I remember when the sequel to Prometheus was going to be named Paradise, Shaw's voiceover fresh in my mind: "...I am still searching." It was one of those sort of lines Damon Lindelof seems to really like writing. "Big things have small beginnings," etc. Nice and tidy, with implications of scope, even optimism, something one might expect more from Star Trek. Still, I found the idea of leaving this outpost where "only death" remained to seek out the Engineer homeworld…

Kept thinking as I noticed the small town murder mystery hallmarks which reminded me of Twin Peaks (it's a logging town, there's a slacker punk biker boyfriend who might be implicated, a certain ineptitude defines the local police force, there's some mention of a body having been wrapped in plastic, etc.) that this straightforward story is done no favors by Nolan's absolutely bland, muddled, anti-Twin Peaks, anti-style, garbage direction. The actors' performances and the plain setting barely hold it together…

Demonlover 2, indeed. There was certainly a sense that Assayas owed to Verhoeven in terms of aesthetics and provocation — hentai and CGI porn essentially mimicking RoboCop's cuts to absurd commercials, or its frankness toward sexual taboo, among other things. This returns here via video game cutscenes, perhaps as a discreet reminder of the director we're dealing with — one who has been largely absent for more than 15 years, save for 2006's Black Book — cutting into a film…