Alien 3

Disappointing, claustrophobic sequel. A big, loud eyestrain of a picture, though Weaver does bring some weight to it. The director comes straight from music videos and it shows. I don’t think there was a shot longer than three seconds in the whole thing, and if I see another facial close-up I think my brain is going to explode. Very self consciously arty and contrived shooting. There is a terrible lack of flow and continuity here. Half the time I couldn’t tell who was doing what and why. This is particularly deadly in the big climactic showdown sequence. And most of the subsidiary characters are indistinguishable. Finally, as I’ve said before, if you go to the trouble of making a good monster (and this is a good one) then show it for crying out loud, don’t just tease with snippets. But I guess that would take longer than three seconds, and we can’t have that. Paging Jim Cameron. (5/27/92)