"In space, no one can hear you scream...
but Film Forum audiences will still be shrieking in honor of this sci-fi horror classic's 30th anniversary."
– Time Out NY
Click here to read the full review

"A perfectly executed B horror movie disguised with an A-picture budget. This exceptional 30th anniversary print of Alien
is a welcome opportunity to view Ridley Scott's original without the baggage of its inferior sequels."
– Benjamin Strong, The L Magazine
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“STILL THE BEST SCI-FI ACTION-HORROR FILM EVER MADE!
Alien was that rare moment in Hollywood history when artistry and jump-out-of-your-seat thrills collided. ”
– Flavorpill

“Never lost its ability to terrify... DON'T MISS THE CHANCE TO SEE IT ON THE BIG SCREEN!”
– New York magazine

(1979) “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Awakened from hyper-sleep by a distress signal, the all-star crew of the freighter Nostromo — Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, Ian Holm, John Hurt (cast literally overnight when Jon Finch collapsed the first day of shooting), and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley (“the most courageous and resourceful heroine seen on the screen in years” – Washington Post) — lands on planet LB426 to find an immense derelict alien mothership and brings back a nasty survivor. Big mistake! From its ominous opening; to its unsettling production design, both grungilly realistic and creepily unearthly (the alien décor and creature inspired by surrealist H. R. Giger); to its picking-’em-off-one-by-one structure (reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians); to its terse, realistic dialogue (much of it improvised); to the unexpectedness of the first entrance — or exit — of the eponymous creature; it’s no surprise to learn that one of Scott’s acknowledged influences was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Color; Approx. 117 minutes.
A CRITERION PICTURES RELEASE OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM

"To this day, the lion's share of hosannas for Scott go to Blade Runner, but Alien is just as mysterious and immersive in its dystopian details. The Nostromo's dank hulls provide easy camouflage for the parasitical intruder, but Scott doesn't stop there. Through a suggestive use of lap dissolves, he continually lays one murky image over another. Meanwhile, machines emit animal noises, and vice versa, and both sets of sounds bleed into the strains of Jerry Goldsmith's menacingly ethereal score. Finally, so precise is the timing of Brian Q. Kelley's editing that this reviewer, to his complete embarrassment, twice leapt from his seat, despite the fact that he had previously seen the film a dozen times and knew exactly when the shocks were coming."
– Benjamin Strong, The L Magazine

“Still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity. One of the great strengths is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew’s discovery by building up to it with small steps. It is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it.”
– Roger Ebert

“Two years after George Lucas' Star Wars madeblockbuster history with gee-whiz heroics, Scott thrust science fiction back into the foreboding dark. Scott's film still shreds nerves… At once graphically elegant and viscerally effective, the future conjured up by Scott was dystopian to the core. The film's famous tagline somehow seemed a perfect coda for the wider culture, but also fit, as it turned out, with Scott's lonely worldview. What has gone missing in the years since the first film was the essential terror that hums through much of Scott’s work... the chilled-to-the-bone fear that no one can hear you scream, no matter where you are.”
– Manohla Dargis

“Although it has often been described as being a haunted-house movie set in space, Alien also has a profoundly existentialist undertow that makes it feel like a Film Noir — the other genre to feature a slithery, sexualized monster as its classic villain. From the first minutes of the film, as cinematographer Derek Vanlint’s camera crawls through the empty corridors, the mood of dread and confinement is almost unbearable. Watching these scenes on the big screen I recognize how few horror movies I’ve seen before or since that ever manage to capture such a tangible feeling of menace.”
– Andrew O’Hehir, Salon