Showing posts with label Walter Hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walter Hill. Show all posts

Alien 3 (1992) - Movie Review

[caption id="attachment_325" align="alignright" width="263"]Official Score = 3 Devils Official Score = 3 Devils[/caption]

When I was a kid one of the movie series (at this time there was only 2), that I used to watch with my Dad and sister alot was the Alien movie series... Why you might ask... Well simply, besides the fact that both the first and the sequel were both action packed scare fests, they also both had some truly awesome casts that did an amazing job!

Unfortunately though, as time moved on, we have gotten together less and less to see these movies, and the truth is, is that most of these movies (especially since Sigourney Weaver has left the series), have kind of grown to be pretty bad... I have kind of strayed away from the series... But when all is said and done, this movie that I am about to review, I find to be the first of the movie series to really begin the slow descent in to cheesydom that most franchises seem to go... That movie being, Alien 3 (1992).

Written by: Walter Hill (The Warriors) & David Giler (Fun With Dick And Jane) & Directed by: David Fincher (Fight Club). Starring: Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Charles S. Dutton (Gothika), Charles Dance (Last Action Hero), Paul McGann (Doctor Who), Brian Glover (An American Werewolf In London), Ralph Brown (Wayne's World 2), Danny Webb (Henry V), Christopher John Fields (Jurassic Park) & Lance Henriksen (The Terminator).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Hopefully Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and this batch of convicts are up to the task of destroying this new Alien threat![/caption]

This movie tells the story of how after the events that happened in, Aliens (1986), The Queen Alien had managed to produce one more offspring that had managed to attach itself to the pods that housed, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Hicks (Michael Biehn), Bishop (Lance Henriksen), & Newt (Carrie Henn).

Well the ship ends up evacuating the crew in an escape vehicle, that ends up crash landing on a Prison planet... Well, Hicks ends up dying from the impact, Newt ends up dying because of becoming an incubator for a new Alien, Bishop becomes un-serviceable, and the only survivor really is, Ripley!

Well in the end, with a new Alien brought to this new planet, it looks like it will be up to Ripley and the Prisoners on this planet, to stop the Alien before the Alien can use them to start a new Alien race!

In the end, this may not be the best of the series, but it certainly is not the worse... And really is the last of the better movies in the series before the slow decent... Well up till Prometheus anyway...

http://youtu.be/9vnjQPcrcZI

Aliens (1986) - Movie Review

[caption id="attachment_415" align="alignright" width="350"]Official Score = 4 Devils Official Score = 4 Devils[/caption]

Written by: James Cameron (The Terminator), David Giler (The Money Pit), Walter Hill (The Warriors) & Directed by: James Cameron. Starring: Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Carrie Henn (Alien Evolution), Paul Reiser (Mad About You), Lance Henriksen (Millennium), Bill Paxton (Twister), Michael Biehn (The Abyss), Jeanette Goldstein (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), William Hope (Captain America: The First Avenger), and Al Matthews (Tomorrow Never Dies).

This movie is an interesting one to me, you see usually sequels tend to not to be as good as the original movie… They usually have overblown special effects, a bigger cast, and an over the top story that seldom is ever as good as the original… This movie to me is not one of those!

You see this movie had a great cast which brought back Sigourney Weaver (who played Ellen Ripley in the first movie) and told the story of how after the hell that she went through on board the Nostromo fighting the first Xenomorph attack, she ends up drifting through space for centuries in the Nostromo’s escape craft’s Hypersleep chamber!

Now when she gets back, she ends up losing her status within, ‘The Company’ when they learn that she is the only one that has survived the attack on the, ‘Nostromo’ and all of her crew is killed by the Xenomorph…

After she loses her status in the company and is relegated to loading freight on to ships that are coming in and out of the company’s space station near Earth, she also ends up finding out what happened to her daughter centuries ago, and ends up falling in to a deep depression… That is of course until Carter Burke (Reiser) pays her a visit…

[caption id="attachment_896" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Carter Bruke (Paul Reiser) and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) not longer after Ripley is rescued from the, 'Nostromo' escape vehicle! Carter Bruke (Paul Reiser) and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) not longer after Ripley is rescued from the, 'Nostromo' escape vehicle![/caption]

You see Burke got it arranged to have a colony installed on to LV426 (the planet where Ripley and the Nostromo had originally picked up their Alien passenger that ultimately ended up destroying the Nostromo, it’s crew, and ruining Ripley’s life!)

Now the Colony has stopped communicating with the company back at home and Burke is putting together a team of Colonial Marines (an elite military unit that works with the company) to head to the planet to check on the colony, and since Ripley had been their centuries ago, Burke decided to bring Ripley along as an advisor on the mission… (and despite her better judgment decides to head off with Burke and the Marines…)

In the end, Burke, Ripley and the rest of the Marines will get more then they bargained for when they make it to the planet and Ripley comes face to face again with the Aliens that ruined her life!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Ripley is about to go head to head one more time in, 'Aliens (1986)![/caption]

Now you wouldn't think it, but this movie in my opinion maybe one of the few sequels that are as good (if not better than the original), and I think that is in large part due to the fact that the first two Alien movies were directed by Directors who would later become Science Fiction Masters! (Ridley Scott for Alien (1979), and James Cameron for Aliens (1986)!)

Another thing that I really liked about this movie is the special effects… I mean like most sequels, the special effects are bigger and more splashier… (these are, but they are done really tastefully.)

The cast of course was utterly phenomenal in this (as they are in most of the other movies that I have seen them in…)

And in all truth, the story was awesome! I mean I always love Sci-Fi, but I also love how they put an element of drama and deceit that was all believable and very well done!

In the end, this movie is an amazing good time and if you haven’t seen it yet, then you might give it a try… I think you might really like it!

http://youtu.be/XKSQmYUaIyE