ALIEN: COVENANT

(2017) After the major letdown that was Prometheus, I was hoping director Ridley Scott - the original helmsman behind the first films in the Alien franchise, the first two of which are among my favorite films of all time - but after what seemed a fairly promising opening, even with a few lame potholes in the writing/plot, Alien: Covenant turns into a derivative, ill-conceived, badly-written (especially the last third of the film) mess that even Michael Fassbender, in the dual roles of androids David and Walter, can't save. Set eleven years after Prometheus, Covenant opens with a colonization ship of the same name traveling through space toward a planet set to be the new home for the 2,000+ cryo-sleeping humans aboard, when the crew receives a strange signal from a planet nearby. Discovering the planet's atmosphere is similar to that of Earth's, and might therefore be a better choice than the still far-distant planet they are traveling years to get to, the Covenant sets down to check things out ... and boy, does the you-know-what hit the fan right away, via a form of a biological menace that does its own nasty bout of destruction before the aliens even show their scary, ugly heads. And the aliens are ugly, too; a throwback to the days before CGI, they look real and quite menacing - and sadly, even with such a strong cast, the aliens remain the most interesting characters in the film, everyone else flat and disposable (yes, even Fassbender x 2). The ending is just plain silly and weak, with a "twist" that Mr. Magoo could see coming, Ridley Scott trying to cram too much depth and not enough character, story or plot into a dissatisfying, disappointing heap. Shame on you, Sir. Well, at least the aliens were cool. (rated R)  4/10 stars