Prometheus

Ridley Scott returns to the Alien mythos by delivering with a splattery, slimy analog to 2001: A Space Odyssey. And for the most part, Prometheus at least rises to the visual heights of Kubrick’s epic. It’s just too bad he didn’t tag a solid writer to assemble all of his random cocktail-napkin notes into a cohesive narrative. After an archeologist (Noomi Rapace) dusts off some cave paintings that imply Earth was seeded by ancient astronauts, we have our eponymous spaceship hurtling toward a destination many light years from Earth. There’s some setting up of motifs and underlying metaphors before they arrive a few years later to do some exploring, but they don’t really have anything to do with the narrative other than introducing us to the archaeologist couple’s shipmates: an ice-queen rep for the corporation (Charlize Theron), the captain (Idris Elba) and an assortment of other unlikable crew members. It takes about an hour of exploring the terrain before people start to die, and things soon go from pretty silly to just WTF. But not in a good WTF way. Cinemark 14 and Feather River Cinemas. Rated R.