mon, 26 May 2025 01:15:26 +1200

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

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The Purchase Price 4g5d3o 1932

Sun, 25 May 2025 11:13:46 +1200

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

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From Here to Eternity f6165 1953 - ★★★★★

Sat, 24 May 2025 08:29:29 +1200

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

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Crank 621h4v 2006

Fri, 23 May 2025 15:42:45 +1200

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

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Mission 1h3df Impossible – The Final Reckoning, 2025

Fri, 23 May 2025 11:50:52 +1200

i loooooove when they trap tom cruise behind any sort of metal door and he gets sooooo mad and starts rattling the bars because my pet bunnies do the same thing in their play pen

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The Bourne Identity 3s3nd 2002

Thu, 22 May 2025 18:28:29 +1200

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

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Prometheus 6259r 2012

Thu, 22 May 2025 06:58:53 +1200

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

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Salomé 4mz4l 1922

Wed, 21 May 2025 16:56:25 +1200

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

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Resident Evil 131k2r Extinction, 2007

Wed, 21 May 2025 07:20:51 +1200

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

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Four Rooms 4k3f2h 1995

Wed, 21 May 2025 04:42:17 +1200

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

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Resident Evil 131k2r Apocalypse, 2004

Tue, 20 May 2025 12:39:36 +1200

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

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AVP 22732i Alien vs. Predator, 2004 - ★★★★½ (contains spoilers)

Tue, 20 May 2025 10:59:16 +1200

This review may contain spoilers.

This review contains spoilers for Predator, Predator 2, and AVP. There are many lenses of analysis that I did not explore in my write-up. My primary focus here is on the conception of the Predator as “ugly” from the perspective of humans. I will be interested to educate myself more on the gender, racial and historical politics of these films.

In Predator, the yautja (Predator species) takes off the mask in order to face Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in unarmed hand to hand combat. Dutch says “one ugly motherfucker” basically to himself as he processes the creature’s appearance. It’s just an automatic response to the sight of a completely foreign as well as threatening species. I don’t think it’s a ridiculously unwarranted reaction in the moment, since there was never any space given for meaningful communication between the two fighters. Dutch has spent the entire film just trying to survive his encounter with the yautja (survival meaning kill or be killed).

Obviously that became an iconic line, and it is revisited in Predator 2 by Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) who is also a strong man capable of violence and trained in using lethal force. Gary Busey’s character, leader of the special task force attempting to capture the Predator, delivers a basic lecture on the yautja’s tactics, so by the time he comes face to face with the creature, Harrigan is more prepared to battle it than Dutch was in the first film. Harrigan is also explicitly out for revenge at this point, having been enraged by the Predator’s murder of his partner. He guns down the yautja, who is lying prone and bullet-ridden by the time Harrigan comes over to remove the mask. While the moment is played for comedy by the time the yautja finishes the phrase, the beginning still acts as a moment for our human protagonist to unquestioningly mock an extraterrestrial’s appearance and gloat over his supposed human victory.

The responses of these men make sense in their films. They are trained in the usage of violence against potential threats, and the Predator is a very real threat to their lives. These hostile, life or death relationships with the yautja in Predator and Predator 2 influence how the human protagonists perceive them, allowing for the normalization of the pejorative “ugly motherfucker” when seeing one of the creature’s bare faces.

What Predator 2 does do to deepen the lore and establish a tenuous connection between the two species is to have the older yautjas show up when Harrigan kills the first predator and gift him with a trophy, showing that they respect his ability to fight to the death. His life is spared because he emerged victorious in battle. In the behind-the-scenes feature for Predator 2, Danny Glover specifically says that he refuses to call the yautja “monsters”, opting instead to refer to them as “otherworldly creatures”. While this species will never be relatable or even understandable to most humans, the yautja species as a whole is arguably “de-monsterized” in Predator 2 by these final scenes inside the spaceship in which we see an elaboration on their culture and a willingness on their part to let Harrigan live.

Given the first two films, we can describe a Predator movie as one in which a tough, violent man sees his fellow tough and violent men brutally murdered by a creature even stronger than them, all for the sake of sport on the creature’s end. The man responds by using all of his own powers to attempt to kill this alien creature. The “ugly motherfucker” line is incorporated into both of these films to confront alien violence with an assertion of inherent human superiority in appearance, giving the protagonist confidence in their battle against the aesthetically displeasing creature.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator defies the Predator movie formula defined above. This is achieved by establishing an even scarier, more inhuman, less principled “monster”: the xenomorph. As far as I have seen, there is no chance of reasoning with or surviving alongside a xenomorph, which uses other species as hosts for its reproductive cycle, violently killing them when the newborn bursts to life. When the xenomorph, yautja, and humans come together in front of a human audience, the xenomorph becomes “Alien”. By asserting that the xenomorph is the alien in the room, the yautja becomes more “acceptable” by comparison.

The human hero of AVP, Lex, is not trained in combat. She is still physically hardy, but there is a major emphasis on her intelligence. Her character has a strong drive to survive, and she quickly sees the possibility of teaming up with the Predator to take down a common enemy. Since she is not actively the target of its hunt, Lex is able to perceive positive qualities in this killer alien, despite its significant differences from her own species. Lex is given the opportunity to observe the yautja more than the characters of previous Predator films because she is not in imminent physical danger from it.

AVP also goes beyond the typical single unmasking scene by including two of them, the first only partially visible to the audience. At this point in the film, Lex and Sebastian, the archaeologist she is with, witness the film’s primary yautja, “Scar”, kill a xenomorph before unmasking and scarring his own face with the xenomorph’s blood (this yautja doesn’t have a name or arguably a confirmed gender within the film but I am going off of how Wikipedia refers to him). The audience of the film is only able to view Scar’s face from multiple obscured angles. What is highlighted in this scene is Lex and Sebastian watching and coming to an understanding of the yautja’s behavior. The creature’s unmasking and subsequent marking become an insightful moment for the humans as Sebastian describes what Scar is doing. Importantly, the aesthetic appeal or lack thereof of the Predator’s face is not commented upon. The denial of a clear view for the audience ensures that they too are unable to confidently comment on the possible ugliness of the foreign species.

In her next conversation with Sebastian, Lex declares her intention to work with the Predator in order to protect Earth from xenomorph infestation. While this stated reason is fully altruistic, it is very likely that she also realizes that her own chance of survival will increase greatly with the Predator on her side. She attempts to give the (re-masked) yautja’s gun back but must first kill a xenomorph in self defense. Scar then kills a few more xenomorphs before beginning to walk away from Lex, who follows him and says “Hey. I’m coming with you, you hear me, you ugly creature?” This is the only time the Predator species is called ugly in AVP, and it is more a cry for attention than an attempted put-down. What follows is a spectacular illustration of inter-species cooperation as Lex and Scar kill their way through the pyramid before finally making it to the surface.

Since the movie is PG-13, only one usage of the word “fuck” is possible. “Ugly”, however, is safe to be repeated multiple times. Tracking the usage of both of these words reveals the film’s biases and moments of emphasis on specific lines of dialogue. The first usage of “ugly” comes from one of the armed escorts as he succumbs to a xenomorph, calling it an “ugly son of a bitch” in his final moments (tough guys with guns don’t make it around here). Next comes Lex’s call to the Predator (quoted above) when she is just beginning to ally herself with him and is not yet comfortable working alongside this extraterrestrial species.The single usage of “fuck” comes in a moment of clear and cooperative communication between Lex and Scar. He uses hand signals to indicate he has a bomb to use against the xenomorphs and she declares “I hope it kills every fucking one of them.” This one allowance of the expletive is thus uncoupled from the word “ugly” and is instead utilized to express emphatic of the Predator’s methods against the xenomorphs. The final “ugly” moment is when Lex and Scar are frantically battling aliens at the surface before the bomb goes off. She stabs at an alien and says “You are one ugly mother-” before killing it. This callback to the traditions of Predator films has been re-weaponized against the xenomorph, shielding the yautja from the attack of the slur as it is Scar who Lex is fighting beside against this “ugly” new threat.

When the yautja takes off his mask the second time, the audience finally gets a full view of his face. Lex does not say anything in reaction to his appearance, modeling an acceptance previously unseen in any Predator film. She even allows Scar to scar her own face, which he does to honor her victory over the xenomorphs. Lex accepts this physically painful ritual because she is willing to engage with another species whose traditions are completely different than hers, and ultimately accept these differences. Lex’s method of surviving AVP wholly disrupts the paradigm of Predator films as her goal is achieved not by dominating or killing the yautja, but by working alongside it. Yes, she still has to kill alien creatures in the form of xenomorphs. But her automatic response was not violence against every unfamiliar being she saw; rather, it was to assess the situation and to make an informed choice on how to get through it. She hereby demonstrates to the audience the possibility of breaking with the series’ conventions, and of empathy and cooperation with someone “different,” even a creature previously cinematically established as an “ugly motherfucker.”

Also, I love it when they FIGHT each other OH YEAH! When he YANKS HIM AROUND BY THE TAIL WHEEE. And I hope everyone had a nice time reading my review :) THANK YOU TO MY TRUSTY EDITORS RUBY AND TRISTAN!!

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Deep Rising 6p6k7 1998

Mon, 19 May 2025 18:03:14 +1200

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

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The Crying Game 23381i 1992

Mon, 19 May 2025 10:30:56 +1200

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

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Warlock 471942 1989

Sun, 18 May 2025 17:57:20 +1200

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

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Dog Day Afternoon 4x526h 1975

Sun, 18 May 2025 10:28:12 +1200

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

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Diabolique 632058 1996

Sat, 17 May 2025 16:16:59 +1200

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

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The Lodger 4x714h A Story of the London Fog, 1927 - ★★★★½

Sat, 17 May 2025 12:48:19 +1200

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

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Final Destination Bloodlines 1q4s64 2025

Fri, 16 May 2025 16:34:48 +1200

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

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New Romance 244s2b 2011

Fri, 16 May 2025 15:45:30 +1200

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

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AVP 22732i Alien vs. Predator, 2004 - ★★★★½

Fri, 16 May 2025 15:45:09 +1200

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

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Resident Evil 131k2r 2002

Thu, 15 May 2025 11:20:38 +1200

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

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Papageno 1x4v1k 1935

Wed, 14 May 2025 16:43:26 +1200