Alien

So uh... yeah. This movie. It was good, especially for its time. Around then, Star Wars was all the rage, but Alien ignores it for a view of space travel that is much more gritty and uninviting. The crew has to go into a frozen sleep because of the length of the journey, and the ship looks like it was made out of pieces of a refinery somewhere. It's kind of silly now that all of the computers lack anything close to modern interfaces (and even sillier that the sequels don't change it, I understand wanting to be consistent, but with the time passing between the movies there's plenty of justification for an upgrade), but it does contribute to the atmosphere. The movie is a slow burn, as plenty of time passes just establishing the crew and mission before anything goes wrong, and even when it does, it takes its time getting really bad.

There aren't many people left who don't know how the alien gets on the ship, although the entire sequence of events remain interesting and disturbing to watch. I can't say I got the same thrill when I knew exactly what was going to happen at certain points, but I still appreciated the craft at work. As I've said before, Ridley Scott is a man who knows how to shoot a scene. Once the alien gets loose in the ship it becomes more of a standard horror movie, with fake-out jump scares, bad decisions (Hey I know there's a monster on the ship trying to pick us off one by one but we just decided to go make you find the cat by yourself), and brief glimpses of the killer as it makes quick work of the people on board. The only disappointment was the alien itself. They went through great pains to make it not appear to be a man in a suit, but it's totally a man in a suit, and most of the kills are too quick and confusing to totally appreciate what's happening. By the end it's just Sigourney Weaver who remains, and she has a chance to creep around in her underwear for a bit before destroying the creature and the ship, and going back to sleep intact for a sequel. Scott originally wanted to kill her off in the end I think, but her character of Ripley is the one common thread through the series (besides the aliens obviously), and at least for a while it seems to have been a good decision.

Gladiator

Five years after Braveheart, it was time for another vaguely historical violent epic to come in and win Best Picture. A comparison between the two is pretty valid, although the feel is somewhat different as Braveheart is more of a complete war film while Gladiator obviously is a bit smaller, with a focus on political backstabbing in the halls of Rome and literal backstabbing in the Colosseum. It's not the most substantial or my favorite of the movies of 2000, but the lead performances by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix are quite good and the film is visually amazing. Director Ridley Scott rarely truly impresses me with his vision but if you give him a workable script he can shoot the hell out of it.

I actually saw the theatrical cut, not the extended one as pictured above. Don't ask me why I used that image. I just realized Scott's last three films have all also starred Crowe. Huh. Anyway, I quite enjoyed watching this movie. It didn't start how I expected, with a lengthy battle and series of discussions before Crowe's Maximus ever steps foot in the arena, and even longer before he actually gets to Rome. Still though, it's solidly entertaining and gorgeous to look at throughout. The fight scenes are far more brutal and generally awesome than I expected and Maximus is pretty bad ass throughout even while he's mourning and all that sensitive shit. I mean, dude kills tigers. It's great.

Blade Runner

I probably shouldn't have waited this long to see it, although at least it's basically the definitive version. Blade Runner's been regarded as a classic of the science fiction genre for a long time, and it's nice to see the roots of a lot of work that borrowed from it. It's also fun to watch Han Solo, Admiral Adama, Cardinal Rourk, and Elle Driver run around a dark, dystopian city when they were younger (or in Solo's case, basically the same age). Having now seen four different adaptations of Phillip K. Dick's work, it's really interesting how different they can turn out in style, although I guess it can be expected when your leading men include Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Blade Runner has a couple action scenes, although that's not really the film's focus. It's about the story, as the movie raises questions about the true nature of life and the morality of killing off "Replicants", which are basically exactly the same as Cylons and even also nicknamed "skin jobs". The movie's very darkly lit and a bit of a slow burn, which doesn't make it very conducive to watching at night, but I wouldn't call it boring, as it's pretty well put together as a film and never lost my attention. Harrison Ford gives an interesting performance as Deckard, a man who isn't sure about what he has to do anymore. When it gets near the end and Deckard goes after the last couple Replicants, the movie gets genuinely disturbing, as Rutger Hauer plays the psychopath villain quite well, as he is known to do. The resolution is a bit weird, but everything about the movie is a little different, which I kind of like. Ridley Scott used to really know what was up with the genre. Apparently previous version of the movie had some terrible narration by Ford, and I'm curious about that, because it definitely didn't need it.