“We’re in the pipe, five by five.”
Notice how Ferro seems more pissed than horrified that the alien is getting into the cockpit — Dammit, where’s my fucking gun? There’s more of these things every season!
This is going to get me blowback: The best performance in the whole movie has got to be Jennette Goldstein as Vasquez. Have you ever seen an actor disappear so completely into a role? And it’s not just the makeup.
“Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man before?”
“No… have you?”
I think more than bravery what he has is complete dissociation, he’s an executive, one of the masters of the universe, of couse nothing bad is going to happen to him, that’s for the little people.
No, it’s not that, or at least that’s not how Reiser plays him. He comes across as anxious and even a little scared, but keeping it together.
Besides, he’s not really a master of the universe, he’s an up-and-comer. He’s the young guy who thinks he’ll be in charge one day, so to get there he’s working 100-hour weeks visiting people at the hospital and acting as the board’s eyes and ears in the field. He knows that something bad could happen to him, because that’s what business is like: people in power don’t care about the people beneath them. That’s why he had no problem infecting Ripley and Newt.
Now I’ll have to watch the movie again to confirm or reject what you said, oh well…
This lady is John Connor’s step-mom, right?
YES! Amazing, isn’t it? Goldstein is pale complected, freckled, red-headed and I could not see a trace of her in the Vasquez character. I think she was robbed at Oscar time that year.
There is a great episode on the wonderful podcast I Was There Too that interviewed her where she told of her roles:
I highly recommend this podcast series.
Yes and she was also the Irish steerage mother in Titanic. Basically, if you can tolerate being around James Cameron, you’re guaranteed to get repeat work from him.
Yeah, I mean some people get along well enough with him. It’s definitely true that he re-uses his actors. He even brought Sigourney Weaver back for Avatar 2 when she doesn’t survive the first one.
Shame he’s just going to make Avatar movies until he dies or retires at this point. Not his best stuff.
I think Bill Paxton was in every Cameron film.
My thoughts too. This one is hard to nail down for me. Overall, I am glad I saw it but I’m not eager to watch it again either. Very strange movie.
Check out Near Dark (1987), if you haven’t seen it already. Writer and director Kathryn Bigelow (the future, but only briefly, Mrs. James Cameron) took Cameron’s suggestion to hire from his Aliens cast, so Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton and Jeanette Goldstein were brought in to play a family. Of sorts.
I don’t know how I’ve missed this one. It’s going to the top of the list. Much obliged. 
The Electric State. A $320 million film that goes straight to Netflix is bound to disappoint. Lots of star power without any memorable performances and a story I feel like I’ve seen in one form or another a hundred times. Completely forgettable.
Netflix bought The Electric State from the Russo Brothers before it was even in production, hoping I think to recapture some of the magic of Extraction (which was IMO a mediocre movie, but which was their most-steamed movie ever at the time).
It was hot!
hahaha. Well, it’s Chris Hemsworth, I might not be wrong.
I’m about 45 minutes in right now and it is pretty good. I mean, I’m hoping it improves before the end, but it isn’t bad. I saw The Gray Man movie and it was picked, I think, as the worst movie I saw from the year it was released.
This is nowhere near that dull.
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Three returning WWII veterans adjusting to life back at home. Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Fredric March.
#37 on the AFI 100, and I’d never seen it. But oddly, my wife – who doesn’t like old movies (“they talk funny”) – heard something about it and decided she wanted to see it, so we recorded it off TCM.
It’s very good. Not sure it’s top 100, but it’s definitely worth seeing. A few notes:
It’s 3 hours long. And this is not David Lean, or a sword-and-sandal biblical epic…it’s basically a soap opera. But it never drags; I never checked my watch.
Odd casting for Dana Andrews’ character. He was a soda jerk before and after the war, and he comes home and falls in love with a teenager (Teresa Wright). The role should have gone to someone like James Dean (or the 1946 equivalent)…Dana Andrews was 36. And his character somehow attained the rank of captain, which doesn’t jive.
This conversation happened:
Wife: Who’s that actress?
Me: Myrna Loy
(an hour later)
Wife: I like Myrna Loy
Me: (duh…who doesn’t??) We should watch a Thin Man movie.