Sheriff! There’s a stranger rid into town and he ain’t using no horse!

As you might imagine, the subject of cowboys and SF is in the front row because of Cowboys and Aliens opening this past weekend. The question is: just how did moviemakers get from westerns to outer space so effortlessly? How is it the horsepower age became an endless source of plasma drive adventures? Just as important – how successful have these films been – classics or tagged for disposal in the local black hole?

Here’s how Film Junk looks at it.

First, a director will set his or her film on a vast frontier. Then add a rugged individualist (maybe even an outlaw or a bounty hunter). Make law and order shaky at best. Mix in an ethnic conflict or a territorial dispute and explore the moral dilemmas. What do you have? A western or science fiction? What’s on their heads – hats or space helmets? And even with that giveaway, some of our best filmmakers have still found ways to blend these two genres into engaging films that stand on their own.

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Battle: Los Angeles
Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Written by: Chris Bertolini
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Michael Pena, Bridget Moynahan, Ne-Yo

Battle: Los Angeles is really two movies. One is a disappointing SF film about an alien invasion. The other is an earnest, reasonably authentic war movie, which in its best moments recreates what it must be like to be embedded with real troops. Unfortunately it has some worst moments too. If you enjoy video games, Battle: Los Angeles is ready for you to boot up. You’ll feel right at home except for not having your M16 of course. For SF admirers, aside from the alien hardware and a fresh reason to be invaded, there’s not much here for you.

Leading the platoon (and giving the movie a fighting chance) is Aaron Eckhart. As Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz, the invasion puts his resignation on hold and gives him a new 2nd Lt. – William Martinez – to report to. It’s made clear up front that, in spite of a haunted past, the Staff Sgt will quickly become Martinez’s mentor as the 2nd Lt. grows into a leader. (If this is starting to sound familiar, yes it is). The film quickly introduces the men in the group but spends no time going past stereotypes. As the alien beachhead storms ashore in Santa Monica, the surfers are easily overrun and our platoon is thrown into the deep end.

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As reported in the Wall Street Journal, an NYU assistant arts professor has implanted a camera lens in the back of his head. With no record of his early nomadic years in the Middle East, his motivation is to document his next year, apparently in arrears. However, the camera will not be live 24/7 as might be expected from such a committed individual. Aside from his evenings (sleeping is apparently quite uncomfortable), during the day, he wears a lens cap to protect NYU students’ privacy. (Using a flap of skin or comb over was not considered reliable).

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“I’ve worked real hard to get this part and no freakin’ code is going to screw me over!”

On a promotional tour for Tron:Legacy, Jeff Bridges made an intriguing comment. He said the day might come when he could appear in movies without actually acting. “I could still make films,” he told The Daily Mail. “I can say, ‘I’ll lease you my image’”. He was too polite to add that if you lease my image, it will cost x. If you hire me to do the acting as well, it will cost more than x. This is going to be huge.

In Tron:Legacy, the film’s lead, Sam Flynn is drawn into the digital world of Tron and not only finds his father but a younger version of his father. Jeff Bridges plays both father parts. (Hint: No make-up is used in the creation of the younger Bridges). Eric Barba, visual effects supervisor describes how:

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Skyline
Directed by: Colin and Greg Strause
Written by: Joshua Cordes, Liam O’Donnell
Starring: Eric Balfour, Donald Faison, Brittany Daniel, Scottie Thompson, David Zayas

Skyline isn’t quite the penthouse – it’s more like a second floor walk-up.

Its lumpy story arc, profusion of vanishing plot elements, and inadvertent humor (second hand smoke) are easy targets for reviewers who only live to snark. So, spoiler alert – no snark in this review (well, maybe just a little). But in spite of these haute cinematique defects, in Skyline, The Brothers Strause (as they would like to be known) earnestly strive to give you an authentic alien invasion experience. Unfortunately, they need human characters to propel the story and engage our emotion. That’s where they come up a little short but, I suspect, not short enough to ruin a nicely detailed alien onslaught for SF fans.

With an excellent SFX resume (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2012, Fast and Furious) it’s no wonder The Brothers Strause introduce the movie’s lead – Eric Balfour as Jarrod – as a special FX genius called to L.A. to sign on with a well-known rapper. Jarrod’s “got the eye” and knows that “computers are just tools” so it’s a good fit for everyone except the writer of that line. Unfortunately, before Jarrod can bring his eye to bear on creative issues, the invaders fill his optics with more compelling sensations and his demise in the first reel is barely averted.

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Between Dimensions is a continuing feature that examines science-fiction on the screen in all of its forms: big or small, good or bad.

Babylon A.D. should have been called Babylon A.D.D. for Attention Deficit Disorder. This overstuffed film from Vin Diesel and Director Mathieu Kassovitz defines helter skelter for the new millennium. The story tries to focus on an unusually gifted child (she spoke 19 languages at the age of 2) who is competitively coveted by a religious group and a brilliant scientist. That’ s Theme One. Vin plays Toorop, a man-about-dystopia, who is hired to get the child (Aurora) from A to B – in this case from a Chechnya-like Russia to a glossy upgrade of the USA. (A similar story was presented infinitely better in Children of Men. Focus Vin. Focus.)

Along the journey, the filmmakers share their views on where the world is headed. Themes Two to Five include omnipresent hi-tech surveillance; bio-tech births and resurrections; nuclear missile proliferation; man’ s inhumanity to man; mercenaries for religion. There are more. And Vin Diesel is asked to keep it all afloat. You just know this ship is going to spring a leak somewhere.

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Inception. It’s an action thriller about people sleeping. Really.

A filmmaker’s greatest challenge is getting the audience to suspend its disbelief. After about 30 minutes of Inception, the new thriller from Christopher Nolan, I had suspended disbelief. Not easily, but I did. But then another 30 minutes later, I had to do it again. And 45 minutes on, once again. By the time Inception finished, I was exhausted. I had suspended disbelief so often I wasn’t sure where I was for real. Which maybe is what Nolan was after. I just don’t think he wanted me to get there that way.

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A good alien is arguably the holy grail of SF film. And with the developments in CGI and motion capture in the last decade, we have arrived at an authenticity point. It allows me to confidently predict that in the next five years we will see the first engaging, plausible, awesomely strange alien in a movie. (I have used all these adjectives to eliminate Jar Jar Binks although any one of them would have sufficed.)

Computers and brilliant software have made this quest legitimate. From their light but effective use in Predator to the breakthrough Gollum (strictly speaking not an alien, but cut me some slack — it’s still early in the article) through the Alien series to the first virtual alien character Christopher Johnson of District 9, we have hybrid CGI characters making movies better. I haven’t included the Na’vi as they are essentially blue humans, not an otherworldly species. But to give Avatar credit, its heavy lifting has ensured that some future director will finally create an authentic exotic alien.

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We’re in our sixth decade of SF movies and it’s chaos out there. Despite a truly vintage year (it takes two hands to count the good ones) SF quality is erratic over the long term.

Folks, it’s as obvious as requiring two up quarks plus a down to make a proton. We need standards! More specifically, we need a set of gold standards that can be the guiding principles for SF filmmakers, enthusiastic audiences, and of course, humble film critics.

So power up your implants. The future of SF film needs Film Junk’s hive mind toggled on. Let us know where we got it wrong, if at all.

(Government Health Warning: We are talking about hard core SF – not comic book poseurs or fantasy fluff heads.)

1. The Smart Idea Planted in a Great Story

Any SF film that aspires to greatness needs a compelling idea that engages the brain. And this idea needs a good story to make them fertile. Yes. You can say these two criteria are important to any movie but they are especially critical in a film genre that has so many potential distractions. Action themes, alien locales, unrestrained CGI, and ADD (Attention Deficit Directors). Their reliance on black SUVs, overwhelming effects, and scripts that constantly repeat “Go! Go! Go!” are bad for us all.

Smart: Gattaca, Solaris, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Code 46

Self-test: Watch Daybreakers. Does it show fresh ways to think about vampires? Or will it be stale blood tropes of the been there, done that variety. Early word suggests 50/50. If so, it fails.

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New Gifting Protocols Breakthrough – Make a Real Difference for 2010!

Film Junk has a radical new approach for your gifting challenges. It’s not the usual generic holiday gift list. It’s a mash-up of groovy stuff that will positively impact all the “personal nodes” in your local area giftnet. It’s called the Film Junk 2010 Protocols for Gift Giving². Developed by the agile minds of our site staff, this collection takes you places you’ve never been and shows you gifts you won’t believe exist.

But the real breakthrough is our new gifting protocol (patent applied for) based on the square of giving or Giving². When you follow this protocol, it generates two gifting strategies. First, gift yourself. Makes you feel good right? This much happy without breaking any laws is unbelievable. Then gift others. By the time you’ve used this Giving² convention, the gifts for you will have re-invented your lifestyle. You’ll be almost as cool as a vampire. And the gifts for the others will finally get you noticed and maybe even liked. (No guarantees please).

So have a ball. Drop us a line on how well it works. When this goes viral, Giving² followers will get all the credit for the economic rebound of 2010.

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Between Dimensions is a continuing feature that examines science-fiction on the screen in all of its forms: big or small, good or bad.

Man fumbles the planet… The first in a continuing series

If you want to sample the golden age of science fiction, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a good place to start. Since British director Val Guest made the film in 1961, this apocalypse is a little more cerebral than what we’re used to (e.g. the recent new gold standard of 2012). With limited effects, Guest relies on good actors, disaster news reels, and clever staging to make his story real. Set in London, DECF sharply conveys the nervousness of a world discovering nuclear fission for better or worse. In this case, much worse.

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Between Dimensions is a continuing feature that examines science-fiction on the screen in all of its forms: big or small, good or bad.

Bring an overnight bag to your couch. This star trip takes awhile.

Solaris is about first contact and tells its story most authentically. It is sprinkled with tantalizing hints of an incomprehensible alien presence and deftly threaded with some of humanity’s long-standing existential issues. These factors combine to create the conditions that in turn perplex, humble, and threaten the movie’s cast of characters. Be warned however. Solaris is also the ultimate litmus test of a viewer’s attention span. Transformers this is not.

For better or worse, Solaris tells its story (from a novel by the great Russian sci-fi writer, Stanislaw Lem) in almost real time. For better because you are cocooned in layer after layer of allegory and allusion. This style ensures that you are impacted the same way the Solaris’ crew is – frightened by the alien presence, deeply concerned for humanity, and afraid for your own sanity. For worse, because this meticulous layering takes 90 real time minutes. It proceeds with a somnolent rhythm delivered by a stolid Russian cast that will severely test your enthusiasm for wanting to be present at first contact.

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