Alien: Resurrection

Rating: 8/10 (15 June 2005)

If you thought Alien³ had ended the series, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie) had found a way to return, quite a clever one. It has 200 years since Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) killed herself on the prison planet, being impregnated. After many attempts, scientists from The Company have successfully managed to clone her into an alien/human hybrid clone using her blood samples (from the planet), and removed the alien queen from her. Ripley, known as Number 8, does have blurs in her original memory, and she does need to relearn things, but she seems to have developed much more power, e.g. acidic blood, strength, ability to hear and smell the aliens, and obviously with these they won't kill her. They are keeping the growing queen in a high security room, and breeding new aliens (with face huggers) insanely with crew members in hibernation, and eventually, they all break out on the ship. So with the help of Ripley, a group of smugglers, including: Annalee Call (Winona Ryder) (who turns out to be an android), cripple Vriess (Amélie's Dominique Pinon), Johner (Hellboy's Ron Perlman), Christie (Gary Dourdan), Sabra Hillard (Kim Flowers) and Vincent Distephano (Raymond Cruz) are trying to escape the ship before they enter the Homeland, Earth. Ripley does have contact with what she has become though, including meeting the new hybrid baby from the alien she had inside her, a hideous pale yellow alien with what looks like a skull for a head, who mistakes Ripley for her mother. In the end they do escape though, the aliens are destroyed, and the pale yellow thing is sucked (by the vaccuum) into bloody chunks going into outer space. Also starring Michael Wincott as Frank Elgyn, Dan Hedaya as Gen. Martin Perez, J.E. Freeman as Dr. Mason Wren, Brad Dourif as Dr. Jonathan Gediman and Leland Orser as Larry Purvis. The fantastic sequences include Dourif face to face (through glass) with the alien queen making it pull faces, the underwater chase, the alien birth through both a guy's stomach and a guy's head, and almost all of the gory effects. I have seen the re-edited version, which is ridiculous, e.g. the opening being an alien turning into an insect being squashed, although Ripley being reminded of Newt (she can't remember her name though) is interesting, but just see the original. Winona Ryder was number 87, and Sigourney Weaver number 20 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars. Very good!