By Ray Pride

Novelist Barry Hannah says it well:  “I really want stories that are rippers in the old sense. Tales of high danger, high adventure, and high exploration.”

And has that been what James Cameron’s been conjuring in his fevered imagination for as long as twenty years, a true ripper? Of all the things that can and will be said about “Avatar,” is that it’s the one 2009 feature drawing from the War in Iraq that could make a mint. While his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker” is the best American movie about war in movies this year, and is racking up year-end critics’ nods, it didn’t blow up at the box office.

Even if James Cameron had spent $200 million-plus on a trainwreck the equal of the Icelandic economy, that would have been gratifying, even at the cost of encouraging the wisenheimers who, without seeing the film, invoked the Smurfs, “Ferngully: the Last Rainforest” and something called “Delgo.” All the pessimistic early jabber made it seem like this would be the in-flight movie that you would see on the way to become part of the Matrix. Of course, virtually no one had seen the movie until its Thursday night premiere in London and its staggered press screenings in the U.K. and North America. Then the lights went down, time passed entertainingly, the lights came up, the Twittering began, and within hours an embargo against reviews before opening day was lifted. Read the rest of this entry »

Spanish videogamer Jorge Blanco directs his debut, a passable PG-rated animated sci-fi comedy, with co-directors Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez. Joe Stillman (two “Shrek”’s and “Beavis & Butt-Head Do America”) writes a snarky tale rife with references to flying-saucer films. The third installment of the alien-invader film franchise is about to open on the planet Glipforg when American astronaut Captain Chuck Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands. Planting the U.S. flag on what NASA identifies as uninhabited Planet 51, he interrupts a backyard barbeque. On the run from General Grawl (Gary Oldman), Buck finds an ally in Lem (Justin Long), the 16 year-old Junior Assistant Planetarium Curator who’s failing to impress girl-next-door Neera (Jessica Biel.) The planet is set in the 1950’s, with long-haired protest singer- guitarist Glar (Alan Marriott) driving a VW bus. Indigenous pop culture is full of mind-control conspiracy paranoia. The human alien, though, can hide in an alien look-alike contest at the premiere of “Humaniacs III.” Twix candy bars are out of place, as are gags about plugs to block anal probes by aliens. Cutest behavior belongs to the robot dog Rover, modeled on the moon and Mars rovers. This frantic jokey fare is engineered to distract kids and their handlers alike. Music quips go from “Macarena” to “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” With more voices by Seann William Scott, John Cleese Freddie Benedict, Alan Marriott, Mathew Horne and James Corden. (Bill Stamets)

In a generous epistemological gesture, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi tells us: “It’s Up to You to Decide…” What’s up in the night air are Sumerian-speaking Alaskan-abducting owl-impersonating aliens. They interrupt slumber in Nome, leaving victims with nightmares and shoulder scars. Suicides ensue. Milla Jovovich plays psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler. Standing on a country road as the camera does 360s around her, Jovovich tells us at the start her own name and says that her character’s name is an alias for an actual psychologist portrayed in the film. (Numbskull skeptics at Imdb.com confirmed that the “Dr. Abigail Tyler” is in fact fictional, citing as sources Alaska’s state licensing examiner, the director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and the president of the Alaska Psychological Association.) Tyler videotapes Alaskans under hypnosis. They convulse hard enough to break their own bones, as they voice cryptic static. Another woman plays the real woman who originally videotaped hypnotized abductees. She also appears on a university TV interview show hosted by Osunsanmi. Videotapes in the film are marked as authentic by italicized inserts in brackets: “alias,” “name omitted,”  “address withheld,” “actual audio.” “The Fourth Kind” is no riff on Brechtian alienation of the fourth wall, with all its split-screen juxtapositions of the real and recreated videotaping sessions. In this inane thriller, characters can believe in aliens, but when an alien claims to be God, the good people of Alaska draw the line and suspect a God-impersonator. Osunsanmi offers film reviewers a “Sampling of Actual Reported Alien Activity in Alaska” yet withholds all the actual alien activity in that state. Omotic-speaking Oklahoman-abductors might be next. With Will Patton, Elias Koteas, Corey Johnson, Hakeem Kae-Kazim and Daphne Alexander. 98m. (Bill Stamets)

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Eccentric without ever becoming unduly whimsical, Sophie Barthes’ surrealism-lite “Cold Souls” (which she tenders a co-film-by with cinematographer-partner-soul mate Andrij Parekh) pirouettes within the same school as Charlie Kaufman’s dance floor. Paul Giamatti plays blocked actor Paul Giamatti, who’s having agonies over his role in a production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” much to the chagrin of his fellow actors, the play’s director Michael Tucker and wife Emily Watson. An article in the New Yorker leads Giamatti to one Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), who specializes in “soul storage” from an office on Roosevelt Island. There are clever, understated visual touches throughout—Giamatti’s journeys to-and-from on the red tram that rises above the river at 59th Street toward the soul storage unit suggests the confinement of consciousness inside the body; the final image is an alarmingly wistful going-out-of-focus shot that suggests a watercolor Rothko—even when the parallel tales of Giamatti’s tortures and a “mule” (Dina Korzun) who transports souls within herself for Russian soul-traffickers becomes a little complicated. Read the rest of this entry »

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Twenty-eight marks the calendar for sci-fi action fare of our era. First came the three zombie films “28 Days,” “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later” set in the U.K. Now we go to South Africa. Twenty-eight years ago a massive spacecraft came to a stationary hover above Johannesburg. Its alien occupants were relocated to a refugee camp called District 9 on the outskirts of the city. That’s the inspired setup for the first alien apartheid action film. Produced by Peter Jackson, “District 9” is based on a six-minute short from 2005 titled “Alive in Jo’burg.” Director Neill Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell efficiently sketch a history of escalating human-alien friction that precipitates a militarized operation by a global security corporation called Multi-National United (MNU) with Springbok insignia: relocate 1.8 million stateless, second-class “non-humans” to District 10, a new ghetto some 240 km. away. Read the rest of this entry »