TheRetroCritic

The film that started it all, Alien represents a director at the top of his game: Ridley Scott lends his classy, atmospheric, moody style to what is essentially a monster movie slasher horror flick and the result is both genuinely unnerving and unique. Not to mention friggin' great. Only very few Ridley Scott movies have that dream-like quality to them and although Alien is most definitely one of them, this is more of a nightmare than anything else. H. R. Giger's detailed, oppressive style shot so poetically creates an atmosphere that's comforting on the surface yet holds an underlying darkness and mean-spirited violent chaos at its heart. One second you're having a nice dinner with the crew, the next you've got blood spurting out of some guy's chest into your eyeballs. Yes Alien has that typical slasher template of people-being-killed-off-one-by-one-by-something-unpleasant but it's so well done you do get attached to those characters, no matter how

Ok, how many viking sci-fi film with giant monsters, spaceships and the line "Foxfire!" can you name, right now? OUTLANDER, that's how many! The ever charisma-free James Caviezel stars in this random but pleasantly entertaining and good-looking action adventure which also stars John Hurt as the king of...whatever, vikings. Sophia Myles is the inevitable love interest, like a clone of Keira Knightley from the film King Arthur , Jack Huston offers an unintentional homo-erotic relationship for Caviezel's "Outlander" and Ron Perlman sports a beard and yells a couple of times. It's all very silly but the first half hour is genuinely very entertaining and competently made, especially because the monster is kept hidden from us long enough to build up a fair amount of well-needed suspense. The rest is pretty predictable and feels less focused but is equally fun and miles more worthwhile than dull efforts like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood .