Monday at the Movies - August 20, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-One of “Monday at the Movies.”  With the summer blockbuster season officially closed (I, The Cinema King, decree it – so let it be written, so let it be done), and in the wake of Prometheus, it’s time for that long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy.”

Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott has been mostly canonized for Alien, and not without reason; more than thirty years later the film remains frighteningly effective and gruesomely imaginative, even with the lights on (how wonderful this film must have been in a full darkened theater!).  The story, a hybrid of science fiction and horror tropes, mutates frequently, much like its eponymous creature, so that the audience never gets a comfortable handle on things; instead, we’re put on edge at every twist and turn.  The cast doesn’t do Oscar-caliber work, but they too are pivotal in subverting expectation, particularly Sigourney Weaver, in a star-making performance as the heroine Ripley, and Ian Holm, in brilliant creepy form as the shady scientist Ash.  As with Prometheus, this is a film that functions as much on a visceral level as an intellectual/aesthetic one, with a pervasive feeling of suspenseful dread over the whole affair.  Scott wisely knows how much to show and how much to conceal, such that the creature might even be behind your sofa (you’d best make sure it’s not).  But unlike its prequel successor, Alien never aspires beyond its ability; we don’t need to know why the crew of the Nostromo is in space, nor do they have any goals but survival – nor, in this case, do they need them.  This is an insular and claustrophobic film which feels as taut as its scope.  Kudos especially to H.R. Giger, whose sexualized designs pervade the film and give it an offbeat sensibility that quickly and efficiently distances Alien from those other spaceship movies while setting an aesthetic tone for the future of the filmed future.  Effective and intelligent, Alien deserves its status as a cultural icon.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!