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on 3/16/2011
Monsters is a solid alien invasion movie but it can't beat Aliens.
Agree with the above. Monsters is a good, solid film. Aliens is epic...
I was expecting more from Monsters and I really didn't like the ending. Aliens is much much better.
Monsters is good, this is what you can do with a couple of hundred thousand dollars these days. More please. Having said that, Aliens is an entirely different class of good.
on 3/26/2013
I don't rate Aliens as highly as most; I think it's a good film with very few intrinsic flaws and excellent as sequels go, not to mention cementing Sigourney Weaver's status as a Hollywood star and Ellen Ripley as one of, if not the best heroine of all time. Nevertheless, I think it's a very safe film which doesn't take as many risks as some of its fellow franchise films and contemporaries, and has subsequently spawned a million cheap knock-offs which, for me at least, devalue the entertainment of the original, which has since dated considerably worse than its predecessor. Monsters, thankfully, isn't one of them. It's a very ambitious monster movie in that it barely features any monsters, but focuses entirely on character development. It's simultaneously fantastical yet gritty, dystopic feel and low-budget production values evoked strong memories of District 9, one of my favourites. It's main problem is not so much in the low-budget as it is in the fact that it doesn't feel wholesome; in an age where many films are being criticised for being too long, I actually feel that Monsters is too short. In some ways, this works to the film and filmmaker Gareth Edwards' credit in that it left me hungry for more, and I am interested to see what he will do with the new Godzilla film now that he's shown what he can do with character development and chemistry in a Sci-Fi setting with major financial constraints. But this also means that the characters weren't particularly fleshed out, and I feel robbed of the opportunity of getting to know them and share their plight. The end is also a mixed bag (the scene just before the petrol station when they travel across the bombed town felt very off). So while I admire Monsters more than I admire Aliens in what each was trying to do, Aliens is easily the better and more complete film.
I like Monsters- It's a good film. Aliens, however, is a great film and it wins here.
