Imperfect alien invasions have plagued 2011. From the U.S. military in “Battle: LA” to America’s gunslingers in “Cowboys and Aliens,” this year’s human heroes have packed heat and won the war, but the explosion-heavy battles were not incredibly inventive. In J.J. Abrams’ throwback “Super 8,” its stellar kid actors and little else kept it from being generally forgettable. Thankfully England has picked up our slack with perhaps their best alien attack since Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” And like “Super 8,” its strength also revolves around a cast of young unknowns. It just doesn’t end there. 

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“Attack the Block” is an interplanetary turf war between street toughs and aliens in the dregs of South London. It opens on a group of hoodlums led by a punk named Moses (John Boyega) as they mug a nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), on her way home from work. Then aliens crash-land on their block. The riff-raff soon become Sam’s best hope as they are forced to join together in their fight for survival. 

Everything about the film is refreshing. First, it takes a group of very authentic kids (played by some stellar young actors) whose interaction, lingo and brotherhood are all authentic to London’s street thugs. Next, it puts them at home in a dingy apartment complex where instead of gaping in awe at the alien threat and wondering how or why the creatures came to earth, the group reacts like media-saturated young gangsters would and defend their hood. Instead of guns blazing, they fight with a baseball bat and a collector samurai sword. Thanks to excellent writing and directing from Joe Cornish (who came up with the concept after being mugged by a similar group of young thugs), the kids are believable punks on an individual and group level. They’re the bad kids, not your typical heroes, and their transformation makes them memorable. 

Cornish keeps the movie funny with a lot of situational humor and excellent dialogue – the boys’ girlfriends hang up on their frantic calls, telling them to call back when they aren’t playing videogames; the potty-mouthed guys rag on Sam for swearing too much. The thick accents and foreign slang (“believe, brev” and “allow it” color the film) do beg for subtitles at first, but as the film goes on it gets easier to understand. Additionally, Nick Frost of “Shaun of the Dead” and most recently “Paul” fame supports as a drugged-up pot grower, and his stoned take on the action keeps everything from getting too serious. 

Not that the aliens aren’t scary. Cornish’s invaders break the modern trend of CGI-heavy, visually overwhelming monsters. His are grounded in reality. The low-budget creatures are actually guys in costumes (among them, Terry Notary, who ran Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” movement school), and are jet black with glowing teeth. The kids describe them as “big, alien, gorilla-wolf mother—ers,” and it’s their similarity to bears and ferocious dogs that make them terrifying. They are filmed to maximum effect. Early on, Cornish suggests them, couching their movements in shadow. Later, when the gang sees a dead one up close, they realize that’s essentially what the aliens are – jet black shag carpets with razor sharp teeth. But it’s not a comforting feeling. 

Cornish also avoids zooming too close as the kids bike up cement ramps, run through hallways and fight their way through the block, letting viewers actually watch what’s going on. His choice in aliens and camerawork are both refreshing when so many filmmakers today opt for CGI and hand-held camerawork, and his strong story and actors make it a must-watch film. Believe, brev.

Much has been made about James Agee’s affectionate judgment of Buster Keaton: “Keaton worked strictly for laughs, but his work came from so far inside a curious and original spirit that he achieved a great deal besides, especially in his feature-length comedies. . . he was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work, and he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.”

As for me, I agree more with another critic, Roger Ebert, who once wrote that Keaton’s movies, “seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising how, without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness.” Marshaling all of the critical gumption he’s earned over the years, Ebert also calls Keaton, “the greatest actor-director in the history of the cinema, and that includes Orson Welles.”

Keaton chalked up a large part of his success to changes undertaken while maturing out of his early, vaudeville-inspired shorts with Fatty Arbuckle (a subject we’ll address in a future FCML series). When first making features, their longer length dictated fundamental adjustments in the way his comedy and cinema interacted. “One of the first decisions I made,” Keaton wrote in his autobiography, “was to cut out custard pie throwing. . . no pie was ever thrown in a Buster Keaton feature. We also discontinued what we called impossible gags or cartoon gags. . . I realized that my feature comedies would succeed best when the audience took the plot seriously enough to root for me as I indomitably worked my way out of mounting perils.”

That quiet indomitable spirit, what Ebert calls his “sustained act of optimism,” separates Buster Keaton’s stone-faced everyman from the other great comedic characters of the age.  Take Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp — at base a hobo, petty thief, and conniving opportunist, his humor derived from his boundless ingenuity in skirting the law, and his pathos came from being an oppressed victim of a cruel society. Late in life, Keaton remembered… (more…)

Yesterday I walked into my local supermarket to find they already had a massive Christmas tree up ornamented with gift cards. Yes, it’s quickly approaching “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and that means gifts to buy, preferably before you find yourself scrambling from store to store in a panic on Christmas Eve.

With that in mind, here are five drool-worthy stocking stuffers for the cinemaphiles in your family, all of them due to be released in the next few weeks.

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1. Frank Sinatra: Concert Collection (November 2, 2010, $54.99 at Amazon)

Get hep to this, man: seven discs containing fourteen hours of TV specials and filmed concerts, with Ol’ Blue Eyes joined by Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Gene Kelly, Antonio Carlos Jobim, John Denver, Bing Crosby, and of course Dino. Four of the specials have never been released, and a host of isolated TV clips are thrown in for good measure. Top it all off with a 44-page booklet chock full of rare photos and scholarly commentary, and the Chairman of the Board is truly back in all his scotch-soaked glory.

The seventh “Bonus Disc” sounds like the perfect thing to have playing in the background while you are decorating your tree: a “Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank” color TV special. (more…)

L. Arnold Weissberger!

I am very proud to say that he had been the first and unquestionably finest “representative” within my entire career.

I hesitate to use the title of his profession … lawyer … since, indeed, its implications are, and just by mentioning the word, not what I’m here to convey.

Since I’m in retirement from the theatrical, film and television careers I did have, I can speak quite categorically and with my own, aging and well-earned crankiness.

I am known as “Grumpy Grampy” to my grandchildren.

There aren’t really many things in my professional life that were ever quite as clear as Arnold Weissberger’s nobility.

At his memorial service, with shining new lights of talent and legendary mountains of genius such as Meryl Streep and Orson Welles in attendance, I had the opportunity to quietly “stick it” to some of the superstars there by saying that I had met many great artists in my life but very few great men and women. (more…)

These may not be the best known or most famous of WWII films, but they deserve to be. Keep an eye out. You’ll be glad you did.

1. Command Decision (1948) – Made just after WWII, this Air Force drama set in 1943 when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, is one of the most intelligent examinations of the burden of command ever put on film. Clark Gable is absolutely outstanding as Casey, a Brigadier General forced to give orders that on their face appear cold and even monstrous, but in truth are just the opposite. Caught between the Washington brass who have a war to sell and the men under him who see only a General ordering their comrades to certain death, Casey is a leader willing to be hated and even lose his command in order to do the greater good. What Casey cares about before anything is saving American lives. That means winning the war as quickly as possible, something which can only be accomplished if unspeakable sacrifices are made in the here and now.   (more…)

During the Cold War, a slew of movies came out that dealt with the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. This is not surprising since the atom and hydrogen bombs were the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. Well, almost.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre. (more…)

“Wax on, wax off.” “He slimed me.” “Fortune and Glory, kid.” “I’ll be back.” “Don’t get him wet. Keep him out of bright light. And never feed him after midnight.”

It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed since that magical movie summer of 1984. The calender year of George Orwell’s dire dystopian nightmares had arrived, but instead of a nation writhing in servitude to Big Brother, America was delighting in the prosperity engineered by Big Gipper. Throughout the summer of ‘84, the greatest president of the twentieth century was cruising to the single largest electoral total ever amassed by a presidential candidate in our history, and “It’s Morning Again in America” commercials were playing on TV’s across the land to widespread approval. (more…)

3pm PST - Trial, The (1963) – In this adaptation of Kafka’s classic, a man in a nameless country stands trial for an unnamed crime. Cast: Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli Dir: Orson Welles BW-120 mins, TV-14

You can decide if you want to see it again, but everyone should see Welles impressive adaptation of Franz Kafka’s classic nightmare at least once, if only for the film’s stunning look and atmosphere. “The Trial” is a challenging film. There’s no real story, a whole lot of slow spots and an overall pace with little respect for the audience. But it is a wonder to look at and fans of the novel are likely to appreciate how close Welles came to filming what was widely believed to be un-filmable (or they might stand by that opinion). (more…)