Monday, August 6, 2012

Alien



Runtime: 117 minutes

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Veronica Cartwright

From: 20th Century Fox

I figured it was time to watch the Blu-Ray of this great film, which I've seen on VHS, DVD, and even on the big screen before. It was a few years ago I got to watch it on the big screen, but it was an obvious DVD projection, as I realized by the end that it was the Director's Cut, which was literally only created to have another version of the film out there and to have some heralded scenes that fans wanted to see; stuff was taken out so that it would be the same length. Both versions are pretty cool to me but I decided to see the original version this time.

You guys already know the plot: a bunch of space trucker types end up going to a mysterious moon to research a mysterious signal; they find the famed Space Jockey and poor Kane (John Hurt) gets attacked by a Facehugger and a Xenomorph pops out of him and causes all that trouble.

I don't think I need to do much explaining as to why this movie is great and it works well even 33 years later, but I'll at least say a few syllables. The familiar cast of character actors along with the relativey new to motion pictures Weaver are pretty great as an ensemble. They work well together and all their arguing makes sense and it's realistic; the fact that the characters all seem realistic (for example, the characters played by Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton argue that they should be paid more for having to go down to LV-426) is a big asset too.

But, what is the best part is how tense and claustrophobic it is. It still is tense and claustrophobic in 2012, a lot of it being set on a ship that is actually huge but it comes off as being small. These average people have to fight a mysterious creature that is lethal with just items like flamethrowers and electric prods... awesome. Others have said much more and much better about this movie so you can explore those opinions on your own; I presume that everyone has seen this already and will agree with me on how great this is, anyhow. Compared to this, no wonder why I was let down by Prometheus.

I'll be back Wednesday night.

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