Alien: Romulus

 Warning: I try not to do spoilers, but this is a movie best enjoyed without knowing anything about it. I'd avoid the synopsis below and read on from after the image if you haven't seen it yet. Hell, avoid the trailers if possible.

 A bunch of no-future kids in a hellish corporate mining world band together to explore a mysterious derelict structure they've found floating in the skies above them. They think it might hold cryostasis pods, which would allow them to escape away from the system and a short life of wage slavery in the mines.

 Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is invited along, partly because the self-proclaimed leader (Archie Renaux) seems to be sweet on her but mostly because her adoptive brother (David Jonsson) is a Weyland-Yutani android - and he might be able to help them bypass some of the corporate security when they break into the structure.

 Said structure turns out to be a full blown Wey-Yu space station... and the resting place for the frozen remains of the xenomorph from the original alien, recovered by an automated probe from the wreck of the Nostromo in the film's cold-open. Things proceed about as well as you'd expect.

 Alien: Romulus, like the space station that lends the film its title, is a film split into two halves: A serious, grounded, tense and very well-thought-out thriller, chased by a gleefully batshit latter-day Alien franchise film with maybe one too many references to the series' past. The first half is clearly superior, and there's some tonal clash to reckon with as things get more and more over the top, but the final stretch remains extremely enjoyable as long as you adjust to a new, more ridiculous status quo in which things just don't quite make as much sense any more.

 It makes sense, then, that it's directed by the great Fede Alvarez (who also co-wrote the script with regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues); This story structure seems to be his MO, after all. His direction here is excellent, muscular and mercurial as the action demands, with the addition of stately (and beautiful) sci-fi vistas to his repertoire. Cinematographer Galo Olivares helps him cleave to the dark and gritty visual style of the first two Aliens, but the camera movements are freer, more prone to indulge in slightly show-offy stunts. It looks great.

 Well... mostly great. There's one particular effect - an act of digital necromancy featuring an android from the series' past - that's distractingly bad; Some of the worst dead-eyed zombie puppeteering Hollywood has offered up yet, made even more insulting because it's shitting over the memory of a well-loved actor, and because it gets a surprising amount of screentime. Romulus started its life as a Hulu streaming exclusive, and I do wonder if these scenes are an artifact of a prior, lower-budget incarnation of the film. This is not the only problematic element (I have my issues with this film's incarnation of the now-obligatory 'final threat' Rain has to face alone)... but it's by far the worst.
 The rest is good to great. The production design (Naaman Marshall) in particular remains incredible, keeping that weird, lovely, stolid 1970's take on future space functionality - and most of the new elements feel of a piece with what's come before.

 The characters get a little lost amid the turns of the busy story, but they are still well-developed enough that it's easy to root for -or against- them. Civil War's Spaeny is particularly good, but the film belongs to Jonsson, who has a lot of fun playing the many changes his android goes through while providing the script's most interesting conundrums.

 Alvarez tones back his bloodthirst slightly, but this is still the most graphic gore we've gotten so far in an Alien movie - including a very grisly, memorable death of a type I've been waiting for ever since we found out the nature of the blood running through the xenomorph's veins. The back half finds some fairly inventive ways to put the various characters through the wringer, and even if it relies a little too much on callbacks (did we really need as many references to the famous Xenomorph lovingly sniffing Ripley shots?), there are still some tense, enjoyably ridiculous horror and action beats there.

 As well as focusing on the bloodshed, Alvarez also pays special attention to the more depraved aspects of notorious pervert H.R.Giger's original designs. Expect a lot of phallic and vaginal imagery, and a very uncomfortable, sexualized depiction of what can only be described as oral rape. Tasteful, it ain't, even before the rest of the story around it descends into madness; Even a discarded chest burster skin looks like a used condom. I have no idea how this managed to get a 15 rating here in the UK.

 Alien and Aliens will forever stand as the ur-text of games that have any sort of action, horror or sci-fi trappings. It's appropriate, then, that this movie was directly inspired by the (excellent) 2014 game Alien: Isolation; Even when the script makes sense of them, there's something very videogame-y about the setup and many of its setpieces - how complications stack on top of each other to provide poor Rain and her friends a proper survival horror gauntlet.

 I can't overstate how good the first hour of this film is. If the movie had reined in its more outré instincts and self-referential impulses for the back half, I'd be perfectly happy to hold it up as one of a piece with the first two installments. As it is, this is a flawed, somewhat disappointing, but still very fun Alien movie; Easily the fourth best - which, to be clear, I don't consider an insult whatsoever. 

Civil War

 It's the near future, and the US is at war against itself again. Several states (California, Texas, Miami are mentioned) have seceded and formed a coalition, and are advancing against the remaining forces loyal to the president at Washington D.C. Things are not looking good for the commander in chief (Nick Offerman), whom no one seems to like much and is serving his third term in office.

 The war is ending, and the capitol is due to be invaded at any moment. Two journalists - Reuters correspondent Joel (Wagner Moura) and legendary war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) decide to go where the action is - but their goal is not just the front lines; They want to cross them and get an interview with the president himself, who's been known to treat the press as enemy combatants.

 They're joined by old hand Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young photographer who idolizes Lee, and off they go on a road trip through war-torn America, running into all sorts of encounters on the way until an action-packed finale at the Capitol. The crew come under fire multiple times, run into some colleagues, find an enclave weirdly untouched by the nation-wide chaos, encounter war-time atrocities, and have time to bond at refugee and army camps.

 It's an anti-war film. That's something Truffaut supposedly said was impossible, and to be honest, this movie yet again proves him right; You can't have visceral gunfights like these or, say, an Apache purring down a city street and pulverizing half a building without it being exiting. But as good as the action is it's also intense, grim as hell, often upsetting, and the human cost is front and center.

 Garland's never really had a budget this big to play with, but his work is as assured as ever, and along with his regular DP Rob Hardy, he's created a film that can be as beautiful as it can be harrowing. The sound design is phenomenal - there are some bizarre, dislocating needle drops every now and then, but I took them to be of a piece with the journalists' partial detachment from the action they're embedded in.

 Meanwhile the script (also by Garland) has engaging characters and a mournful tone that he deflates every now and then with some surrealist situations and wry humour. Really clever stuff, too, like a joke about Canadian currency that's... well, it's not actually a joke if you think about it, but it's still very funny.

 The acting is excellent; Dunst may not have a huge range, but she's great at what she does, McKinley Henderson is loveable as fuck, and Moura and Spaeny are great company as well. Jesse Plemons, of all people, almost steals the movie with a truly chilling turn - I guess officer Gary really lost it after the militia service curtailed his game nights.

Let's be honest, all the warning signs were there.

 It'd be ridiculous to say the film is not political - you can't do a movie about a modern civil war without it being political, much less after the election riots debacle. But wonder of wonders, Garland keeps it as close to apolitical as he possibly can: it's thoroughly non-partisan, avoids mapping any of the sides in its fictional conflict to any ideology, and it stands resolutely fictional in its premise.

 So what is it about? Well, people will read into it what they will, but I think the movie itself makes itself clear when Lee ponders (and I'm paraphrasing here, so apologies in advance) that whenever she sent photographs from a warzone, she felt like she was voicing a warning. "But here we are."

 It's a Brit looking at America from outside and saying: "let's make sure we never get there, OK?

 We worry about you guys sometimes."