One assumes that Weaver received enough combat pay to compensate for playing the now understandably cynical Ripley in this bleak and pointlessly grueling movie.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 6, 2024

It does succeed in rounding the three movies off, not smashingly but interestingly. It drives us into the wall, throws Ripley into a blind alley from which, at last, there is no escape hatch.

| Aug 6, 2024

The monsters just aren't that scary anymore, and so the film mostly just sits there, gloomy and inert, sunk in exhausted myth, looking and sounding Wagnerian but feeling underpowered.

| Aug 6, 2024

Like his predecessors, Fincher tries to take the series where no man has gone before, and somewhat succeeds. Unfortunately, he also takes some turns where no man wants to go.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 6, 2024

The result is a very strange Alien movie, far more cerebral and less scary than the first two but successful nevertheless. And still not nice.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2024

Completing the unforeseen trilogy, this is a sad and incoherent non sequitur.

| Aug 6, 2024

In spite of all its troubles, the resulting film is actually a presentable piece with imaginative production design and special effects of considerable panache.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 6, 2024

Instead of trying to outspectacle Aliens, this third chapter in the science-fiction saga takes us down a menacing, twisting side path that is as fascinating as the first two movies.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 6, 2024

There's no fun and very little joy in this somber chase story that would be lost without Steadicam shots of the beast chasing everyone through a series of tunnels. The result is a movie that is much ado about nothing.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 5, 2024

It may be just another sequel, but Alien 3 is better than most, and follows nicely after the first two.

| Aug 5, 2024

Alien 3 is, in common with its predecessors, a gruelling film, but unlike both Alien and Aliens, it is both gruelling and boring, which is filmmaking at its most sadistic.

| Aug 5, 2024

Alien 3 should be seen on the largest screen, with the biggest sound system possible; the silences are all-important. And director David Fincher does a pretty good job of implying horror as well as showing it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2024

Although there are moments when it's hard to shake the feeling we're watching a re-run of Ridley Scott's masterful first film, only with different sets, Alien 3 deserves credit for managing to produce shocks when they're least expected.

| Aug 5, 2024

Not only is Alien 3 less than the sum of its parts, its parts don't add up to a cohesive whole. Hell, they don't even add up to parts.

| Aug 5, 2024

Most of the elements that made the first two films so enjoyable are missing here. The sharp satire and visually exciting weaponry of Aliens are nowhere to be found, and the genuine creepiness of the original film never is recaptured.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 5, 2024

While Alien was an artsy carny spookhouse and Aliens a heart-popping roller coaster, Alien 3 is a lead-weight Tilt-a-Whirl that keeps scraping the pavement.

| Aug 5, 2024

Alien 3 can't be accused of over-cheerfulness. Its tone of dungeon-like bleakness is consistently oppressive. Skin has a fluorescent lividness. Clothing has a medieval lumpenness. People's breath comes in frosty puffs.

| Aug 1, 2024

Sigourney Weaver, whose portrayal of space voyager Ellen Ripley has deepened with each new film, carries Alien 3 despite the dawdling indifference of novice director David Fincher. Where Fincher plods, Weaver charges ahead.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 1, 2024

Either through lack of money, or the inability to reshoot vital scenes, the film's plunge into horror is both too long and too incoherent to be compared with either of its predecessors for sheer panache.

| Aug 1, 2024

It still works relatively well, despite the fact that Alien 3 lags behind its predecessors in style and frightfulness. Credit Fincher with crisply bringing it together in an incredibly dark and, yes, despairing package.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 1, 2024