Alien

8.5/10  - Directed by Ridley Scott - 1979 - 117  minutes

Today Ridley Scott can be thought of as many directors, all with an excellent creative and visual eye, but many with less than desirable taste in scripts and varying levels of skill in executing period films. But for a glorious and fleeting period in the late '70s and early '80s, Scott was one man doing what he does best; fascinating and beautiful science fiction. Few films will touch the legacy of the thriller that changed Ridley Scott's career and the world of action and sci-fi cinema permanently; Alien.

I must admit, I viewed Alien as a lover of the action and science fiction of the '70s and '80s first and a movie lover second. The movie is bursting with thrills and classic quotes, it brims with suspense and tension, it has every quality craved by any fan of other sci-fi flicks of its era. But Alien is not campy or cheap, it's not careless and most decidedly not a Spielberg simpatico-alien narrative. It's true, the script struggles with a few moments of corny humor and occasionally falls into action movie clichés, but Scott forms Alien deliberately and attentively into an unforgettable movie. 

The film follows a team of privately employed astronauts in a distant future returning from a mission who are woken from their stasis to investigate an abandoned alien ship. After an alien parasite latches on a crewmate, the crew of the freight Nostromo must fight for their lives against the alien who has grown into a monster. The performances of the side characters are all good (albeit unremarkable), but it's the acting of Sigourney Weaver as now feminist icon Ellen Ripley and the writing of the character itself that stand out. Ripley is a born leader; tough, commanding, and logical. And yet, she's not cold or robotic. She risks her life for the stray cat (the literal origin of the screenwriting principle "save the cat") and uncompromisingly prioritizes the survival of herself and her crew. Ripley is resourceful enough to gain the complete respect and admiration of the audience, but she doesn't feel false or inhuman. Weaver embodies this strong character with complete commitment. Where the line delivery of other cast members is sometimes unnatural, Weaver's dialogue is entirely immersed in the world of Alien. 

Aside from the acting, the most important non-visual element here is the pacing. Every moment of the film is intentionally foreboding in a way that makes the final showdown with the creature that much more terrifying, as the screen time of the alien is relatively small but the buildup is time well spent. I would even go so far as to say that Scott hides the film's monster to create suspense better than Spielberg had in Jaws four years prior. But I would be remiss in convincing a reader to watch the film for the plot; the visual action is what makes Alien one of the all time sci fi greats.

The movie is made for the big screen. Any opportunity you take to watch it in a theater will move you to call it aesthetically flawless, as I did after my first in-theater watch at New York's best revival house Film Forum. I had seen Alien for the first time a year before at home and naturally thought it was great. But something about my second watch made the worn sets of the crew's star freighter "Nostromo" more impressive and the scenes of the crew desperately trying to ward off the creature more terrifyingly claustrophobic. The film's best shots are dark and grimy with careful attention paid to the switch between the close immersive camera work and the wider shots, most notable in scenes where the crew explores the alien mothership. It's no exaggeration that the film's creators had perfectly refined every visual aspect from the sets to the elongated and monstrous head of the primary antagonist (the Alien, now referred to as Xenomorph). Alien may one day fade into obscurity, but its extremely high standard of quality and the praise it continues to receive nearly 50 years after its release make it hard to imagine.