Aliens

Since I talk about it endlessly... Aliens is one of my favorite films and holds up continuously on re-watching, my ultimate criterion.  It is furthermore one of two films I was wrong about, the other being Miller's Crossing.  Since this so rarely happens, my noticing being wrong, I find excuses in that they came out around the same time (they really didn't).  Also, and there's some truth to this, I was mad that both films had plagiarized so shamelessly.  Miller's Crossing from Red Harvest, and Aliens from, wait, it's a sequel right?  It must have been the year. And we're talking, let's be clear, about the Director's cut, released so pleasurably and watched so repeatedly on Laserdisc.  Like JFK, I still can't see the film without feeling the subconscious urge to stand up for the disc changes. At some point, I'll talk about the film. Fine, now.  What I like about the film is what I hated about it then: the mechanics.  Aliens drip blood, steal humans and lay eggs and so forth.  Besides being a complete mythology, it is an original and compelling one.  Mr. Cameron was 100% correct for transplanting to an action milieu, as all failures at reviving the franchise have shown.  Tirelessly. But it's much more than that.  There's a multitude of characters interacting, there's the clear research that Mr. Cameron did on the language of the Vietnam grunt, which comes out, unhighlighted, in the film.  Consider Apone saying pulling down his eyelid with his thumb and saying: 'Look into my eye.' - there's a whole subterranean world concealed in this line.  This may be seen as reading too much into it, and certainly true, but many filmmakers would feel the impulse to explain what every indication indicates, which is not done here.  When Milch inserted 'Lawyer up' into the vernacucon, he never explained it, but we all use it like he did.  Likewise, you must thank Mr. Cameron for understanding when a character says: 'We're in the pipe, five by five.'. More later, kids, but I'm starting to like this reworking, as the blog doing what it meant to: be unread.