Ripley’s back, cloned to create alien-human hybrid offspring by (that familiar trope) recklessly overreaching scientists, in the Alien series’s conclusive fourth installment. I don’t count the Alien-versus-Predator travesties. Director Jeunet brings his regular players Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman for just the right mix of quirkiness to go along with the doomsday bleakness. Sigourney Weaver conveys the darker note of a woman who’s come back from torment and death.

Conventional wisdom says Alien films declined in quality by installment, but I disagree. Resurrection is clearer and more engaging than Three by a wide margin, and better than the naysayers say.