Up there

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2014)

The movie starts in space on the rings of some planet. The mining vessel "Nostromo" is on its return voyage, but the crew is unexpectedly awaken from its hyper sleep because the ship has received an "intelligent" signal. The crew wakes up happy, thinking they are almost home. Everything goes down hill when they realize what's going on and that they have to explore some inhospitable planet. A portion of the crew goes off and Kane (John Hurt) is attacked by some parasite. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) tries to keep the crew from getting back in, fearing infection, but Ash (Ian Holm) lets the explorers in anyway. Eventually, an organism bursts out of Kane's stomach and runs amok on the ship. Kane is left dead, then Brett, then Dallas, then Ash, then finally Parker and Lambert. Ash, however, is murdered by the surviving crew after it was revealed he was an android and tried to hide an attempt to capture the alien instead of helping the crew with their original mission.
This film is definitely the best scifi I've seen, perhaps ever. It has nice long talking sequences (after they wake up) and great seems of the ship (inside and out). Ripley Scott conceded in the commentary to have been heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and this is obvious. However "Alien" maintains its uniqueness being much darker. The soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith also keeps it haunting and more a horror movie than the classical score of 2001.
It's also less overt. I took at as a very good portrait of large corporate policy. A couple of the people are paid a lot less than the rest of the crew (one of them is black) and they want to make more money but aren't really taken seriously. It also has the secret android which is good because many times corporations don't keep their policies open. I always find it important that scifi movies have some type of statement. After all, we cannot talk about the future without keeping in mind what is going on in the present.
To sum it up, it is slow paced and powerful. It is haunting and inspiring (the survival of the cat). It's a high recommend to everyone.