Skyline

Not the famous brand of Chili in Cincinnati. Not the small northern Alabama town where everyone seems to hate each other. This is Skyline the movie.

By far, the easiest type of movie to review is one that is completely awful. The jokes basically write themselves. It’s also easy enough to rave about a movie you love. The hardest movie to review, in my opinion, is one that you never form a strong opinion about and neither like it well enough to particularly recommend it or hate it enough to mock it. This is also Skyline the movie.

An artist named Jarrod (Eric Balfour from Haven and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) and his girlfriend Elaine arrive in Los Angeles for a birthday party for Jarrod’s best friend Terry (Donald Faison from Scrubs). Terry has hit it big, and wants Jarrod to move from New York to work for him. We are treated to a dullish party where we learn Elaine is pregnant and doesn’t want to move, Terry is cheating on his wife with his personal assistant, and the building super objects to loud music. It’s a very special episode of Party of Five. If you’ve ever watched one of those TV shows about angst-ridden yuppies and wished aliens would invade and kill them all, this might be your kind of movie, because Jarrod and Elaine have arrived in L.A. just in time for a big alien invasion.

Alien spacecraft descend and produce bright lights. If you look at them, you become all veiny and are drawn into the light and sucked up into the spacecraft, no doubt for a nefarious purpose. The military is no match for the alien menace, and soon Jarrod, Elaine, Terry, and company are attempting to survive the attack and get the hell out of town.

The obvious connection to be made here is Cloverfield, a similar and better movie about a group of affluent young things trying to survive horror. In both movies, the main characters (and the viewers) never get the full story about what is going on, and seem to be a side story to the main action. In this one, the characters seem a little less sympathetic, and the ending tends toward the confusing side.

More interesting than the movie itself is the back story of how it came to be made. The co-directors are successful in the field of computer-generated special effects and self-financed the production, spending $500,000 to shoot the live action before adding $10,000,000 of special effects in post. (The movie was shot in one of the co-directors condominium building). It does look great.

I suppose this is one of those films that should be seen by viewers who love alien invasion films, a group of which I am a member. A sequel has been rumored to be in the works since this came out, but has not yet materialized.

It will clear up. Just give it time.

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Predators

The original Predator, released in 1987 and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of those movies whose fame has managed to outlive its decade. Still revered by its fans, it seemed ready-made for a successful franchise, but 1990’s Predator 2 was a disappointment, and the character remained dormant until brought back in Aliens vs. Predator (not as bad as its reputation, but still a little disappointing) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (It’s impossible to say too much about this one, since it was filmed with a total absence of light. I have no idea what happened in the movie, although I’ve seen it twice.). Various ideas have floated about reviving the titular monster, but none came to fruition, until this year’s Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators.

The movie opens with Royce (Adrien Brody) falling through the air. He has been thrown out of some sort of craft, and is saved by an automatic parachute (although the parachute opens low and slams him to the ground, which seems contradictory to their purpose). Royce is a mercenary (presumably) and he finds himself in the company of Nikolai, a Spetsnaz commando, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), a member of the Zetas Mexican gang, Isabelle (Alice Braga), a CIA sniper (disregard what is said about her by Royce, he’s wrong), Stans (Walter Goggins, playing his usual racist redneck) and so on. All are obvious killers, except for Edwin (Topher Grace), who is a doctor and is presumably there to act as the group medic. It seems the deadliest of humans has been plucked from their world by the Predators and placed on a “game preserve” planet to be hunted by the Predators. This brings the story even closer to its original Most Dangerous Game antecedent. There are also other species from other worlds, but they barely figure into the story.

The seven surviving humans (one has an unfortunate parachute accident and does not live to take part) soon realize they are being hunted by the Predators and spend most of the movie trying to figure out how to fight back. There’s not much more of a plot than that; this is an action movie through-and-through. Complicating the situation somewhat is the presence of two distinctive (if you look closely) Predators, who apparently don’t like each other very much. I do wonder how a race that spends all its time trying to kill each other ever gain the technology to move about the universe so freely. There is a twist near the end which you may or may not find obvious, and the end sets up the possibility of a sequel, which Rodriguez has promised will be forthcoming.

My main reservation going in was Adrien Brody as a lead. He is a fine actor, but is better known and was seemingly better suited to playing more passive, intellectual roles. I was pleasantly surprised. Brody beefed himself up somewhat for the role, and talks in a lower, gruffer voice, and all in all, comes off well as a soldier for hire who is capable but interested mainly in saving his own skin. The rest of the cast is a bit stereotypical; one-note characters in the movie just so there would be someone to kill. The worst offender, the fault of the script, not the actor, is Nikolai. He is portrayed as an almost mindless brute with a machine gun. The Spetsnaz are the Russian Special Forces, and only take the best mental and physical candidates. It would have been a more interesting film, in my opinion, if Nikolai was the equal to Royce, perhaps pushing an alternative viewpoint, rather than having Royce as the Only Guy Who Knows What To Do. We also meet our old friend Exposition Guy (Lawrence Fishburne, in basically a cameo) in the middle of the movie, but since the only information he ha to dump is “the Predators want to kill you”, he doesn’t serve much of a purpose.

Incidentally, the filmmakers have stated this movie is a sequel to Predator and Predator 2, but not to the Alien vs. Predator films. Good call, although I would have pretended Predator 2 never existed, too.

So, is it worth seeing? I think so, as long as you know exactly what you are going to be watching. This is a simple movie of dangerous people being chased by alien monster who use advanced technology, just like the first movie, and in that it succeeds just fine. If you want something deeper, you probably wouldn’t choose this one anyway.
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District 9

I was a little bit hesitant to watch District 9, for a couple of reasons. First of all, a movie that receives the hype it did usually disappoints, as it just can’t live up to the buzz. That’s why I watch movies like Supercroc. You don’t go in with the idea it’s going to change your life, or even be competent. The other reason is that it was well known District 9 was a “message” film, and filmmakers are generally terrible about doing such, getting overwhelmed by the idea of making their point and forgetting that people are irritated when they are preached to. (This is why Spike Lee infuriates me. He obviously possesses great talent, but he will make a movie that eloquently makes its case against racism or some other social ill for 90 minutes, then stop the movie dead so a character can deliver a “racism is bad” rant, as if you are too stupid to understand that from the rest of the movie. Then again, I do watch movies like Supercroc, so maybe he is right.)

Despite all this, which caused me to miss District 9 while it was at the theater, I finally got around to watching on DVD, and I was pleasantly surprised. While it is not a movie that will change your life or the entire future of movie-making, it is well-done, intelligent and entertaining. The message is there, but presented well enough it doesn’t seem like a sermon.

Twenty years ago a giant space craft reached Earth and hovered over Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans were eventually able to gain access to the ship, which they found to be filled with insect-like aliens, who are given the derogatory nickname “prawns” due to their resemblance to shrimp. The prawns seem to be workers/slaves, and whoever was piloting the ship has disappeared somehow. The prawns are taken to Earth, where they are segregated into “District 9”, a garbage-strewn ghetto. There, they are exploited both by the government and by gangs, who control them due to their addiction to cat food, and use them to try to get the secrets of the alien technology, which can only be used by the prawns, as it is somehow keyed to their DNA.

Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is a mostly dim bureaucrat in an agency tasked with managing the aliens. He is given the task of overseeing the eviction f the prawns to a new district, ostensibly to get them better living conditions, but really to discover more about the technology and the aliens’ other secrets. Wikus’ life changes when he is exposed to an alien compound which wreaks drastic changes on him, and he is forced to switch sides.

The parallel to apartheid is so obvious as to not be worth comment, but the filmmaker does something interesting. The aliens are shown to us as being ugly (to our eyes), somewhat dumb (or at least horribly naïve negotiators), and irrationally violent, so our sympathies in the early part of the film lie mostly with our fellow humans, even in scenes where a grinning Wikus destroys an alien “nursery”, including the infant prawns inside. When Wikus is forced to confront the fact there may be more to the aliens than he realized, we are being pushed to the same revelation, which allows us to “experience” the message of the film without being explicitly lectured as to what it is. Very effective.

Wikus is an interesting character. Not overly bright and certainly not given to deep thought, he is a mid-level bureaucrat. This type of protagonist dominates Russian literature, and appears often in some Asian books, but The Bureaucrat is rarely seen as an archetype in American fiction/film. We are more inclined to make the protagonist of a film like this one a crusading attorney, or something similarly higher class, perhaps because we see ourselves as more than we really are. Nevertheless, by containing our flaws, Wikus serves as an effective stand-in for the viewer.

The movie is not only about a message, as the second half becomes pretty much a sci-fi action movie. It keeps your interest as it takes some interesting turns. I highly recommend this film.
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Threshold (Not The Series)

You’ve got to love the Sci Fi Channel – excuse me, that’s now the SyFy Channel, as they’ve now changed their name to take advantage of an apparent cross-promotion with syphilis. They take a lot of crap over the generally pitiful quality of their original programming, but without them, where would we go to see movies about moths from outer space trying to take over the world? It also has a cast made up of people from various sci-fi related series, including Nicholas Lea (The X-Files), Steve Bacic (Andromeda), Teryl Rothery (Stargate SG-1), and Jamie Luner (I’m sure she was in something, the name’s familiar).

An astronaut is floating in space, on an urgent mission to repair some space stuff, when a cloud or two blows past him. It’s better not to think about clouds blowing around airless space. One of the clouds strikes the astronaut, blowing through his suit, and into his arm, although he shows the Right Stuff by taking this calmly. It’s just the type of shit you have to put up with when you’re an astronaut.

Back on earth, the astronaut is treated by NASA’s head doctor, Dr. “Geronimo” Horne. Dr. Horne makes a pair of startling discoveries. There is living, insect-type cells in the fragments that struck the astronaut! And some are still embedded in his arm! Dr. Horne tells the astronaut there’s nothing to worry about, he doesn’t even need to be quarantined, and sure, he can sleep with the window open. He does call in entomologist Dr. Savannah Bailey to study the new DNA. Drs. Horne and Bailey clash upon first contact, which we know means they’ll fall in love. Horne tells Bailey they’re keeping the discovery of the first alien life form a secret even from the government for a while. What could possibly go wrong?

Bad news for the astronaut. His fingers turn into cocoons, moths hatch out, and he bleeds to death. That open window turns out to have been a bad idea after all. The moths escape into the outside world (Houston, Texas) and beginning biting people. Apparently, they bite anyone with the same blood type as the late astronaut, and convert them into man-bugs, complete with extra hidden appendages and nictitating eyelids. Those with different blood types shouldn’t feel left out, as they can serve as food.

One of the unusual things about this film is that through the first 40 or so minutes, the bug people only attack obnoxious jerks. An alien invasion where they kill only the assholes? I’m thinking this may not be such a bad idea.

Government spy types show up and tell Horne and Bailey if they don’t find and destroy the bug people in a day or so, the spy guys will blow up Houston with a bag of explosives. Having had generally poor experiences in Houston, I am ambivalent.

Fortunately for our heroes, the bug people have produced a giant larva, and they have to stick together to worship it, and also because they are a part of a hive, although I thought moths…oh, forget it.

Threshold is actually done with a reasonable level of competence, and the acting isn’t bad. It’s fun in a cheesy, mocking Sci Fi/SyFy sort of way.
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H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

The Asylum is a direct-to-DVD production company whose main stock in trade is producing “cover” versions of more heavily advertised, higher-budgeted movies. They countered Snakes on a Plane with Snakes on a Train, The Invasion with Invasion of the Pod People. Quality is not high on their agenda, since their business model seems to be based on people’s inability to read a DVD box cover. In 2005, when Steven Speilberg directed War of the Worlds as a Tom Cruise vehicle, they countered with H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. As always, use of the author’s name in the title indicates the script will deviate significantly from the original story.

The Asylum’s version of War of the Worlds stars former Brat Pack member C. Thomas Howell. He plays an astronomer and mainly serves as our point of view character. He has a wife and child, who head for Washington just before the attack occurs, so the main focus of his struggle is to find them. We get a brief glimpse of their family life beforehand. They are about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, which leads to something of a shudder. Howell was 39 when the movie was filmed, but looks much older (he had suffered some health problems which caused drastic weight loss, and has prematurely grey hair) and the actress playing his wife is 24 and looks it, giving us a mental image of a courtship involving an older guy stalking a 14 year old. Their marriage is under pressure, since he is constantly being called to work on emergencies. I’m not sure what constitutes an emergency for an astronomer, maybe a lot of stars keep blowing up or something.

Anyway, the Martians attack, and as in the other versions, things go badly for the old human race. This version eschews the traditional tripod look for the alien machines in favor of a more crab-like appearance, although that doesn’t really matter much. They blast, melt, gas, and stomp various humans. As might be expected in a low-budget movie, the special effects are nothing to shout about, but they are passable.

Howell, whose character’s name is George Herbert (get it?), begins his journey to find his family and runs into facsimiles of the familiar characters from the novel. He meets a soldier, who is much more sympathetic than his written counterpart – it is his commander who is crazy – and a preacher. Ultimately, things work out as the Martians come to regret not taking their flu shots.

The first half of the movie really isn’t that bad, but it clangs to a halt about the time the preacher appears. Not that is solely his fault, it looks like the production ran out of money, and the second half is Herbert and the preacher talking to each other, and it isn’t exactly My Dinner With Andre. The preachers spend his time endlessly complaining about how hungry he is – it’s his comeback to everything – which would be more believable if he wasn’t stuffing his damn face in just about every scene. He’s supposed to be having some sort of existential crisis, trying to reconcile his faith with what is happening, but it seems more likely he’s just bummed because he finished the last of the crackers. Fortunately he gets crushed before he can suffer the slow death of starvation that would have taken him after he went without eating for 15 minutes.

The movie was successful enough for a sequel to be made (cleverly called The War of the Worlds 2), this time directed by Howell. As the foodie preacher is dead, I will probably get around to it eventually. It really wouldn’t have been a bad little popcorn flick if they’d had the money to keep the action scenes going in the second half.

For uncertain reasons, the movie is called Invasion in Europe. As you might guess, the box cover photo of an alien machine blowing up the White Hose a la Independence Day doesn't actually take place.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space

Just because your budget is almost non-existent doesn’t mean you can’t make a decent film. Case in point: 1958’s It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

The movie opens on the planet Mars, in the distant future of 1973, when we will be jaunting around the solar system in rocket ships. Er, check that. Anyway, the second expedition to Mars has landed to rescue the sole survivor of the first expedition. He tells a fantastic story of how his crew-mates were killed by an evil creature. No one believes him (actually, we do, because we saw the creature on the dvd cover) and he is to be transported back to Earth for a court martial. Unbeknownst to the second crew, the creature has hitched a ride on the second ship, and waits for the moments when the crew members wander off by themselves, then grabs them to drain them of fluids (‘cause Mars is so dry). After only a couple of deaths, the crew realizes they’ve got a problem, and began a grim struggle against the monster. They are well equipped for this, since they brought guns, grenades, and even a friggin’ bazooka along on the ride. They proceed to fire/explode these weapons at will, bravely ignoring the danger of puncturing the hull and dying. I did wonder, if they were so damn sure Mars was uninhabited, why the arsenal? Eventually, they temporarily trap the creature belowdecks, and began seeking a way to kill it. (It took my wife fifteen minutes to state how to do this, although it takes the professionals hours to do so.)

It’s easy to poke fun at the movie for its scientific failings. In addition to the indiscriminate firing of weapons, the crew watches meteors flare by while in transit, even though there is no atmosphere to make them flame, and you will go crazy trying to figure out the order of the decks, since the people making the movie couldn’t keep it straight. And just for the record, if you only go to Mars, you haven’t gone “beyond space.” Still the movie is fairly effective in creating suspense, and scared the heck out of me as a little kid. Finding the desiccated bodies of crew members in the air shaft is a creepy moment.

The movie was written by Jerome Bixby, a well-regarded though not prolific science fiction writer, who also wrote scripts for The Twilight Zone and the first Star Trek series. As a promotional stunt, the poster that accompanies this article offers a $50,000 reward for anyone who could disprove the existence of such a creature on Mars. I guess they felt no one could do that in 1958.

It is widely stated that It! The Terror From Beyond Space was one of the inspirations for the movie Alien (there was a lawsuit), although I don’t know if that’s ever been proven. There are certain plot similarities.