Amazon.com video review:
Perhaps these films are like the Star Trek movies: The
even-numbered episodes are the best ones. Certainly this film (directed
by French stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet) is an improvement over
Alien 3,
with a script that breathes exciting new life into the franchise. This
chapter is set even further in the future, where scientists on a space
colony have cloned both the alien and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who
died in Alien 3; in doing so, however, they've mixed alien DNA with
Ripley's human chromosomes, which gives Ripley surprising power (and a
bad attitude). A band of smugglers comes aboard only to discover
the new race of aliens--and when the multi-mouthed melonheads get
loose, no place is safe. But, on the plus side, they have
Ripley as a guide to help them get out. Winona Ryder is on hand as the
smugglers' most unlikely crew member (with a secret of her own), but
this one is Sigourney's all the way. --Marshall Fine
Amazon.com Essentials:
An interesting feature of Alien, Aliens,
Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection, worth watching together if only for the
chance to see how different directors handle essentially the same idea. The results are
decidedly mixed. Ridley Scott's Alien is the most traditional of the
bunch, essentially a haunted-house picture set on a space freighter,
where a monster is picking off crew members one by one. James Cameron's
Aliens is the all-out adrenaline bath, a pulse-pounding action
thriller from start to finish. It plays a little like a Western in
outer space, where the settlers are waiting for a cavalry that never
comes--and the Indians are acid-veined aliens. And David Fincher's
Alien 3 is the rock-video version, in which substance and
storytelling are sacrificed to editing and imagery, as the aliens
attempt to take over a space penal colony.
--Marshall Fine
