list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

Alien: Romulus It's set between the first and second movies. It's not bad and has all the Alien tropes you'd expect. But it has no feeling or depth. The main lead and the guy who plays the android are OK, but generally the cast are dull. When you think of the original film it was mainly character driven with very little seen of the actual intruder. A shame as it could have been really good instead of just acceptable. I'll never watch it again, unlike the first 2 movies which I've seen many times - I think that sums up this latest effort 6/10

Sputnik

Fascinating for its depiction of the organs of Soviet Russia during the early '80s and machinations of the space program, Sputnik is a careful, deliberate, highly specific and comfortably creepy thriller involving a cosmonaut recently returned from space and the non-Earth entity living inside him deriving nourishment from his body and consciousness from his mind.   The lovely Oksana Akinshina plays a young neurologist attempting to draw out the creature and communicate with it before things go terribly wrong.   Recommended for its mood, photography, color palette, suspense, music, cast, and slow but steady pace, I thoroughly enjoyed Sputnik more for its atmosphere & insights into Soviet bowels than its value as a science fiction film.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice  - I was really looking forward to this sequel to the cult-classic original. Well, in parts, it was great and all the ingredients were there but overall it just felt a little flat. Winona Ryder has always annoyed me a bit and she has a lot of the screen time. Thankfully Michael Keaton reprises the role like it was just yesterday, but stealing the show for me was Justin Theroux as the slimy boss/boyfriend. Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe were both at their best too. This movie was probably not needed except to cash in on the original and the script was mediocre at best. Still, it was nice to have a blast from the past - 6.5/10