Alien

Spent most of the day hanging out with my folks and eating great food only to come back to my apartment and watch the best movie ever. How was your Labor Day? I bet it doesn’t compare! On an unrelated note to the film (don’t worry, you know I’ll get to it) I went to check back on when I last watched ALIEN considering this is my 8th log of it and saw my past review in January of this year talking about watching this out of necessity because of how miserable the year had already been. Funny enough I wasn’t aware how much worse it would get in the coming months (a short four months later one of the most important people in my life would die amongst a laundry list of other things I don’t want to get into) but either way it made me grateful because I was just talking to my Dad earlier about how this feels like the first time in the year that things are starting to maybe look up for a change. There is a lot to be happy about right now, and it’s nice to recognize that. This is partially why I love this app so much, it’s almost often become a subconscious journal for my life filtered through the lens of something I’m incredibly passionate about. It’s a really unique thing to be looking back on the last time I watched a Ridley Scott science fiction movie and be struck by how against all odds grief and pain have eased and all the things that have gone well in my life recently. Cool app. Feeling grateful for living. Maybe…this was the true meaning of Labor Day all along… SUCH a delight to watch with two people who’ve never seen it before. Unsurprisingly it works just as well as it’s worked on everyone else I’ve ever watched it with. Truly just the best. No shot to Aliens but anyone who thinks this is worse cannot be trusted. Aliens is all fine and good, but this is legitimately one of the best movies of all time. This movie literally feels like someone constructed it for me as a gift. It broke my heart to kick Harakiri off my top 4 (although real Hayden-Heads know it’s kind of just a rotation between my top 10 so I’m sure it’ll make its way back) but this movie has one too many switches, buttons, and panels for me not to include it. That’s what makes it by the way. It’s the switches, buttons, and panels. Every other element is kind of semantics. I took a film course in high school, you can trust my opinion.  Only concerning part of watching this with someone who had never seen it was when Ripley was self destructing the Nostromo and my roommate audibly groaned and shielded their eyes from the obtrusive and omnipresent flashing lights making me briefly run back in my memory to question if they had epilepsy or not and wether or not I just essentially killed them. Turns out they just don’t like their eyes being molested by bright strobe lights for 15 minutes (loser), but it really helped bring out the tension in a movie I’ve realistically seen over 25 times in my life. The true 4D experience! ALIEN: but this time YOU die in the third act!  Also quick shoutout to H.R. Giger for making perhaps the greatest production design aesthetic contribution in the history of film and also for making me have to explain to an entire college class who you are last semester when I drew a tribute piece to you for a project. That was surely something! People surely do want to hear some guy talk about an old creepy Swiss man who makes psychosexual science fiction art at 10AM! Whatever. Never mind the haters, Giger, you are safe here in the heart shaped locket around my neck… Obligatory extra points for Harry Dean Stanton and also the cat.