Cameron's finest

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 1999)

My apologies to any Titanic fans reading this, but in my opinion Aliens is the best thing James Cameron ever did. It's a tremendous thriller with excellent special effects and, in the egg-laying queen alien, the greatest movie monster of all time. For Ripley to stand there and say her famous line, "Get away from her, you bitch!" (don't you just love the way Sigourney Weaver positively *spits* the word "bitch" at the creature?) takes the kind of over-the-top heroism that screen legends are made of. The Alien franchise could've died with this movie -- instead, it became the classiest and most durable of them all. If it lacks the cult-appeal of Ridley Scott's Alien, it more than makes up for it in every other way.