geezer cinema: alien: romulus (fede álvarez, 2024)

I liked the first Alien movie, and loved the second. Thought Alien³ was dreadful, and found Alien Resurrection even worse, After that I quit watching. But I was encouraged this time around because I liked director Fede Álvarez' movie Don't Breathe, and hoped this latest installment in the Alien franchise would be a good one. Well, that, and it was my wife's turn to pick a movie.

Sure enough, Alien: Romulus delivers. It takes its time getting to the action, and the various characters aren't all that interesting, so it's slow going until the aliens arrive. But things are straightforward ... no artsy-fartsy stuff here. A decision was made to use mostly old-school special effects, and that's nice ... you feel for the actors when you can't deflect your fear into "well, they're acting against CGI in front of a green screen".

James Cameron's Aliens remains the standard against which all other Alien movies fall short, but Romulus is as good as the first in the series. And Cailee Spaeny in the lead pulls off a cool special effect of her own: Sigourney Weaver's 6'0" height helped make her Ellen Ripley an iconic part of the franchise, but Spaeny is also quite believable as a bad ass in Romulus, and it seems even more amazing, given she is only 5'1".