The best things to do in Los Angeles this week

After 30 years, the “Boo!” and gross-out moments are permanently cemented in the cultural psyche—from the face-hugger’s leap out of the translucent egg to John Hurt’s dinner-table stomach burst. So what’s left to discover about Ridley Scott’s great deep-space horror show? Mainly it’s the sense of pace and craft that the once-promising director would soon trade in, post–Blade Runner, for empty, pretense-laden spectacle. When Scott introduces us to the crew and corridors of the interplanetary mining ship Nostromo, he emphasizes silence and languor, the better to immerse us in the cavernous physical and mental playground that the alien (designed by Oscar-winning Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger) will use to its merciless advantage. It’s the creature’s instinctual murder spree that makes the immediate impression, but that would be nothing without the simmering tensions among the human counterparts. At times, Alien plays like an upstairs-downstairs comedy of manners, complete with disenchanted, proletarian grunts (Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto’s union-men mechanics) and effete, eye-rolling snobs (Ian Holm’s above-it-all science officer) trading class-specific aspersions. What it all comes down to, of course, is Sigourney Weaver in her underwear facing off with a drooling, phallus-shaped nightmare made flesh. The dissertations practically write themselves.

Too often dismissed as the bland, cutesy, cakey-bakey face of the modern romcom, the late Nora Ephron was an unacknowledged genius when it came to screenplay construction – and ‘When Harry Met Sally’ remains her finest work. This is a film where everything works: Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s just-this-side-of-smug central couple, the gorgeous photography of New York through the changing seasons, even Harry Connick Jr’s jazz-lite soundtrack. And it’s all rooted in that flawless script. The story is simple: Crystal and Ryan meet after college, and loathe one another on sight. As the years pass the random meetings pile up, and dislike turns to reluctant friendship. But, as the film insistently, infamously asks, can men and women ever really be just friends? It’s not just that Ephron poses these kinds of obvious-but-important questions. It’s that she does so while circumventing romantic clichés left and right, creating unforgettably loveable characters and throwing in some of the most fluid, insightful and witty set-piece conversations ever written (the diner orgasm is the most famous, but it’s the tip of a very large iceberg). ‘Perfect’ is a big word to use about any film, but in this case no other will do.

With his white-knuckle sci-fi thriller Gravity, Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón extracted an intimate character study from the vastness of outer space. Now he goes in reverse: In his deeply personal b&w marvel Roma, Cuarón—a director of erotic road-trips (Y Tu Mamá También), dystopian thrillers (Children of Men) and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the finest entry in the Harry Potter series—unhurriedly observes the smallest parts first, before expanding to gradually reveal the social and political canvas of 1970s Mexico City, where he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Roma. A sober and autobiographical elegy about his childhood and the women who raised him (one hardworking live-in maid in particular), Roma coalesces out of episodic recollections, digitally filmed with a crisp, grain-free appearance for unsentimental visual conviction. The domestic helper at the heart of the story is the gentle-natured Cleo (exceptionally talented newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), who works for the affectionate but occasionally livid Sofia (Marina de Tavira, terrific and understated) and the rest of her family. Through transfixing long takes that capture the monotony of Cleo’s chores, Cuarón dotingly honors Cleo’s unsung rituals (just as Chantal Akerman did in her 1975 feminist classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels): cleaning, looking after Sofia’s lively four children whom she loves like her own, interacting with her best friend and co-worker Adela (Nancy García García), going

If you’ve ever been stuck hundreds of miles from the love of your life, wondering if it’s really worth all the heartache and phone-checking, Pawel Pawlikowski has made the movie for you. With this monochrome love story spanning two decades and four countries in post-WWII Europe, the Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away. Beginning in 1949, twentysomething singer Zula (Joanna Kulig) and middle-aged pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) meet in the least auspicious of settings—an austere Polish musical academy that could easily double as a prison. Wiktor is tasked with assembling a troupe of folk musicians to extol the greatness of the motherland, but he’s had his fill of songs about agricultural reform and the global proletariat. Zula’s defiant spirit catches his eye, they fall for each other and he promises her a new life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But when he defects to Paris, she surprises him by staying behind, setting in motion a 20-year love affair that plays out like a swinging ’60s version of Doctor Zhivago. Chemistry is not in short supply between the two. There’s an age gap—that hoary old bugbear—but Pawlikowski semi-subverts it by making Wiktor the more lovelorn of the couple. They meet and part on Parisian boulevards, in smoky jazz clubs and at concerts in Yugo

For all their global dominance, everybody wants these superhero movies to be better: funnier, smarter, more inclusive, more super. A huge step in the right direction, Black Panther is that dream come true. Proudly African—even if its Africa comes in the form of the fictional country of Wakanda, a powerhouse of secret technologies—Marvel’s latest is, from top to bottom, a conscious reversal of racial paradigms. Handsomely mounted by Creed director Ryan Coogler and starring an enviable slate of black actors that makes cameoing comics godhead Stan Lee almost seem lost, the film is provocative and satisfying in ways that are long overdue, like its ornate, culturally dense production design and the deeper subtexts of honor, compassion and destiny. Wakanda’s young king, T’Challa (a dignified Chadwick Boseman, well-seasoned after playing onscreen versions of James Brown, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall), recognizes that the world outside his peaceful realm is a divisive place. Still, even as his own armor-clad excursions as Black Panther set up an internal tension between isolationism and responsibility (yes, this is the rare blockbuster with something on its mind), tensions within Wakanda—fomented by exile-turned-rebel Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan, on fire)—threaten to bring him down. In their script, Coogler and Joe Robert Cole take inspiration from the Black Panther’s 50-year history on the page, including a dazzling current run by author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the fi