In honor of Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott’s next feature, let’s look at the best and worst film of his long and mostly successful and continuing career.
Worst:
The Counselor (2013)
Ridley Scott’s most anticipated film since Prometheus was a financial and critical disaster and for good reason. The film was pretentious as it was boring in it’s attempt to look at morality and immortality in the actions of humanity. Each scene tries so hard to be and sound smart, but there isn’t any real texture or content to strive with. It almost feels like the movie forgets that the dialogue must come second nature to the themes and plot of the film. But it focuses way too hard on being violent and philosophical at the same time that it loses its identity and forgets what kind of movie it wants to be. It tries so hard to be new and groundbreaking but fails on nearly every level. Its attempts to be dark and smart becomes convuluted in its plot contrivances and the dialogue is messy and does not match with the film’s goal of being realistic as Cormac Maccarthy tries to sprinkle the dialogue with philosophical monologues that drag on and on. The Counselor is a mess.
Best :
Alien (1979)
Alien is a masterpiece of Sci-Fi Horror and of film. It smartly has a slow burn 1st act to allow the charcters to have some growth for the audience to understand and care about them and it allows us to see the world of the eggs and alien species right before it turns its wheels into a suspensful and thrilling 2nd and 3rd act that sees the characters getting picked off one by one.