One of the best of all time

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2003)

Look, you're entitled to your opinion. If you think this movie is overrated, you'll never be a convert. I am not given to hyperbole...check my other reviews and see. I am hard to impress...cynical, even. But how anyone could watch this film and be underwhelmed is beyond me.

One of the reasons I respond to it as strongly as I do is BECAUSE of the wonderful characterizations by the strong cast, especially Veronica Cartwright and Yaphet Kotto. Watching this film, one can't help but marvel at how much MOVIE is there, how much texture and backstory is layered in the all-too-few group scenes, and think wistfully of the action or horror movies that are made with ensemble casts nowadays. Those are made of carticatures, to be slashed/eaten/blown up one by one, meaningless and disposable. Look at "Scary Movie", which successfully lampooned this archetypal, boring standard-issue cast makeup.
In the case of 'Alien', however, you have a real cast, of real characters, and when they all gradually meet their maker ( I don't think that this is a spoiler--who doesn't know the premise of the 'Alien' movies??), I don't know who can't honestly feel bad for each one of them. When Tom Skerritt swallows hard and volunteers to do something you know is not going to prolong his life, you genuinely want to scream at the screen...NO!
Everyone knows about the extraordinary design, the amazing performance delivered by Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, and the fantastically creepy Alien. How can everyone know if it is such a bad movie? I can't think of a bad word to say about it. The tension builds like music. The chills and thrills are exhilarating. The creepy, tragic feeling of doom and despair is palpable. It's a masterpiece of storytelling, if you ask me, done in such a spare and elegant fashion it makes me marvel every time I watch it. Superlative.