The Good, the Bad, and the Funny
Harry Topley
We were stuck in what seemed like an infinite loop, of trying to catch movies at the theater, and missing them. But thanks to some clever engineering and good timing we've managed to catch up. So without further ado, our short and sweet reviews of Alien: Covenant, Valerian and The City of 1,000 Planets, and The Orville.
Alien: Covenant was promised by some reviewers to finally close a lot of loose ends in the Alien universe...NOPE. We left wondering how that was supposed to answer anything other than why aren't there Engineers running around the galaxy anymore? And how many bad choices must a crew make in order to create danger in well thought out space thrillers? The whole thing left us feeling a little underwhelmed.
Valerian and The City of 1,000 Planets on the other hand was great fun to watch, visually speaking, and the opening sequence about the creation of space station Alpha hit us right in the feels. but (spoiler alert) we spent hours afterwards wondering how exactly the relationship between main characters blossomed from "I can barely stand you" to "sure let's get hitched" without any real romance or bonding in between...but the movie sure was pretty.
And last but certainly not least The Orville, has given us two decent offerings, a premier pilot and a second episode, both of which delivered good laughs at the sci-fi tomfoolery of an odd-couple divorced first and second in command, and plenty of strange alien types. Seth McFarlane is up to his usual sophomoric level of humor, but there's a few higher level laughs to be had. So far we are enjoying.