I first watched Alien 32 years ago. I'm 43 now, which means that, yes, I was indeed just 11 years old when I got my first horrific taste of H. R. Giger's glorious xenomorph. I blame my school friend ...

For a long time, aliens in movies had something reassuringly familiar about them. Even when they arrived from distant galaxies, they tended to stand upright, speak (or at least gesture) like us, and ...