Alien Covenant review

Ridley Scott returned to the “Alien” franchise with his 2012 prequel “Prometheus,”  showing  that the veteran Hollywood director still had a love for monumental science fiction storytelling and an eye for evocative imagery. Yet the viewers who were waiting decades to know more about the origins of 1979’s “Alien” were left with a handsome production undercut by a messy screenplay by writer Damon Lindelof that only teased an explanation, while leaving more questions to be answered.  Hopes that this year’s “Alien Covenant” would finally tie the narrative threads together are hopes to be had in vain, as this latest installment ventures down another lateral tangent that further broadens the mythology.

Much like the first third of the original “Alien,” “Covenant” sends another crew of explorers to an uncharted planet after receiving a fuzzed-out message by Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), the lost survivor of the Prometheus ship. This traveling colony, having recently suffered from an electrical storm that killed many of their inhabitants in hyper-sleep, decides to change course to see if this mysterious planet can support human life. Aboard the vessel is their self-doubting, proudly religious Captain Oram (Billy Crudup), who’s insisting they take the risk to save time, while second-in-command officer Daniels (Katherine Waterston) has just lost her husband in the devastating accident and wants the Covenant to stay on course.  Once a pod of explorers is sent down to investigate the earth-like sphere, the crew discovers a biological terror they weren’t prepared to deal with.

Rounding out the cast is Danny McBride as red-neck pilot Tennessee, Amy Seimets as his wife Faris, Damian Birchir as Lope, and Michael Fassbender as the group’s resident android Walter.  They’re many other smaller performances in the picture and characters to be named, including an oddly short James Franco cameo, but John Logan and Dante Harper’s screenplay relegates most of these roles to serving the story as faceless creature-feature fodder and these extra crew members barely peak out of the movie’s larger obsession with awkwardly-paced, talky scenes of needless exposition.

While the initial introduction to this crew in mourning is an interesting place to begin a darker more sorrowful tone, the movie ultimately lacks the humanity and soul it needs to inform this choice. Instead, the film abandons this set-up and moves on to other concerns. The final moments of “Alien Covenant” contains a traditional attack sequence that feels tired and familiar by the time we get there and superfluous after an hour and forty minutes of exhausting scenes of cave-dwelling, interspersed with mindless attempts at shock

Longtime fans that are curious to see how Scott expands the Alien mythos will likely be divided on the Covenant’s retroactive continuity, as it seems to disregard a lot of speciation rules from the previous installments that followed writer Dan O’Bannon’s original “Alien.” In its place, we are introduced to various forms of alien spores, white monkey-looking creatures that burst out of people’s backs and early forms of the classic eggs and face-huggers. People new to the franchise will and should be totally lost in this minutia and those trying to follow along may need to create a complicated flow-chart to connect all the disparate creatures into one lineage. Whereas the original alien-lifecycle was once elegant and believable, O’Bannon’s simple mythology has now been muddied by two prequels that let the overarching thematic concerns and a handful of bad ideas overtake the storytelling.  This installment in particular is somehow both overreaching and lazy in its execution.

Like “Prometheus,” Michael Fassbender’s duel performance as the androids Walter and David steal the show; though within these scenes, the film’s divergence into highfalutin discussions about life, grief, religion, creation, obsession and flute playing loosens the necessary narrative tension for the movie to work as an effective thriller. Most of the monster attack scenes are only sprinkled in to remind us that this pre-sequel is still related to the known franchise, but the overall structure of the picture is compromised by wasted performances by otherwise good actors, under-rendered CGI, moments of ponderous meditation on themes that are never fully realized and rushed sequences of unearned gore.  

Grade: D+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2017\

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Alien Covenant"

Exodus: Gods and Kings review

         If Hollywood knew what they were doing, Bible stories would be the next major source for untapped IPs. They’re ripe with special effects potential and simplistic, Campbellian hero’s journey narratives, and not only will they draw in big crowds in the flyover states but if they keep it Old Testament they could even play well abroad. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is Riddley’s Scott’s adaptation of the famous story of Moses and unlike Darren Aronofsky’s reinterpretation of “Noah” from earlier this year, this film in perfect step with the biblical text in terms of major plot details and the overall message of building trust in God, but rather than then the parable function it serves in the bible as a morality tale, Scott is far more interested in its cinematic function as a setting for swords and sandals spectacle, and maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.
The first third of the movie teases a “Prince of Egypt” like tension between Moses (Christian Bale) before he becomes the self-identified revolutionary of the Hebrews and his adopted brother Ramses II (Joel Edgerton) before he becomes the Pharaoh. Having been raised as Egyptian royalty, Moses slowly learns through the oppressed peoples he visits on a business trip that he’s actually one of them, which then causes his existential collapse and his eventual exile from the kingdom. After wandering the desert for a bit, Moses makes a new life for himself when he marries and becomes a sheep herder, and all seems well until his newly acquainted Hebrew God asks him to return to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh and free the slaves.
Throughout the picture there’s a constant war between the spiritual and philosophic concerns of the content and the overbearing aesthetics and grandiosity of the production. The brother-against-brother storyline isn't properly milked for its dramatic potential as we’re initially told it’s going to be. Instead, midway through, Moses and Ramses are full-on enemies and that’s pretty much that.  There’s a small but significant thematic thread dealing with Moses’ increasingly taxing relationship with the elusive Biblical God, and every so often those concerns are dealt with in a semi-thoughtful and humanistic way; first when Moses is abruptly asked to leave his family to save his people, and then later as God instructs him sit and watch the Egyptians he grew up with tortured and killed by a host of terrifying plagues.
          The scenes depicting Moses’ struggle with his faith is about the only relatable thing here as the majority of the film feels and looks like a Las Vegas production, bathed in gold-tinted color-corrected lighting schemes, and spotlighting  a cast of Caucasian actors cheaply bronzed to look more ethnic , wearing bejeweled accessories and thick drag-queen eyeliner. Not helping this is a series of distracting and smirk-inducing casting choices with equally bizarre performances, including John Turturro as Moses and Ramses’ king father, Sigourney Weaver as their queen mother, who, with the exception of one scene, is seemingly only there to walk in and out of rooms, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as a crazy-eyed Hebrew slave who has looks as if he had a bad month and wandered on set without any discernible direction.
         You can always expect a level of technical craft when it comes to a Riddley Scott production and you certainly get that here.  The sets are lavish, the cinematography is atmospheric and the special effects sequences such as the plagues and famed parting of the Red Sea, visually captures your attention. But despite Scott’s minimal attempt at humanizing this tale, a large gilded heap of camp buries the story elements and turns this overlong  epic into a theatrical Circ de Sole performance, and like a well-lit show at the Luxor, it has its entertainment value even if it lacks artistic credibility.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014