Sigourney Weaver returns as New and Improved Ripley. Utterly annihilated at the end of Alien 3, the bits of her left over have been patched up by mad, misguided space scientists, who've added more than a dash of alien DNA for good measure. This has the extraordinary effect of endowing her with a Harlem Globetrotter sized talent for basketball, and a nifty repertoire of one-liners to rival Oscar Wilde. It also gives her an enormous dose of that kick-ass attitude a girl needs if she's going to overpower an army of evil extraterrestrial mutants. The director of Delicatessen brings a pleasantly peculiar dark edge to the fourth in the Alien franchise, and all in all it's not half bad.