Monday at the Movies - September 3, 2012

It may be Labor Day today, but The Cinema King isn’t taking a vacation.  Welcome to Week Thirty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” and with our 33rd week it’s appropriate that we cover a threequel.

Alien³ (1992) – David Fincher’s first film, the third in the Alien franchise, hasn’t been treated well by critics or fans alike.  I don’t know the extent of the director/studio conflict that surrounded this film – although I am extremely curious to see the “Assembly Cut” of Alien³, more so than with the other director’s cuts in the series – but I can say that the film is more competent than its detractors give it credit.  (Is a competent “bad film” actually good?  I’m not sure.)  What fans of Aliens won’t like is the sequel element here, in which Newt and Hicks die off-screen and Bishop is reduced to a nearly-lifeless husk.  Alien³ is more a sequel to Alien, restoring the terror of the single monster and removing the cannon fodder element I didn’t like in Aliens.  In concept, then, the Alien is scarier than before, but its execution doesn’t quite work; the dog/Xenomorph hybrid is rendered with some bad special effects that look jerky and extremely unreal.  What is real, though, is the strong performance Sigourney Weaver turns in; watching her character evolve from the frightened underwear-clad kitten rescuer into a tough-as-nails full-on nemesis for the Xenomorphs has been a real delight, one that deservingly solidified her iconic status in the annals of science fiction film.  Unfortunately, the rest of the cast doesn’t quite line up, in part because the film doesn’t do a good job of distinguishing them; except for Charles S. Dutton, they’re all pudgy bald British men with very few distinctive traits (something perhaps rectified in the Assembly Cut?)  All told, Alien³ is a competent movie that does some things very well while flopping on others, striving for but never quite attaining the excellence of its grandfather.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!