From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 1 16:48:19 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:656 rec.arts.sf.reviews:83 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: rauser@sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: rauser@sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 20:56:48 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992May28.205648.16219@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01379 Keywords: author=Rauser Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 86 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Richard John Rauser Copyright 1992 by WNI and RJ Rauser Okay, folks. Forget anything else you may have heard about this film, because Rick J. Rauser has *his* review here (egotism is a joke, actually). Seriously, let's talk ALIEN. Or to be more precise, ALIEN 3 (or ALIEN CUBED, depending on which rumors you believe). Let me say this bluntly: ALIEN 3 is not as good as the first two films. That having been said, let me go on to stress that ALIEN 3 is a good, good flick. It's scary, it's well paced, and the effects are nice. Visually, this film is dazzling. It looks that good. The prison is just as eerie as the Nostromo or the colony settlement on LV-426. In fact, I think it's more so. Well done, well done. The alien itself is a nice, spooky variety as in the first two flicks ... but this time the alien is different. I won't tell you how, and it's so subtle you might not pick it up ... but watch for it when you see this film. ALIEN 3 has a shocker ending (presuming you haven't been reading Hollywood gossip columns or spoiler reviews) which, I'm sad to say, was filmed very poorly. The ending is great, the way it looks on screen is almost laughable. It's sad, because the rest of the film is visually perfect. The ending ... *ach*. But don't let that throw you, it's a small gripe. Another big gripe that I couldn't forget (that's why I'm now typing it out) is how the characters in this film don't like each other. They really don't. There's no friendship or bonding as in the first two films between the human victims/fighters. These characters seem to want each other to die ... also, this film has an annoying habit of killing off the wrong characters. Don't get bonded to any of them, faithful viewer. If you thought they were expendable in ALIEN and ALIENS, you ain't seen nothing yet. I also hate the marketing people who deceived us for months on end with previews that said "In 1992 we will discover ... on Earth ... everyone can hear you scream." I'm not giving anything away by telling you that this film is not set on or near Earth. That preview is old garbage, and I'm sure you all know that by now. But still that annoys me. Another scene that I saw in previews was of one of the characters pressed against a chainlink fence screaming. *Boy*, that looked cool, I thought ... the guy in the film is only yelling at Ripley in annoyance. Again, false advertising. But it was minor. Look forward to wonderful scenery, a fantastic autopsy, a small group of likable characters (even though they don't like or bond with each other) a great ending (marred by crappy directing - just the ending, mind you--and poor filming--again, just the ending) that will really surprise you and a *wonderful* chase scene near the movie's end. Good stuff, ALIEN 3, good stuff. Just like DIE HARD 2 this film doesn't quite live up to what went before it, but like DIE HARD, ALIENS and ALIEN were tough, tough acts to follow so I don't blame Fox for the fact that ALIEN 3 fell a little short of the mark. It's not a huge film, like the first two were ... it's more of a quick, scary flick. It reminds me of Leviathan, if any of you have seen that. It's short and satisfying, but not a huge, great horror/sci-fi epic like ALIENS, nor a long, nicely paced landmark like ALIEN. But let ALIEN 3 breathe freely and you'll be quite happy with it, in my humble opinion. It is not a *great* movie, like the first two. It is, however, very, very *good* and I more than highly recommend it. Overall, I am happy to give ALIEN 3 eight out of ten. My complaints were fairly minor, and the only thing that prevents this movie from being fantastic is that it doesn't do enough and doesn't look far enough. After seeing it you'll undoubtably be happy, yet you'll also agree it's a "small" film, dealing with a small incident, not a huge one like the first two. However, it's a small incident that you'll really enjoy sitting through. By the way, the way the story runs and the way the film finishes off leaves more than enough room for ALIEN 4.... -- Richard J. Rauser rauser@sfu.ca WNI From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 1 16:48:22 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:657 rec.arts.sf.reviews:84 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 20:57:27 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992May28.205727.16282@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01380 Keywords: author=Maloney Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 57 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Frank Maloney Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney ALIEN 3 is a film directed by David Fincher, from a script by David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson. It stars Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Paul McGann, and Lance Henriksen. Rated R, for violence, language. ALIEN 3 is, of course, the latest sequel to 1979's ALIEN, a landmark movie in its genre that scared the living daylights out of us all and has had us coming back for more for 13 years. ALIEN was poetic, scary, and innovative. ALIENS (1986) was the roller-coaster ride through hell. ALIEN 3 is grim, monochromatic, neither as scary nor as fast-paced as its predecessors. And yet, it's a lot better than I had been led to expect. Someone tell us the story of how David Fincher, an MTV veteran, got the assignment to do this very expensive, potentially very lucrative film. It turns out to be an interesting choice since the editing style and the photography appear to me to be highly influenced by the music video style. Some film student should have a lot of fun writing this one up. I don't have the name of photographer here, but I must say I intensely enjoyed the photography in this film, there being times when it takes on a life of its own, quite apart from the action. I'm thinking a shot of sprinklers that look like ballerinas in ankle-length tutus, from which point on I became almost distractingly aware of the photography. The story has a couple of interesting twists to it that ought to appeal to veterans of the series. And the supporting players are an interesting bunch. With everybody's head shaved, one concentrates on the faces more, and they an interesting lot of faces, not very pretty for the most part, but very interesting. Sigourney Weaver is pretty much the whole show, but a couple of the others come perilously close to upstaging here once or twice. John Hartl in the Seattle Times made the interesting observation that the film is a metaphor about disease. After comparing it to NO EXIT or last year's POISON as a Hollywood version of trapped people with no defenses, he mentions that if the first film was about cancer, this one is about AIDS. There is a "vow of celibacy that also includes women." There are complaints about the lack of condoms and characters says things like: "I'm sorry you've got this thing inside you" and "I don't have much time, I'm dead already." This is a metaphor, remember, but one with a lot of resonance for me. If you're a fan of the series, you will see ALIEN 3 regardless of what I say, so it hardly matters that I think you ought to, even at full price. If you're not one of the converted, you might want to give it a go at matinee rates. It has its points. -- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 1 16:48:24 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:658 rec.arts.sf.reviews:85 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: dlk0ms9s@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Mark Santora) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: dlk0ms9s@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Mark Santora) Organization: Univ of Miami IR Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 20:58:09 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992May28.205809.16390@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01381 Keywords: author=Santora Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 80 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Mark Santora Copyright 1992 Mark Santora ALIEN 3 **** out of ***** ******MINOR PLOT SPOILERS IN REVIEW******* *****NO MAJOR SPOILERS ARE IN REVIEW****** The previous two "Alien" films have each had their own unique styles to them. The Ridley Scott's ALIEN was very much a stylistic suspense film. James Cameron's ALIENS was much more of an action film. And I liked each film separately for which it was. Now ALIEN 3 is out. And it is it's own film in the same right that ALIEN and ALIENS were. Unlike ALIENS, ALIEN 3 requires that you have seen ALIENS. This is very important as the story picks up exactly were ALIENS left off. The survivors of the expedition to LV-426 are returning home after battling and beating the Aliens. The climactic fight scene between Ripley and the Mother Alien on the Sulaco in ALIENS left behind one item, an egg. In the opening sequence we see the egg hatch, find its quarry, which leads to a fire aboard the Sulaco when the facehugger is injured, an leads the Sulaco to jettison the hypersleep tubes in an escape vessel. This vessel crash lands on Fury 109. Everyone in the vessel is killed, except Ripley. The facehugger is jettisoned with them and survives the crash. Fury 109 is an ex-mining/maximum security prison. When closed down, some of the lifer prisoners decided to stay and live out the remaining years on the planet. All the prisoners are men who have not seen a woman in many years. Ripley's arrival sparks a problem with the inmates. As for the new haircut that Ripley and the prisoner's sport, there is an infestation of lice on the planet. Being an ex-prison means that there is no way off the planet and no weapons. So the prisoners and Ripley are off to face the Alien on their own. I will not go into detail, but you can guess what happens here. The Alien is loose and no one believes Ripley's outstanding story. She finds comfort in the arms of the colony's doctor. Yes, after 57 years Ripley has sex. It is not gratuitous, in fact, we don't even see them kiss, but it is just as well. A sweaty sex scene would not have worked in the context of the film. There is a lot more gore in ALIEN 3. In fact I would guess to say that there is more in ALIEN 3 than either of the earlier two. It also sports a new Alien with 4 legs! I won't say how, but it leads us to believe a few new things about the Alien and its cycle, which I am sure will be explored in ALIEN 4. Sigourney Weaver is back as Ripley and provides another excellent performance of this character. Her scene during the autopsy of Newt is enough to garnish her another academy nomination. The rest of the cast is also quite good. Notably, Charles Dance as the doctor with whom Ripley finds momentary escape from Fury 109. ALIEN 3 has a very distinct look. This is due largely to its director, David Fincher. Mr. Fincher, who until now has only directed music videos and commercials, has done an incredible job here. His direction is excellent and makes this film come to life in ways no "Alien" film has before. For Mr. Fincher, I see a long prosperous career ahead of him. The music was also done by a newcomer to the film industry. Elliot Goldenthal has created a deeply moving score which lends itself to the claustrophobic setting that the "Alien" series been set in. This time the score is not so much a rip off of STAR TREK II (James Horner's ALIENS). This score has a choral back up at times and even lends itself to the old style of Ennio Morricone scoring. This is a great score. The ending to ALIEN 3 is quite good. There were times I thought that Hollywood would come in and screw it up, but it played very nicely. I will not ruin the ending for you. Go see the film. I consider it to be a much more involved film than any of the other films released so far this season. ALIEN 3 is a worthy successor to ALIENS and ALIEN. And when they make ALIEN 4, perhaps they will be able to find yet another new direction to take it in. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 1 16:48:26 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:659 rec.arts.sf.reviews:86 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 21:03:54 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992May28.210354.16782@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01382 Keywords: author=Leeper Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 84 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Fury is a dreary, ugly prison colony planet, made up of "double-Y-chromosome" criminals who have rediscovered monastic life. To this planet comes Ripley and her alien. And Ripley's nightmare starts over. ALIEN 3 will probably kill the series. Director David Fincher's previous major credit is music videos for Madonna. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4). In 1979 Ridley Scott directed ALIEN. Scott had previously directed the moody story THE DUELLISTS. The inspiration for ALIEN was the weird surrealist paintings of H. R. Giger. The world Giger creates has the feel of an alien culture, the feel of a mind incomprehensible to humans at work. In 1986 James Cameron directed ALIENS. Cameron had directed TERMINATOR. His inspiration was apparently to show how a company of marines reacts when faced with something like the alien threat of the first film. While many of the sequences are lifted from the previous film, Cameron brought complexity to the character of Ripley and had a reasonably complex plot. Now 20th Century Fox has made ALIEN 3. For a director they got David Fincher, who has had a successful career directing music videos and television commercials. The inspiration appears to have been an empty slot at the beginning of the 1992 summer release schedule. I thought the first film was the best of the series and the second film was a step down. It borrowed whole sequences and ideas from the first film. Also it seemed to sidestep very lightly the moral issue of the earth people stealing and transforming a planet already colonized by an intelligent alien race. It is genuinely surprising and more than a little disturbing how many of the audience were rooting to see the aliens exterminated because they were hostile to humans and not cute and dewy-eyed. Unintentionally, ALIENS was an intriguing test of whether the audience would still buy into attitudes that had caused major foreign policy failures in the past. (And the answer was an undeniably "YES!" Audience cheered ideas as blatant as, "Let's withdraw and nuke 'em from orbit." Perhaps what it showed was that in the end we are just only to those we find appealing.) There were many who preferred the second film for its realistic treatment of marines in space. The third film is easily the weakest of the three. On one of the ugliest planets ever portrayed in film, human criminals and an alien tear away at each other in the cinematic equivalent of a pit bull fight. The pit is Fury 161, an evacuated lead mine and prison colony. There the worst outcasts of the galaxy have been isolated and have formed a sort of monastic order living in the lead mining facilities. They have no weapons and, to make the place even uglier, they all have to shave their heads because the planet is infested with lice. On this delightful planet crashes Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), the future equivalent of Typhoid Mary. When deaths start occurring on Fury 161, Ripley realizes what she has done but--for reasons never explained--still refers to tell the inhabitants even while people are being killed. Most of the rest of the film is running and screaming through the ugly lead mine. Fincher has filmed ALIEN 3 with a lot of superficial attempts at style. The foundry seems like one big dark and ugly basement. One or two scenes with odd camera angles, shooting up or down on characters, would be welcome. Fincher, perhaps used to short music videos, does not seem to know that eventually this becomes very tiresome. The plot takes a long time to advance and in the first half is also short on action. Without sympathy for Ripley from previous films and some minor flashes of humanity from the prison doctor, the film is without sympathetic characters at all. The screenplay is by three people with two different conjunctions: it is by David Giller & Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson. This is a film that I can recommend only to people into the "Alien" series as a series. (And since this is a third director with a third concept and a third style, this is much more loosely a series than it might be.) As a film it is no better than much of the low-budget productions that show up only on cable. I rate this one a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [Minor spoiler] The way the alien is killed ranks with one of the most absurd sequences I can think of in a major science fiction film, and is arguably inconsistent with previous entries in the series. Mark R. Leeper att!mtgzy!leeper leeper@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jun 12 14:16:57 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:666 rec.arts.sf.reviews:87 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!wupost!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu (Brian L. Johnson) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu (Brian L. Johnson) Organization: ? Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 13:14:31 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992Jun8.131431.15534@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01389 Keywords: author=K.Johnson Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 72 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Ken Johnson Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson 109 min., R, Science Fiction, 1992 Director: David Fincher Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles Dance, Charles S. Dutton, Lance Henriksen *Contains Spoilers for ALIENS* Well, if it isn't the season for sequels. ALIEN 3 and LETHAL WEAPON 3 are currently playing in the theaters. HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID and BATMAN RETURNS are coming to the theaters during the summer. CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH 2: SUBHUMANOID MELTDOWN, WAXWORK 2: LOST IN TIME, and VICE ACADEMY 3 (all direct to video releases I think) just recently hit video. I just saw ALIEN 3 and I hope to soon see LETHAL WEAPON 3. All of the survivors of ALIENS, except for Sigourney Weaver, die, when their life support pods crash on a planet. The planet is an old maximum security prison, where all the prisoners have taken a vow of celibacy. An alien facehugger had snuck into the pod ship and is now in the prison. I was rather disappointed with ALIEN 3. I feel that ALIEN, a five-star movie, is one of the best horror/sci-fi flicks out and that ALIENS, a four star movie, is a good sci-fi film. I was expecting a wonderful film for ALIEN 3 filled with elaborate sets, a great continuation of the alien story, and great special effects. Two out of three aren't bad, the sets were great and I have no complaints about the special effects. The story, however, leaves something to be desired. On a scale of zero to five, I give ALIEN 3 a three. ALIEN 3 is rated R for graphic violence and explicit language. Basically I enjoyed seeing ALIEN 3, the problem being that the film got marred by the story line. The story for ALIEN 3 looks like it was thrown together and released because the producers figured that people would flock to see another alien movie. Well, people, at least in my town, are flocking to see the movie. I think the 9:30 PM showing I went to got sold out. The acting in the movie is great. Charles S. Dutton (of FOX's "ROC" and MISSISSIPPI MASALA) is my favorite person in the film. Even though he is a prisoner he seems to have the most caring and compassion, although sometimes he doesn't show it. Lance Henriksen (Bishop in ALIENS) is back, although this time as the creator of Bishop. Sigourney Weaver is starting to get a little tiresome. Of course, the alien is great! If the first two alien movies hadn't been so good, or if this film were standing alone, I think that it would have gotten a higher rating. But it had a lot of expectations to live up to, and compared to the other two alien movies, it doesn't fare too well. I hope that there will be no ALIEN 4 because I think that they have run out of good ideas. The Alien films have been very highly spoofed. Part of the reason for this is that the it has been such a good series that almost everybody has seen at least one of the films. ALIEN has been spoofed in films like Mel Brooks's SPACEBALLS and on television in shows like, the British comedy series "Red Dwarf," and I seem to remember a "Saturday Night Live" skit spoofing ALIEN. I highly suggest that if you plan to see this film, that you re-watch ALIEN and ALIENS, for this film takes off where ALIENS left off. I do see no reason why you should go to the theater to see this film. It is marginal whether it is worth seeing at a theater, but would probably be worth seeing on video. Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jun 12 14:17:01 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:667 rec.arts.sf.reviews:88 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: terry@MIMSY.CS.UMD.EDU (Terry Gaasterland) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: terry@MIMSY.CS.UMD.EDU (Terry Gaasterland) Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 13:15:32 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992Jun8.131532.15631@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01390 Keywords: author=Gaasterland Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 81 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Terry Gaasterland Copyright 1992 Terry Gaasterland ALIEN 3 tarring Sigourney Weaver, directed by David Fincher, with a story written by Vincent Ward and a screenplay by David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson is a disappointment in every cinematic sense. Rated R. My recommendation: No matter how much you enjoyed ALIEN and ALIENS, stay away from this movie. If your curiousity about Ripley's fate is going to drive you nuts until you see it, wait until it comes to the $1.49 theatres. The wait will entail more suspense than you'll get out the entire movie. ALIEN 3 tells of one more encounter between Lieutenant Ripley (Weaver) and The Alien. The movie opens with a very well done sequence of shots interleaving long, silent views of space and stars with quick, sharp shots of fire breaking out in a ship containing Ripley and her cohorts. Unfortunately, the visual drama of the interleaved shots is interrupted by endless film credits. The four travelers lie in hyperstasis as crisis breaks out around them. Their life-sustaining units automatically slide into an escape vehicle and plummet to the surface of a nearby planet. The rest of the movie is unbearably predictable. Ripley learns that the Alien has also landed on the planet. Together with her and about twenty dangerous convicts, it lurks in a massive, heavy, dark, wet, moldy, underground refinery. The convicts have adopted a religious fanaticism as a way of controlling their inner drives. They consider Ripley to be a destablizing force. Unfortunately, their resentment and prejudice toward her is two-dimensional and bland. For the remainder of the movie (the remaining hour and a half), we follow Ripley as she challenges the warden of the convicts, tries to convince everyone that the alien is a dangerous entity, and then organizes an alien hunt through the dimly lit ductwork and tunnels of the refinery. Ripley's character is central to the movie. Yet she remains lifeless, glamorless, and drab. Her charisma, so strong in ALIEN and ALIENS, is disturbingly absent. As she moves through the movie, one almost does not care what is happening to her. The camera work of the chase is interesting. The camera follows the point of view of the alien. The alien has a tendency to run around on the ceiling during the chase, so the picture flips up and down and around in a compelling manner. Unfortunately, this one clever technicality fails to carry a long, drawn-out, repetitious, sometimes confusing scene. (Hit 'n' now if you want to avoid minor spoilers) The only interesting character, the medic who cares for Ripley as she emerges from hyperstasis, meets an early end. The other character with potential, the religious leader of the convicts fails to be charming, appealing, or inspiring in any way. The plot development is so confused that when he finally sacrifices himself for the good of all, it is unclear why it is necessary and why Ripley does not join him. The thread of action looses sense many times as the movie unfolds. Several times, one has no idea what just happened or why. When the prison warden is looking at a CAT scan of Ripley's head, we are supposed to be horrified at what we see, as he describes it to Ripley, but the horrifying sight is impossible to pick out. The audience sits confused, peering at the screen as the warden announces the worst to Ripley. (Hit 'n' now if you want to avoid a slightly bigger spoiler) Ripley's final sacrifice is utterly melodramatic, predictable and boring. The outspread arms in the symbol of the cross falling into the fire project a lame image. Instead of emanating noble self-immolation, the falling body seems pitiful. In summary, wait until a friend rents the movie and watch it for free -- with the Sunday paper in hand for the long, boring parts. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jun 16 14:21:33 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:679 rec.arts.sf.reviews:90 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: kreme@isis.cs.du.edu (The Third Aardvark) Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3 Reply-To: kreme@isis.cs.du.edu (The Third Aardvark) Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci. Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 10:28:11 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992Jun12.102811.14839@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01402 Keywords: author=Butler Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 81 [Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator] ALIEN 3 A film review by Lewis Butler Copyright 1992 Lewis Butler Summary: The third movie in the highly successful series begun by Ridley Scott and continued by James Cameron is a turkey in the worst way. A shameful addition to what are probably two of the best action/horror movies ever made. A -3 (-4 to +4). ALIEN 3 is a dumb movie. It makes dumb mistakes, and has a dumb plot. While ALIEN was an intelligent suspense flick and ALIENS was a masterful action flick, ALIEN 3 is nothing more than a painfully poor movie. The dialogue is so bad it is distracting at every turn, the acting is not horrid, but it is uninspired and flat through-out. There is no emotion on anyone's part (none of ALIENS "Game over, game over man!") and the entire mood of the picture is, "Oh, there's an Alien eating everyone. Wow." The plot is at once simplistic and confusing. The characters actions are never explained well, the "plan" doesn't make any sense, and the entire plot revolves around the Alien being extremely stupid (while the Alien in ALIEN and the Aliens in ALIENS were demonstrably quite bright). The direction is horrid. The motion is uneven and badly done. The camera is used to compensate for bad plotting by making the shots confusing and difficult to see. The dialog is hard to hear in many places, and there is no sense of suspense or even interest. With all the things that are wrong with this movie, the direction is the worst. It appears this refugee from MTV videos (and supposed to be good at them) will not be making a strong move to the silver screen. Everyone should be extremely thankful of this. The best thing about this movie is the title. ALIEN^3 (Cubed). It manages to sneak in a "3" reference, tell you the movie is about a *single* Alien (one cubed is one) and doesn't repeat the stupidity of RAMBO III (the sequel to RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II). SPOILER Alert and Plot nit-picks (serious nit picks): The movie starts off badly. Three of the surviving four people from ALIENS are killed during the opening credits, with no explanation as to how or why. We know from ALIENS that there is no possible way that Alien eggs could have been on the ship, and yet we have two at the beginning of this movie. Why? Because no one was imaginative enough to think up an original plot, so they decided on the old monster movie ploy: "Even though you saw us kill every last monster in the last movie, guess what? We missed one, and it's pissed off." Lt. Ripley is impregnated with an Alien, even though the integrity of her hypersleep capsule was intact and no "facehugger" remains were left with her. It is quite obvious Hicks was killed because the producers didn't want to pay Michael Biehn. While the Alien in ALIEN was sly and tended to strike quickly and then vanish (presumably to eat its prey) this one just runs around killing people. It will move from one body to the next live one without a moments hesitation. We have no explanation for this other than it allows for an extremely stupid chase sequence where the characters all get to act as live bait luring the surprisingly stupid Alien to the "kill zone." In short, the movie violates just about every single rule of making a successful sequel. It is not at all true to the original movies, it changes the rules from what we know, and it is poorly made. It is not as bad a movie as HIGHLANDER II, but it is not much better. A -3 is pretty generous on my part, and it only rates that because I liked the character of the religious zealot quite a bit. -- kreme@nyx.cs.du.edu kreme@#22 (FV3 Net) From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:15:48 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jul 15 23:06:42 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed1.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!newssrv.ita.tip.net!ubnnews.unisource.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!newsfeed.direct.ca!ais.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: ALIEN 3 (1992) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 23 Jun 1997 15:10:50 GMT Organization: Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers Lines: 57 Sender: evelynleeper@geocities.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: evelynleeper@geocities.com Message-ID: <5om3lq$18b@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #07899 Keywords: author=Yegulalp Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7299 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1359 ALIEN 3 A film review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp CAPSULE: The weakest and least engaging of the Alien movies, dragged down by an uninvolving story and no real tension. ALIEN 3 (the "3" should be in superscript) is a sad and wan entry in what was shaping up as one of the best SF sagas ever put on screen. It continues the story of Ripley, the space-trucker-turned-impromptu-survivalist, but seems remarkably uninterested in her. In fact, the movie seems lucky to be interested in anything at all, it's so elegaic and limp. A little of this would have been nice for atmosphere, but the movie telegraphs its own tragedy from the beginning. At the end of the last film (ALIENS), Ripley and two survivors were on their way home. Unfortunately, an alien pod had been deposited in their ship, and wound up triggering off their ejection in an escape pod. The pod crashes on Firorina 161, a prison planet designed to house the incurably criminally violent. Ripley lives through the crash; the others do not. The prison is a grim place, even as prisons go -- it's been built around the remnants of an abandoned steelworks, which provides no end of techno-gothic backdrops for the actors to be backlit against. Lice are endemic, and so Ripley's head is shaved (another surreal touch). At first it looks like she just has to hold out as an unwelcome guest until a Company rescue ship can arrive, but it doesn't stay that way. One of the other eggs on board the wrecked escape pod hatches, and soon a newly-gestated alien is running amuck. Worse, it looks like Ripley herself has been impregnated. What's weird is how little tension this generates, except near the end, when the pressure is being troweled on through every cheap cinematic form of cheating imaginable: loud music, shaky camerawork, etc. Sigourney Weaver has become comfortable with the role, and she does well with it, but this time the role has been underwritten and left slack. The supporting actors are also not given a lot to do: the doctor (Charles Dance) and another, rather religious inmate (Charles S. Dutton, very good), hiave presence, but they're not asked to do anything with it. In light of the impending sequel, which apparently plays fast and loose with the ending of this movie, I will not talk about the ending -- except to say that they found a remarkably good ending for such a drab movie. It's strange that some of the desperate and improvisational thinking that they found to wind up this story couldn't have driven the rest of it. One and a half out of four dog-bursters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... UNMUTUAL: A Digital Art Collective - E-mail syegul@ix.netcom.com for details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 18 22:42:18 2003 From: Marshall Garvey Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Alien³ (1992) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 19:36:18 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 35606 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1192815 X-RT-TitleID: 1039355 X-RT-AuthorID: 8934 X-RT-RatingText: 2/5 Summary: r.a.m.r. #35606 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 180 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!feed.news.nacamar.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7431 rec.arts.sf.reviews:640 "Alien 3" (1992) Review by Marshall Garvey Rating (0 to 5): 2 Grade: C- Starring Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley), Charles Dutton (Dillon), Charles Dance (Clemens), Paul McGann (Golic), Brian Glover (Andrews), Ralph Brown (Aaron), Daniel Webb (Morse) Lance Henriksen (Bishop II) Directed by David Fincher Produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill Written by Vincent Ward, Giler, Hill, and Larry Ferguson (based on characters by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett) Original music by Elliot Goldenthal 20th Century Fox 114 minutes Rated R (violence, gore, strong language. Most teens okay, namely those with strong stomachs) The first two "Alien" movies are great for a number of reasons. One is that they created a dark atmosphere that carried the sense of the film perfectly, whether it be the unknown terror of "Alien" or the multiple danger of "Aliens". "Alien 3" has a familiar sense to it as well, though unlike the first two it carries the franchise in the wrong direction, and by its end it feels surprisingly empty and pointless. While it is still somewhat atmospheric, it makes the unfortunate mistake of trying to bring back the classic suspense of "Alien" by using just one member of H.R. Giger's famed species. Instead, this well directed but depressingly bleak film does little more than add on different story elements and repeat its thrill attempts as it spins out into a pointless haze that left me with an equal feeling of emptiness. Several people have despised "Alien 3" beyond belief. Some have said it shouldn't be part of the series, while others claim it shouldn't exist. Despite this negative word of mouth, I had high hopes for the film when I finally snatched it off the shelf at Hollywood Video. Before watching it, my thoughts were preoccupied on whether or not it had a chance, and that it would hopefully overcome its disadvantage of killing off some of the loveable characters that made it out of "Aliens". I also saw it as a chance for David Fincher to make his mark, knowing "Se7en" and "Fight Club" are a bit too graphic for me to view as of now. Ridley Scott had already won me over with "Alien" and would later direct another one of my favorite movies, "Blade Runner". When I saw "Aliens", I had already seen James Cameron's "Titanic" and truly loved it, and after viewing his brilliant sequel to Scott's classic he became one of my all-time favorite directors ("The Terminator" and "Terminator 2" also helped in persuading me). In "Alien 3", Fincher's direction does succeed in being fresh, thanks to his captivating use of putting us in the perspective of the alien as it chases its prey through the hallways. However, Fincher's direction does have its flaws, and is also tethered by Vincent Ward's weak story and a mediocre screenplay courtesy of David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson. In the end, this hopeless film contributes absolutely nothing to the series. Despite his credible direction later on, Fincher begins the film in a rather annoying fashion. As the members of the cast and crew are introduced, Fincher decides to cut in between the credits with different shots of a facehugger finding its way through the Sulaco spaceship, where survivors Newt Jordan, Dwayne Hicks, Bishop, and, of course, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) rest in cryosleep. When the cryosleep stasis is corrupted and the facehugger finds its host (although we can't tell whom), the pod in which everybody rests ejects itself and crash-lands on Fiorina Fury 161, a bleak and windy prison planet that bears much resemblance to the LV-426 planet from the first two films. When a group of prisoners are sent out to investigate, it turns out that Hicks and Newt are dead, while Bishop still remains deactivated. Ripley, though, is the only survivor, and is taken to the hospital wing for treatment. When Ripley finally regains consciousness, she is more than disappointed to hear that she's the only survivor of the four. Afraid that Newt may have been impregnated with an alien, she asks prison doctor Clemens (Charles Dance) to take her to the morgue and examine her body. As Clemens suspected, it turns out that she had died by drowning in her cryotube. Taking no chances, Ripley asks for the bodies of Newt and Hicks to be cremated, and her request is met. However, as the ceremony is held, an alien emerges from the stomach of a dog that had met with the pod's facehugger, even more fully grown than a regular newborn and ready to feast upon the prisoners. As it turns out, Ripley is the only female in the prison, a fact that's met with mixed approval by the other inmates. Nonetheless, she must adapt to the bylaws of the prison, such as shaving her head due to the lice problem there. She does, though, receive a little help from prisoner Dillon (Charles Dutton), a holy and religious leader who foils a rape attempt on Ripley despite being responsible for such crimes in his past. He warns Ripley not to get too close to anyone during her stay, especially himself. But things change when some of the prisoners are mysteriously killed one by one, and when the boss is picked off Ripley soon becomes the leader and must help the remaining men prevail against the alien despite not having any weapons or modern technology of any kind (there aren't even batteries for the flashlights). It seems impossible, but when Ripley learns that she's been impregnated (with a queen at that) and that the alien won't kill her, she suddenly becomes the ideal bait to lure the creature to its death. But with a rescue ship approaching, Ripley knows that she must die as well, for if the queen escapes Fiorina it will reproduce and wipe out the entire human race easily. The "Alien" movies have two major stages: the establishment of the alien threat level and the climax, with some moments in between to develop the characters and story. David Fincher gives a nice touch to the climax here by filming most of each chase sequence through the alien's point of view, sometimes doing it upside down as it crawls along the ceiling. Yet, despite the inventive touch, the sequences aren't entirely fulfilling due to the fact that I didn't care for anybody who died. None of the actors do a particularly bad job, and very few of the characters are made out to be likeable. But as the bodies mount, there's very little impact, for as a whole the characters form no more than a wooden, faceless conformity that erase the film's chance of having any emotional impact when you see who dies and who lives. I did, in particular, have admiration for Clemens and Dillon, but two memorable characters amidst twenty-something wooden ones didn't help the film's cause, and half of them are about as compelling or colorful as dish soap. The weakest aspect of the characterization, however, is that the film seems to go to any means necessary to taint each and every worthwhile figure. After the enlightening and sweet bond between Newt and Ripley was formed so well in "Aliens", the writers here decide to attempt to stun viewers with a surprisingly dark twist and kill her, which instead of doing the story any good had me booing at the screen. To accompany Hicks' unfortunate but predictable death, Bishop's character is also needlessly spoiled when it turns out he's merely an android clone of an actual human (played, of course, by Lance Henriksen) who intends on studying the alien species. Worse is that this occurs after Bishop (or at least what's left of him) confirms Ripley's fears that an alien was indeed onboard the ship, a scene which seemed to signify his end. After all, he wasn't even top of the line anymore. Yet, still, it seems the writers couldn't help but erase every last bit of the overflowing optimism left over from "Aliens", and in doing so they succeed in stopping "Alien 3" itself and disrupt the flow of the series. The worst point of "Alien 3" is undoubtedly its weak story, which instead of being a viable chapter in the series brings almost nothing new into play. First off, it tries to go back to using one single alien for its suspense, and while there are some tight moments there's no freshness or originality to it now that the species has been entirely uncovered (well, most of it). The "Alien" series is one that is always liable to take another step forward even when it seems to have reached its peak, and "Alien 3" is more than a failure in that sense. While it still carries some of the atmosphere and feel of the preceding films, it is marred by bland screenwriting and an utter sense of emptiness that puts and end to the series' momentum. Even though the next installment, "Alien: Resurrection", has been panned by many as well, I still hope it fills the void left by this. So you're probably wondering what my final thought is on this film's existence. Do I think "Alien 3" shouldn't exist? Of course not. It's far from good, but on the other hand it's also quite far from the worst movie of all time (I'll take "Battlefield Earth" instead, thank you very much). Then again, is it a worthy addition to the series? Absolutely not, and I do carry hope that "Alien: Resurrection" will be a dramatic improvement. Of course, I could be setting myself up for even more disappointment. Note: This review is purely of my doing, and I do not copy off other reviewers. So, what does this rating system mean anyway? *****-A masterpiece of filmmaking that should be seen at all costs ****1/2-A fabulous movie. An absolute must catch. ****-An excellent show. Tell everyone else about it. ***1/2-A good film. Recommended. ***-Decent movie that could be a lot better. **1/2-Average movie with a number of flaws. **-Pretty bad with a few saving graces. *1/2-Bad. Don’t see it. *-As much fun as having your seat kicked for two hours. 1/2-Just plain awful. 0-Death may come ========== X-RAMR-ID: 35606 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1192815 X-RT-TitleID: 1039355 X-RT-AuthorID: 8934 X-RT-RatingText: 2/5