While Dirty Harry was a magnificent example of fantastical Hollywood filmmaking, a story that while gloriously entertaining didn’t try and reflect the real world, Zodiac is a more grounded attempt at telling the story of a serial killer loose in San Francisco. Yes Fincher’s direction is as flamboyant as ever and yes it’s a glossy big budget movie, but with its emphasis on the minutia of detective work and with its unresolved ending, it’s a brave attempt at reflecting the reality of the case. The film doesn’t provide you with any answers – it’s a mystery that will remain as such long after the credits have rolled.

The film opens on the 4th July in 1969. Fireworks fill the sky and we see a young man take a ride in a car with an older woman. It’s an idealistic picture of America – a couple going to a diner, a nation celebrating its independence, the last summer of a great decade. But despite the fireworks and the promises of a brighter future, there’s a dark shadow looming around the corner. America’s innocence, if it ever existed, isn’t going to last long.

The attack on the two kids is a superb piece of cinema. We see them awkwardly talking as they pull up by a lake and then a car appears behind them. At first its headlights shine brightly, but then they’re turned off, adding to the unspoken menace. But then the car drives off. However, it’s not long before it returns. With the light from a flashlight shining in their eyes, they maybe think it’s a cop, but then the shadowy figure opens fire on them. It’s a senseless attack, and one that is masterfully filmed, edited and scored – I love the use of Donovan’s ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’; it’s a psychedelic rock song, one that while seemingly upbeat and positive has a dark undercurrent to it. It works perfectly for the scene. And then after the attack we see the boy sitting outside his car, near the point of death, as the Zodiac phones the authorities to tell them of his crime. The calmness of his voice is quietly chilling, as is the way he says, ‘Good-bye’ like it’s two separate words. Here’s a person who is killing just for the thrill of it.

The second attack isn’t the grandstanding piece of cinema that the first is, but it’s equally effective. We see another young couple driving to a lake. There they encounter a masked man with a gun. He says he’s escaped from prison and the couple think they’re just going to be robbed. The young man even offers to write the masked man a cheque. But then after being tied up and after assuring his female companion that everything is going to be okay, the masked man casually stabs them. It’s shocking in how nonchalantly they’re attacked – their daytrip may consist of a picnic and kisses by the lake, but the Zodiac’s idea of fun is completely different. And there’s a great moment where after being tied up, the man asks the Zodiac if the gun was even loaded. The Zodiac then holds the gun close to his face and shows that yes it was loaded. It’s a great moment because the gun is distorted by the camera lens – it looks even larger and therefore more threatening; our lives hang by a thread and it takes very little for someone to come along and snuff us out of existence.

And it’s maybe that sort of power that the serial killer has over us that makes them so fascinating. They don’t adhere to the rules that society lays down for the rest of us. Therefore we’re amazed by them and maybe we even admire them in a perverse way. We want to hate them, but at the same we want to consume every lurid detail of their exploits and maybe even indulge in daydreams about the people we’d off if we were batshit crazy like they are. Or if we don’t have some sort of distant, guilty admiration for their utter lack of self-control, we want to at least understand them; we want an insight into their twisted soul. And of course, this hunger for answers is even more pressing when so few are made available to us.

This is why Robert Graysmith invests himself so deeply in the case. He wants to understand. He wants answers. But it says something sad about human nature when he finds a killer more fascinating than his children or his wife. Somehow we’re acknowledging that serial killers are extraordinary simply because they refuse to go along with the rest of us. They don’t create anything, they don’t expand our understanding of life and the cosmos. But because they don’t listen to the little voice in our heads that says ‘no’, they immediately become worthy of our attention.

But despite the attention that we lavish on them, what would we really find out if we could get into their heads? That they hate? That they’re mad? The answers will always be mundane, but a desire for answers will remain as long as the killer is unidentified. Wars we can understand. Natural disasters can be explained. Diseases don’t even perturb us that much because we arrogantly feel that we can do something to avoid getting them. But we need to unmask serial killers because we need the reassurance – we need to know that the person is really human, that there isn’t a supernatural demon lurking in the shadows that is going to snatch us away without warning.

The film taps into this wonderfully. Robert Graysmith’s whole quest is a quest for this reassurance. He needs to be able to look someone in the eye and know it’s them – he needs to know that it’s a mere mortal who is out there. This leads him down various dark alleys, one of which involves him going to a man’s house in order to talk to a friend of a suspect. Graysmith has a sample of what he thinks is the Zodiac’s handwriting, only to find out that the handwriting belongs to the man he’s speaking to. Graysmith is then led down into the basement where he hears the floorboards creaking above him. It’s a very creepy scene, but we’re denied any payoff. Graysmith isn’t attacked and the killer isn’t revealed. The mystery remains.

After that, Graysmith tries to bully the sister of a victim into naming the killer. He just wants an answer; he wants it to be over – briefly he doesn’t care about the truth. But then he finds out about one of the prime suspects.

Arthur Leigh Allen is the only serious suspect that the film puts forward. But at the same time we’re never told that it’s him. We only have the information that the investigation gives us, that the man was a paedophile, that he owned guns, that his timeline fitted with the Zodiac, that he blabbed important information to a fishing buddy, that his watch bears the name zodiac and that it has the crosshair logo that the Zodiac’s letters used, and that he was spotted on the weekend of one of the murders with bloody knifes in his car that were supposedly used to slaughter a chicken. But even though we have all of this information, along with tasty titbits that his freezer is full of dead squirrels and that he fucks himself in the arse with a wooden dildo, there’s still nothing concrete to tie him to the killings. Like Robert Graysmith and the detectives who investigated the case, we can only look at him and draw our own conclusions on all the circumstantial evidence. Everything screams that this is the man, but we never know for certain.

Hollywood thinking dictates that a lack of a firm resolution is deeply unsatisfying, but this most certainly isn’t the case for Zodiac. The film ends with a victim identifying Arthur Leigh Allen as his attacker, but the man can’t say for certain. And although at the end we discover that Allen died of a heart attack before he could be interviewed again, DNA evidence supposedly cleared him. A concrete answer would only turn the Zodiac into another serial killer, but without it he obtains almost mythic status. He becomes the bogeyman we all fear but which we’re fascinated by.

But although I love the mythic side to the film (ending the film with ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ is a master touch, reminding it as it does of the first killing and suggesting that the Zodiac might still be out there), it also works wonderfully as a police procedural. We see the bureaucracy that the detectives face and the hurdles they have to overcome in order to do their job. There’s a great little scene where the cops have to put their case forward in order to get a warrant to search Allen’s premises. Unlike Dirty Harry it’s not a simple case of finding the guy and then blowing him away.

And there’s also something quite sad in the amount of time that is dedicated to hunting this one individual (if the Zodiac was indeed one individual). Years go by, people grow older and yet the detectives are still on the case. One beautiful sequence illustrates this perfectly – we see the Trans America Pyramid being built. Everything around these people is changing as they’re hunting a phantom from the past.

However, for Anthony Edwards’ cop it all proves too much. After years he quits the case. In an understated scene we see him say goodbye to his partner with very few words expressed between the two. There are lots of emotions there, but neither can express them.

But one of the most memorable images from the film is of the detectives walking through a maze of superimposed words. No one can see the wood for the trees. Has this man killed as many people as he claims? Is he a liar who takes credit for other people’s work? Either way his campaign was a success. With the help of the media he created a myth and a mystery that hasn’t been solved, and as long as that mystery remains he’ll always be exceptional. People may want to solve the mystery, but it’ll only remain interesting while the answer is elusive.

Feel sorry for Inspector Harry Callahan. Not only does he have to abide by pesky laws and procedures, and not only is the Mayor a damned coward, but his new partner studied sociology. In other words, he's the sort of man who actually tries to understand criminal behaviour and fix society's problems with rational thought and all that jazz. But for Harry, what's there to understand? Criminals are damned punks. A bullet in the head is true justice.

And there are so many criminals about. Just take the list of dead police officers that opens the film. All of them were killed by damned punks, and those damned pussies at city hall seem to be encouraging them. No wonder a guy like Harry is disillusioned.

Of course, in the real world, a guy like Harry Callahan would be a liability. I mean, no one is right all the time, and when Harry thinks he's right, he has no qualms about shooting suspects or torturing them. But hey, this is a movie, and therefore Harry is always right. Consequently his fascism is just a committed cop doing what it takes to get results. We love every moment of it.

I guess it helps that his adversary is off his nut. Really, is there anyone quite so mental as Scorpio? I don't think there is. He makes Tom Cruise look like he has all his faculties.

My favourite Scorpio bit is the Scorpio scream when Harry stabs him in the leg. Words fail to describe the hilarity and the insane beauty of the sound, but if I were to try, I'd say it sounded like the sound a man would make if he were mounted by an overly friendly horse. But in the same scene there's the brilliant moment when Scorpio beats Harry up. Wearing a lurid orange ski mask, and staring at him with deranged eyes, he shouts, "Do we understand each other?" It's so crazy it's almost beautiful.

Also rather beautiful is the way Harry captures Scorpio. He chases him through a football stadium and on the pitch he orders Scorpio to stop, which he does. Then he shoots him in the leg, which leads to more Scorpio screaming. At this point it seems like the scene can't get any better, but then Scorpio starts pleading like a little girl. "You tried to kill me...I want a lawyer...I have the right to a lawyer." And then Harry treads on Scorpio's wound and you have a fantastic helicopter shot that pulls away from the action to reveal a god's eye view. And if god did exist, I'm sure he'd approve. I know I do. Well, only because I know with 100% certainty that Harry is right.

But those damned liberals at city hall don't approve of Harry's methods, so Scorpio gets released. I mean, Harry only performed an illegal search and violated a man's rights. What's the problem?

But insanely dedicated cop that he is (in other words, he doesn't have a life of his own), Harry follows Scorpio around during his spare time. And classy fellow that he is, Scorpio spends plenty of time in titty bars. But Scorpio soon tires of being trailed, and in a magnificent scene, pays a large black man to beat him up, framing it on Harry (I love how mangled Scorpio's face is when he insults the large man that is beating him up - 'Are you sure you want the rest?' 'Every penny's worth you black son of a bitch'). But do you see what happens when you give people rights? They use their devious minds to turn everything around. Wouldn't the word be a much better place if cops were at liberty to blow heads clean off? Mayors and stupid chiefs, and laws and regulations only hinder good ole cops like Harry.

And just look at what happens when someone like Scorpio is left on the street. He shoots people with his snipers rifle and he robs shopkeepers. And the shop scene may well be my favourite in the film – although it would compete with the scene where Harry deals with the jumper (he insults him, makes him mad and then punches him out; now that's policing). But in the shop scene, Scorpio chats to the owner about how many times he's been robbed. The owner blathers for a bit and shows him his gun. To which Scorpio meekly says, "Please, I scare easy." But then as the man is putting his gun away, Scorpio smashes a bottle over his head (while still in its paper bag) and robs the bloke. How can you hate a man that's so ingenious? And how can you hate a man who pleads like a dog, screams like a girl and wants to kill Catholic priests? See, he's not all bad.

Plus he's great with children. There he is singing with them and having a good old time. Sure he slaps them about a bit and tells them that he's going to kill their mothers, but children need a bit of discipline, don't they?

But Harry soon puts a stop to this. Like The Terminator he jumps off a bridge, lands on top of the bus and after a bit of a shoot-out, kills Scorpio. Then he throws his badge away. It would be an ending with some symbolic meaning if Callahan hadn't returned for so many sequels. But as it is, Dirty Harry is a shallow, wafer-thin detective film that's a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, there's almost zero character development (Harry's wife is dead and that's that; and Scorpio is just loco), but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable ride. Just the Scorpio scream on its own would make it worthwhile, but on top of that you have a fascist cop blowing people away with his large gun. And surely that's enough for anyone.

It’s not surprising that lots of people compare Bringing Out the Dead to Taxi Driver. Both are Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader collaborations, both deal with the seedy underbelly of night-time New York and both deal with strung out individuals driving, er, vehicles. But comparisons are unfair. One, because any film is going to have a hard time living up to Taxi Driver, and two, despite their surface similarities they’re very different movies.

Bringing Out the Dead centres around a paramedic named Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage). He can’t sleep and he hasn’t saved a person in months. And to make matters worse, he keeps on seeing the face of an eighteen-year-old girl who died in his arms. Needless to say, he isn’t in the best state of mind.

The start of the film is a little unconvincing. Yes Scorsese’s camerawork is electrifying – we see the ambulance speeding through the streets and Cage’s weary eyes are lit by the flashing lights – but the voiceover and its delivery feels clumsy. ‘The night started with a bang. A gunshot to the chest in a drug deal gone bad…’ It feels like something out of a B-movie or a bad novel. But then once the film settles down, it steadily improves.

The primary focus of the story is Frank’s relationship with the daughter of a cardiac arrest patient he brought back from the dead. In her he perhaps sees a chance to redeem himself – to make amends for the mistake he made with the homeless girl he couldn’t save. But although he wants to help her through this difficult time, he may have unwittingly made things worse. The man he saved was dead for too long, and so now he’s in limbo. As a consequence, the man’s alive but not completely aware (one of the doctors says he’s going to be a vegetable), and so therefore his new existence revolves around a routine of minor heart attacks and shocks to bring him back to life. This has a negative effect on his daughter Mary (Patricia Arquette), a reformed drug addict who falls off the wagon as she tries to hold her family together. And so all this misery has been inflicted because of Frank’s desire to save lives.

And in Frank you have a man who has been progressively worn down by his surroundings. We hear from him how great it is when you save lives, how the world seems to shine, but recently he’s been unable to do any good. And so while Travis Bickle’s problem was violent alienation, Frank’s is impotent empathy. He wants to make life better, but when there’s so much misery around him, he feels like he’s swimming against the tide.

It has to be said that Scorsese’s direction is often better than Cage’s acting at capturing this weariness. Cage’s performance certainly isn’t poor, but it is uneven. In one dire bit of acting, after having woken from a drug-fuelled dream, he just shouts incoherently like some B-movie monster. And the facial tics and jerky movements feel overly familiar. But then in other scenes he can be excellent.

But like I said, Scorsese’s directing is stronger than the star’s acting. Through time-lapse photography he captures the fractured passage of time and the frenzied emotions of the characters. And through his use of lighting he captures a frightening vision of urban hell while shining a bright halo on the film’s hero. After all, at one point, Frank likens saving someone’s life to having god pass through you. And in a wonderful hallucinatory dream sequence we see Frank reach into the ground to bring the dead souls of the people who have died before him back to life. This is the kind of power he wishes he had. He wishes he could rescue those lost souls – to drag them back from purgatory or hell and give them and him a second chance at living a normal life. Because this job makes Frank suffer – his burden is almost religious. And at one point he literally begs to be fired. But in a great comic scene, his Captain won’t have it. Because they’re understaffed, his Captain refuses to terminate Frank’s contract, even though that’s exactly what Frank wants. So even though he’s promised that he’ll be fired in the future, Frank knows he has to keep carrying this burden on his shoulders – he has to witness the sins of the world and do his best to patch up the mess.

But although there are plenty of serious religious undercurrents in the film, there are also some fantastic comic moments. In particular I like Ving Rhames’ Christian paramedic. He talks about Jesus, he flirts with the female dispatcher and he flashes money at whores. But in his best scene he presides over a ‘miracle’. A kid overdoses (a kid named I. B. Bangin’) and as Frank gives him a shot, Rhames gathers the rest of the junkies around and makes out like he and god have brought their friend back to life. The character has taken his role as a healer and almost wants to make it mythic in the eyes of these kids in order that they can reform their ways – it’s a great scene.

But in the film we see Frank work with three different paramedics (played by John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore respectively). Each one deals with his hellish situation in a different way. Goodman seeks solace in food, Rhames in god and Sizemore in violence. Frank is the only one who is tackling the awful situation head on and as a result he can barely take it. He even has to resort to booze and drugs to numb the pain.

And at the end Frank even takes the life of Arquette’s father. Every time he sees the man he hears him speaking in his head, asking to be put out of his misery. At that moment he’s borderline psychotic, but it’s still a mercy killing. He’s just tired of seeing people suffer – both the man and the man’s daughter. So in a way we’re kind of asked to see Frank as a modern saint, a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders so that others don’t have to suffer as much as he does. He’s the complete opposite of Travis Bickle, whose suffering was brought about by self-absorption.

And although the end of the film sounds a little pat, with Frank finding the love of a good woman and finally getting some much needed rest, it doesn’t feel contrived. This is what Frank needs – he needs someone who can understand his burden and he needs someone he can share it with. Only then can he rest and return to some semblance of normality.

Ben is a rat. A smart rat, but a rat nonetheless. Socrates is also a rat; he’s as smart as Ben but more loveable. Willard, though, is a pathetic loser. A friendless nobody who’s under the thumb of his skeletal mother.

What’s clear from the beginning of Willard is that the two rats who vie for the affection of their master are the two sides of his tortured personality. Socrates, white and beautiful, is his good side, the side that is tender and loving and sweet. Ben, though, dark and brooding and ugly, is his bad side, the side that is angry and vengeful and that hates the world. So the rat who outlasts the other is the one that will take possession of this greasy weirdo’s soul.

One of the most eyebrow-raising moments in the film is when Willard tells Socrates that he hates everyone in the world except him and that they should go to bed. Go to bed? Yes, he says it tenderly. He says it seductively. He says it like they’re going to, well, fuck. Er. Um. Right. (But is that even possible? Maybe if one has the most micro of micro penises. Otherwise you’d probably just end up turning your beloved rodent inside out.)

However, a tender scene turns bad when the dastardly Ben, who has previously been told that he’s not allowed to leave the cellar, crawls into the bed perhaps seeking a ménage a trois. He wants part of the action, the little perv. But Willard isn’t having it. He wants no part of Ben. His heart belongs to Socrates.

But what could have screwed Willard up so badly that he has to sleep with rodents in order to feel some sort of contentment? Well, I guess a batshit crazy mother would do that to you. Especially one that wants to rename you Clark because Willard is a cissy name and one that wants to check your turds when you tell her you’re having bowel issues. How is a young man meant to get a girl when that kind of pussy kryptonite is walking around? No wonder Willard chooses rats.

But there’s also Willard’s boss. The second you see him and find out that he’s played by Lee Ermey you know he’s going to be a colossal bastard. And he lives up to expectations. He shouts at Willard, he bullies him, he takes his wages and basically does anything he can to make his life a living hell. Yet another reason to seek refuge in the tickly caress of a rat’s vivacious whiskers.

Another eyebrow-raising moment is when Willard is training his rat army. He keeps on repeating the phrase ‘tear it’. And as he says it, he becomes more and more impassioned. It’s like he’s getting aroused. Maybe he’s thinking about tearing more than just paper. But I do love some of the details in the rat training sequence. I mean, there’s even a little rat obstacle course. How sweet. But it’s also in this sequence that we first meet Ben. But he doesn’t really take part in the training because a) he’s a fat bastard and b) he’s a bit above himself. In fact, he’s a bit of a prick is Ben. He’s always lurking in the corner like a right creepy bastard. Plus he has a habit of always turning up no matter how hard you try and get rid of him. Trying to get rid of Ben is like trying to escape a fart in a crowded lift.

Then there’s the fact that Ben’s borderline psychotic. In one of the film’s best scenes, a cat is given to Willard and its left alone in his creepy house with all of his rats. Under Ben’s command, the rats pursue the feline. And then after finding higher ground, and apparently escaping the filthy pests, Ben attacks and the cat is knocked to the ground and consumed by Ben’s underlings. Oh, and to make it even better, the scene is scored to the Jackson 5's song ‘Ben’ from the awesomely titled sequel to the original Willard, Ben. The juxtaposition of violence with a tender love song dedicated to vermin is exquisite.

But although all of this violence is committed by Ben in order to get Willard to love him, his feelings are never returned. Indeed, late in the film, Willard even shouts that he hates Ben and that he loves Socrates. And this is after Willard tries to abandon Ben. He gets the large rat to kill his boss and then says goodbye to him. He’s trying to escape the darkness and reclaim the light. But it’s too late. He’s become what he loathes. He’s become Ben.

And just compare Ben to Socrates. There’s a scene where Willard is going through his deceased father’s possessions (in a nice little nod to the original film, Willard’s dead father has the image of Bruce Davison, the actor who originally played Willard). He takes a knife and is contemplating killing himself. But then Socrates stops him. Meanwhile Ben watches from above. He wouldn’t stop Willard, the bastard.

But Crispin Glover is wonderfully cast in the film. He’s the consummate weirdo and fits the part exceptionally well. And his commitment to the role is impressive. There’s an amusing scene where he’s at his mother’s funeral and he shows her his only friend, the rat Socrates. The rat climbs over mum’s face and then Glover begins bawling, a massive line of snot dangling from his nose. And then later on in the scene, when he finds out he’s in debt and may lose his house, he just starts ranting and screaming. It’s kind of reminiscent of his appearance on Letterman. And he also has a nice singing voice. ‘Ben’ isn’t quite ‘Clowny Clown Clown’, but it provides an ironic counterpoint to Willard’s mistaken assertion that his association with Ben is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. No, it’s the beginning of your demise. Ben will be the end of you.

I never thought a film would come along that would be so bad it would make Alien: Resurrection look like a masterpiece. But Paul W.S. Anderson has succeeded in performing that dark miracle, for Alien Vs. Predator (or AVP for short) is a complete stinker.

You know the film is in trouble about two minutes in. There's a scene where Alexa, the main character, is climbing an icefall. Her phone rings and she actually answers it. Then when she gets to the top, and while she's still talking, she sees the person on the other end of the line standing right before her next to a helicopter. However, in the establishing shot only a few seconds earlier there was no helicopter in sight. How the hell did it get there without her hearing it? Very stupid.

Just as stupid is another's character's ridiculous intelligence. There's an Italian archaeologist who's been hired by Bishop to look at this pyramid that's been found under the ice. No sooner has he been shown a poor computer model than he's proclaiming the style is a mixture of various ancient cultures and that this pyramid therefore must be the first pyramid ever made. He's quick. And he's just as quick in the pyramid itself. He reads hieroglyphics like he's reading the daily newspaper; he knows the meaning of each room that's contained in the pyramid ("this is the sacrificial chamber", he says after being in the room for about a second) and he even understands the building's inner workings. This last bit leads to another moment of absurdity. The archaeologist proclaims that the Aztecs used the metric system, therefore the moving parts of the pyramid must change every ten minutes. Since when did the metric system have anything to do with time? And since when did the Aztecs use minutes? Did they wear wristwatches?

But one of the worst scenes is when the archaeologist and Alexa get stuck in a room. Again the archaeologist reads the hieroglyphics like he's thumbing the daily paper and spins a yarn about the Predators teaching man how to build temples and create a civilisation. You see, Rastafarian aliens taught us everything we know. Kill me.

But for sheer stupidity there's one moment that trumps everything else. A character is in the sacrificial chamber and he drops a glow stick down into the room below. Then later we see Alexa and a couple of other people wander into this room. She looks at her GPS watch and proclaims that this room must be directly below the sacrificial chamber…with the glow stick just a couple of feet ahead of her! Cocking Christ almighty.

Just as annoying as all this, though, is Anderson's fanboy attempts to doff his dunce's cap at the previous Alien and Predator films. 'Look, it's Lance Henriksen! Listen, one of the characters says, "You are one ugly mother…" See, I made a satellite look like an Alien Queen. Oh, how I respect the heritage of these fine franchises.' Too bad he couldn't provide the film with a decent script, memorable characters or exciting action.

And I guess it's the action that hammers the final nail into the film's coffin. After all, it could have been at least tolerable if the action had been half-decent. Instead it's total crap. Take the fights between the Predators and the Aliens. They're more homoerotic than the naked fight between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Women in Love. Of course you don't get to see any floppy bits flapping about, but you do get to see an injured Alien flick lots of acid into the face of a Predator in a very camp manner with its tail (I can imagine Anderson patting himself on the back at how innovative he is). And there's another hilarious bit when an Alien is injured on the floor. It reminded me of a scene in The Simpsons where Homer is negotiating with Mr Burns to get the dental plan back. When Homer wins he lies down on the floor and walks circles on his side. The Alien in this film does the exact same thing. Stupid Alien.

But even the penguins in this film overact. There's a scene where Ewen Bremmer gets spooked in an abandoned whaling outpost. Of course, we get the standard 'BOO, there's someone behind you moment' and then when Spud insists that there's something else in the room with them, a penguin waddles out. It's more of an old ham than the Alien.

And I feel sorry for Ewan Bremmer. He gets to play some bland sap that keeps going on about his kids. Of course he dies, which is the only good thing he does. But the other characters are dull, too. Alexa, in particular, is a waste of space. I can imagine that Anderson thought he was shattering genre conventions by making the hero a black woman, but he completely forgot to add colour (ahem) to her character (and everyone else for that matter).

Almost as frustrating as this is the fact that we don't even get the pleasure of seeing these people die horribly; Anderson keeps violence at arms length – he cuts away from every screen death. And also, because his crap story requires it, people give birth to Aliens in about half an hour rather than the hours or days it used to take. Oh, and now facehuggers jump in bullet-time. Wait a second while I weep... And on top of that, the main Predator in this film has an incredibly goofy face. Somehow make-up has got worse over the last twenty years or so. But what made me laugh/cry the most was the final shot: dead Predator gives birth to Predi-Alien. As if the hunchback yellow turd Newborn Alien in Alien: Resurrection wasn't bad enough...

I don't care what most people say, Alien 3 is a damn good film. It's dark, it's gritty and it's refreshingly downbeat. It was a damn good end to the Alien trilogy. Unfortunately though, because of the negative reaction to the film and the desire to make some more cash out of a potentially lucrative franchise, Alien: Resurrection got made. And boy is it bad.

Right from the very first second it's obvious you're watching a turkey. The music is terrible, the special effects are sub-par and the visual style reminds me of The Fifth Element – a film I hate with all my heart. Then you have the awful Star Trek costumes and soldiers who look like they're holding toy guns. It's a comic book.

What I like most about the original trilogy is the way that despite being set in the future and despite being about Aliens with acid for blood, the environments felt realistic. The Nostromo felt like a living breathing spaceship, the colony in Aliens felt authentically low-tech and the prison planet in Alien 3 was grim and dirty. Alien: Resurrection, though, feels like exactly what it is: a film. Not once could I suspend my disbelief. The sets look like sets (something that should never happen) and you can just imagine them filming in some large hanger and then someone shouting 'Cut!' The environments are horribly artificial. They're TV quality.

Then there are all the pointless gimmicks. Not one of them works, whether it be the breath identification, the metal detector gloves (more cheap TV quality sci-fi) or the ship's computer being called Father just because it's oh-so clever in light of the computer in Alien being called Mother (Father, by the way, sounds like Stephen Hawking). And then there's the spitting Aliens (the spitting effect is shite) and the bastard creation that is the Newborn. And speaking of the Newborn, how in the hell did that get past the design stages? It looks like hunchback yellow turd with a potbelly and National Geographic tits. It's not in the least bit scary and the attempts to humanise it are hilarious. I'm supposed to have sympathy for its demise? Sorry, I could only sit there laughing my head off.

But the Aliens in Resurrection aren't much better either. They all look like someone has blown their nose on them. They're covered in too much slime and gunk. And then, like the Newborn, there are the depressingly stupid attempts to try and give them character and to try and make the audience feel sympathy for them. Do I care that two Aliens decide to kill one of their own? No, of course not.

But what about the characters? Well, the film doesn't have much time for them and neither do I. Every single one is a cardboard cut out. You've got the evil corporate/military guy, the supposedly lovable rogues and the character who turns out to be a robot. Haven't we been over all of this before? And Ripley is a waste of space too. Sure Weaver tries her best to give her character layers, and she has a bit of fun being bad, but Whedon's script is so thin that it all comes off as a bunch of soundbites, or trailer moments. "I heard you run into these things before. What did you do?" "I died." Ooh, pithy! But I guess that's what happens when you give writing duties to a fanboy and the creator of the hideously adolescent Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, to be fair to Weaver, although perhaps not to Whedon, Ripley does have one good scene, the one where she kills one of her clones. It's the only scene with genuine feeling. Too bad then that it ends with more dire-logue: "It must be a chick thing."

In light of these multiple atrocities, I hoped that at least the action would be a welcome distraction. It isn't. The worst offender has to be the basketball scene. As if the fight isn't bad enough with its brief burst of techno music (I can't adequately express how awful the musical score is), there's the shoot-out with its toy guns and the ridiculous ricocheted shot. It's yet more comic book crap. And the underwater scene, while a good idea on paper, fails to get the blood pumping. In fact, the only thing I kept thinking during the whole scene was, 'Boy, they can hold their breath for a long time.'

Oh, but the worst moment in the film, worse even than the Newborn, has to be when a man with an Alien inside him, who's convulsing, and who indeed gets shot three or four times as he's walking and giving 'birth', manages to punch his attacker in the face, disarm him and brutally beat him up. It's obviously meant to be crowd-pleasing moment, but the only people it's going to please are retards and fuckwits.

But there are many other moronic things in the film. There's the way Ripley has acid for blood yet apparently has a normal physiology. There's the way that Ripley uses her blood as a convenient way to get her out of tricky situations. There's the way that The Company, the real bad guys in the series, are disposed of. There's the way that grown adults refer to the Aliens as 'nasties' and 'monsters'. There's the way that Call inexplicably has a sample of the General's breath (how did she get that?). There's the way that Call gets shot, falls into the water and miraculously reappears somewhere else. There are the Taxi Driver-style electronic holsters that one of the characters wears. And there are the amusingly awful moments of ultra-violence – the General saluting and then picking his own brain, the baby Alien shooting through the bloke's head, the Newborn biting someone's head off and the Newborn squeezing someone's face off. Way to crucify a once great series.

Alien 3, by and large, is considered a poor film. Most people see it as a lazy re-hash of the first instalment and most people hate the way that it dispensed with the other surviving characters of Aliens. Well, I can kind of see their point. Alien 3 does opt for the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of the first and it does have the same stalk and slash mentality – there are no big guns here. And yes, it does rather ruthlessly kill off the characters of Aliens. But I can't really see it being any other way. The Alien series isn't about Hicks or Newt. It's about Ripley, and it's always been her alone against the Alien. To have Hicks and Newt tagging along would feel like Aliens Revisited. It would just be, for the second time, Ripley fighting the Alien to protect her surrogate daughter. At least here she gets to do something different. It isn't a fight for survival, or a fight to protect Newt. It's a fight to keep the Alien away from The Company.

One of the many things that annoyed and enraged me about Alien: Resurrection (now there's an Alien film truly worthy of revulsion) was the way that they dispensed with the main villain of the piece, the mysterious, all-seeing company. That was one of the fun things in the series. You felt like there was something bigger and more important going on. And the filmmakers developed it superbly. In the first film it was only on the periphery. But in the second film, with Burke, it was brought to the front. So I like the way that Alien 3 develops it even further. The Company has an almost Orwellian presence. It seems to see everything. And so Ripley's fight to kill the Alien before The Company can get its hands on it seems entirely convincing. Indeed, there's a great scene – one of those rabble-rousing moments you only see in films – where she explains The Company's motivation to the prisoners. It's an excellent nod to the fans and one that gets you even more fully behind her cause. Don't trust those greedy capitalists, man.

Of course, the company man in the film (Aaron, played by Ralph Brown) is a stupid sheep, but rather than ape what Cameron did with Burke – and make him totally untrustworthy – he's just a man trying to do his job and earn a living. And at the end, after lots of abuse from the prisoners, he actually grows a set of balls and takes a swipe at one of the company men. Too bad, then, that this action gets him killed. I mean, during the final sequence, when all the prisoners are being chased by the Alien in the maze, he finds a quiet room and sits it out. I thought, then, that this might show a new dawning of intelligence. But instead, after looking like he's been saved, he does something brave, but stupid, and gets himself killed. I guess you've got to know when to pick your fights.

Another complaint that people seem to toss in the direction of Alien 3 is that the characters all look the same. Well, personally, I think the characters stand out pretty well. Sure they may all have shaved craniums, but I think that the writing and the acting are pretty damn strong. They all have distinct personalities – which is a pretty good feat when you're dealing with rapists, murders and pederasts – and it's only the ones that get killed in seconds that feel generic. Dillon stands out the most. He's the kind of hardnut that can kick your head in and say something poetic at the same time. Plus, he takes the Alien on in hand-to-hand combat and insults the Alien's fighting skills as he's being killed. How can you not dig a man like that? I also think that Charles Dance is great. He gets killed off rather early, but he makes his scenes count. And he even gets to sleep with Ripley. Sure, in film tradition, this means that he has to die, but hey, at least he went there. And Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Pete Postlethwaite and Paul McGann are superb. Plus I like the way that one of the more peripheral characters survives the whole ordeal.

And the film is also quite poetic. The cremation scene in particular stands out. It has some great dialogue, a fantastic score and the Alien birth is beautiful in a perverse way. And the final moments, too, are great.

But what of the Alien in this film? Well, aside from the occasional dodgy bit of effects work in the maze sequence – it sometimes moves like its got piles – it's excellent. It's certainly better than the CGI and gloop covered monsters of Resurrection. And it gets some pretty good moments. The killing where the blood sprays over Paul McGann's face is nice, as is the amusing killing of Brain Glover. And I also like the bit where it meets Ripley face to face. Somehow, in the Jeunet film, the Aliens were no longer threatening, but in Alien 3 it still has the right stuff.

And I think the film would have been a fitting end to the series. Ripley finally meets The Company and she sacrifices herself to deny them and to save mankind. That's pretty good going in my book. And I wouldn't have thought the character would have had anywhere to go if they somehow would have managed to bring her back to life. Well, when I first saw it, I had hopes for Resurrection, but unfortunately, I was proved right. The series should have ended here.

Directed by David Fincher
Written by David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson
Produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler and Walter Hill
Original Music by Elliot Goldenthal
Cinematography by Alex Thomson
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance and Ralph Brown

Running Time: 114 mins

Rated R for monster, monster violence

Thank the cinematic gods for pluralisation. ‘Oh, what’s that? Alien only had one critter? Well, let’s slap an ‘s’ on the end of the title and have hundreds of the motherfuckers. It’ll be great.’ And indeed it is.

Diehard fans of Alien may bemoan the different approach that Cameron takes – lots of guns and the Aliens themselves reduced to bugs to be blown to pieces by machinegun fire – but the film is true to Scott’s original while taking it in a new direction. It’s a perfect sequel.

The fidelity to the original includes the creepy atmosphere and the slow build-up, but this film has more action and more of an emotional pull. Indeed, it’s the relationship between Ripley and Newt that elevates it to something more than just an excellent action film.

The final act, which sees Ripley head off alone into the Alien nest in order to rescue what has become her surrogate daughter, has a whiff of absurdity to it. Skinny woman with a massive gun and flamethrower attached to her and she’s going to kick butt? Yeah, right. But because Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron play it so straight, and because you’ve become so attached to the characters over the course of the film, it seems like the only thing that could happen. You totally believe in Ripley. This is something she just has to do.

And it helps that there are no attempts to indulge in empty grandstanding. This is just a simple case of a mother going into hell to rescue her daughter. And as everyone knows, there’s nothing in the world you should fear more than a woman who’s trying to get her child back. Mothers are tougher than any Alien Queen, a point illustrated by the fabulous moment when Ripley burns the Alien Queen’s eggs. There Ripley is, just trying to get Newt back to safety. She’s happy to leave the Aliens alone. But then one of the eggs opens, and with a fantastic look from Ripley, one that says she’s going to kick the everloving shit out of you, she lets rip with the flamethrower. She burns the eggs, she shoots the Aliens and fires grenades at the Alien Queen. It’s a phenomenally good scene – aside from crackwhores and morbidly obese shut-ins, I believe any mother in the world would do this for their kid; they’d go into an Alien nest, rescue their child and fuck it up bad if any pissant motherfucker had the temerity to try and fuck with them. You just don’t fuck with a mum and her kid.

But back to grandstanding, one could argue that the ‘Get away from her you bitch!’ moment is an example of empty of grandstanding. But I’d strongly disagree with that. That moment is so iconic because of the sincerity of Weaver’s delivery and the truth inherent in the line – don’t stand between a mother and her child. But fair enough, it’s also iconic because the power loader is so damn cool.

However, the bond between Ripley and Newt was less explicit in the original theatrical version. But in the Special Edition we get a great scene where we find out, because she spent so much time drifting through space in hypersleep after surviving the Nostromo, that Ripley’s real child has died as an old woman. It’s a great little scene and gives more depth to the relationship between Ripley and Newt. I’m kind of baffled as to why it was cut out.

However, other stuff in the Special Edition doesn’t fare quite as well. The least successful inclusion is the scene on the colony where we see Newt’s parents find the derelict alien ship from the first film. It’s kind of pointless and it’s not particularly well filmed or acted – I can easily see why it was cut out. And plus, part of the joy of Aliens was not knowing exactly what happened on the colony. It was creepier when we could try and imagine it ourselves.

I’m also not a huge fan of the sentry gun sequences. Most people tend to love them, thinking they add to the tension. But to me they only seem to highlight the budgetary restrictions. You seem to see the same bit of footage of an Alien exploding over and over again. Plus, for me, there was greater tension when you saw less of the Aliens. The longer you have to wait for the attack, the bigger the pay-off because you’ve been wound up that little bit more.

But although the big attack where the Aliens come crashing through the ceiling is magnificent, I prefer the first encounter; the one where the cocky Marines are slaughtered in the hive. What makes the scene so fantastic is the way Cameron uses the Marines' cameras, the ones they have strapped to them, to add to the confusion of the attack. It makes it even more visceral - we see a lot of the action take place on a series of monitors.

But this use of monitor footage also serves as a nod to Alien. When Dallas and his crew head off to the derelict ship this technique is used to build tension. But Aliens takes the concept that little bit further.

Another concept in Alien that is developed by Cameron is the use of the motion trackers. Scott used it briefly in the scene where Dallas is killed, but here it’s a main feature of the film. It’s used all the time. And again it’s incredibly effective. It’s a tool that’s meant to help the Marines, a piece of technology that helps them do their job better, but it only makes them more paranoid and confused. They can rarely see their enemy. And even when they think they know where the Aliens are coming from, things are turned upside down because the Aliens will come crashing through the ceiling instead of through the door like they expect.

And it’s this unseen enemy, and the Marines' cockiness, that makes it feel like a Vietnam War film. The Marines start off with complete confidence and then are gradually broken down by an enemy that is less well equipped but that can adapt to its environment better.

But although the militaristic aspect of the film is always going to be reminiscent of Vietnam, it also feels a bit like a Western. The Marines keep getting attacked and they’re gradually running out of ammunition. It’s like the Indians are storming the fort – they can only be repelled for so long. But in that way it also feels a bit like the film Zulu – superior numbers will eventually wear down a well equipped force with fewer bodies.

However, going back to the way that Cameron builds upon the ideas that were started in Alien, I love the use of Bishop in the film. After Ash in the first film, we maybe expect another unhinged robot or at very least a company stooge. And at the beginning Ripley treats him like shit. But after hinting that he might be another android psycho, he turns out to be heroic. And it’s a lovely moment when Ripley finally tells Bishop that he did well. In a film that is relentlessly violent, it’s nice to have a moment that has such warmth.

A much smaller nod to Alien that I like is the use of a countdown at the end. With the reactor about to explode we’re told how long Ripley has to reach a minimum safe distance. It raises the stakes even higher when Ripley has to save Newt – not only does Ripley have to save her daughter from the Aliens but she has to do it before everything is blown to shit.

Aside from building on the concepts started in the first film, another one of Cameron’s strengths is creating memorable characters. No one gets lost in the mix. All the grunts stand out. My personal favourite is Hudson (Bill Paxton), the whinging scaredy cat who eventually grows a massive set of balls and kicks some serious Alien butt before being killed. Every line he utters is a work of genius. Then there’s Vasquez. I don’t know what it is about Cameron, but he always seems to be able to create believably tough female characters. Therefore it doesn’t ring untrue when she kicks an Alien in the head and shoots it in the face. You believe this woman is capable of doing this. And of course, then there’s Hicks. He’s probably the toughest Marine, but there’s also a sexual undercurrent between him and Ripley. Thankfully there’s no explicit romance in the film, but with the way that Hicks shows her how to use a gun and with the tracker he gives her, quipping that it doesn’t mean they’re engaged, you know it’s on the cards. And at the end Ripley, Newt and Hicks are like a small family. Again it’s another reason why the film works so well – you believe in the emotional connection between the characters.

But smaller characters stand out as well. Drake and the Sergeant are great in what limited time they have, and I love Gorman, the poindexter turned good. And then there’s Burke, who proves that a greedy company man will always be worse than an acid-drooling monster.