Aliens (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Aliens (Special Edition)
Movie Review: GAME OVER MAN!!
Summary: 5 Stars
"In Space Nobody Can Hear You Scream" was the slogan for the terrifying space-horror film "Alien".The sequel, "Aliens" is nothing short of terrific. This film is nowhere near as horrifying as the original, instead, it is action-packed to the hilt. Director James Cameron, of Terminator fame, does an incredible job with special effects, story telling, and character development.
The story basically picks up exactly where we last saw Ripley, floating through space on the escape ship where she battled the Alien from the first film. Ripley is found by a deep salvage team, and returned back to a space station orbiting Earth. As it turns out, Ripley has been drifting in outer space for 58 years.
When Ripley destroyed the Nostromo in an effort to kill the Alien that slaughtered her entire crew, she cost the "company" millions of dollars, and upon her return, was stripped of her flight status. Burke, played by Paul Reiser, talks Ripley into joining a team of grunts in a military exercise to find a colony of people that were stationed on the Alien planet, and are now missing.
The action ensues from there, as the grunts set up post in the colony stronghold, only to encounter Alien attacks. After many losses, and the finding of Newt, the only apparent survivor of the colony, Ripley fights the Queen of the aliens in a battle sequence for the ages.
There are too many great things to say about this film. If you have never seen it, you have missed out on probably one of the best action films of all time. For a film made in 1986, it is definitely up to par with todays action films.
Movie Review: Is it in her?
Summary: 5 Stars
Aliens DVD
Sigourney Weaver is superb in this sequel to the movie Alien. In this one:
It is nearly sixty years (57 to be precise) after the conclusion of "Alien," Ripley and Jonesy the cat are still quite happily sleeping away in their cryo-freeze compartment aboard the shuttle after sending the first alien out the airlock. The film opens with a salvage crew opening up the shuttle and finding her and the cat! After she's awoken, she learns that she's been floating around for fifty seven years and the company she works for is none to sympathetic to her cause, basically blackballing her. Unbeknownst to her, the "company" sends someone out to investigate her story and not too long thereafter nobody from the planetoid is heard from again. This of course prompts the company to send the space marines and Ripley as an advisor to find out what happened to the people.
What follows from there is one of the best and most intense Sci-Fi action/thrillers to have ever been made and I would highly recommend this film to any and all who are fans of films in this genre!
This review is for the June of 99 DVD release. I found that the THX and 5.1 Surround worked quite well for this film. The seventeen minutes of the restored footage for this film is quite seamlessly added to film and serves extremely well in enhancing the experience of this movie.
Highly recommended for fans of Sigourney Weaver, science Fiction, and good action movies.
Gunner January, 2007
Movie Review: Cameron shows how to do it...
Summary: 5 Stars
Before TITANIC, before TERMINATOR 2, and before THE ABYSS, James Cameron made what is the ne plus ultra of his action-film output, ALIENS. Many of us wondered what on earth could a sequel to ALIEN ever be like. Ridley Scott's mesmerizingly terrifying Gothic thriller in space seemed as if it couldn't be matched. And indeed, wisely, Cameron found the way to do it by avoiding the horror-movie aspect, and instead fashioning one of the finest pieces of filmmaking in the action genre. ALIENS is a war movie of almost unstoppable velocity. This new DVD version includes the 20 minutes or so of footage that 20th Century Fox demanded be removed to keep down the theatrical running time. The new footage (previously available only on the boxed-set laserdisc) forestalls the action elements, yet provides very clear motivation for the character of Ripley to embrace the discovery of the lone little girl on the "alien" planet. This footage stretches the introductory sequences to about 45 minutes, but once the story is set up, the action set pieces begin coming in gangbusters style for the remaining two-thirds of the picture.Beautifully, intelligently designed, photographed and edited, ALIENS mixes suspense, terror, and full-throttle action in a supremely confident and entertaining manner. The DVD's picture is intensely sharp, and the 5.1 digital surround howls with power. The movie has never looked or sounded this good on home video. For thrills and chills, it's a one-of-kind experience.
Movie Review: You CANNOT miss this one!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you enjoy science fiction and fantasy movies then you will most certainly enjoy this one. It's true that the majority of sequels in moviedom are pale in comparisson to the original, however Aliens is more than a match for it's predecessor Alien.James Cameron's script really captures the mood and he creates a fine ensemble of characters played by competent actors such as Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton. Even Weaver's character "Ripley" is still relatively fresh and interesting at this point in the series. The film trades a lot of the quiet, chilling suspense of the original Alien for gun-totting action. However it remains suitably dark and oppresive as the colonial marines soon find out they are no match for the hive of deadly Aliens and it becomes a tense fight for survival.
Clever and original plot, this is arguably Cameron's best film. The DVD version is certainly comprehensive and contains just about everything you could want (except maybe a directors commentary). FOX are among the best for quality and extra features on their DVD releases. Most importantly this release is the "Directors Cut" containining the extra 17 minutes of footage that was cut from previous versions. It should be noted that the picture quality IS grainy, but this is due to the original quality of the 1986 35mm film reel.
If you liked the first Alien movie, this one is a must. Even people who are not fans of the genre would be hard pressed not to take something out of this movie.
Movie Review: If you could give more than 5 stars...
Summary: 5 Stars
Forget that you've seen it before; watching the ALIENS Special Edition DVD is almost like seeing it for the first time. The new added scenes range from interesting to breathtaking. I've seen other re-edited films for DVD (Brazil for one) and have mostly wished they'd been left alone. But here we have an impossible case of perfection made better. The back of the DVD case says the new footage (17 minutes worth) was added to "broaden the narrative scope and enrich the emotional impact of the film". Does it? Yessiree! I do have one minor gripe about this "special" version. There's a scene near the end where even an average viewer can see how a special effect was done. My disbelief is always challenged at the moment. I was hoping they'd use some computer-aided matting similar to the enhancments made in the Star Wars Trilogy to remove this.How about the quality of the DVD transfer? Well, it's tough to find much fault. There is a little graininess or blockiness here and there but the picture quality is mostly quite sharpe. The creatures look amazingly icky! The sound is 5.1 perfection. Turn it up!
The DVD interface is very creative just like the ALIEN DVD. There's some interesting extras to sort through; although not as much as the ALIEN DVD. The Cameron interview is very good (who is that interviewing him? One of the Beach Boys?).
Perhaps the best SF/Horror picture ever done; becomes the #1 MUST BUY Dvd!