In Space, No One Can Hear You Gab

Werth: It's here, Wise!

Wise: My Wizard of Oz press-on nails?

Werth: No, the much anticipated Ridley Scott-directed Alien prequel Prometheus!

Wise: Oh, then perhaps you'll be interested in this crocheted Alien wall-decor.


Werth: I'm excited to see the new movie—but I'm trying to keep my expectations low. I fear Scott's budgets and storytelling have evolved into monster-sized messes.

Wise: With recent disappointments like Robin Hood (2010)and Body of Lies (2008) to his credit, why would you think that?

Werth: I guess it can all be chalked up to Hollywood success, but Scott's career didn't start off so extravagantly. Scott's second film, Alien (1979) spawned a dynasty of six movies and counting, comic books, videogames and a rabid fanbase of fan fiction writers, expanding the film's story into epic, Star Wars-like proportions. But despite all of that, the first Alien is amazingly simple. 

The crew of the deep-space mining vessel Nostromo is awakened from their cryogenic sleep midway through their journey home by the ship's computer, Mother, because she has intercepted a distress call.

Wise: Making it the worst bit of Mother's advice since Janet Leigh stepped into that shower.

Werth: What the crew finds on the planet surface below is far from in trouble, however, and soon they are fighting for their lives against a seemingly unstoppable alien with two sets of choppers.

Wise: Martha Raye?

Werth: What made Alien so unique was that it was more than just a horror movie in space. Scott wove themes of feminism into the film by making the hero a heroine. Ripley as portrayed by Sigourney Weaver is not a terrified girl who screams and bites her hand when she is confronted by danger (that role is left to Veronica Cartwright who plays Lambert). Ripley is smart and inventive and it is her caution and chutzpah that allow her to survive.


Wise: That and the prospect of starring in three sequels. 

Werth: While many horror/sci-fi movies from that period look like they were made on a shoestring budget and practically beg the audience to laugh at them, Alien takes itself seriously—in a good way. H.R. Geiger's set and alien designs are works of art. Scott's shooting style is elegant and purposeful with a slow-building tension that pays-off brilliantly with one of the best "gotcha" moments in film history. 

Its gore is startling, but not excessive, making the audience grip their seats more from what Scott doesn't show, than from what he exposes. Watching James Cameron's steroid-injected sequel Aliens (1986), really highlights how Scott's use of less in the first film was more. 

I have a feeling that when I sit in my stadium seat with my IMAX 3D glasses and watch Scott attempt to recapture Alien's magic through CGI sunsets and Charlize Theron's skintight jumpsuit, I'll be nostalgic for a simpler time.

Wise: Things are never simple in Black Hawk Down (2001), Scott's adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name by Mark Bowden about the United Nations' 1993 peacekeeping mission to Somalia where a devastating famine erupted into civil war.  The film depicts an attempt by U.S. forces to capture two top lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid after the withdrawal of the majority of the peacekeepers.  During the raid, a series of mistakes, compounded by extraordinary bad luck, tumbles the mission into chaos, and eventually results in a re-evaluation of then-President Clinton's foreign policy strategy.  

Werth: Try taking that to a pitch meeting.  

Wise: It's a complicated film addressing complex issues and a tangled chain of actions and reactions.  And even though a raft of screenwriters whittled the 100 key characters from the book into a more manageable 39 role, the film still feels overstuffed.  

Josh Hartnett plays Staff Sergeant Matthew Eversman who takes command of his first mission after his lieutenant is felled by a seizure; Ewan McGregor plays nebbishy desk clerk John Grimes, nervously taking on his first battle; 

Orlando Bloom plays teenage recruit Todd Blackburn who quickly realizes he is in over his head; and Eric Bana plays swaggering Delta Force Sergeant Norm Gibson.   

Werth: Without all the war stuff, it could have been another Magic Mike.

Wise: While the cast may be a look book of handsome young Hollywood, Scott refuses to allow the picture to devolve into war film clichés by documenting the terror and stupidity of war as well as the heroics.  

There are gorgeous shots of helicopters zooming across dusty plains, a city haunted by civil unrest, and close-ups of men facing down terrors worse than they've ever imagined.  In some ways, Black Hawk Down resembles Alien without all the sci-fi trappings: the characters battle a faceless enemy that lurks around every corner, as well as the enemy that lurks inside. 

And like John Hurt's famously gut-busting encounter with the alien, these soldiers must confront the possibility that they have already succumbed to the horror that surrounds them.  

 Werth: So, Wise, are you ready to succumb to the Prometheus juggernaut?  

Wise: I'll keep pretending it's just Michigan J. Frog.  

Werth: Just bring your straw hat and cane to next week's Film Gab. 

When Autumn Leaves Start to Gab

Werth: Dear God, I am happy to see you, Wise!

Wise: Did I win the lottery and no one told me?

Werth: No, I'm just feeling reborn with the coming of autumn!

Wise: I thought fall was about things dying.

Werth: It is, but I just feel so much better when the air cools and I stop sweating and people stop wearing filthy flip-flops on the streets of NYC.

Wise: Fall is also a great setting for movies.  Used effectively, the seasonal explosion of color before the inevitable tumble into winter can greatly enhance the tone of a film.  And few filmmakers have used the brittle, polychromatic perfection of Autumn better than M. Night Shyamalan in The Village (2004).  

Werth: I make it simple and just refer to all of his films as The Twist.

Wise: Set in a 19th century Pennsylvania town, the film dramatizes the the inhabitants' reluctance to interact with the outside world.  Only when Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) is stabbed by the developmentally disabled Noah (Adrian Brody) over their competing affections for Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) do the elders of the town consider allowing Ivy to set off on a journey to procure medical supplies.  

Werth: Where she encounters... The Twist!  

Wise: The film does suffer from Shyamalan's previous success with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and suffered even more when an early draft of the script was leaked online revealing the ending and causing re-shoots of a rejiggered finale.  

Werth: Even The Twist had a Twist.

Wise: But I have to say, despite the slap-dash preposterousness of the climax, this film—moment by moment—is one of my all-time favorites.  Beautifully photographed by Roger Deakins, the costumes and sets are bathed in the ochre, amber and umber of Autumn while the mysterious creatures lurking in the forest are swathed in crimson.  

And the performances are great, too, especially William Hurt as Ivy's father Elder Walker—played to the hilt in full-throttled phlegmatic portentousness—and Sigourney Weaver as Lucius' ferocious mother Alice.  

What I like best, however, about Shyamalan's direction is the intimacy he creates onscreen.  His characters interact in believable ways, and even small moments—like two girls sweeping a porch and making a game of twirling their long, golden skirts—feel effortlessly real.  

Werth: Unlike the mechanical Twist at the end.  

Wise: Sometimes plot just gets in the way of a good film.  

Werth: My favorite fall movie is autumnal in name only. Named solely for the popular Nat King Cole song that opens the movie, Autumn Leaves (1956) is the story of single, Hollywood typist Millie Wetherby who, although she is in the autumn of her years, meets and falls in love with a much younger man who is equally desirous of her.

Wise: Sounds like a charming love story.

Werth: It's directed by Robert Aldrich and stars Joan Crawford.

Wise: I stand corrected.

Werth: Not long after the wedding, Millie discovers that her new, exciting husband Burt (played by the recently passed Cliff Robertson) is a schizophrenic and soon he is terrorizing her with mood swings and typewriters. Burt's ex-wife (Vera Miles) and his father (Lorne Greene) show up to add some oily grift to the proceedings, pushing Millie to the edge. 

Crawford as a terrorized woman is in very comfortable territory here, but Aldrich does something with her that he would later do with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). He makes Crawford embrace her age. Crawford was 51 when she shot Autumn Leaves and while she was still a vibrant-looking figure, she captured a sense of loneliness and resignation that comes with realizing that perhaps your best years are behind you which makes the hope presented by Burt all the more thrilling—and then horrifying—when it's snatched away.

Wise: I would be terrified to snatch anything from Joan. 

Werth: But it's not all shattered love and straitjackets, Aldrich still has a flair for camp, and the scene where Millie confronts Burt's ex-wife and father is an all-time quotable. It's not out on DVD, but look for it on Turner Classic Movies, or get a VHS copy and dust-off your VCR. It's perfect for an afternoon spent under a fleece blanket with a cup of warmed apple cider... and your typewriter.

Wise: I'll stick to my computer, which we'll use to post more cinematic insanity next week on Film Gab!

It All Gabs...

Wise: Hello, Werth!

Werth: Howdy, Wise!

Wise: Do you have your wand, cape and broom ready?

Werth: Are you referring to the premiere of the final Harry Potter movie, or a janitorial drag show?

Wise: It's hard not to get swept up in the Potter Hype that's going on.

Werth: The completion of the film series is a great accomplishment, but I have to say I'm a little perturbed at how some of the stars are "Hogwarting" the spotlight.

Wise: I know!  Sure Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are the stars of these films, but let's talk about the adult actors who invest J. K. Rowling's fantastical world with humor and life.

Werth: Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon—

Wise: Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Gary Oldman—

Werth: Robbie Coltrane—

Wise: John Hurt—

Werth: Warwick Davis.

Wise: And let's not forget the man playing the biggest baddie of them all, Ralph Fiennes who brings a seductive serpentine malevolence to the role of Lord Voldemort.  

Werth: Oops! You mean He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  

Wise: It's totally worth naming Fiennes' work in these films because the frigid menace of his characterization counterbalances the everyman nobility of Harry, Hermione and Ron.  But Fiennes hasn't always played cold-blooded villains.  In fact, his work in The English Patient is lush, romantic as well as deeply tragic.  

Werth: And he gets to keep his nose.  

Wise: But, oh, what a nose!  Cinematographer John Seale photographs Fiennes' face with with all loving attention he also brings to the Italian hills and the golden terrain of the desert, finding in each a landscape of passion.  Fiennes plays Count Lazlo de Almásy, a Polish geographer who travels to the Sahara only to fall in love with Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of the expedition's sponsor, Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth).  Their torrid romance leads first to sensuous heights, but eventually devolves into fights, plane crashes, and betrayal to the Nazis.  

Werth: Nazis always ruin torrid romances.  

Wise: Based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje and adapted for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella, the film honors the slipstream poetry of Ondaatje's prose, but literalizes the action without destroying the book's eloquence.  The film begins in Tuscany in the waning days of World War II with the Count confined to bed, scarred head to toe by fire and unable to remember his past life.  

Under the care of his nurse Hana (Juliet Binoche in a luminous, Oscar-winning performance), his memories emerge in a series of flashbacks.  

Werth: Flashbacks where his face isn't burned off, thankfully.

Wise: Woven into the narrative are a series of subplots including Hana's love affair with a bomb-diffusing Sikh (Lost's Naven Andrews) and the thief Caravaggio's (Willem Dafoe) hunt for those who double-crossed him.  But it is Fiennes' romantic, otherworldly yet fully grounded performance that prevents the film from falling into an overblown mishmash and allows it to emerge as a beautiful tone poem of love, loss, regret and devotion.  

Werth: The other Potter baddie who gets short-shrift at the red-carpet extravaganzas is the scrumptiously droll Alan Rickman.  

Wise: His Professor Snape combines villainy with a soupçon of sexy.  

Werth: Throughout his long career Rickman has used his haughty sneer and distinctly British disdain to create some of the screen's most lovable campy villains in films like Die Hard (1988), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007).  

But one of my favorite Rickman performances allows him to be a hero instead of a ne'er do well, 1999's sci-fi comedy, Galaxy Quest. Now I know what you're thinking—  

Wise: That watching any non-Pixar movie starring Tim Allen is like poking a dull, fiery stick into your eye over and over and over?  

Werth: Normally, yes. But Galaxy Quest is different. Dreamed up at Dreamworks, Galaxy Quest poses a fun premise: What if aliens in a galaxy far, far away were getting re-runs of Star Trek, but thought it was a "historical document" instead of a TV broadcast? 

Enter the cast of the hit show Galaxy Quest, washed-up and sold-out as they go to conventions to eternally re-play hackneyed sci-fi archetypes for a rabid, costumed fanbase.  

Wise: Somebody needs to keep the geeks out of trouble on weekends.  

Werth: When a strange group of bobbed, perma-smile groupies (look for a young Rainn Wilson) approaches them and tells them they need their help to fight off an alien invasion on their homeworld, the actors go along thinking they are going to wind up in yet another convention hall to collect another meager paycheck. Instead they are transported to a spaceship and a world where everything they've done on TV has been taken as gospel and created for reals.  

Wise: But without all the duct tape and desperation basement-dwelling superfans most frequently use.  

Werth: This premise could be milked for either geekery and/or preciousness, but with the superb cast, this movie goes beyond spoof to genuine fun. Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shaloub and Sam Rockwell have a field day playing bad actors who have to literally live their parts. 

And leading the charge is Rickman who plays Alexander Dane, the Shakespearean actor who has become trapped by his Spock-like role of Dr. Lazarus, cringing and rolling his eyes at his prosthetic makeup and his catchphrase, "By Grapthar's Hammer!" Every look and gesture is pure derision and frustration, and it's marvelous.  

Wise: How is Tim Allen?  

Werth: They should have gotten William Shatner. But Galaxy Quest is an enjoyable cinematic send-up, both laughing at and paying tribute to a phenomenon that has become part of our culture's lexicon.  

Wise: Speaking of cultural lexicons, we'd better go get in line if we want to see HP7P2.  

Werth: Let me go get my broom. I might need to smack some wizards who can't keep quiet during the movie.  

Wise: Tune in next week for more film magic at Film Gab!