A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Pretty much B-movie territory... but like I said it has its moments of real class.As the adult S1L works out her destiny, there are times you feel like you're seeing the kinds of primitive psychological insights into an idealized character, such as you'd get from Philip K. Dick or Jerome Bixby. I found those flashes refreshing and exciting. I also sometimes found myself gripped by the central existential issue: That the fate of the human race rests on the outcome, no less than in the original "Alien".But, yes, these rather pristine story elements wind up a bit inundated by the succession of de rigeur horror flick alien/human encounters.And there is the fact that one of the most interesting plot points is a tech hubris of ginormous proportions (NO SPOILER: It's revealed in the first 10 minutes): WHO the HECK's Bright Idea was it to shotgun a DNA sequence radioed from outer space into a human egg?!?!?! Sheesh!!!So, with the proviso that it's pretty much a horror movie snack, it's worth watching for the aforementioned sterling conceptual stings, the general decent production values, the nicely turned dramatic tension over the outcome, and almost all of the acting. There are some letdowns, but I still consider this a not-half-bad "period" classic of the genre.

I really hate to belabor the obvious, but SPECIES is one of those movies that's just asking for it: badly conceived and written, poorly directed with a cast miscast to a man, it's "cruisin' for a bruisin'." "Let's rip off ALIEN," someone somewhere apparently suggested. (Never knowing or caring that ALIEN itself was a hodgepodge of several older films, including IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE, FEIND WITHOUT A FACE, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and David Cronenberg"s THEY CAME FROM WITHIN.) "We can even get Giger to design OUR alien," another Mental Midget chimed in. And thus was born... SPECIES. With the obvious exception of Natasha Hestridge's nude scenes, there's nothing at all to recommend this one- and, even if you're a fan of John Carpenter's GHOSTS OF MARS (in which Miss Hestridge proves herself a most CAPABLE actress), I'd think twice if I were you before forking over the money to see this one.

'Species' features a fantastic cast, and it gets off to a reasonably strong start, but it very quickly begins to deteriorate and eventually limps through its drawn out finale with all of its early promise wasted and forgotten.Kingsley, Madsen, Helgenberger, Whittaker and Molina do what they can with their stock characters and thin script, and (then) newcomer Natasha Henstridge is flat-out breathtaking as Sil. And though she's not given much to do save for walk around in various states of undress, Henstridge does a reasonably good job as both a curious blank slate and a deadly black widow predator. But unfortunately they're not enough to lift 'Species' to the next rung of the evolutionary ladder.

This is a B Movie trapped in an A Production. It tries to break free of its Fancy-Pants foundation and succeeds with some Charm. There is a Name Cast here headlined by an Oscar Winner, Ben Kingsley giving what must be the worst Performance of his Career. The Scene in the Lab when the Scientist are trapped with the "New Alien" is downright deplorable and He and the Director should be ashamed.The Movie is a lot of Sci-Fi and Horror Movie Fun. The central theme here is Sex overlaid by all the Gore and expensive SFX and Action. It is a Sex Story (think Kinsey and Freud on Acid), and is the prime of this pump.The Sex is sexy, the Violence is violent, the Gore is gory, the Alien looks Alien, and the Script is, well that's the rub. The Dialog is sometimes so Corny, Clichéd, and Bad that one can only hope that it was an attempt at Cheap Laughs and aimed at less than the usual Cerebral Sci-Fi intellect. But who knows. Most of this isn't even as good as those "penny a word" Pulps.Overall this will not disappoint Fans of Fangoria and Cinefantastique and casual Folks slumming for a Thrill, but this isn't really anything more than an Entertaining Movie based on past expectations to do nothing more and nothing less at the Drive-In or a Saturday Matinée.