01/30/10 - Alien

Alien (1979, 117 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/

Alien is a movie I saw last year but before I started this blog. So, like for 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is a movie that was actually pretty fresh in my mind but was watching anyway. They reason for that is because I was beginning a four movie marathon featuring: Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Alien stars Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a crew member on a ship sent out to investigate a strange alien signal. Also on the ship are: Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), John Hurt (Kane), and Parker (Yaphet Kotto). Ash (Ian Holm) is an android with them but they don't know that until probably halfway through the film. Boljai Badejo suits up to play the actual Alien.

The acting here is average on all fronts except Weaver. Ripley is the star of the show and does a pretty good job. Her character is probably the most fleshed out of the group. The other two people that do a good acting job are Holm as the android Ash and (in my opinion) Kotto as Parker. Holm makes Ash weird and a suspicious untrustworthy character with his acting and that's exactly how it's supposed to be. For Kotto, I just like the way he presents his character. He doesn't seem to be acting most of the time which is great.

On this rewatch of Alien I remember pretty much everything that happened. This didn't make the film any less scary or anything but it allowed me to appreciate a new aspect of the film. That aspect is how tense director Ridley Scott makes every single moment. Even knowing what was coming next most of the time, the way the camera shoots stuff and the score create a great creepy feeling. I might even go out on a limb and say that the most tense times were when the film makes you expect something and then teases you with nothing. And I'm not meaning the times when the motion detector is detecting the cat or something, I'm just meaning times when someone goes off alone and the camera shows them doing everything fine. You expect the alien then but it doesn't show. And finally, the time when Ash's head almost snaps off but stays put is really freaky even on a second viewing. I forgot that happened and it surprised me quite a bit.

The setting is also incredibly well done. The ship itself is barren sometimes and extremely creepy at others. It's a good mix and I don't ever feel comfortable watching them move around there. Something always seems just a tad bit off so this creates another layer of tension which is appropriate. I'd also like to say the alien itself is a great design. The sleek and slimy look is disgusting and the added point that the alien doesn't seem to have eyes makes it all the more bizarre and frightening. The mouth inside a mouth thing never really freaked me out or anything, but this lack of eyes is perhaps the most unsettling feature. Also, the alien is never completely shown and this adds to its awesomeness. I get the impression that if this movie were made now that one of two things would happen: the camera would show the alien as much as possible completely ruining this aspect of it; or it would show it in a really shaky and quick cut format so that you never really got a good look at it. The way it's done is Alien is the best, though.

The movie Alien clocks in at 117 minutes but the alien (after bursting from the chest) doesn't show until about the halfway mark. I think this is great and makes the first half of the movie tense for an entirely different reason than the second half. Being able to build up that much suspense and fear is really cool.

Overall, I gave this film a 9/10. Alien is simply an amazing sci-fi / thriller movie. It's probably at the top of the charts in this subgenre. I don't like a few minor things in Alien (sometimes the music is really lacking, some of the acting, and some of the lesser characters), but it's still a great movie. And on a second view in the past year it holds up really well. Even over thirty years later, the movie holds up well with its minimal special effects, instead using great directing and great cinematography.