There’s a cloud hanging over Drake Doremus‘ Equals (A24, 7.15). It’s taken forever to finally open, and it’s coping with failing grades from Rotten Tomatoes (52%) and Metacritic (37%). But it’s not as bad as all that. I wouldn’t even call it “bad’ — it’s just a tad underwhelming. I couldn’t hear 65% of the dialogue when I watched it at the Wilshire Screening Room, but I respected it as a reasonably decent tribute to George Lucas‘s THX 1138. Same milieu, same theme, similar story…but a little bit different. I’m presuming that the vast majority of Millenials and younger GenXers have never heard of Lucas’s 1971 film, much less seen it. (The publicist who was checking off names at my screening is among them.) Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, as a pair of suppressed would-be lovers in a futuristic Orwellian society, are reasonably compelling. Not a great film, but watchable.