Alien Reviews
Top CriticThe most startling thing watching Alien again is its pacing. For the first 45 minutes, little happens. It's all slow, exquisite build-up, which makes the second half seem all the more horrific.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
It is depressing to watch an expensive, crafty movie that never soars beyond its cold desire to score the big bucks.
The limited strengths of its staple sci-fi horrors always derived from either the offhand organic/ Freudian resonances of its design or the purely (brilliantly) manipulative editing and pacing of its above-average shock quota.
An old-fashioned scary movie set in a highly realistic sci-fi future, made all the more believable by expert technical craftmanship.
An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography.
The limited strengths of its staple sci-fi horrors always derived from either the offhand organic/ Freudian resonances of its design or the purely (brilliantly) manipulative editing and pacing of its above-average shock quota.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/6
These things no longer surprise or tantalize us as they once did. In a very short time, science-fiction films have developed their own jargon that's now become a part of the grammar.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Alien will upset your mind and upset your stomach.
Alien looks amazing, almost like a new film.
Ridley Scott's new cut won't change the way people think about the movie, but it reinforces the film's strengths without alienating the series' biggest fans.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
It's a most satisfying return to one of the few sci-fi films that deserves to be called a masterpiece.
| Original Score: 4/4
Besides Weaver and Skeritt, the top-notch ensemble includes two of Britain's best actors -- Ian Holm, as the untrustworthy science officer, and John Hurt.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
What's most unusual about the original 24 years later, though, is its elegant minimalism.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's a scream from another era that still echoes around us.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A haunted-house movie set in space, Alien also has a profoundly existentialist undertow that makes it feel like a film noir -- the other genre to feature a slithery, sexualized monster as its classic villain.
The way [Ridley] Scott meticulously raises the sense of menace and tension is worthy of Hitchcock.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
In space, the famous tagline went, no one can hear you scream. In Alien, you can hear lessons for the sci-fi future in a great milestone from the recent past.
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| Original Score: A
