Ridley Scott again unleashes monsters

The creator of the original Alien delivers an accomplished helping of sci-fi and horror -- but some of the thrill is gone.

Everyone who's old enough, probably remembers their first viewing of Alien , the Ridley Scott-directed movie that in 1979 landed a direct hit to the pit of the stomach. Besides being a masterclass exercise in generating tension, Alien also helped temper the optimistic buoyancy of movies such as 1977's Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Scott brought cynicism and dread to the galaxy, offering a view of space that was industrialized, gritty and full of terrifying dangers.

James Cameron's Aliens added booming urgency and scale to the groundwork Scott had done. And, of course, there were two additional movies, neither of which found quite the same purchase in the pop-cultural landscape or should we say "spacescape?"

Scott again picks up his creature cudgels with Alien: Covenant, a sequel to his 2012 Prometheus, as well as a prequel to Alien.

In Prometheus, Scott played with big ideas and made his most memorable character an android played by Michael Fassbender, who gave his synthetic creation traces of scalding wit. Unfortunately, the serious talk in Prometheus sometimes clashed with the action Scott may have felt compelled to deliver.

Set in 2104, Alien: Covenant isn't exactly free of ideas, either. They're laid out in the movie's chilly opening -- a conversation between an android (Fassbender) and his maker (Guy Pearce). The two discuss the nature of creation and the ability of a creation to surpass its creator. The android sounds an eerie note that suggests the inherent inferiority of human life. "You will die. I will not,'' says the robot.

Little in Scott's movie matches the ominous elegance of this prolog which takes place in a large white room that looks as if it might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

But ideas eventually fall prey to the expected shocks in which newly designed horrific looking creatures burst from backs or chests or latch onto the faces of their victims.

The story involves a space ship named Covenant, which is being run by an android named David. The crew has been put into deep-space sleep as the ship heads toward a distant planet with some 20,000 colonists on board. The implication: Humans must leave a fully exploited Earth.

The plan goes awry when a space storm awakens the crew, which almost immediately faces a temptation that we know will lead to trouble. A signal -- John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads -- emanates from a planet that's closer than the ship's original destination. Could years be shaved from the Covenant's planned seven-year journey by finding a closer and apparently habitable planet?

Katherine Waterston plays a crew member who loses her husband, the ship's captain, during the sudden reawakening. Another officer (Billy Crudup) assumes command of the small crew, which includes Danny McBride, Demian Bichir and Carmen Ejogo.

It gives you some idea about the effort that goes into characterization to know that McBride's character is called Tennessee. He wears a cowboy hat. Do you need (or want) to know anything more?

Nowhere near as memorable as the original Alien crew, this group of voyagers winds up buffeted by a conflict between Waterston's evidence-based character and a man more inclined to take things on faith (Crudup).

Additional conflict arises between two robots, both ably played by Fassbender: the android of the prologue -- named David -- and a later model named Walter. David proves the more mission-oriented to the two. Having absorbed what he needs from humankind, the sinister Walter sees no reason for keeping people around.

Scott spends significant amounts of time on the planet that the Covenant reaches, thus sacrificing the extreme claustrophobia that turned the first movie into a white-knuckle masterpiece.

Not surprisingly, the movie's peripherals are all expertly handled by the veteran Scott and his crew: from the look of the spacecraft to the idyllic surface of a planet where the crew encounters monsters capable of working their way into human bodies in a variety of ways.

Alien: Covenant arrives wrapped in a convincing package. For some, that will be enough, but for those who regard the original Alien as a breakthrough movie, it's difficult not to see Alien: Covenant as a slightly depleted helping of a once stunning pop-cultural landmark, something like a well-made TV series that continues to entertain even after it has lost much of its juice.

Never mind the war, let's sing

Despite a few chuckles, Rock the Kasbah pretty much seems pointless.

The new Bill Murray comedy, Rock the Kasbah, makes room for a worthwhile story of courage: A brave Pashtun woman risks her life to defy cultural norms so that she can sing on Afghanistan's version of American Idol.

In the case of the movie's Salima, the risk goes beyond being laughed off the stage. Salima's life is threatened by the men in her village, most of whom see her behavior as a cause for shame.

Salima's a fictional character, but the story has roots in reality. In 2008, singer Setara Hussainzada appeared on Afghan Star, the Afghan version of American Idol. Another woman, Lima Sahar, also competed on the show.

Hussainzada has been the subject of two HBO documentaries, 2010's Afghan Star and a 2011 follow-up, Silencing the Song: An Afghan Fallen Star.

Unfortunately, director Barry Levinson, working from a screenplay by Mitch Glazer, trivializes the story of his fictional singer by focusing on Richie Lanz (Murray) a bottom-feeding American who organizes tours for rock groups.

Remember? I told you this was a Bill Murray comedy.

When the movie opens Richie -- who lives in a dumpy apartment in Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles -- is so down on his luck, he accepts a job taking a no-name singer (Zooey Deschanel) on a USO tour to Afghanistan.

Once in Kabul, Deschanel's character quickly realizes that she's in danger, and arranges to leave the country. She takes Richie's money, and his passport, stranding him in a two-star hotel in Kabul.

To make matters worse, a tattooed mercenary (Bruce Willis) claims Richie owes him $1,000 for helping to get Deschanel's character out of the country. He gives Richie 24 hours to pay up.

A couple of shady gun runners (Scott Caan and Danny McBride) offer Richie a way out. They'll pay him to deliver ammunition to a group of local villagers who are trying to defend their homes.

After an encounter with an IED, Richie and Willis' character reach the village, and Richie discovers Salima.

In the middle of all this and for no apparent reason, Kate Hudson appears as a hooker with (yes) a heart of gold, a woman who's trying to use the war to gather a nest egg that will launch her in the real estate business once she returns to the states.

Doing his best to convey Richie's perpetual cynicism and all-around crumminess, Murray ambles though Kabul (the film was shot in Morocco), a war-torn city where there are no rules, and where foreigners gather at a club where they drink and indulge in other pleasures.

Despite its ravaged location, the movie can't escape the bright glare of Hollywood cliche. A seedy, no-account guy must find a way to redeem himself. Richie discovers his route to salvation by standing up for Salima.

It's roughly the same pattern Murray established in last year's St. Vincent: the apparently irredeemable guy who's not as bad as he initially seems.

Although there are some chuckles (credit Murray), this dragged-out, shambles of a comedy doesn't amount to much of anything.

Maybe that wouldn't have mattered had Rock the Kasbah been funny enough to make us overlook its shortcomings or serious enough to excuse a very sporadic supply of laughs.

'30 Minutes or Less' has its moments

What happens when slackers meet thugs? Not enough that's funny.

You'll find a few funny moments in 30 Minutes or Less, director Rubin Fleischer's indigestible follow-up to the more inventive and funnier Zombieland. Fleischer's latest R-rated comedy pits slackers against thugs in an effort to create an explosive comic environment, but not all the humor ignites. **** Jesse Eisenberg, who played brilliant Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, dumbs down to portray a pizza delivery boy who's coerced into robbing a bank with a pal (Aziz Ansari). **** How does that happen? Two dopey thugs (Danny McBride's Dwayne and Nick Swardson's Travis) order a pizza and then strap a bomb to Eisenberg's Nick. If he doesn't come up with $100,000, they'll blow him up. **** Dwayne, a foul-mouthed miscreant, needs $100,000 to hire a hit man (Michael Pena) to bump off his father (Fred Ward), a mean-ass former Marine who happened to win at Lotto and figures to leave Dwayne a hefty sum of money. **** Eisenberg, who starred in Zombieland, spends the movie's fleet 83-minutes being flustered, and McBride too often comes off as more offensive than funny. **** Fleischer may have been trying for a fresh and funny take on gritty crime movies. Although he manages to come up with a surprisingly punchy final joke, Fleischer's approach works only fitfully, and 30 Minutes or Less fails to rise to the top of a long list of equally foul-mouthed predecessors.

'Your Highness' is a royal flop

This Medieval comedy is vulgar, but not funny..

Once a darling of critics, David Gordon Green (George Washington and All the Real Girls) lately has been dabbling in low-brow comedy, first in 2008's Pineapple Express and now with Your Highness. * Green manages to take two of last year's prominent Oscar names -- James Franco (nominee) and Natalie Portman (winner) on a downward spiraling ride. * Tasteless and often downright ugly, Your Highness attempts to spoof the cliches of the sword-and-sorcery genre. * Danny McBride, who along with Franco appeared in Pineapple Express, plays a prince immersed in a sibling rivalry with his older brother Fabious (Franco). The brothers embark on a quest to save Fabious' finacee (Zooey Deschanel). * Deschanel's Belladonna has fallen into the clutches of the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). The brothers ultimately find Belladonna, but discover few laughs as the script pours on the F-word, something you can do at home without having to purchase a ticket. * Is it me or is there some kind of rule that after winning an Oscar, an actor must always appear in a bad movie? Oh well, at least Portman looks good. * The movie's comic high point involves a severed penis. Does that tell you enough? No? Well, the presence of special effects makes the movie seem as overproduced as it is witless.* By the end, I was hoping that Your Highness wouldn't raise its sword in in triumph, but would fall on it instead.