NMR: Alien quadrilogy

In the spirit of the season, I opted to check out some scary movies and decided to watch the Alien films - a franchise I had never seen before.

Alien: This one gets the series started right. The film, directed by Ridley Scott is fairly simplistic, but still offers a lot of interesting ideas. You really see the debates play out as the crew tries to determine how they will deal this creature, especially since they've never encountered anything like this before. Throw in some outside obstacles like a greedy corporation and a rouge android and you've got the makings of a solid thriller. The final sequence involving Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in her underwear dealing with this creature on her own will go down as a classic film scene. Rating: ****

Aliens: James Cameron takes over the franchise here and manages to up the ante. Many consider this just as good, if not better than the original and I agree. You can see some of Cameron's visions of space from Avatar first appear here. Weaver gives another compelling performance and it's really interesting to see the creatures evolve in their intelligence and methods of attack. I could have done without the military crew that serves as fodder for the creature and offers no interesting characters, but I liked Paul Reiser's corporate stooge character and the presence of Newt, while nothing special herself adds another dynamic to the Ripley character. Again, the film ends strong with a hell of sequence involving Ripley coming face to face with the queen. Rating: ****

Alien 3: Three films, three amazing directors. This time around it's David Fincher (The Social Network), although this was his first feature film, so it's not on par with his later work. At this point in the franchise Weaver's Ripley character is the only thing worthwhile. She gives another strong performance (without her, I'm not sure how far this franchise would have gone), and continues to find new ways to add depth to her character. Unfortunately, she's surrounded by a group of unengaging convicts who are trying to survive the aliens. The whole film is depressing rather than exhilirating, both in look and in story as they basically shit over everything that had been established in the previous film. Unlike the first two, this one crawls to a finish as there is one chase sequence too many, capped by final shot that was meant to be poetic, but instead was just unfortunate. This one felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen all offering input and the result was a less than satisfying effort. Rating: ***

Alien: Resurrection: The first 15 minutes or so of this film showed a lot of promise. We finally get to see what happens when those who want to study this creature do once they get their hands on it. Unfortunately, the explanation for how they managed to get it is ludicrous and then they don't even do much with it. From there this turns into a typical fright fest where the creature comes out at opportune to kill off unnecessary characters. Weaver does her best to continue making the Ripley character interesting (this time around it's actually a clone of her character), but I truly question why she decided to come back for another go round. It seemed like the studio was just using the franchise name as a way to lure people in without really offering them anything new to the mythology. A disappointing effort for sure. Not even sci-fi master Joss Whedon, who wrote the script, could salvage this one. Rating: **