The perfect horror-action blend

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2016)

While the original "Alien" certainly got under my skin more with its claustrophobic shots, I would say "Aliens" is at least equally entertaining. What I like most about James Cameron's action movies is that he never looks down on the genre. It's not because he makes action that the movie shouldn't feature well thought-out dialogues, a coherent story and actual characters, quite to the contrary: there's no point in doing awful things to your protagonists if we don't care about them in the first place. The first act is purely about getting to know the characters, that way it actually has some dramatic value when they inevitably get killed. The action itself looks amazing as well, it's incredible what you can do with practical effects if you don't have CGI to bail you out. The alien queen was so huge it needed fourteen crew members to make it move realistically, but the upside to that: it moves realistically, not pixel by pixel. I miss that charm in modern day action movies, but thankfully a movie like "Aliens" is infinitely rewatchable.