Notes from the sketch book — aliens

How do you make a movie about the total collapse of the American character without the audience running out of the theatre in a panic? In the summer of 1982, John Carpenter released The Thing, and the audience did just that—they ran, they recoiled, and they rejected it. It was the summer of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a movie that offered a suburban fairy tale of intergalactic friendship, assuring us that the universe was benign and that our own government, though clumsy, could ultimately be outsmarted by a boy on a bicycle. Spielberg gave the Reagan era exactly what...

In the first subject of the Among Us collection we look at two films that tap into the nightmare of paranoia and fear over two decades.

Well after an extended break Notes from the sketch book is back, in these notes I'll be looking at the new Alien movie by Fede Álvarez, Alien Romulus. I've always been a big fan of the Alien movies , I watched the first one (directed by Ridley Scott) when I was far too young and the sequel holds up as one of the best action movies ever made. The design of the xenomorph by H. R. Giger is a timeless, nightmarish vision that is at the heart of the movies. The writer of Alien, O’Bannon presented Scott with a copy...