"Alien Resurrection" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCI, Dublin
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet wastes no time in getting down to business in the fourth film of the enduring Alien series - and he never permits the pace to flag for the duration of the movie as he turns up the tension and propels the picture with spine-tingling terror and virtuoso action sequences.
If the resilient and resourceful heroine of the series, Ellen Ripley, did not exist - and she died at the end of the brooding and depressing Alien 3 - it would be necessary to resurrect her. In the sequel, scripted by Joss Whedon and set 200 years after Alien 3, the solution at the outset of the movie is to have her cloned from an old sample of DNA - which also allows the scientists aboard the vast military research space vessel, the Auriga, to extract the genetic data of the alien queen which was gestating inside Ripley before she died trying to wipe out the species.
"It's amazing," declares one of the Auriga scientists when, after several abortive attempts, they refine the cloning of Ripley. "She's operating at complete adult capacity." One of the scientists, played by Dan Hedaya, refers to Ripley as "it" and notes that she has her memories, but with some gaps - "an unexpected benefit of the genetic process". Meanwhile, the Auriga is visited by six mercenaries from the commercial freighter, The Betty - named after Betty Grable - with a sinister cargo. This relatively rudimentary premise serves primarily as a vehicle to trigger and drive the movie's action sequences, which are abundant, inventive and expertly staged, and none less so than the thrilling, underwater escape set-piece. Alien Resurrection bristles with energy and is peppered with the wicked black humour characteristic of director Jeunet from his two French features, Delicatessen and The City Of Lost Children, on which he collaborated with Marc Caro.
Ripley, played for the fourth time by Sigourney Weaver, is tougher, more forceful and more blunt-spoken than ever before in this visceral, at times eerily sensual thriller permeated by a dark, creepy, menacing atmosphere and wholly enhanced by the highly effective chiaroscuro lighting of cinematographer Darius Khnodji. Winona Ryder is effective as The Betty's enigmatic mechanic, Call, and the cast members also feature Jeunet regulars Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman.
"Crash" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin; Kino, Cork
Finally, 18 months after its controversy-stirring world premiere at Cannes, David Cronenberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel Crash finally arrives here, screening on a club basis. This austere and provocative movie operates from the thesis that being in, or witnessing, a car accident is sexually arousing.
It opens on three consecutive sex scenes - in an aircraft hangar, the camera room of a TV studio and the balcony of an apartment building - before one of the participants, an advertising executive played by James Spader and named James Ballard, takes to the expressway in his car.
Swerving across the road and driving against the oncoming one-way traffic, he causes a crash which kills the other driver. Soon he's back in his car, kissing the dead driver's wife (Holly Hunter) and, after another near-crash, having sex with her. The consequences involve multiple sexual groupings - among them gay and lesbian sex, voyeurism of a back seat coupling in a car-wash, rough sex and scar fetishism - in which the other participants are Ballard's wife (Deborah Unger), an accident victim (Rosanna Arquette) in callipers, and a heavily scarred renegade scientist (Elias Koteas).
The sex scenes are interspersed or overlap with a great deal of dangerous driving, the morbid close-up photographing of the aftermath of a horrific collision and the gross re-staging of James Dean's car death for an avid audience which is promised a recreation of the crash that decapitated Jayne Mansfield as the next attraction.
The coldest and most clinical film to date from David Cronenberg - and the most extreme and disturbing - Crash is as technically accomplished as we have come to expect from the gifted Canadian director. It reiterates the recurring theme in Cronenberg's work - and in virtually every movie set in the future - that the human race remains primitive despite all the technological advances of this century.
The expression of that theme through the equation of sexual excitement and car crashes rings singularly hollow for the duration of Crash, an arid and austere experience in which the cars seem more real than the people in them. The movie's calculated outrageousness is so relentless that it eventually provokes mere numbness and often turns risible.
Hugh Linehan adds:
"8 Heads In A Duffel Bag" (15) Nationwide
Joe Pesci is (surprise, surprise) a violent gangster hired to deliver the eight heads of the title across the country as evidence that a mob execution has been carried out in this feeble and tedious farce. In that old staple of low-rent comedy, the heads get lost in a mix-up aboard the plane, ending up in the possession of Andy Comeau, a hapless eternal student on his way to a vacation in Mexico with his girlfriend (Kristy Swanson) and her disapproving parents (George Hamilton and Dyan Cannon). As Pesci tries to figure out where his cargo has gone, the contents of the bag cause havoc among the unsuspecting holidaymakers.
The publicity for 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag implies that this is largely a Pesci vehicle - which would be uninspiring enough, given that actor's limited range, but most of the story revolves around the slapstick and misunderstandings among the holidaymakers in Mexico. This is handled with stunning ineptitude by Tom Schulman, who as writer-director must shoulder the whole blame. The jokes are unfunny, the acting third-rate and the overt racism towards Mexicans quite stunning. Indeed, the whole enterprise is gruesome in quite a different way from that indicated in the title. Schulman won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Dead Poets Society, and this is his directorial debut. If he has any sense, he'll stick to the day job.
