Keep Watching the Skies

"Skyline" is a riff on the "Cloverfield" experience, only without the found footage approach and produced on a smaller budget that keeps the FX within reason. It's basically the same premise: uncharismatic twentysomethings with insipid soap opera problems are faced with extraordinarily destructive extraterrestrial visitation, forced into escape attempts and survival mode while military forces assemble their pathetic efforts. Toss in ingredients pilfered from innumerable alien invasion features of similar ilk, and "Skyline" is one derivative motion picture that is unable to rise above its origins.

The film marks the return of Greg and Colin Strause to the directors chair, a few years after their disastrous turn at the helm of the Aliens vs. Predator franchise with the loathsome 2007 picture, Requiem. A major force in the special effects industry, they decided to play to their strengths for a follow-up, shunning Hollywood to make a low-budget creature feature on their own, allowing them to slash costs and dictate tone without studio interference. It's a laudable idea, yet the siblings fail to make a compelling thrill ride with this would-be franchise. The Brothers Strause have no sense of visual tension, trusting ineffective actors to communicate end of the world panic. Unfortunately this bland group is not up to the task. The siblings seek to amaze with their budget bonanza, staging flaccid action as the aliens chase the humans around the complex every 15 minutes or so, offering cheap thrills sans excitement. The CG elements are satisfying in a SyFy Channel sort of way, but the pursuit is drab, again requiring these unappealing actors to sell the enormity of the effects. A sense of grand scale just isn't there, and for a film like "Skyline", reminding the viewer they're watching a second-rate product isn't the brightest idea.

Early Morning Broadcast News

I find this poster so cute.

"Morning Glory" has a welcome spring in its step, supplied visually by director Roger Michell ("Notting Hill"), lending the antics a wonderfully crisp appearance with careful composition that adds a certain whimsical feel. "Morning Glory" is part comedy, part romance, and sprinkled with some biting satire on the morning news biz. It's a tricky tone to sustain and it's amazing how well the director spins the plates for the first two acts of the film, bringing the audience into the situations.

Selling the humor with tremendous comedic timing is McAdams, who gives an atypically impassioned performance as the center of the producing storm. Registering fear, compassion, and Blackberry-engrossed distraction, the actress makes for believable television wrangler, using her diminutive size to reinforce the impossible task ahead. McAdams also makes an unlikely sparring partner with Ford, who turns his bewildering growl into a refined comedic instrument, portraying a pigheaded newsman facing a dire future of cooking segments and celebrity interviews, counting on booze and his acidic put downs to keep him going. Ford is exquisite at creating a battle of wills chemistry with McAdams and Keaton, who's mostly pushed into the background.

When "Morning Glory" catches a wave of satire and farce, it's an engrossing, amusing feature. The romantic subplot between McAdams' Becky and the vanilla Patrick Wilson bears little fruit and stops the movie dead in its tracks. More convincing are the young producer's battles with Ford, working a subplot that slowly reveals a vulnerability to the veteran, tenderly paying off their bickering relationship. The film's ending is a contrived movie convention and if the filmmakers taken a different approach to the same conclusion the movie would have been even better. 

Twelve Cabins, Twelve Vacancies

Hitchcock broke innumerable rules with his first entry in the horror genre. The film's lead abruptly changes from Leigh to Perkins, with early scenes of a foolish rich braggart and a suspicious policeman proving to be red herrings. The film opens with an unmarried couple in a sleazy motel room (very risque in 1960) and was the first film to show a flushing toilet. Touches of Hitchcock's black humor are spread throughout the film. There's also the shop customer who doesn't want her garden insects to suffer from poison. Norman makes endless double-meaning references to his mental condition and relationship with his mother. All of this adds to the pleasure of seeing the film again. You know all the surprises but you notice the bits of business in the background. Plus Anthony Perkins performance is among the most amazing in film history. Perkins had previously made a mark in "Friendly Persuasion," "Fear Strikes Out" and "On The Beach" but he will be forever identified as the twitchy motel owner Norman Bates. When the car stops submerging halfway in the swamp,the audience sees Norman's nervous indecision and is breathless for a moment until the car continues to sink. Bernard Hermann's iconic score is unusual as it consists entirely of strings.

"Psycho" was a major change from recent Hitchcock films, which were big budget Technicolor films featuring major stars such as James Stewart and Cary Grant. In contrast, "Psycho" was a low budget movie filmed on the Universal back lot using crew from Hitchcock's television series. However, it became one of the biggest grossing films of the year and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Leigh), Best B & W Cinematography (John L. Russell) and Best Art Direction. It failed to win any Oscars, which were largely swept by Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960). 

Random trivia: Hitchcock tested the shock value of the mummified remains of Mother by placing them in Janet Leigh's dressing room, strategically placed to be seen when she first turned on the light. John Gavin, who plays Leigh's boyfriend, later became the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Perkins was not present for the filming of the shower scene. As it was among the last things shot Perkins had finished his part and was appearing in a play on Broadway so an unknown stand-in replaced him as Mother Bates. 

Standing in the Middle of Nowhere....

It is always dangerous to go into a documentary about a subject you love with expectations. I love the Kinks so it may have been inevitable that "Do It Again," the new documentary about music journalist Geoff Edgers' attempt to reunite the combustable group,  is one of the more disappointing films in recent memory. Billed here in passing as "the Kinks movie," it has, in fact, precious little to do with the Kinks. A film about an attempt to reunite the feuding Davies brothers would be interesting unfortunately the focus is on Edgers' effort born from the crisis of turning 40 and cutbacks at his job with the Boston Globe. Along the way Edgars does land interviews with artists including Sting, Peter Weller of the Jam, Robyn Hitchcock and Zooey Deschanel (who once again became my favorite Deschanel sister by singing "David Watts" from memory) but they have very little to do with his quest.  Unfortunately Edgers lacks the charisma necessary to carry a film where the objects of his affection may not appear. His adolescent fanboy longing to play a song with the reunited band quickly becomes tiresome. Plus his bitching that Kinks frontman Ray Davies is elusive and refuses to be interviewed is all the more off-putting. Ray created a narrator who interviews an older version of himself for his autobiographer. Does this sound like a man interested in airing his personal life in public? Any fan knows that Ray does not seek publicity. The film falls into a contemporary trap familiar from the overzealous documentarians who become personalities in their own films and that is where the film fails.

Zooey sings "David Watts" while Edgers plays guitar badly.

Slapstick Death

Wait a minute, someone must be pulling my leg...the guy who owns Segway (James Heselden) goes off a cliff while riding on a Segway and plunges into a river, killing himself? 

This is the kind of comically absurd death that Blake Edwards might have invented for one of his '60s or '70s farces. The man's death is tragic but it does make you chuckle in an abstract way. You picture a grainy black and white image straight out of a Buster Keaton two-reeler.

Films have been able to make death funny when keeping  the particulars vague and emphasizing the random bad luck that goes into suddenly being killed -- its inevitability, illogic, lack of fairness.

There's a moment in John Frankenheimer's "The Train" when a bespectacled German sergeant wakes up from a nap in a caboose on a stalled train, opens up the rear door and sees another train heading right for him. He barely has time to react before the crash decimates the caboose.  Why is this funny? Because of the timing of the cuts and the fact that we don't see the sergeant suffer.

There's another moment in Mike Nichols' "Day of the Dolphin" when a dolphin plants a magnetized bomb on the hull of a yacht carrying a group of scheming bad guys. Cut to a shot of them sitting around a poker table. One of the baddies -- a young dolphin trainer who has betrayed his colleagues -- hears a sound, gets up, goes to a porthole and sees the dolphin swimming away. He puts two and two together, goes "oh, shit" and BLAM! It's funny because of the editing, and the way the actor delivers the "oh, shit" line. If it hadn't been done just so it wouldn't have worked.

The Top 5 Fall Films

There's a chill in the morning air. The leaves have started to fall. This could only mean the beginning of the next cycle of films to spin through your local cinema. Here is a quick list of 5 movies that I'll be seeing opening weekend. By the way I'm only including films from September, October and the beginning of November. Thanksgiving is the start of the Winter film season no matter what Entertainment Weekly says.

5) The Town (September 17th) Who would have thought that Ben Affleck would turn out to be one of the brightest young directors in Hollywood. He follows up the excellent "Gone BabyGone" with this crime thriller set in his hometown of Boston. The cast is strong featuring Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall and Jeremy Renner. But has Affleck overextended himself by taking the lead role? We shall see.

4) Buried (September 24th) Before he saves the universe next summer as a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Ryan Reynolds stretches his acing muscles by starring in this unique thriller.   Reynolds plays a U.S. contractor in Iraq who is kidnapped and finds himself buried inside a coffin with only a lighter and cell phone. The entire film takes place inside the coffin. The film was shot on the cheap very quickly so there is little risk but if it works it could lead to meatier dramatic roles for Reynolds and I like to see actors take chances.

3) 127 Hours (November 19th) Oddly, another solo acting gig but this one is directed by Danny Boyle so I'm hoping for some fantastic visuals.  In this true life story James Franco plays a mountain climber who cuts off his own arm to free himself from a boulder that had trapped him. Not sure how that will translate to film but even Boyle's failures ("Sunshine," "Life Less Ordinary" and "The Beach") are interesting. 

2) Red (October 15) This looks like a fun change of pace and much better than the last film based on a hitman graphic novel "Wanted". Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirran, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Mary-Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss and Earnest Borgnine make a formidable cast and they appear to be in on the joke (unlike the crew from "The Expendables".)  When motivated no one is better than Willis at melding action and comedy.

1) The Social Network (October 1st) Early reviews from the Toronto Film Festival for Dad Fincher's opus on the creation of Facebook have been gushing Valentines. Fincher's body of work has been a mixed bag for me. After a unimpressive debut with "Alien 3" he has directed classics ("Seven" and "Zodiac") and failures ("The Game" and "Panic Room")  but his work is always pushing the boundaries of cinema in new and interesting directions. The youthful cast has all ready nabbed some of the most sought after roles in Hollywood. Andrew Garfield is the new Peter Parker in the spider-Man reboot and Rooney Mara nabbed the title role in the American remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" also directed by Fincher. 

American Hitman Picnics in Italy

Anton Corbijn's "The American" is a soothing art piece that respects the audience's intelligence but never fully connects on any emotional level. The cinematography is photography is exquisite and the whole affair feels like a lost film from Antonioni. Anyone expecting a slam bang action thriller will be disappointed as the film is more a meditation on paranoia. Clooney does a fine job as a man unable to live because he's forced to use all his wits in order to avoid the predators that he knows are after him.