Battle of the Sexes (4/5 Stars)

Putting the Show back in Chauvinism

The show was so good it is hard to believe that it was actually true. “The Battle of the Sexes,” a tennis match played in 1973 between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King plays like a professional wrestling match. In one corner is the heel, the ex-champion Bobby Riggs, a boastful, clownish, male chauvinist. In the other corner is Billie Jean King, young, serious, the greatest female tennis player in the country. Bobby believes that he can beat at his age, 55, any woman who has the guts to challenge him. His reasoning: men are better than women. The match became so hyped that it ultimately was played in a football stadium and 50 million people watched it on television. Like professional wrestling, it had a man one could love to hate and a woman everyone wanted to win.

Except that this wasn’t a professional wrestling match. The outcome that would delight the world, good guys win, bad guys lose, was not predetermined. The prize money was a million dollars and Bobby Riggs, a compulsive gambler, had bet $15,000 of his own money on himself. There would be no throwing of the fight and the fact that Bobby had previously soundly beat the next best female tennis player, Margaret Court, in what was termed the Mother’s Day massacre, had put a real suspense onto the outcome of the match. The match was exciting. And in this movie, the feeling is fully captured.

To Billie Jean King, the significance of the match was very serious. She had turned down Bobby several times before Margaret’s defeat, made it essential that she take the match in order to prove that women’s tennis wasn’t a joke. At the time, she was lobbying for equal pay in tournaments between men and women. Her reasoning: the men and women sell the same amount of tickets, why are they paid differently. To Bobby, the significance of the match seems less serious and more of a ploy to be paid more money. Bobby knows that by trolling the women’s lib movement he could generate interest in the match. Whether he actually hates women is an open question, but on a certain level it doesn’t matter. He does not take the women’s lib movement serious. As he comments in one scene: the women don’t deserve to be paid as much as the men because they can’t beat the men in a match-up. In fact, he says, “I’m being paid less to play on the men’s senior circuit than the women are making in their regular circuit. If I can beat the top women, its unfair to me to be paid less than them.”

It strikes me that I’m talking far more about the plot than usual. Well, that speaks to the power of the story. It is a fantastic battle between two very strong characters. Steve Carell is the perfect actor to portray the clownish Bobby Riggs and Emma Stone is perfect as Billie Jean King. In fact, I think this is the fullest character Emma Stone has ever played and is her best performance. Sarah Silverman and Bill Pullman pull their weight in supporting roles.

The movie thankfully pays a lot of time and attention to the match itself. It is well directed by Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Davis (directors of “Little Miss Sunshine”) and written by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”). This is a good movie. I really liked it.

Mother! (3/5 Stars)

The last two movies of writer/director Darren Aronofsky, “Noah” and now “Mother!” Present a point of view that is rarely posited. Believers of God generally think of the deity in an absolutely positive light, whether as fully good or at least fully just. Whereas non-believers don’t have an opinion about God (though they may hold a generally negative of organized religion) because they don’t believe that the deity exists to have an opinion about. Darren Aronofsky, at least in his last two films, believes in God, and finds the deity lacking. For example, in “Noah”, God decides to kill almost everybody on Earth. Some characters in that movie were quite articulate as to the unfairness of it all. If there was a such thing, that movie and this new one would be heretical works.

“Mother!” is an extending and ever-developing metaphor of all the crimes ever committed against Women/Nature. I myself did not quite grasp the overall metaphor until about two thirds of the way through and upon reflection noticed I missed many things early on. Then again, I went into this movie blind. Just reading that its a metaphor will likely help you catch on to the biblical parallels earlier. “Mother!” has received a Cinemascore of F which should give a hint as to what an unpleasant experience this movie can be. However, an unpleasant movie does not necessarily a bad movie. “Mother!” is technically proficient, well-acted, and has more things to say in ten minutes than most movies have in their running time. I cannot say I liked “Mother!”, but when I exited the theater I had a feeling that reminded me of the feeling I had when I exited the theater after watching Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” It is an intense proceeding.

The movie takes place entirely in a fixer-upper mansion in a picturesque landscape. Here Jennifer Lawrence, doing her best impression of a Renaissance Madonna, works on renovations while her older husband, played by Javier Bardem, tries to get out of a writing block. Nobody actually has names as who they are and what they represent seem to more or less explicitly change over time.

The movie can be broken into three parts: the first is about the neuroses and concerns of a married couple trying to decide when and if to have a child, the second is about fame and what happens to a couple when one of them starts spreading their love in a not exclusive fashion, the third is quite explicitly about God and Mother Nature. In the background, making things complicated and then throwing the whole world into squalor and chaos are the humans. The movie takes a dim view of the humans, and through this dim of view of the humans, places the ultimate blame for the troubles on God, who made them in his image. The only innocent here is Women/Nature. At least that is what I believe this movie is about. Aronofsky does not feel the need to be explanatory. I think that wound in the floor is Original Sin, but there is no way to know for certain. Javier Bardem it should be noted is quite good as God. Not sure how that sort of thing is pulled off, but he does it.

I can’t recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see a movie with anyone else. You are going to have to see this one alone. It’s not a good time. However, it will make you think. It is quite literally a challenging movie. I for one never considered what Mary, mother of Jesus, may have felt about God giving up his only son through martyrdom for our sins. I mean it’s not like God asked Mary for permission or even her opinion on the matter.

Logan Lucky (4/5 Stars)

Those searching for a theme to categorize the career of Director Steven Soderbergh will be left searching. He is a man of seemingly unlimited interests. To take just enough examples to prove my point: his projects have ranged from an epic biopic of Che Gueverra, a remake of a Russian science fiction movie, an action movie built around the physicality of a female MMA wrestler, a no-budget movie set in a doll factory starring non-actors, a remake of a rat pack heist movie with the biggest movie stars in the world, a TV show about a hospital in NYC in the year 1900.

Logan Lucky is no exception to the rule that there are no rules. This movie takes place in present day West Virginia and concerns the Logan family’s heist of the Coca Cola NASCAR speedway. You could say it’s like Ocean’s Eleven because it technically is in the same heist genre, but really the movie are not the same at all. Or to put in another way, they are as different as Las Vegas is to Appalachia.

Logan Lucky is a lot of fun. In particular, you sense the deft hand of an experienced storyteller at work in what Soderbergh chooses to leave out of scenes. How the heist itself works is not really explained fully beforehand, so we experience how it works as the heist progresses. This was probably a good move because the heist, being somewhat realistic, is also not super complicated (as opposed to say Ocean’s Eleven). It does succeed in passing the Heist Test, a test I’m making up now (although it probably already exists somewhere).

The Heist Test consists merely of watching the movie and spotting some obvious clue that the authorities have been shown in the movie that should tip them off to the perpetrators. An example of a movie that fails the Heist Test is Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” In that movie, the robbers make all their hostages shed their clothes, put on the same uniform as the robbers, and they all walk out the front door. The authorities could have easily just had all the hostages put their clothes back on. The people without any clothes to put back on are the robbers. Heist solved. The authorities in “Inside Man” don’t do this thus that movie fails the Heist test.

I think Logan Lucky passes the Heist Test. It does this in a nifty way by transforming the Heist of a Speedway more into an insurance scam. That is it takes away anyone’s motive for solving the heist. That sort of is a spoiler but isn’t really.

Logan Lucky stars Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan, mastermind, Adam Driver as Clyde Logan, his sibling and sidekick in the scheme, and Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, an incarcerated bank vault specialist. They all sport Appalachian accents. Weirdly this seems the suit the Brit the best. Then there is Seth MacFarlane who plays a racecar sponsor named Max Chilblain. I couldn’t tell at all where his accent hailed from.

Logan Lucky exploits the regular fun from its Appalachian characters and setting while undercutting the stereotypes sometimes in the same line of a scene. For one particular good instance, Joe Bang makes what can best be described as a white trash bomb out of bleach and gummy bears, but then successfully explains it using chemistry equations. I had a good time watching Logan Lucky. It’s a good addition to the Pretty Good Soderbergh shelf.

Dunkirk (4/5 Stars)

 “Dunkirk” recreates of an early event in World War II when the German blitzkrieg flanked and encircled the entire British army at the beaches of Dunkirk while the German Luftwaffe bombed them from above and German U-Boats terrorized the British channel.

It is entirely possible that the large majority of the British army, around 400,000 men, may have died on that beach. The British navy was not sending the bulk of their destroyers to evacuate the men because of the superiority of the German air force and submarine fleet. The last and only hope was to draft all the “little ships” of the England, civilian boats, to cross the channel and pick up the boys. As a retreat it was so successful it became the stuff of legend. Only 40,000 men were expected to live. The British with the help of the civilian effort rescued ten times that amount and a good amount of the French army too.

Writer and Director Christopher Nolan treats the subject matter with solemnity and reverence. Individual stories are sacrificed to the events as a whole. (In fact, I can’t remember most of the names of the characters.) There is no back-story and no locations that are not on Dunkirk, therefore no characters that aren’t on-the-ground soldiers. This minimalism suits the sense of isolation and the impending doom felt by the men on the beach.

What is innovative is the structure of the story. Here, again, Director Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar) engages his forte. The movie is divided into three parts and seamlessly switches between the three. The first is the Mole (french word for pier thing on the beach) and takes place over a week and covers the entire week that the evacuation took place in. The second is the Sea and takes place over a single day that the little ships were involved in the evacuation. The third is the Air and takes place over a single hour that the British Air Force provided a cover mission for the evacuation. The Air’s hour takes place during the Sea’s day which takes place during the Mole’s week. It is not necessarily intuitive that these stories could seamlessly move back and forth between each other, but Nolan once again proves that he knows how to clearly tell a seemingly convoluted story. I was not particularly confused as to what was happening when.

And it makes sense story-wise. If Nolan had told the story straight chronologically, the second and especially the third story-line would have been sandwiched unfairly near the end, thereby reducing the historical importance of the sea and air efforts. This way, they are all given equal time (even though the their times are unequal) and the movie has this interesting relativistic effect. The faster the characters move, the slower time seems to move for them, and an hour in a British Spitfire roaring across the channel equals the time spent by a man walking on the ground.

Most of the actors, though talented like Tom Hardy (airplane) and Cillian Murphy (ground), could have been replaced because of the deliberate motive of the movie to have the scenario overpower any one individual story. There is one exception and that is the civilian captain of one of the little ships, played by Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The nobility of the man shines through and gives incarnate form to the humble and collective spirit of Dunkirk that became the stuff of legend. His interactions with a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) provide the heart of the movie. “There’s no turning back from this, son,” he states and there is a power in the understated yet unwavering purpose behind his intonations. Keep Calm and Carry On indeed.

The Little Hours (4/5 Stars)

Ostensibly “The Little Hours” is based on “The Decameron” by Giovanni Boccaccio. This 14^th century work concerned a group of ten women who relocated to the country to wait out the bubonic plague. To entertain themselves, they each tell a story. There is only one rule: don't make it depressing like the plague. This movie is more likely to have been inspired by one of the short stories as opposed to actually adapted from it. I don’t know much about the actual short story except that it involved a convent of horny nuns and their adventures with the new gardener. That more or less happens in “The Little Hours,” but there is plenty here that is most likely anachronistic. Then again, there is also plenty here that isn’t anachronistic. And more than anything, the choices that Writer/Director Jeff Baena makes as to what to stay historically faithful to and what to not care too much about changing are what makes “The Little Hours” a superior movie and yes, very funny.

What stays the same is the general context of 14^th century Italy, specifically the Tuscan countryside where the convent is located. I know something about the context because of recently reading Will Durant’s “The Story of Civilization, Volume 5: The Renaissance”. (I may have been the only one  in the theater keenly aware of the historical context of one character’s paranoid obsession with Guelfs.) The characters, being of 14^th century Italy, and unaware of a brighter future with far more freedom, respond to their situations in historically correct ways. One particular nun, when told by her visiting father that the family’s money is tight and she probably won’t get a promised dowry (and thus dashing her hopes of someday leaving the convent to marry), is disappointed but does not get angry or disobedient. Although such a response would be unheard of today (just like it would be unheard of for any daughter to be forced into a convent for monetary reasons in the first place), it is this type of detail that provides the basis of catharsis later on in the story. This story, after all, is about life finding its way through the strictures of not just physical but psychological repression. That repression, though outdated, must remain heavy and the characters must believe in it for the movie to truly succeed. When successfully providing the basis for the reality of the movie, it provides high stakes for certain reveals that in this day and age nobody would care about. Those high stakes seen through a modern consciousness are quite funny. At the height of one particular comedic moment, I heard a sizable gasp in the audience (and onscreen) when one character accuses another character of being a Jew. (Gasp!)

What is changed is plenty. For one thing, although this is Italy, there are no accents and there is noone speaks like Shakespeare. The script is tailored not to the prose of “The Decameron” but to the comedic attributes of its very good cast of talented comedians. In supporting roles are the men. John C. Reilly plays a good-hearted pastor with a weakness for wine. Fred Armisen plays a traveling bishop who functions like a spiritual auditor (more in an accountant way than an inquisitor way). Nick Offerman plays the previously mentioned monarch obsessed with Guelfs. In the main roles are three of the most talented young female comedians around. First is Alison Brie (“Community”) the aforementioned girl who wants to leave the convent and marry but whose family decides is not worth the dowry. Next is Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) whose dead-pan bluntness and sullen rebelliousness makes her the perfect candidate for witchcraft. Finally is a new-comer (at least to me), one Kate Micucci, who is a comedic revelation. If the convent plays a little like high school with Alison as the rich girl and Aubrey as the goth girl, Kate is the unformed slightly nerdy girl that just wants to fit in with the rest of them. Although the characters are of the 14th century, the movie takes a purely modern and secular view of certain taboos (homosexuality, celibacy, drug-use, etc.). For example, witchcraft is not so much about being evil as it is about dancing naked in the woods on drugs. The witches are not unlike modern hippies.

Surrounded by all these colorful characters is Dave Franco, the humble gardener whose presence in the convent excites all of the repressed nuns. Dave wisely plays the straight man to the craziness abounding around him and never really goes for the laughs himself. That’s fine, because the story is driven by the women in it, and it is their choices as it pertains to the gardener (some of which can be decidedly categorized as sexual harassment) that reveal each of their well-rounded characters.

A movie like “The Little Hours” could not have been made before the digital revolution in movies. It is way too niche and obviously would be very difficult to market in any mass market type of way. If however you stumble upon it, give it a shot. I thought it was hilarious.

The Beguiled (4/5 Stars)

In the midst of the American Civil War, on an abandoned Southern plantation, there remains a girls school, seemingly marooned from the world. It is headed by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) and employs one teacher named Edwina (Kirsten Dunst). She teaches five girls ranging from eight years old to an almost adult named Alicia (Elle Fanning). One day the youngest girl finds an injured Union soldier on the road named Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell). He is taken into the plantation where the women go about nursing him back to health.

According to the dictionary, to beguile means to “charm or enchant (someone), sometimes in a deceptive way.” The titular “Beguiled” in this movie is perhaps everybody in it. It is a case study in very polite sexual tension. It is not just that Colin Farrell is handsome, and he is, or that the house is full of hospitable southern women who are quite beautiful, and they are, it is that there are several dynamics in between all the characters playing at once. The union soldier is injured so he must rely on the women. But the women are trained by the culture and the time period to acquiesce to the man. But the number of women in the house far outnumber the man. But the women are competing amongst themselves for the man’s attention.

It is a credit to the writing and direction of this movie, that the above does not drown itself in melodrama. Instead through very fine attention to detail and pointed understatement the situation hovers between absurdity and suspense. There is something funny about the women offering the man a home-cooked meal (“would you like some pie, corporal? It’s my special recipe.”) at a dinner they have all dressed too much up at, and also something sinister about it given that any actual sexuality would have drastic consequences. The consequences again are on several levels: The impropriety of such a lady-like institution harboring any such sensual situation, the jealous competition between the ladies themselves, and then there is the war waging outside that technically makes the man and all the women sworn enemies.

The Director is Sofia Coppola, who based her screenplay off a previous movie of the same title. (I bet this remake is much better.) Ms. Coppola perhaps more than anybody in the business is a good argument for nepotism. The thing is that, and if you ever watch interviews with Ms. Coppola perhaps you would agree with me, Ms. Coppola doesn’t really come off, forgive me, as a particularly interesting person. She comes off strikingly competent, yes, but way too literal to be engaging. For those who generally enjoy the insight of a director's interview, Ms. Coppola has a way of making it seem like there is less to the movie than meets the eye. Of course, this shouldn’t be held against her because what counts is the movie and not her personality, and she does make good movies. I simply find it hard to believe that she could have risen through the ranks without her last name because its hard to believe she could ever successfully pitch a movie.

But whatever the reason she gets to make movies, it is a good thing that she does. Most directors aren’t like Sofia Coppola and her movies in turn are not like most. Just as nobody but Coppola would imagine a biopic about Marie Antionette without a beheading, here nobody would have had the follow-through to base a movie for such a sustained period of time on tiny movements, glances, and phrases that may or may not mean what they say they mean. Counter-intuitively, “The Beguiled” may be a movie you should see in a theater because it is small. If you saw it on Netflix, you might miss a good portion of what is happening.

When the movie finally does get dramatic it is very satisfying. The ensemble is perfectly cast. In particular, Nicole Kidman, as the head-mistress, and Elle Fanning, as a really bored girl, do well in their roles. Given the general dearth of good roles for women, I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie got multiple Oscar nominations for acting. And Colin Farrell again made me regret ever thinking he was bad actor. I take it back. I really like that guy.

Wonder Woman (4/5 Stars)

A standard hypocrisy implicitly permeates most action blockbusters, which rely on strong-armed violence to solve problems all the while preaching the modern day values of pacifism and tolerance. In Wonder Woman, such hypocrisy is explicitly brought to the forefront and an elemental part of the plot and philosophy of the movie. Wonder Woman, also known as Diana, the Roman version of the Greek Goddess Artemis, has spent her entire life in the secret realm of the Amazons, a Greek tribe of woman warriors. There is a mythology in her tribe about a woman warrior from stopping all the wars of the world by killing her brother Ares, the Greek God of War. (I’m not sure why Diana and Ares are in the same story. Really it should either be Diana and Mars or Artemis and Ares, but whatever). The secret realm is penetrated accidentally by a British pilot named Steve Trevor in a World War I by-plane escaping German forces circa Istanbul. Steve Trevor, played by Chris Pine, describes to the Amazons for the first time what is going outside their cocoon. It is the War to End All Worlds. It’s been going on for years and seemingly won’t ever stop.

Diana, played by Gal Gadot, sees her destiny. She becomes convinced that a particular German is Ares and that she must take her sword and shield out into the world and kill him in order to end the war. That this plan could possibly work would appall any lightly seasoned student of history. The tragedy of World War I was that it took so long and so many lives before the forces realized that further violence would not help them “win” the war, at least not in any traditional sense of the word, and that neither side was the “bad” side. I had a sinking feeling during much of the movie that Diana might actually succeed in her mission and thus turn the movie into a dangerous piece of revisionist history. It was only until the last twenty minutes that I became relieved that the movie had turned the implicit hypocrisy of the modern blockbuster into a teachable lesson. (Although I have no idea what Wonder Woman may have actually learned if she is still bandying about the modern day world trying to solve problems with sword, shield, and costume.)

Yes, “Wonder Woman” has been competently directed in the fight scenes, but most of the film’s fun comes between the interaction of Chris Pine and Gal Gadot. Steve Trevor though he is right when he describes himself as an above-average male, knows that Diana, being a goddess, is his superior. He takes this in stride and the movie does not make a big deal out of it. Actually, if I had to make a model of one particular aspect of this movie as a teaching point, I would show the superior way “Wonder Woman” treats the subject of misogyny. As this movie takes place in World War I in a European society entirely controlled by men, there must needs to be the obligatory scenes of men objecting to a woman in the room and so on. I’ve seen this scene many times and have learned to take its general heavy-handedness like I take my cough syrup, with reluctance but knowing its good for me. That is until “Wonder Woman.” In this movie, these scenes are are played with nuance and are consistently funny. The point is still being made, but watch “Wonder Woman.” It does it better.

“Wonder Woman” was directed by Patty Jenkins. In 2003, as her directorial debut, Patty Jenkins made the great movie “Monster” starring Charlize Theron. Then she fell off the face of the earth, not directing another mainstream movie for fourteen years until this years “Wonder Woman.” This, in my mind at least, is the best living evidence of the idea that woman directors are treated unfairly in the movie-making industry. Patty Jenkins should be making a movie every other year. She shouldn’t have to wait until a bunch of studio heads sit around a boardroom and conclude after much deliberation that they would look like shmucks if “Wonder Woman” were directed by a man.

More women writers and directors would certainly go a long way in making men look better in movies. “Wonder Woman” is a good example of a trend I’ve spoken of before: that members of one sex have a tendency to idealize members of the other. Well, in “Wonder Woman” the most interesting and noble character isn’t Diana. As the main character in an origin story, she has a lot to learn and must have room to grow. No, the best person is the man, Steve Trevor, and it is his noble efforts to stop the war and help Diana with her mission that provide the heart and soul of the movie. If we had more women writers and directors who wrote stories with women as main characters, we would have more male characters like Steve Trevor, an above-average man, instead of say the multitude of man-childs that have dominated the comedies and blockbusters of the past hundred years of cinema. I will be sorely disappointed if I have to wait another fourteen years for the next Patty Jenkins movie.

Alien: Covenant (2/5 Stars)

In what is becoming an “Alien” franchise tradition, a subsequent installment cannibalizes a superior predecessor. I don’t mean that the sequel is inferior or simply does the same thing in an inferior way, I mean that is actually undercuts the pleasure of watching a previous movie. This happened the first time in Alien 3, when in between “Aliens” and “Alien 3” the movie actually killed off important characters that the viewer had come to know and very much like. “Alien: Covenant” does the same thing, killing off the main female lead of “Prometheus,” Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace. The ironic thing about the “Alien” franchises is that one of its major themes is corporate disregard for human life in the face of profit, and the main culprit of these in-between movie killings is most likely the waning stardom of previous main characters. At least that is what seems to be the main impetus behind the lack of Noomi Rapace here. In 2012 came out, Noomi Rapace, coming off the iconic “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy, was a the zenith of her star power. In 2017 she has become largely absent whereas Michael Fassbender, the other survivor from “Prometheus,” is still around. So “Alien: Covenant” kills off Noomi Rapace even before the movie starts and became the Michael Fassbender show. It is notable that this is the first canonical Alien installment that does not feature a strong female lead.

The problems start there and keep going. I am going to limit myself to just a few complaints, but not before noting that this movie was directed by Ridley Scott who directed both the original “Alien” and “Prometheus.” I merely point this out to state that he should know how to make a better movie than this one.

A large problem with blockbusters nowadays is that they use digital effects too much. Digital effects have their place, and that is when the filmmakers cannot make the thing they want to show without digital effects, like say a large crowd, or a landscape, or another world. When digital effects are used to make something really small and close, they should not be used at all. The filmmakers should just make the thing they want to be represented. Compare the baby-alien chest bursting scenes in the original 1979 “Alien” and the one this year in “Alien: Covenant.” Even though a span of thirty-eight years of continual special effects evolution has occurred, the 1979 version is more believable, more visceral, and more effective. It’s that way because they made a puppet out of real material and performed the operation physically. The same scene in “Alien: Covenant” looks like a digital recreation. It’s detailed but the audience can tell the difference. There is no financial reason to do it this way. In fact, a puppet is probably cheaper.

This movie breaks all the rules of the Alien. For it to be a believable story, the rules having been set down explicitly need to stay there. Here is a short list of broken rules in “Alien: Covenant.” One: Aliens can be killed by bullets from guns. Two: The Alien gestates in the stomach and bursts through the chest (as opposed to say, through the upper back vertebrae, which is novel but doesn’t make any sense). Three: The Alien needs time (maybe a couple of weeks) to impregnate the host, grow inside it, burst out of it, go into the wilderness and come back fully formed. In this movie, that whole process happens in a couple of hours.

Mr. Scott perhaps broke these rules because he felt the audience may have been impatient. Well, the first “Alien” movie was great because he took his time to establish the rules and follow them, which made them visceral and effective. If he couldn’t find a way to do it here, he should have gone back to the drawing board. After, the end product is an “Alien” movie that doesn’t have believable Aliens in it.

As far as the philosophical underpinnings of this movie, I am disappointed to relate that it did not follow through on the promises “Prometheus” made in what it was trying to accomplish here. I feel like “Prometheus” got thrown under the bus quite frankly. I’m not happy with this movie. Two Michael Fassbenders did not make it all okay.