Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
Based on the trailers for Jordan Peele’s third film Nope, this seems to be a departure in terms of his previous styles. Get Out and Us were both horror films. This is science-fiction. While I could tackle the sci-fi topic again, I’m going to narrow my list down to films about aliens, since that’s what this film seems to be about. There are a lot of great films in that genre that I could tackle, but these are the five best. Before anyone asks: Yes, I considered the Star Wars franchise and no I didn’t pick anything from it. I also didn’t pick any Star Trek films, which I’m much more inclined to include. I wanted this to be more about alien invasions than just movies with aliens in them. Hence also why E.T. isn’t on the list.
Another batch of films I didn’t include are films about aliens arriving on earth, but not to colonize, but to communicate with. The four I thought of were Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1975), Contact (1997), District 9 (2009), and Arrival (2016). There were also two titles in particular that I wanted to include, but didn’t fit the theme of alien invasion: Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). Other titles I considered, but did not include: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Independence Day (1996), The Fifth Element (1997), Men in Black (1997), Dark City (1998), Lilo & Stitch (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Oblivion (2013), and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). Now to the final five
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Although the film itself doesn’t deal with an actual alien invasion, the threat of invasion is evident and that’s enough to clear my bar for inclusion on the list. In the film, Michael Rennie plays an alien named Klaatu who has arrived by spaceship to deliver a warning to the planet earth. Neighboring planets have seen the aggressive development of the planet Earth and are concerned about their recent development of the kinds of destructive weapons that could one day be sent off against a universe at peace. Released 6 years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and under perpetual threat of mutually assured destruction between cold war enemies the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the film presents a stark reality for all those who watched it. The fear of annihilation by warring nations.
The Day the Earth Stood Still remains as important and significant today as it did 70 years ago. Although peace had been achieved in the late 1980s, the US has continued its war-hungry power struggles, shifting from one war to the next in spite of the Cold War’s seeming conclusion. Old adversaries are once again moving against one another albeit with less catastrophic consequences as nuclear war, though that remains an ever-present threat. This film asks audiences to decide what kind of world they want to become. Do they want to remain aggressive and ever-destructive or do they want to reach a peaceful coexistence that precludes the horrors of nuclear war.
No original review available.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Strange as it might seem, there’s a direct connection between the previous entry on this list and this feature. Rocky Horror Picture Show was conceived as a celebration of B movies across the years, often double features with other more prominent pictures. In the opening song to the film, the Lips sing that “Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still, but he told us where we stand.” Other films like The Invisible Man, Flash Gordon, and more were called out in the opening before leading into the thrust of the film, a bizarre group of partygoers whose festivities are interrupted by a straight-laced couple. Their car having broken down, the pair (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) wandering into a strange old estate where the owner, Frank N Furter (Tim Curry), is preparing to create a man in the Charles Atlas mold. With touches of Frankenstein, the new creature is born and is intended solely for Frank’s sexual gratification, but his seemingly perfect creation has eyes only for one of the newcomers.
The film is filled with devilishly clever lyrics to rocky musical scores, sung with flare and gusto by Curry, Bostwick, Sarandon, Meat Loaf, and others. Over a decade before then-“deviant” desires would start to gain public acceptance, the film is a standard-bearer for the sexually liberated and remains a stellar film to celebrate with those who are feeling isolated or maligned. The story isn’t particularly deep thanks to its origins within the sci-fi & horror B movies of years gone by, but it’s such a delightful and delish tribute to and celebration of those films that some of its least impressive elements can easily be forgiven.
No original review available.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
This might seem a little odd to include as it’s not a better film than a lot of the films I passed over, but while sci-fi comedy is rather common, there just aren’t a lot of comedy-horror musicals out there, especially ones about alien invasions. Rocky Horror Picture Show might be considered by some to be a comedy, but it’s the audience participation elements that bring humor to an otherwise rather serious, science-fiction and horror premise. Little Shop of Horrors was conceived from the outset as an almost absurdist comedy, but one that asked important questions, not terribly dissimilar from those pondered in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The popular stage musical was based off Roger Corman’s 1960 horror comedy about a schlub Seymour Krelborn (Jonathan Haze) living beneath a flower shop who discovers a blood-eating plant and begins to raise and nurture it.
The plot of the musical is the same and the film based on that musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman is largely the same, though the ending is changed. In the Frank Oz-directed feature, Rick Moranis plays the nerdy florist; Vincent Gardenia plays the owner of the flower shop; Ellen Greene (reprising her role from the off-Broadway original) stars as his shopgirl and the object of Seymour’s obsession; and Steve Martin plays her boyfriend, a sadistic dentist with an addiction to nitrous oxide. The plant, named Audrey II, is voiced by Four Tops alumn Levi Stubbs. The musical is a great deal of fun and although the ending isn’t nearly as dark as the original, it’s a delightful escapist yarn that once again pays tribute to the B movie.
No original review available.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise plays a military journalist who upsets a high ranking official and is forced to follow a troop into the heart of an alien war, a battle the Army is losing. When he’s killed by one of the aliens, he absorbs some of the liquid exuded by a specific type of alien who is capable of manipulating time. From there, Cruise is forced to relive the same day over and over again, learning each time he dies different ways to overcome the myriad obstacles in his way, but not initially being able to end the dreadful temporal loop he’s found himself in. Emily Blunt recognizes his ability and insists he seek her out in the next loop.
Over the course of the film, Cruise, Blunt, and others begin to unravel the time travel aspects of the alien Cruise has become linked to and their understanding of this connection helps them try to turn the tide of the war, hopefully enabling them to thwart the temporally manipulative alien race once and for all. The creativity of the film’s premise is reason alone to watch the film, but Cruise exerts his trademark skill at selling even the most unusual premises and brings the audience along for the ride. Blunt delivers terrific support in one of the best science fiction films in the last decade.
A Quiet Place (2018)
The film’s we’ve tackled so far have run the gamut of science-fiction from drama to comedy to musical to horror. And while Little Shop of Horrors and Rocky Horror Picture Show are more akin to the types of horror common in the 1920s and 1950s, A Quiet Place is more emblematic of modern horror where terror and violence are a more inherent part of the narrative. While the violence quotient is limited in this film starring husband-and-wife team Emily Blunt and John Krasinski and directed by Krasinski, the terror and tension are high as the horrific threat of an alien race with incredible aural capabilities.
The film follows Blunt and Krasinski and their two surviving children (Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds) as they leave an entirely silent existence in a small hovel in the middle of the woods. Their carefully regimented lives are threatened by the merest sound. Blunt’s character is now pregnant and goes into labor while Krasinski and Jupe are away fishing. The events of the film are harrowing and almost entirely silent, Marco Beltrami’s sensational score and the impressive sound work doing much of the heavy lifting. Blunt is tremendous in her role, showcasing all of the reasons why many feel she’s one of the best actors working today. The film is an absolute experience and while it’s utterly unnerving and frightening in equal measure, it’s such a creative and inventive work that it needs to be experienced.
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