Blade Runner **
Ridley Scott, 1982
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Visually and aurally stunning. Very glad I got to see this in the theater. I had to wonder from time to time if all the smoke and fog was a way to hide flaws in the set, kind of like in 3D video games when the processor can't draw the world fast enough. In general, though, the atmosphere and architecture are so fantastic that it feels as if the detais of this particular story are somehow a letdown. Not that there's a problem with the basic Replicant<->monster<->human continuum/conflict, but that some bits, like Sebastian's toy pets, and much of the chase near the end seem cartoonish rather than astonishing.

See also: IMDb

Alien **
Ridley Scott, 1979
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Wow, did the guy next to me ever have some awful breath. Also, I sat down (in the most desirable row) two seats away from the only other person in the row. These two dudes come in and sit right next to me, leaving a couple seats open toward the aisle. Then the original "only other person" is joined by her two friends who sit to her left, leaving me squeezed between two groups even though the row was only half full. I was baffled.

I was struck by how, in some ways, horror is an essentially empty genre. That is, in most genres the protagonist wants something, strives to get it, and then succeeds, achieving a goal of some sort, perhaps many sorts. But in horror, the hero is having a fine time as it is, then normalcy is disrupted by the horrific monster, and the objective is to restore normalcy or escape to somewhere resembling it, simply to obtain what's been lost over the course of the film. There's something kind of nice about that.

See also: IMDb | Manohla Dargis review (2003)