Monster Movie of the Week: Skyline (2010)

SKYLINE
Genre: Sci-fi/Survival
Directed by: The Brothers Strause


THE MOVIE

We are experiencing a mini-boom of alien invader stories: Battle Los Angeles, Cowboys & Aliens and Falling Skies and V on TV. We have yet to get a great one in this wave but Skyline is an interesting take on the genre from The Brothers Strause, who are best known for directing Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Like the great Signs from M. Night Shyamalan, Skyline aims for a smaller scope than your average over-baked invasion movie. The movie limits the action to a small group of survivors in a residential high-rise in L.A and the immediate area.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Skyline is the fact that it was produced for around ten million dollars, which is amazingly cheap considering the amount of high-quality effects work in the movie. Skyline went on to make about $80 million world-wide, so this is the kind of story that movie studios like to see and no doubt The Brothers Strause will get lots of work if only for their ability to bring in a good looking movie for very little cost.

The human story is more of an afterthought as they often are in these movies. I wish all of these James Cameron-wannabe filmmakers would go back and watch Terminator and Aliens. One thing Cameron did beautifully in those movies was make the relationships the backbone of his action/sci-fi movies and give us compelling characters that we care about. This is pretty much a lost art today. Skyline features a forgettable plot about a guy, Jared, and his wife visiting his friend who is a hotshot effects artist in L.A. (Donald Faison, who manages to be both douchey and nerdy). The invasion happens after they have a big party and there are several other ancillary characters who are pretty much interchangeable. In fact, most of the female characters were such ciphers that I had trouble telling them apart.

This all adds up to a movie that-while severely lacking in drama and characterization-has the loose feeling of a scrappy small production that is being produced out of love for the genre. There is something fun and pure about two brothers making a sci-fi movie on the cheap out of their condo. While not great or groudbreaking, Skyline delivers lots of action and thrills.

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS

Skyline is one of those movies in which the line between creature and vehicle is hard to discern. We first witness the aliens in the forms of their great and spindly ships. The technology of the aliens is very complex and spiky and lit by eerie blue lights. It's an aesthetic not unlike the Transformers movies.

We also see a lot of drones floating around and it is not clear whether these are purely mechanical or partly organic. They are a bit reminiscent of the Sentinels from the Matrix movies. More monstrous are the large, ogre-like creatures which prevent our protagonists from escaping the building. Like the other creatures, these guys feature a slimy, bio-mechanical look.

The last scene of the movie is an interesting coda that actually sets up a cooler story than anything before it. Throughout the movie, the aliens had been abducting people and in the final scene we see then ripping out brains and placing them into brutish bio-mechanical bodies, presumably to serve as their army. These guys are big and almost gorilla-like, with huge deadly claws.


MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT/MINORITY REPORT

Sadly, not a good one. Latino actor David Zayas, in addition to having to awkwardly mouth the word-salad that is the script, is not only given a cliche action movie line, but one that suddenly and unnecessarily calls ridiculous attention to his ethnicity, in the way that screenwriters like to call out their Hispanic characters by throwing a lil Spanish 101 into their English dialogue.



HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Bluray.


TRAILER






Patrick Garone
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Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

STAR WARS BLURAY FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The time has come. The six-movie Star Wars Bluray set has arrived and I finally got my grubby hands on it. While I haven't actually set the time aside to watch the movies, I have been able to browse the special features so while I won't be able to speak to the quality of the transfers or any changes made to the movies in this post, I have a good handle on the strengths and weaknesses of the supplemental materials, which are going to be a big draw for people looking for the "Ultimate Star Wars Saga" experience on home video.

There are three bonus discs as part of the nine disc set, one each for the prequels and the original trilogy. There is also a third bonus disc that includes longer documentaries. Navigating the first two discs is a bit counter-intuitive, as the features are broken down by movie and then by location within the movie. For example, the section for A New Hope is subdivided into Tattooine, The Death Star and The Battle of Yavin. While this is logical on some level, not all of the materials neatly line up to a location and it would have been better to arrange them by subject or importance.

Within each "planet" there are interviews, deleted scenes, and vault items. The interviews give you good nuggets of information but largely stuff you have seen before in other documentaries or read about in other sources. However, the vault items are very different from typical special features and make good use of the high definition format and they are one of the features that real stand out in the set. Each vault item is a costume, prop, maquette, or other item that you can get a nice close look at including a hand full of zoom shots on some of the details. Some items even have their own short videos. I found this particularly rewarding in getting a close look at some of the great Amadala costumes from The Phantom Menace. It helps you really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the costume designs. Other items that are featured from the archives include R2D2, various light sabers, Leia's metal bikini from Jedi, and a reproduction of the original Yoda puppet. The archive feature is the next best thing to being able to go to Skywalker Ranch and have a look around.

For many fans, the deleted scenes are going to be a major selling point . While there are a lot of them in the set, it is far from the comprehensive collection that some of us were hoping for. Fans of the Original Trilogy should be satisfied with the offering though, as deleted scenes from those movies are quite legendary and this is their first official home video offering in many cases. There are actually quite a few substantial scenes that were cut from the original movies, such as a good and lengthy scene from the beginning of A New Hope in which we see Luke interacting with his friends at Tosche station and his reunion with Biggs. This is a great scene and it really helps to give a better picture of Luke's life on Tattooine. From The Empire Strikes Back there are some interesting scenes from Echo Base on Hoth, such as the rebels dealing with a Wampa infestation and a longer (and creepier) scene between Luke and Leia after he gets out of the Bacta tank. Return of the Jedi features a short but legendary scene in which Luke puts the finishing touches on his new light saber as well as the sandstorm scene as our heroes make their way back from Jabba's. While the quality of these scenes are not always top-notch is is great to finally be able to see them after hearing about them for so many years.

Sadly, the deleted scenes from the prequels don't fare as well, largely because so many of the scenes were never finished and are just actors mixed with animatics. It would have been nice, considering how amazingly profitable these movies have been, for Lucas to have had ILM put some finishing touches on a select few of these scenes. Scenes like Darth Maul's leap on boarding ramp and short battle with Qui-Gon, or the attack on the droid control ship from Attack of the Clones. I was very much hoping to really see Yoda's deleted scene with Qui-Gon from Sith, but it is presented here as a rough animatic with a bad stand-in for Liam Neeson. Since the actor had been back to record dialogue for The Clone Wars I was hoping they might have recorded some dialogue to finish off this scene. Other deleted scenes are curiously absent, such as the extended light sabre battle between Anakin and Dooku in Clones. My hope was that they would really go the extra mile for this set, and they didn't.

Also, since these versions of the movies are the continuously-revised special editions and the theatrical cuts are unavailable, it would have been nice to have included some of the original material as deleted scenes. Many fans would have liked to have seen Han shooting first, the monkey-eyed Emperor, or the original Lapti Nek number from Jabba's palace, or the original Ewok song that closed out Return of the Jedi. I have no problem with Lucas making changes to his movies (mostly they are for the better) but there is no reason the original sequences should go unseen. A whole younger generation of Star Wars fans might find them interesting to see.

Also somewhat disappointing are the documentaries on the third disc. There's nothing on here as substantial as the great The Beginning documentary from the Episode I DVD or the wonderful Empire of Dreams documentary included with the original trilogy set. There are vintage features for each of the three original movies, which had been available previously. More recently produced are a 25 minute interview with Lucas and Irv Kirshner on the 30th anniversary of Empire. There are a couple of other recent pieces focusing on different aspects of Star Wars but nothing particularly meaty or specifically produced for this set. I would have liked to have seen the great 2007 History Channel documentary, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed, which focused on the mythic, literary, and historical influences on the movies. At two hours long, it would have been a nice center piece for the shorter documentaries that are on there now. At the very least, Empire of Dreams should have been included.

So, as far as special features go, it is a bit of a mixed bag. While there are some interesting looks at items from the vast Lucasfilm Archives, and some very cool Original Trilogy deleted scenes, a bit more effort would have made this the ultimate home video release of the Star Wars Saga. As it is, we may have to wait for the 40th anniversary of Star Wars in 2017.