Pollock

Pollock; drama, USA, 2000; D: Ed Harris, S: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Tom Bower, Jeffrey Tambor, John Heard, Bud Cort, Amy Madigan, Jennifer Connelly, Sally Murphy, Val Kilmer

A biopic about expressionist and abstract painter Jackson Pollock. While living as a struggling artist in New York, he meets painter Lee Krasner and starts a relationship with her. His painting draw the interest of Howard Putzel and Peggy Guggenheim, who organize an exhibit of his art. His paintings aren't selling, so Pollock and Krasner move to a small house in the countryside and get married, but Krasner says she doesn't want to have a baby with him. After an interview for Life magazine, the interest for his art improves. He discovers a new technique of pouring paint over a canvas on the floor. However, his alcoholism ruins him, and his friend tells him his art isn't in fashion anymore. Pollock has an affair with Ruth Kligman. While driving drunk, Pollock dies in a car crash with Edith, while Ruth survives.

The directorial debut film of actor Ed Harris, who also plays the leading role, "Pollock" is a solid biopic about the famous abstract painter Jackson Pollock, concise and objective, without any sentimentality, but also without any major creative lift-offs or outstanding highlights. Everything is done correctly, honestly and genuinely, yet it is still rather too standard. The two leading performers, Harris and Marcia Gay Harden, deliver strong performances as Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner, respectively. It's not quite clear why she would stay with an alcoholic with bizarre outbursts of rage and wild behavior, except that she considers him a great artist, and thus tries to endure all of his escapades. In one moment, Krasner finally admits why she doesn't want a baby with him: "And I don't want to be anywhere else, I don't want to be with anyone else. But that's all I can handle." Later, after Pollock was already gone fully crazy from alcohol (Harris even gains weight for this final segment), there is another revealing fight between them: "You open that mouth again, I'll kill you!" - "You *are* killing me!" The drama is luckily restrained, but considering that Pollock's paintings were so wildly unusual and creative, one could have expected that Harris would have directed the movie in something beyond the usual and routine.

Grade:++

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy; action comedy, USA, 2024; D: David Leitch, S: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Stephanie Hsu

Colt Seavers is a stunt double for Hollywood star Tom Ryder, and is in a relationship with camerawoman Jody. However, after he falls down from inside a building in a stunt gone wrong, he is injured and spends over a year in rehabilitation, and loses contact with Jody. He is persuaded by producer Gail to travel to Sydney and be a stunt double for Jody's first film as a director, a Sci-Fi epic about a love story between a man and an alien woman. Gail sends Colt to search for Tom who went missing, and then finds a video clip in which a drunk Tom hit and killed a stunt man, but later the clip is changed using a deep fake to insert Colt's face on Tom, so that Colt is now wanted for murder. Colt realizes he was framed by Gail to deflect from blame for Tom, a major star, but is able to trick Tom into admiting the murder. Colt also makes up with Jody.

The film adaptation of the popular TV series "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors (who has a cameo in the closing credits) is a fluent, energetic and clever action comedy film about the neglected profession of stuntmen, which is why it was described as a "film by fans and for fans of stunts", though the director David Leitch is much more inspired in conjuring up stunts than humorous moments. While somewhat overstretched, "The Fall Guy" has several unusual plot twists which make it unpredictable, and thus the viewers don't always know how a certain situation might unravel. One example is the great sequence where stuntman Colt (very good Ryan Gosling) investigates and lands at a night club, where he meets a drug dealer and wants to leave, but the former laments: "Nobody ever wants to talk to the drug dealer!" Colt then obliges him, has a drink, but then starts having hallucination and realizes that the drug dealer put drugs inside his drink, as two thugs appear to take him away. In any other typical movie, the hero would have a blackout and wake up on a different location, but not here—even though he is disoriented and drugged, Colt is still able to beat up the thugs (!), anyway, even in tune to psychedelic colors and effects accompanying his punches. There are also other unusual and creative moments (after being attacked in an apartment, Colt neutralizes the weapon by jamming the sword inside the wall and removing its handle away; the cool filming of the Sci-Fi movie with the Sydney Opera House in the background), and even a little bit of metafilm touches (Jody phones Colt to ask him if she should use a split screen in her film, and then the split screen shows them both in the frame), though the storyline is not always logical (even if Colt's face was inserted on Tom's body using a deep fake in the video clip of the murder, the guests at the party could still testify that it was actually Tom who killed the stuntman, not Colt; Tom's coerced "confession" at the end cannot be used as evidence at a court). "The Fall Guy" could have been funnier, with more elaborated gags, yet it is still a loving homage to all the unknown heroes who never get credit for the job they do.

Grade:++

Titane

Titane; psychological horror drama / art-film, France / Belgium, 2021; D: Julia Ducournau, S: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, Laïs Salameh

As a little girl, Alexia, had a car crash and was left with both a titanium plate in her skull and a love for cars. As a grown up, Alexia is a popular dance performer at car shows. She has sex with a car,  inside of it, and becomes pregnant. One evening, a fan follows and kisses her through the car window, so she kills him with a metal spike. Alexia also kills several people at a party and then sets her house on fire, killing her parents. She sees a public artist's sketch of a possible look of a missing boy, Adrien, who disappeared a decade ago. In order to hide from the police, Alexia cuts her hair and presents herself as Adrien, and his father, fireman Vincent, accepts her. They live inside his house, while she hides her pregnancy. Upon finally admitting her real name to him, Alexia gives birth to a baby with a metal spine. Alexia dies by losing her titanium plate, while Vincent accepts the baby. 

"Titane" is a typical example of a movie confusing shock and disgust for quality and talent. The weird, meandering story about a heroine Alexia who disguises herself as the long lost son of Vincent doesn't even pretend to make any sense or logic (Vincent even refuses a DNA test, even though he cannot know how his missing 7-year old son could look like as a grown up), and instead presents itself a subconscious parabel that only works on the allegorical level. However, since there is no inspiration or ingenuity in the film, allegories and symbols alone cannot carry all of this, regardless of all the important messages they conveys. There are some noble messages here regarding Alexia's transformations involving a titanium plate in her skull, her disguise as a man, or her baby-hybrid of a car-metal and a human (people should be accepted for who they are as a person, in essence of their character, and not by their physical appearance which is relative), but since all of this is so weak, the movie just seems to desperately take these transgender themes as a human shield from its lacklaster execution. The writer and director Julia Ducournau just lists random bizarre "body horror" scenes—Alexia has sex with a car (via a gear stick?) and becomes pregnant with it, so she hides her stomach by using duct tape to make it more narrow, which then leaves scars on her breasts and stomach; a failed self-performed abortion using a metal spike; she slams her head on the toilet sink to break and "change" her nose to be more like the sketch of Adrien; she scratches her pregnant belly until she pierces her skin and reveals metal under the blood—without any purpose or meanng. On top of all, as Adrien, Alexia doesn't speak almost at all for the next hour of the film, in fear of revealing to Vincent that she has a woman's voice. A disturbing patchwork, only for fans of macabre cinema.

Grade:+

Halima's Path

Halimin put; drama, BiH / Croatia / Slovenia, 2012; D: Arsen Anton Ostojić, S: Alma Prica, Olga Pakalović, Mijo Jurišić, Izudin Bajrović, Miraj Grbić, Mustafa Nadarević, Daria Lorenci

Bosnia, 1 9 7 7. Bosniak girl Safija became pregnant with Serb lad Slavomir. Due to an argument with her father, Slavomir goes to work in Germany. Since Safija doesn't want the child, she gives it to her aunt Halima for adoption, who is infertile. Halima and her husband Salko raise the boy, naming him Mirza. Slavomir returns to Bosnia with money, but Safija tells him their baby died at birth. After the Bosnian War, Halima is summoned by the commission for missing people who found the remains of her late husband, but they need her DNA sample to determine Mirza's identity. Halima thus persuades Safija to go to the laboratory and give her own blood posing as Halima. Slavomir is a nervous wreck. He remembers what happened: during the war, Slavomir was drafted by the Serb army and forced to shoot Bosniaks, including Salko and Mirza. Slavomir cannot live with himself and thus commits suicide. 

"Halima's Path" is one of those movies that are more valuable from a humanitarian perspective than from an artistic one, yet it presents an episode from the Bosnian War as a well restructured Greek tragedy. Bosnian screenwriter Feđa Isović (comedy series "Lud, zbunjen, normalan") and Croatian director Arsen Anton Ostojic craft a noble film with a message, yet its story is rather underdeveloped, thin and simplistic. Nonetheless, Ostojic directs some moments with a remarkable subtlety. Through its story of a Bosniak woman who became pregnant with a Serb man, gave birth to a boy and gave him up for adoption to a Bosniak family, the movie presents all the detrimental wreckage of ethnic cleansing and territorial nationalism, since the communities often get so interwoven that in the end one side actually even destroys itself together with the nation they target. Emotional, calm, measured and minimalistic, "Halima's Path" gains the most through some examples of match cuts or association cuts—the best one is when Slavomir is sitting in a night club and remembers how he was a paramilitary during the war, as his commander orders him to shoot Bosniaks in the forest, but he hesitates. The clips thus flip-flop back and forth between these two time periods, and as the commander from Slavomir's past orders him again: "shoot!", Slavomir in the present takes out a gun in the night club and starts shooting in a outburst of pain and guilt. More creativity and build-up of the storyline would have been welcomed, yet the ending leaves a strong impression, summing everything up without preaching.

Grade:++

Austerlitz

Austerlitz; historical drama, France / Italy, 1960; D: Abel Gance, S: Pierre Mondy, Jean Marais, Martine Carol, Elvire Popesco, Georges Marchal, Claudia Cardinale, Ettore Manni, Jack Palance, Daniela Rocca, Orson Welles, Jean-Louis Trintignant

Paris, 1804. Following the end of the Treaty of Amiens, which the British didn't follow through since they didn't evacuate from Malta and Alexandria, French First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte is anxious and senses a new Coalition will declare war on him. Napoleon's family, including brother Lucien and sisters Pauline and Caroline, urge him to declare himself the King. Napoleon thus orders a referendum which gives him the wanted result, and he stages his own coronation. His marriage with Josephine is troubled since he sometimes has affairs with Elisabeth de Vauday. Now the Emperor of France, Napoleon and his army travel to Austerlitz in December 1805, where they win over the Austrian and Russian armies in a battle.

Even though his famous film "Napoleon" was too expensive to initiate new movies about the famous French military leader, director Abel Gance still directed another Napoleon film 33 years later, "Austerlitz", where he at least gave a glimpse of what he wanted to show by depicting one of his most famous military campaigns, the Battle at Austerlitz. Overlong and overburdened with a running time of three hours, "Austerlitz" is, unlike "Napoleon", a very static and conventionally filmmed story, but Gance gives a lot of effort in historical accuracy and depiction of details of that era. The main highlight is the leading actor Pierre Mondy, who is brilliant and energetic as Napoleon. However, the first half, the "talkative" segment, is uneven and somewhat dry. Bizarrely, the film starts off like a goofy spoof, de-glamourazing the myth: it shows Napoleon exiting a spa and talking to his assistant who wears the Napoleonic hat to widen it as to make it fit for the French military leader, while Napoleon even stands on his toes to make himself appear taller when the assistant registers his height of 5'4. Later, the movie improves: in one scene, Josephine is angry that Napoleon has a secret lover, Grassini, yet his reply is: "But my feelings stop at her breast". 

In the military headquarters, Napoleon, wearing his military uniform, enters the room through a door on the giant map of France. Despite lengthy dialogues, numerous events and reactions to them feel organic, and give the impression that the viewers really are looking at a documentary of Napoleon in office bringing decisions based on new developments. He is a hothead and impulsive, yet still calm, measured and intelligent enough to warrant every decision he makes. Upon hearing the British are again planning a new war against him, Napoleon orders a plan of attack: "We must compensate for 10 years of insults in two months!" When he randomly decides to declare himself the King tomorrow, his associate protests: "Pardon, Sir, it's impossible," to which Napoleon replies: "In France, we admire the impossible!" Gance certainly is fascinated by this personality. The cast is huge, including numerous stars in small roles, from Vittorio De Sica as the Pope up to Orson Welles (who 10 years later starred in another Napoleon film, "Waterloo"), yet the second half, depicting the Battle at Austerlitz in great details, is underwhelming, since it's not quite clear who is fighting whom: we only see random hundreds of people on horses charging at other people on horses. Gance doesn't have a sense to direct action or battle sequences, which leaves this second half messy and chaotic, often even sloppy (it's supposed to be winter, but the trees still have green leaves on them), except for a little famous detail at the end, the ambush at the frozen lake, where the French army shoots at the ice which breaks and drowns several retreating enemy soldiers. "Austerlitz" gives a small peek at Gance's vision of making a movie about the entirety of Napoleon's life: it's flawed, yet has its moments. Like most of movies about Napoleon, this one is good, but never quite reaches the pathos of his events.

Grade:++

Paddington

Paddington; fantasy comedy, UK / France, 2014; D: Paul King, S: Ben Whishaw (voice), Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Nicole Kidman, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent

A British explorer found two anthropomorphic bears in the Peruvian jungle and told them they are always welcomed in London. Decades later, after an earthquake kills one of the bear, Pastuzo, the other, aunt Lucy, decides to take the explorer on his word and sends nephew Paddington via a ship to London. Once there, Paddington is lost, but is taken pity by the Brown family who take him in: Mary and her children Judy and Jonathan love the bear, but father Henry is annoyed because he is causing too much trouble. Having only the red hat as a clue to the identity of the explorer, Paddington finds out the latter died years ago, but his daughter, taxidermist Milicent, wants to stuff him in her collection of stuffed animals in a museum, resenting her father for refusing to harm the bears. The Browns save Paddington, and ultimately keep him at their home.

One of the freshest comedies of the decade, "Paddington" is a surprisingly superior feature length film adaptation of the otherwise too bland eponymous children books, surpassing them with some outstanding jokes thanks to the delicious sense for humor of the director and writer Paul King. It is remarkable how many creative and charming little wacky gags were inserted into this simplistic storyline, and many "serious" film directors would have tried to talk King out of doing them, but King did them anyway, and crafted a tsunami of charm that simply floods the entire film with positive energy. There is no need to analyse this too much, since almost everyone has a childish side that needs some anarchic fun once in a while, especially when the jokes are so good. Unlike Gerwig's "Barbie", whose themes took over the entire film, to such an extent that they shoved every other feature out of their way, "Paddington" effortlessly and naturally blends in its more subversive themes and messages in the story (illegal immigrants; fleeing a war-ravaged country to seek asylum abroad; universal emotions and empathy shared by different races), but the viewers will never feel bothered nor think they were forced upon them.

In one of those jokes, Jonathan is apprehensive when hearing that Paddington might be sent to an orphanage, and then a bleak frame of a dark, derelict building in the rain shows up with the title on the gate saying "Orphanage". His father, Mr. Brown, assures him it's alright, since it's not an orphanage, but rather an "institution for young souls whose parents have sadly passed". Cue to the identical bleak frame of said derelict building, just with a different title on the gate. In one highly inventive sequence, the villain, Milicent (Nicole Kidman) enters the Brown home "Mission Impossible"-style, but accidentally causes a gas leak. As Mr. Curry looks down through the window, a petal from a flower on his suit falls and causes a chain reaction in the house: the petal falls on a mouse trap, activates it, which catapults a cheese crumb into a vase, which falls and catapults a ladle, which in turn pushes a jar that falls on the stove, activates the flame, and causes an explosion in the kitchen. The comical episode where Mr. Brown takes on the clothes of a cleaning lady to secretly sneak into a database headquarters, so a guard checks "her" ID photo, causing Mr. Brown to improvise that he lasered a wart from the cheeck and got a prosthetic arm. There is enough time invested into character development of the four Brown family (which was sadly neglected in "Paddington 2"), who all get enough space to develop, but the movie does get less funny the longer it lasts, since a certain coerced tone is imposed in the last third. Nontheless, "Paddington" shows that kids movies can be equally as fun as grown up films, if the authors take their job or writing inspired jokes seriously.

Grade:++

Sansho the Bailiff

Sansho Dayu; drama, Japan, 1954; D: Kenji Mizoguchi, S: Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Kinuyo Tanaka, Akitake Kono

Japan, the Middle Ages. Governor Masauji stands up for the rights of the exploited peasants, so his feudal lord punishes him by sending him to the Tsukushi Province in exile. On their long journey to him, Masauji's wife Tamaki and their children Zushio and Anju are tricked into boats of gangsters and separated. Zushio and his sister Anju land as slaves in the blacksmith estate run by cruel landlord Sansho, under the protection of the Minister of the Right. A decade later, the now grown up Anju persuades Zushio to escape with a sick old woman, while she stays behind and drowns herself in the lake. Zushio flees to Kyoto and begs the Chief Advisor for a meeting. The latter accepts to see Zushio and even grants him the job position of Governor of Tango, but informs him his father died. Zushio proclaims a law that abolishes slavery. Sansho's servants rip all the signs of the proclamation, so Zushio has him arrested and frees all the slaves. Hearing rumors his mother Tamaki was sold as a prostitute, Zushio travels to a village and finds her blind, but happy to meet him again.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, Kenji Mizoguchi's "Sansho the Bailiff" is very good, but still a little bit overrated to rightfully justify all the exaggerated superlatives by film critics. Its first two thirds are too slow and too conventional, sometimes even banal in its depictions of suffering, sadness and cruelty of slavery in Medieval Japan, yet it rises to the occasion in the fantastic last third when the story ignites, reaching the full spectrum of the viewing experience. The opening act shows a neat flashback: the scene of a grown up Zushio running towards his father dissolves into Zushio as a kid running towards the mansion, witnessing a rebellion. His noble father, a Governor, idealistically teaches him: "A man is not a human being without mercy. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others. Men are created equal. Everyone is entitled to his happiness." The following second act seems like a dark, bitter negation of all of this, when Zushio and his sister Anju are kidnapped and sold as slaves to work on the estate of the cruel Sansho from the title, who seems to have the exact opposite philosophy: people are worthless and their only task is to serve him. 

There are some depressive, bleak moments in this middle segment, such as when a 70-year old slave is re-captured by the guards, who protests ("I've been working patiently for 50 years! Let me die a free man! I don't want to die here!"), and none other than Zushio, now a "collaborator" of Sansho's, punishes the old man by branding him with a hot iron. This shows how Zushio abandoned his father's and his own humanity to embrace evil which will secure him a comfortable life in captivity. There are some philosophical contemplations presented here, such as if goodness can be unlearned, as some sort of nature vs. nurture experiment, and Zushio's quest to get back to his soul, to his roots. This is embodied symbolically in Sansho's son Taro who left the estate and became a monk at a temple, who says this tragic observation: "I found that humans have little sympathy for things that don’t directly concern them." The final third, the "rags to riches" epic comeback segment, works as some sort of blend of the endings of "Oliver Twist" and "The Ten Commandments", as Zushio allegorically returns to his father's legacy and decides to make a remarkable, idealistic change to the society, to do what is in his power to make life better for the oppressed. The final sequence is one of the most emotional and moving moments of 50s cinema, not to be missed. If the first two thirds of the movie had been as good as its last third, it would have been a much better movie, yet it still deserves to be seen.

Grade:+++

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; fantasy comedy, USA, 2024; D: Gil Kenan, S: Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Finn Wolfhard, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Alyn Lind, Patton Oswalt, Bill Murray, Celeste O'Connor, Annie Potts, William Atherton

New York. Gary Grooberson and Callie Spengler are a couple and continue with the Ghostbusters business, together with Callie's teenage kids Phoebe and Trevor. They are assisted by mentors Winston Zeddemore and Ray Stantz. When a certain Nadeem sells a metal orb to Ray, it turns out to be an ancient ghost trap which keeps demon Garraka trapped inside. However, Garraka forces a ghost girl, Melody, to befriend Phoebe, whose voice is used to break the orb and release Garraka, who initiates a mini-ice age in the city. Teaming up with Peter Venkman and Janine Melnitz, the Ghostbusters use Nadeem's firepowers to jointly hit Garraka and trap it inside the ghost containment unit.

The 5th official "Ghostbusters" film, "Frozen Empire" is surprisingly a better film than its rather too serious and too nostalgia-burdened predecessor "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", and works almost as some sort of live-action feature film adaptation of a "The Real Ghostbusters" episode, thus giving it more room to explore this imaginative world. A big kudos goes to the writer and director Gil Kenan who shows several clever, creative and inspired tricks while knitting this storyline. The opening is already clever: the camera pans down to the iconic Ghostbusters firehouse building, the door opens—and a horse carriage with firemen emerges, as the subtitles reveal the year is 1904. After their freezing paranormal encounter, the movie jump cuts to the present, when the Ghostbusters car chases after an eel-like blue ghost through the streets, using a fascinating new gadget—a ghost-catching drone. "Frozen Empire" has a whole array of stimulating little ideas (the "animated" stills depicting stone engravings of Garraka's ancient story; a possessor ghost "inserts" itself into the proton pack to try to use it against Trevor, but afterwards it flees into a pizza—which is immediately eaten by Slimer, in a moment of serendipity) and even a few comical lines (Podcast jokingly naming the ominous orb "the devil's testicle"). 

A subplot involving friendship between Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and a ghost girl, Melody, is even a bit philosophical and melancholic, though maybe out of the scope of the concept. A big negative point are three unnecessary sequences which again cater to nostalgia and plagiarize the original classic (the library ghost has a cameo, as does Walter Peck, now a mayor; dozens of Stay Puft Marshmellow minions are throw-away marketing ploys), which deducts from the quality. Despite swift writing, there is a big problem—the "core" team of the new Ghostbusters is murky. In the original, the four members formed an easily unified core team, while here the film is struggling with this. For instance, the characters of Trevor and Podcast are practically irrelevant for the story, underused, nor do they interact that well with the rest. This leaves the question: who is the main protagonist? It seems Phoebe, and then maybe Gary. Yet since Ray and Winston appear in substantial roles, the core team is always out of balance and "skewed". Therefore, only Phoebe and Gary form a 'rump' team, which feels incomplete. Nontheless, the finale with the villain is exciting, the pace is compact, whereas Kenan offers several unusual new ideas which further the plot. 

Grade:++

Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant; science-fiction horror, USA / UK, 2017; D: Ridley Scott, S: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride

Years after the "Prometheus" expedition, spaceship "Covenant" is heading towards an inhabitable planet, Origae-6, with 2,000 colonists. A neutrino burst damages the ship, so android Walter wakes up several astronauts from cryosleep. Captain Christopher decides to re-direct the spaceship towards a different, closer planet emitting a signal, despite Daniels protesting. A reconnaissance ship lands on the planet, the astronauts walk around without spacesuits, but one of them is infected with a floating virus entering his ear, which mutates into an alien, xenomorph, which bursts out of the astronaut's back, killing him. In the shootout inside, the ship explodes. Walter discovers his "twin" android, David, who admits he experimented with creating xenomorphs, thinking they are superior than the weak humans which will go extinct. Pilot Tennessee picks up Daniels and other survivors back to the spaceship in orbit, and they battle and throw out another xenomorph hidden inside. Walter turns out to actually be David, who kills Daniels in cryosleep and takes over the spaceship, planting xenomorph embryos inside.

"Alien: Covenant" is the "RoboCop 2" of the Alien franchize: it focuses only on the most primitive, superficial features of mindless brutality, splatter violence and bloody "clickbait" and doesn't even care about any character development, story, creativity or inspiration from its originator. "Covenant" is a waste of a time. A pointless reboot of the first "Alien", itself also overrated. A massacre on "autopilot". The sequel to "Prometheus", "Covenant" is a rushed mess that just runs through all the plot points of the original "Alien", as some sort of a bare minimum to have a justification for exploiting the fans once more, but it doesn't offer anything new, whereas all the characters are just one-dimensional, nameless extras who are just there to be slaughtered by the alien xenomorph. The director Ridley Scott shows no tact, no sense for measure or tone, and after half an hour nothing really matters, anyway—it's just random scenes where xenomorph kills people. Besides illogical plot holes (why would astronauts walk on an alien planet without any spacesuits? What would protect David himself from xenomorphs?), a sterile cinematography, and sadistic hate for humanity (xenomorphs bursting out of the back of a man, killing him; a man "throws up" a xenomorph from his mouth; a naked couple shower in the spaceship, while a xenomorph shows beehind glass and kills the man by impaling him through his mouth...), the movie also fails in writing a comprehensive storyline. There are some tiny good bits involving some scarce philosophical questions about humanity, such as when a man created android David, and David then created the xenomorphs because he considers them "superior" and strong, as opposed to the "weak" mankind which he believes will go extinct, since some contemplations could be made towards a clash between humanism and society based on violence. The story could be seen as the contemplation on violentocracy, and the twist ending is interesting, yet it establishes a strange trend—the more violent the "Alien" sequels get, the weaker they are.

Grade:+