Don't be afraid, I'm part of the family.

Alien 3

(1992)

The "not quite the director's cut but probably closer to what he planned".

Paul McGann's subplot as Golic definitely adds a sense of substance to the proceedings, but the thematic strengths aren't sufficient to counteract the averageness of the plotting. The puppet Alien effects aren't up to much either, as there is never any doubt that the creature is not in the same space as the rest of the action.

The incessant swearing is also rather banal, shining a spotlight on the paucity of decent dialogue. This viewing was the first time I noticed the blatant (and ludicrous) product placement where Ralph Brown holds a bottle of Coca Cola.

This version makes sense of some muddled sequences and, even if it maybe allows itself a little too much room to breathe, captures a more consistent funereal mood than the theatrical. Improvements include the beach scenes, the toxic waste chamber trapping of the alien and Golic setting it free.

On the other hand, the second attempt to deal with the alien lacks verve; it amounts to little more than a load of baldies screaming as the alien takes them out. The baldcap Ripley chest burst death is better executed (in the theatrical cut) than what we have here, but I don't think either is particularly well-realised.

***

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

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Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

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Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

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My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

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I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

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The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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