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

Watching this third Alien film after a re-watch of Alien Resurrection certainly offered a contrast. Where one was somewhat reminiscent of Ridley Scott's original vision, the other felt more like a fun, if stupid, cartoon. It is quite a big leap between Alien 3 and Resurrection so lets see how the Alien Trilogy ended before it... began again. From the offset, Alien 3 stylistically pays homage to the first Alien with it's white/greenish tones and clinical feel rather than the bluey, sweaty look of Aliens . We are led to believe that this will be a back-to-basics outing with a focus more on atmosphere and subtle horror with less action but more impact. To a certain extent, this proves to be an accurate assessment: Alien 3 most definitely approaches the horror aspect of the franchise the way Scott went about it. You get several scenes where something thoroughly unpleasant is going on, whether it's gory surgery or an autopsy, and we mostly see the event through the charac

Reviews have sure been harsh with this one. I mean, I never hear anyone mentioning this fourth instalment into the Alien franchise without them groaning under their breath and complaining about how Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind cutesy rom-com Amelie (and much less cutesy Delicatessen ) was the wrong choice as director blah blah blah... Ok, lets make this very clear: Alien Resurrection is by far the silliest, most grotesque Alien movie pre- AVP . It's hard to contest that. I mean, this one goes where no Alien movie has gone before: Crazy Town. You've got clones, gooey Alien birth scenes, basketball, that weird-looking guy from every JP Jeunet film, the not-so-clever premise that a thin sheet of glass could totally contain some 10 foot alien monsters no problem and...  SPOILERS    Winona-bot!   It's all-over-the-place, yes. But boy is it entertaining. A slow but involving build-up leads to the same type of walking-through-dark-corridors scenario Aliens was a