Prometheus
Tagline: The Search For Our Beginning Could Lead To Our End
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Whatever you’re thinking about dropping into any conversation about Prometheus, don’t even think about calling it a prequel to Alien, especially if director Ridley Scott is in earshot. He’s been at pains to define his new film as its own entity — going so far as opening up the potential for there being at least two more movies before we even reach the date in which the first installment of the Alien series is set.
So what do we know and what are we allowed to say? It’s probably for the best to not read too much about one of the year’s most anticipated releases. But it shouldn’t ruin the experience if we reveal that a team of explorers (starring the likes of Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender) discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth. But this being part of the bigger Alien picture, they’re forced to fight a battle to save the future of the human race.
For the most part, film critics seem happy to go along for the ride. The New York Times says that “Scott’s sense of visual scale, which has often produced hectic, hectoring grandiosity (are you not entertained?), achieves, especially in the first hour, something like genuine grandeur. Roger Ebert, meanwhile, calls Prometheus “a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn’t have the answers.” But to the Village Voice, “Scott seems a bit like David carefully arranging his hair in imitation of O’Toole’s Lawrence. He can still mimic the appearance of an epic, noble, important movie — but the appearance is all.” And as TIME’s own Richard Corliss notes in his review, “Impatient readers will observe that I have craftily deferred revealing any salient shocks from Prometheus. But that’s exactly what Scott does for the first third of his new movie.” As the tag line for the original Alien might have put it, when it comes to negative reviews, everyone can hear you scream.
MORE: Prometheus Decoded: Investigating Ridley Scott’s End Credits Secret
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
Tagline: They Have One Shot to Get Back Home
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Speaking to TIME this week, Chris Rock discusses the secret to voice work in animated movies, which is that they pave the way for an actor to do edgier stuff elsewhere:
Jokes rot. They’re not like songs. I always envy singers — Sting is always going to sing “Roxanne.” But people want to hear new jokes. I’ve written jokes as good as “Roxanne,” I believe. But I can’t tell them again. And there’s no publishing. So. I play a zebra.
Animated film franchises, unless you’re a Toy Story, tend to not age well, so it’s a surprise to hear that the reviews have been pretty positive. “This is the rare animated property that has consistently improved on its ho-hum origins,” notes Variety. “Like a big-screen Big Gulp, this third installment of the billion-dollar animated franchise contains as much cinematic confection as an 85-minute movie can bear,” reveals the Village Voice. But the Hollywood Reporter brings us all back to reality, saying that “it’s dominated by the characters shouting over one another, repetitively reacting with alarm to anything that happens and overcompensating for largely unfunny material by overacting by about 300 percent.”
REVIEW: TIME on Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
Bel Ami
Tagline: Temptation. Seduction. Obsession.
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If you’re a teenage girl, you haven’t been forgotten amidst the sci-fi and animation. Bel Ami stars Twilight vampire Robert Pattinson, who continues his quest to show the world he’s got grown-up acting chops in this version of the 19th-century novel by French writer Guy de Maupassant. He plays Georges Duroy, the man who scandalously slept his way to the top of Paris high society in the 1890s with some of the city’s most influential women.
Pattinson is sensibly surrounded by some safe actorly hands, in the shape of Kristin Scott Thomas (who plays a woman sexually corrupted by Duroy in his efforts to influence her husband), Christina Ricci (the oh so naughty Clotilde), and Uma Thurman as Duroy’s wife. Critics, however, have not been as accommodating. “A good-looking yet curiously tame adaptation of a saucy classic that showcases Pattinson’s ambition if not his full abilities,” concludes Total Film. “Bel Ami stutters rather than glides and while punctuated by some impressive performances and a fine sense of design it can never quite find the right balance between its twin storylines of seduction and politics,”says Screen Daily.
LIST: Robert Pattinson in the Top 10 British Invasions
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Prometheus for the adults, Madagascar for the kids and Bel Ami for everyone else! But if pushed, we’ll have to go for the big blockbuster.