Should I watch Alien?

The long and short of it: Most Likely
When was it made: 1979

Alien was directed by Ridley Scott and is one of the most well-known and often parodied monster movies. Let's start out with that: this is a monster movie, and a really good one at that. Taking place almost exclusively on the mining ship Nostromo. It takes advantage of humanity's inherent fear of enclosed spaces and of what we don't understand. This is not a slasher, and there is not gore sprayed around like beer at a kegger. It works much more on the principles of suspense with a few graphic moments which are thematically appropriate. The set up moves a bit slowly, as does the dénouement. However, the middle more than makes up for the ends.

As I mentioned before, Alien has been parodied an incredible amount of times, mostly due to its universality-most people have seen it. It spawned a series of four movies, and the titular characters have moved on to a new series called Aliens vs. Predator-for better or for worse. Almost anybody who sees this movie far the first time will have at least one joke they've seen in the past make more sense-Spaceballs, anyone?

Now, the movie raises a lot of questions and doesn't take much time to answer them. But those questions are the last thing on your mind once the action starts. It is well timed and well written, establishing realistic characters with whom it is possible to empathize. None of the characters are cardboard cutouts or cliches-not that there aren't some familiar characters, but I think they fall in the same boat as Gandolf being a stereotypical wizard:they fit the stereotype because the stereotype is based on them. So if you get nightmares easily or hate scary movies, then Alien might not be for you (and there are enough of these people to drop this from a "yes" in the long and short of it). If you don't mind a startle or two and like space monsters, make this your next movie.

I really liked this movie. There were scenes that were a bit less than interesting, but these were mostly the establishing scenes where we get to view the 1979 version of the future. I mean, yeah, the spaceship itself is very advanced, but the display monitors look like they were made in, well, 1979. But who cares about all that? Nobody, that's who, because the aliens are awesome and the suspense is handled very well. My favorite scene was the first attack: I was so involved that I had actually leaned forward in my chair and had my hands held up near my face in anticipation-and the scene actually managed to deliver, too. This is a very fun movie, so if you have movie night or party coming up, Alien should be somewhere on the queue.