Review #1,245: 'Alien: Resurrection' (1997)

Despite plummeting into a fiery furnace while carrying an unborn alien queen inside of her at the climax of David Fincher's messy-but-interesting Alien 3, Fox saw more money to be made in carrying on the franchise started by Ridley Scott back in 1979. For the fourth instalment, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, hot off the success of The City of Lost Children, was brought in to inject some life in the stuttering series, bringing a unique aesthetic to the ongoing battle between us puny humans and the superior xenomorph. Sadly, this unique aesthetic is muted and ugly, perhaps even more so than the incredibly miserable Alien 3, and the European sense of humour and quirkiness Jeunet also brings to the table doesn't quite fit the tone of the Alien series. If this was a stand-alone, unconnected genre movie, Alien Resurrection may now be fondly remembered as an offbeat, cyberpunk oddity.

It's 200 years since Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley sacrificed herself to finally rid the universe of the xenomorphs, but humanity's stupidity apparently hasn't wavered in that time. Ripley is cloned by some mad scientists from a single drop of blood, for the sole purpose of removing the queen inside of her (how the queen got inside her from the cloning process isn't quite explained), and turning its offspring into weapons and/or subjects of experimentation. She tells them, "she will breed, you will die," but naturally this falls on deaf ears. As the inevitable happens and the aliens free themselves from their cells, Ripley falls in with a rag-tag group of mercenaries. But Ripley is different; she can smell nearby aliens and seems to possess super-strength, and when she receives a jab to the face, her blood burns through the spaceship's floor. She clearly shares a bond and possibly DNA with her 'children', and the grizzled space pirates don't know whether they should trust her.

Alien Resurrection is the worst of the franchise for two reasons. One is that the film is so damn ugly. Aside from the wonderfully weird moment in which Ripley writhes in the slimy tentacles of her 'daughter', there isn't one shot that feels truly cinematic. The sets look expensive, certainly, but there's a TV-quality running throughout, backed-up by a pre-Buffy the Vampire Slayer show Joss Whedon script, which often feels like a precursor to the wonderful Firefly. The second is the casting of Winona Ryder as daughter-figure Call. Ryder is a terrific actress, but every line she utters here is without conviction. She stands out like a sore thumb when sharing scenes with such reliable character actors as Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, Dominique Pinon, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif. Jeunet amps up the gore factor, which is something the Alien series was never about, and neglects suspense and terror in the process. The climax is weird and disgusting, and may have been delightfully bonkers if this was unshackled by a franchise tag and was the director's way of letting loose with a generous budget. But this isn't the Alien I know and love.


Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, J.E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,091: 'Basquiat' (1996)

Artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel's re-creation of the New York art scene of the early 1980's is captured with the authenticity of a photograph from the time come to life. If anybody should be familiar with the vibrant energy and atmosphere of this era, it would be Schnabel, as he brushed shoulders with the likes of Andy Warhol and the topic of his debut feature, Jean-Michel Basquiat, as a key contributor to the American 'Neo-Expressionism' movement himself. What the film fails to do however, is capture the driving force behind Basquiat's art and the demons that drove him to heroin, which is odd given that Schnabel - here thinly disguised as a character played by Gary Oldman - was close friends with Basquiat.

Born into a middle-class family in New York to parents of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, we first meet a 20 year-old Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright, living in a cardboard box. Already a cult figure in the city thanks to his spray-painted poetry under the guise of 'SAMO', a chance encounter with Andy Warhol (David Bowie) and art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper) propels him to the front-and-centre of the art scene. Basquiat is charming and charismatic, but also detached and inwardly focused. While this may compliment his art, he remains a mystery to his girlfriend Gina (Claire Forlani) and becomes clinically depressed when an article dubs him Warhol's 'mascot'. Wright gets all the mannerisms and facial expressions spot on, but he also bring a deep soulfulness to what is a terrific, career-making performance.

Peppered with a massive supporting cast that also includes Benicio Del Toro, Michael Wincott, Parker Posey, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, Tatum O'Neal and Courtney Love, Basquiat seems frequently distracted and never really goes deep enough to unravel the thought processes of the enigmatic artist. There are moments of undeniable beauty - Basquiat dreams of moving to Hawaii and imagines the New York skyline as a surfer catching a wave - and there is a building air of tragedy as he begins his inevitable decline into isolation and drug addiction, but the film follows the familiar biopic formula to a tee. See it for the wonderful sense of time and place, and a truly astonishing performance from Wright.


Directed by: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Benicio Del Toro, Claire Forlani, David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Parker Posey, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie