late fall 2009 series

Cornell Cinema celebrates the Sci-Fi genre with screenings of new prints of two of the most enduring science fiction films of the last 30 years: the first two films in the Alien series. Ridley Scott's 1979 film about a science crew in deep space that encounters a monstrous, acid-spitting alien is really just a carefully plotted haunted-house movie, raised to art by exceptional editing, performances and art direction - and the now-iconic scene when the alien embryo bursts through the chest of an unfortunate host/crewmate still manages to fascinate and repel. Alien was followed seven years later by James Cameron's Aliens, which forgoes the eerie claustrophobia of the original for full gung-ho action, as Ripley, the sole survivor of the first film, battles scores of aliens with the help of the Marines, in one of the most thrilling movies ever made.