Alien (1979)★★★★★

The entirety of my review tonight was going to be “movies are stupid” because that’s how I feel right now, but this is an incredibly not stupid movie so it didn’t feel right. There’s a lot to be said for this movie, and maybe you’ll get to read some of it next week when I watch the first sequel.

For now I’ll just say that this is a movie about teamwork, about survival, about trust, but above all it’s about aliens. Terrifying aliens. It shouldn’t be so impressive that the crew has two females on board, but add in the fact that there’s no sexual tension or romance story at all and this movie might seem ahead of its time.

Good science fiction carefully places its characters at the juxtaposition of completely unfamiliar surroundings with eerily familiar and relatable scenarios. The best science fiction brings its audience along with its characters. Few horror movies can pull that off the way this one does. This is a great movie, but definitely not for the faint of heart.