Subject: REVIEW: ALIEN 3

From: [email-masked] (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 20:57:27 GMT

[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