Skip to main content

Alien / Aliens



For the benefits of brevity, I've consolidated these two Alien films into one block, as I saw both of them back to back at the Luna Monday Double screening recently. I remember Alien more clearly, probably because I've seen it more often and more recently than its sequel. In fact, there were a few scenes in Aliens that I'm pretty sure I'd never seen before, this screening being the Director's Cut version.

So, if I'm comparing these two iconic films, I'm still of a mind to say that I much prefer the first one. It's a compact, grungy, flipping scary horror film. Some scenes - the creature stuff, in the main - don't really hold up to today's modern gaze, but back in 1979, I imagine folks were gobsmacked. The famous John Hurt scene is still shocking and the alien's life cycle was a cracking idea for some fun with the visuals, mostly due to H.R. Giger's design work.

Sigourney Weaver, as Ripley, holds the whole contraption together, Yaphet Kotto is great as Parker and Ian Holm brilliant as Ash - "I can't lie to you about your chances, but....you have my sympathies". The cinematography of the ship and planet LV-426 are sometimes too muddy, too murky to see as much as we'd like and the sound mix did seem a bit off at times, with the voices mumbly and the computer and ship sounds quite loud. These quibbles aside, Alien is still a fantastic sci-fi/horror, but on to the follow up.....

Aliens, made 7 years later, with James Cameron taking over directing duties from Ridley Scott, picks up at the final scene of Alien, though a fair amount of time has passed. 57 years, in fact. And one of the good things this sequel does is give the returning Weaver a great big swag of motivation running through the film. This version has a key scene the original theatrical one didn't - namely Ripley finding out that her daughter has grown up and died, aged 66, in her absence. The loss and helplessness of this situation makes Ripley's relationship with Newt (Carrie Henn) more fleshed out and understandable. It also adds relevance to the Mother-scrap at the climax, though I have to admit feeling a bit odd at Ripley's decision to incinerate the alien mummy's eggs. This seemed a bit nasty to me, but maybe it's a maternal thing;).

Visually, Aliens looks cleaner than its predecessor, and it's easier to make out movement but it's just as loud. Maybe my ears are getting old. The high points, aside from Weaver's performance (which is top notch again), would be the way the tension is built throughout, and the final showdown with Ripley in the loader suit (nice foreshadowing Mr. Cameron). But my historical gripe with this film is the portrayal of the army group. They're mostly cocksure dickheads, Bill Paxton being the most annoying of the lot. Between his 'game over man!' bullshit and Newt's glass-shattering screams, there's a bucket load of irritation in this film. There's also the obligatory 'just when you think it's all over....' bollocks, which is a facsimile dump from the first film.

Ultimately, Alien is a small, creepy horror film, whereas Aliens is guns and explosions porn; the bigger, the better. Visual grummer.

See also:

To round out the quadrilogy, have a look at David Fincher's Alien³ (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien: Resurrection (1997).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Case 137

Here's a police procedural drama from the Alliance Francais French Film Festival with a minor key change. Case 137 is based on true events from 2018 during the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests in Paris. The case (or dossier in the version originale) involves a young lad who was shot in the head with an LBD riot gun (basically rubber bullets) and then left on the street. He survived, but with life changing injuries. The IGPN internal affairs department are brought in to investigate. Léa Drucker takes the lead as Stéphanie, a single mum dealing with resentment from her ex-husband, his new girlfriend, and most other members of the force, who believe the cops should look after their own and not 'police the police'. Her teenage son is also concerned that everyone he talks to hates 'les flics'. There's a slight hitch in the case when it's discovered that the injured guy and his family come from Saint-Dizier, also Stéphanie's home town. Director, Dominik M...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Magic Faraway Tree (Me) (Kids)

I probably read these books as a kid (can't remember) but I certainly read them to my kids a few years ago, so the whole family took a trip to the Palace cinema to check out this new film version. It's adapted from the Enid Blyton book(s) by Simon Farnaby, the writer of Paddington 2 , Wonka and Mindhorn , and directed by Ben Gregor, a British TV journeyman. The cast is chock-full of screen dignitaries, from Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, to Python Michael Palin, to Dame Judi Dench as a talking fridge (!). Modernising this classic kids' book series from the 30s and 40s means adding some stuff about screen (over)usage, the splintering of the family unit, and the desire to get back to the basics of life. In this case, the Thompsons go rural in a rundown barn with old tractors, and chickens living on the stove. The family is made up of Tim and Polly (Garfield and Foy), and the three children, Beth, Joe and Fran, played by Delilah Bennet-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche and Billie Gadsd...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amrum

The preview film for the 2026 German Film Festival is a sombre little drama about a child's perspective of the end of WWII. Jasper Billerbeck plays Nanning, a 12 year-old doing his best to look after his pregnant mother and younger siblings in the tiny farming/fishing island of Amrum in Northern Germany. The opening scene shows German planes flying overhead, indicating that even this lonely outpost of the Reich is not untouched by war.  The story really acts as window dressing for the suppression of emotions and trepidation related to the very probable approaching end of hostilities. We find out early on, in a clever moment in the family library, that Nanning's (absent) dad is a high ranking Nazi, and his mum, Hille, is fully on board with the doctrine. Auntie Ena lives with them and is much more pragmatic, and as anti-Nazi as she can be in the circumstances. The two sisters are played by Laura Tonke and Lisa Hagmeister respectively, and they're fantastic. Diane Kruger, who...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...
2 comments
Read more

The Monkey

What's this then? Modern horror, I guess. Or just another addition to the relatively recent spate of animal-titled films: The Lobster , The Crow , The Whale , Pig , Lamb , First Cow , Black Dog , Red Dog ,  Dog Man ,  Monkey Man ,  Wolf Man , Cuckoo , Cocaine Bear , and Hundreds of Beavers . Whatever the reason for its existence, this Stephen King adaptation is a curious beast. Osgood Perkins (son of old Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) writes and directs here. He also has a pretty funny cameo. The story starts with a bloke in a pilot's uniform (Adam Scott) trying to sell a windup drumming monkey toy (DON'T CALL IT A TOY!!). A bloody event occurs, not for the last time in the movie. Cut to 1999 where we meet Hal Shelburn and his twin, Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who live with their mother, Lois (an in-form Tatiana Maslany). The pilot of the opening scene is the dad/hubby who has done a runner, leaving the cursed monkey for the lads to find (though, to b...
2 comments
Read more

The Talented Mr. F.

Screening at the German Film Festival, this is a mind-boggling tale of a 'you-tuber' dickhead who nicked a short animation film off a couple of German university students and passed it off as his own work. The thief, or the 'talented' Mr. F. of the title, is Samuel Felinton, a ubiquitous pud with a probable case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This diagnosis has been mentioned on Reddit but his baggage is weighty so fucks knows what's wrong with him. We open with Moritz and Julius, who made a cute little robot anime, uploaded it to YouTube to see if anyone liked it, and when it gained loads of hits and positive comments, took it down. Emboldened by this public favour, they then started to enter their short,  Butty, into various film festivals. When the replies came back that it couldn't be accepted because the film was already doing the festival circuit, the lads freaked out. Turns out Butty 's brief online life was enough time for Felinton to d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Arco (Me) (Kid)

This is the first feature length film from French writer/director Ugo Bienvenu. It tells the story of futuristic kid, Arco, voiced by Juliano Crue Valdi in the English dub, and Oscar Tresanini in the French original - here I'll explain that I saw the preview of this with the English voice cast, so I'll mention them from now, unless I spy a notable Frenchy. Anyway, Arco is too young to fly to the past like his family do, but like any young ding-a-ling, he decides to chance his arm, and ends up in 2075. This is a more recognisable future for us than Arco's time, as we see climate change writ large on society. In this time-zone, Arco meets Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra) and her domestic robot, Mikki (voiced by a strange combination of Iris's parents, Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo). Iris wants to help Arco return to his time, but they're thwarted by a missing jewel that he needs in order to travel, as well as a trio of bumbling goons (Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and Flea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hesitation Wound

This film was shown at the Revelation Film Festival programme launch for 2024. It's a Turkish legal drama that leaves a lot unsaid, unexplained, with plenty of scope for interpretation. Tülin Özen plays Canan, a lawyer tasked with defending a guy on a murder charge, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). At the same time, she is dealing with the slow demise of her old mother, hospitalised in a coma.  The minutiae of life in this small Turkish town is fascinating. There's one simple, prosaic scene where Canan stops by a chemist to buy a razor so Musa can shave for the hearing. The shopkeeper asks what kind, she tells him she doesn't know, he selects for her, then explains that she can't use her debit card for that amount, so she buys some pretzel sticks. Completely normal, yet for some reason, I've remembered this scene weeks later. Maybe it's the unusualness of seeing a Turkish store on screen, but I think the on-point pacing of the film has a lot to do with it. Another odd...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guardians of the Galaxy

As the picture above suggests, Guardians of the Galaxy is a bit reminiscent of such films as Seven Samurai (and its remake, The Magnificent Seven ) and The Dirty Dozen . An unlikely bunch of misfits come together to fight something or somebody. Hatred and tension within the group leads to respect and friendship. Victory is achieved, albeit at some loss. This is not to undersell Guardians, though. It's a fun film with many things to like about it. It reminded me of Firefly and Serenity , especially the costumes and the design of the spaceships and planet vistas - the giant floating skull of 'Knowhere' is a stand-out. It's also a nice coincidence that Nathan Fillion (Mal in Firefly ) has a pretty funny cameo. Most of the humour in Guardians works. Not too esoteric (though I missed the joke about 'baby gravy') or American focussed, even the 1980s cultural references fit the lead character's situation. The lines are played straight and Chris Pratt h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ainbo: Amazon Princess

A young Amazonian girl bounding around on a tree like Mowgli in The Jungle Book opens this Peruvian/Dutch/German co-production. We soon discover that this is the Ainbo of the title, and that her best friend, Zumi, is about to be crowned leader of their tribe. A relatively quick whip- round of characters introduces us to the two leads; a smarmy village thug called Atok; Zumi’s father and current tribal chief, Huarinka; Ainbo’s foster mother, Chuni; as well as two ‘loopy’ spirit guides, Dillo and Vaca (a bespectacled armadillo and a clumsy tapir). The environmental theme is also introduced early on, in the form of dying fish and disease in the village, attributed to a curse but, as we find out later, the result of something more real, and more troubling. Ainbo is convinced by her spirit guides to embark on a trek to find a magical root that will save the village. On her journey she must deal with various perils, ranging from a pursuing Atok, and a gigantic sloth in his volcano home, t...
Post a Comment
Read more