Alien Resurrection
So my unexpected return to the latter Alien films from the original run has now led to Ressurrection and man is it a frustrating film. I love the Jean-Pierre Jeunet films I'm familiar with and you can see why his disturbing, uneasy visual style would seem a fit for an Alien movie, but this was a director about to make Amelie before being offered this and that explains a lot.
This visual style sits so well against a disarming charm and thrust into a horror chase horror movie it makes for an odd mix, too obvious like its REALLY underlining the film trying to be disturbing and uneasy rather than allowing it to be through script and plot. It kinda works best in the end dream like sequence with the Queen, the Hybrid and the all the over laboured sexual guff. The trouble is that bit of the film just doesn't work that well and the end is a bit rubbish - well aside from the gloriously grim way the Hybrid is dealt with.
The film is close and has some real highlight. Sigourney Weaver is just brilliant hamming it up as Ripley 8, the mercenaries are wonderful cartoon characters and the underwater sequence remains an absolute triumph. It just... lacks something. Its fun, passes the time excitingly enough and I don't hate, I just don't really like it either. It hangs there having much to praise it, but nothing to love it.
Curious, which is maybe what it wanted to be.