Invasions and Degradations

It Came from Outer Space: adapted by Harry Essex from a short story by Ray Bradbury; directed by Jack Arnold; starring Richard Carlson (John Putnam), Barbara Rush (Ellen Fields), Charles Drake (Sheriff) and Russell Johnson (George) (1953): Surprisingly thoughtful and methodically paced 1950's alien-invasion movie from the great Jack Arnold, with an assist from Ray Bradbury, who actually wrote much of the screenplay.

The Arizona landscapes make a perfect backdrop for a story of paranoia and infiltration that doesn't go where one might expect it to, given its Cold War origins. That's the Professor from Gilligan's Island (Russell Johnson) as a power lineman. If any screen aliens are the parents of Kodos and Kang from The Simpsons, it's these aliens. Recommended.

The Raven: written by Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston; directed by James McTeigue; starring John Cusack (Edgar Allan Poe), Luke Evans (Detective Fields), Alice Eve (Emily Hamilton) and Brendan Gleeson (Captain Hamilton) (2012): Often jarringly anachronistic dialogue is the only major problem with this solid period thriller (it's set in Baltimore in the late 1840's). John Cusack makes an interesting Edgar Allan Poe, doomed (as history and the opening scene tell us) to die under mysterious circumstances within days of the movie's beginning.

But first he has to help a police detective stop a serial killer who's modelling his killings on Poe's short stories. Things look great, and the direction is moody and effective from V for Vendetta 's McTeigue. But boy, the dialogue stinks at points, and there are also several points at which the writers seem to lack a basic knowledge of Poe's body of work (when asked if he'd ever written about sailors, Poe says no, apparently forgetting The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and about half-a-dozen other stories. Well, he is drunk and opium-besotted much of the time).

Luke Evans is also effective as a hyper-rational detective right out of a Poe -- C. Auguste Dupin, to be exact, the fictional ancestor of Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and there's no Oran-Outan in the movie, dammit, though Poe does have a pet raccoon whose fate is left unresolved at the end of the film. They've also got Jules Verne (who homaged Poe in From the Earth to the Moon with the space-faring Baltimore Gun Club) starting his writing career about 20 years early. Either that or the serial killer is also a time traveller. Recommended.

　

He Treats Objects Like Women

The Sure Thing: written by Steve Bloom and Jonathan Roberts; directed by Rob Reiner; starring John Cusack (Walter 'Gib' Gibson), Daphne Zuniga (Alison Bradbury), Nicolette Sheridan (The Sure Thing), Anthony Edwards (Lance), Tim Robbins (Gary Cooper), and Viveca Lindfors (Professor Taub) (1985): Fairly delightful though somewhat programmatic 1980's teen romantic comedy aided by unusually sharp writing and a high-calibre cast. Smart girl Alison and sarcastic goof-off Gib will eventually get together, thanks to a shared Christmas-time, cross-country trip from their East Coast university to Los Angeles.

Alison's going to see her law-school boyfriend; Gib's going to bed the eponymous "Sure Thing" his buddy Lance has set up for him. Anthony Edwards has a full head of hair and plays a goof-off! John Cusack demonstrates that he has his full John Cusack charms even in the mid-1980's! Tim Robbins cameos as a showtune-singing Young Republican! Nicolette Sheridan plays the Sure Thing as vapidly as one expects! And astronomy is important!

The film's DNA traces back to It Happened One Night and forward to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Here, it works like a charm, with the added charm of assessing the somewhat alien landscape of 1985, when not everybody accepted charge cards, bank cards were almost non-existent, and nobody had cellphones. Though Lance does get overly excited at using a cordless phone. Recommended.

Crapocalypse

2012, starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, some cute kids, two fat kids and a cute dog, directed by Roland Emmerich (2009): 2012 takes place in a magical alternate universe where the harmless neutrinos emitted by the sun suddenly decide to turn en masse into particles that cause the Earth's core to get even hotter than it already is. Yes, it's another heart-warming romantic comedy from the team of producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day).

Given that the Earth's core is composed primarily of nickel and iron, you'd think these particles would affect nickel and iron on the surface of the Earth, and perhaps even on other planets and asteroids in the Solar System, most notably Venus and Mars, which would be getting an even denser bombardment of nu-neutrinos. Apparently, the nu-neutrinos do not affect anything else, however, because the various governments of the world manage to keep impending global catastrophe hidden from the public until approximately five minutes before the Earth's plate tectonics and magnetic field go completely haywire, killing several billion people and relocating the South Pole to Wisconsin. But happily, throughout this process, nickel and iron not located in the Earth's core remain completely benign and non-reactive. Apparently, the sun just has it in for Earth's core.

Much is made of the fact that the only way to survive the end of the world is in one of the humungous super-liners being built in the Himalayas by the G-8. Yes, the fate of the world rests in the hands of the G-8. Canada even gets a couple shout-outs. Yay! As long as Ben Mulroney survives the end of the world, everything will be fine.

Our hero is John Cusack, a down-on-his-luck science-fiction writer working as a limo driver for a rich Russian guy who, having given $1 billion to the makers of the super-liners, has a ticket on-board for himself and his two fat kids but not, alas, for his hot blonde mistress. Various plot shenanigans result in John Cusack realizing that the world is going to end, not least of which is the world ACTUALLY STARTING TO END.

Yellowstone Park turns into a supervolcano with a hard-on for Woody Harrelson, a tidal wave engulfs the entire world all the way to the top of the Himalayas, most of the Earth's surface falls about 5000 feet into oceans of lava, an aircraft carrier lands on President Danny Glover, the Washington Monument kills the Lincoln Memorial, St. Peter's Basilica crushes several hundred praying Roman Catholics, and so on, and so forth.

Luckily, John Cusack is The Best Driver in the World and manages to outrun the destruction of California all the way to an airplane, where he passes the baton to his ex-wife's new boyfriend, who turns out to be the Best Pilot in the World despite having had only one flying lesson. Whee!

Many scenes of mass destruction ensue, but throughout all the solar-induced mayhem, Earth's satellite and cellphone network remains working. I told you this was an alternate universe. Eventually, most of the good people we've been following survive and the bad people die various terrible and/or suddenly heroic deaths. The hilarious escape scenes almost make the movie worth it -- the escapes from death by land and air have all the realistic heft of a Roadrunner cartoon.