2,076 words

Director Alexandre O. Philippe has followed up his 2017 documentary on the shower scene in Psycho (78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene) with Memory: The Origins of Alien, a documentary on the creation of Alien that attempts to chart the film’s wide-ranging influences and explore its mythic resonance. The result is an underwhelming muddle that lacks direction and often retreads old ground, particularly in an overlong segment on the chestburster scene. (more…)

979 words

Editor’s Note:

After reviewing Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Buttercup Dew decided to revisit its prequel, Prometheus. — Greg Johnson

Prometheus, an omen of the atrocity to come that was Diversity Awakens, is an example of how box office anticipation can propel a franchise into the hands of saboteurs. Unlike the tightly scripted, self-contained stories of the original Alien and exhausting Aliens, (more…)

1,948 words

With its stunning H. R. Giger designs and first-rate cast, Ridley Scott’s classic Alien (1979) is imaginative, visually striking, immensely atmospheric, and sometimes just plain terrifying. Together with its worthy but very different sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), it spawned a vast pop-culture “franchise” (which is Hollywood-speak for a mythos) including two unworthy sequels, Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, plus two Z-grade Alien vs. Predator movies, (more…)