Author: Alton Williams

Skyline ***

Paranormal Activity has a lot to answer for. Costing only $15,000 to make, its huge success at the box office has opened the door for a whole new kind of filmmaking to emerge on a big scale – filmmakers making films for low budgets free of interference from meddling studio executives. This is something that liberates filmmakers to make the films that they want to make without having to worry about things such as whether the property is commercially viable or casting actors who are bankable.
Skyline is one of the first of what will probably be many films to follow the example of Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli, another such film being fellow alien invasion film Monsters which is released in December – aliens being very much an in thing in Hollywood right now. Best known for directing Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, a film which, as a result of such meddling from studio executives, didn’t entirely come out as they wanted and was not particularly well received upon its cinema release, the Brothers Strause set out to make a film completely free of such studio interference and the result is a film that they not only completely financed themselves, making the film for an alleged $10 million investment – an impressively low number for a film as effects heavy as this one – but also shot almost entirely at co-director Greg Strause’s condo building in Marina Del Ray, California. Shot entirely on the new Red cameras with the Mysterium-X chip owned by the Brothers Strause and boasting more than 800 VFX shots, the visual effects work of the Brothers Strause elsewhere has nonetheless still brought on the brunt of a big movie studio. Visual effects company Hydraulx Filmz, which is owned by Greg and Colin Strause, also did the visual effects for next year’s big action blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles, a film which sees aliens launching an invasion in Los Angeles – sound familiar? – and there is now a distinct possibility of legal action being taken by Sony Pictures against the Strause Brothers. Obviously, this is too little too late to prevent Skyline from being released but it does raise serious questions about where the brothers actually got their ideas from. There again, the concept of Skyline is hardly an original one anyway is it.

 Professor Stephen Hawking famously warned that if the human race ever encounters aliens, it might be bad news for us in the way that meeting Columbus was bad news for the Native Americans. Humanity is about to experience its first encounter with alien life forms and Stephen Hawking’s warning turns out to be quite an apt one. Over the city of Los Angeles, mysterious lights have started to appear in the sky, drawing people up to them like moths to a flame. The lights seem to emanate from alien space craft, apparently intent on swallowing up all humans from the earth. Trapped in a high-rise building, a group of survivors – Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his pregnant girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson), Terry (Donald Faison) and his girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel), Denise (Crystal Reed) and Oliver (David Zayas) – fight for their lives as their world disappears before them.

If you get a sense that you’ve seen Skyline before you most definitely won’t be alone. If you’ve seen Independence Day you already have seen it. While supposedly intended to be a film about a mass alien abduction rather than an invasion per se, the parallels are so blatantly obvious as to make it clear that even if it didn’t seem like Greg and Colin Strause had stolen the idea for the film from Battle: Los Angeles, there still wouldn’t be an inkling of originality to be found here. This, however, does not diminish what these filmmakers have achieved on a very low budget. The general perception amongst movie studios seems to be that to make an effects heavy blockbuster you have to spend a lot of money and with this film the Brothers Strause show that this isn’t necessarily the case. The visual effects on display here are quite impressive, particularly for a film made on such a small production budget, and the directors deliver plenty of stunning VFX shots – the destruction of a mothership is a particularly spectacular shot – and pretty enjoyable action sequences – aerial dogfights that see fighter jets and stealth bombers take on the alien ships are particularly entertaining – as well as alien ships that look suitably threatening and giant alien beings, designed by creature design veterans Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., that are just as much so. In particular, the sight of people being sucked up into the alien motherships is very chilling. So, the effects are of a high standard and the effects based sequences prove pretty entertaining. So far so good, but sadly there is little else truly positive that can be said about the film. Often coming across more like a show reel displaying the Brothers Strause’s visual effects abilities than a proper movie, there is no real creative flare on display on the part of the filmmakers, what we see impressive but not particularly new and all in all this is a film packed full of flash and lacking even one iota of substance. While the approach of showing everything from the perspective of the little people might seem like a good idea – it does, in some rare instances, prove effective, such as viewing events through photos taken on a camera or viewed through the eyehole of a telescope – it largely fails to turn out this way, largely due to the fact that the little people in question are uninteresting and uncharismatic individuals (and the fact that one of them is supposedly a guy who does visual effects for a living is just pointless self indulgence at its worst). The establishing character scenes that occur before the alien attack begins hold little interest to us and serve no purpose other than to (unsuccessfully) make us care about the characters, much of it seeming like it is right out of a teen drama or soap opera and even while their lives are hanging in the balance the character based stuff still fails to engage us. Much of this can be blamed on the actors, at their worst delivering the kind of acting you would expect to find in an American television soap and at their best being merely competent – it’s certainly not a good sign that I couldn’t help thinking of Donald Faison as Turk from TV’s Scrubs. The other problem is poor plotting and characterisation, the film featuring the bare minimum of plot necessary to support the effects sequences, the characters being two dimensional stereotypes and the dialogue being completely obvious and unimaginative. It is hard to care less about this aspect of the film and the lack of interesting characters or a decent plot means that the terrifying scenario at the heart of the film fails to be even remotely terrifying. Additionally, the unengaging characters make us yearn for something more than what we are getting, the setting proving to be far too limited and the only glimpses of the bigger picture coming in the form of aerial shots above Los Angeles and a few shots showing alien motherships over other recognisable cities, which clearly only feature for the sake of effects shots and not for any purpose in the storyline – what little storyline there is anyway. The plot just seems lazy, predictable and rushed – perhaps they really did steal the idea for the film and had to get a script rushed through? – and it all culminates in an ending which is frankly rather absurd. Blame screenwriters Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell for the poor writing on display here. So, all in all, Skyline is not a particularly good film. It is at least successful in showing that a big budget isn’t necessary to show good visual effects but a lack of anything other than decent effects here makes for a rather shallow viewing experience. The only reason that it warrants three stars is that it has enough entertainment value that, if you leave your brain at home, it does prove to be a reasonably entertaining way to spend an hour and a half, being adequate popcorn fodder but nothing more. Also, somewhat ironically, for a film that was made without studio involvement, Skyline seems just like the kind of lazy filmmaking that some studios might actually make.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

You Again **

The concept for You Again is one of those that is almost timeless and that has great comic potential, dealing with themes that could readily be applied to almost any era and that many, young or old, will undoubtedly be able to relate to – the horrors of high school and having that one person who just made your life a living hell.
Many people will have been bullied at some point during their time in their high school careers, this is hardly something that is new to movies (in fact, I dare you to try and think of an American high school movie that hasn’t featured a character who is a bully), but rarely do we see on film what the long term implications of that bullying may be – until now that is, in a fashion at least. You see, while the concept here does have comic potential, it also has a very serious side to it as well – after all, bullying is a very serious issue in real life – but, suffice to say, there is little serious about this film. Never having dealt with serious material and not looking to change this any time soon, director Andy Fickman’s track record really speaks for itself. While he has forayed into more adult territory with 2005’s Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, by and large his resume consists of films aimed purely at the younger moviegoer, notably featuring teen comedy She’s The Man and Disney flicks The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain. And the fact that You Again boasts a U rating – something that seems to be quite rare for live action movie nowadays – probably means that you’ve already guessed that this is a film made with the younger demographic squarely in mind and your presumption about what to expect from the film will undoubtedly prove correct. You Again is not remotely serious and, quite fatally, also not particularly funny either.

As a teenager, Marni (Kristen Bell) was the kind of girl no girl would go near, a geeky bespectacled high-school loser mercilessly bullied by the popular and perfect Joanna (Odette Yustman). Joanna made Marni’s time in high school a living hell but years later, having survived the horror of high school, Marni has a successful career and, having just been promoted, is looking forward to going home for her brother Will’s (Jimmy Wolk) wedding and meeting his bride for the first time. She is in for a shock, however, as it turns out that Will is getting married to Joanna. When they meet she wants Joanna to apologize for the way she treated her but Joanna feigns ignorance and has entranced Marni’s family – mother Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis), father Mark (Victor Garber), younger brother Ben (Billy Unger) and her Grandma Bunny (Betty White) – and even dance tutor Georgia (Kristen Chenoweth), who’s convinced that Joanna is sincere, with her apparent flawlessness. Gail tries to encourage her to let bygones be bygones but Marni is unable to put the past behind her and sets out to expose Joanna for who she is. Things take an interesting twist as well when it is revealed that Joanna’s aunt, Ramona (Sigourney Weaver), is an old friend turned rival of Gail’s. Suddenly, old rivalries begin spilling out, threatening to destroy the big day. But is Marni right about Joanna still being the same girl she was in high school and what really sparked the rivalry between Gail and Ramona.

It’s a long time since I have had the misfortune to see such a talented cast as the one here so completely wasted as they are in You Again. You’d think that such distinguished actors as Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver would bring some real class to a film such as this but sadly their efforts are wasted on a series of slapstick scenarios. Regardless, however, it is the older generation who prove to be the best here, younger actresses like Kristen Bell simply being likable and little more, Odette Yustman doing mean pretty well but not being quite as convincing when playing nice, Kristen Chenoweth hardly bring given anything to do and a surprise cameo appearance by Dwayne Johnson just seeming pointless and out of place. The show really belongs to Betty White who is by far the best thing in the film – a scene at the end featuring her and Cloris Yeachman, who used to trade barbs with White on 70s TV show Mary Tyler Moore, is particularly amusing – but sadly even she has limited screen time. The actors are certainly not to blame for the film’s failings though, with pretty much everyone doing a decent job and only being let down by the poor quality of the material they have been given to work with. It would be easy to blame director Andy Fickman for everything, and indeed a lot of blame does rest on his shoulders, but the real weak link in this film is writer Moe Jelline, whose only previous writing credit was Love and Marriage, a TV show from 1996 that ran for two episodes. Jelline leaves no cliché unplundered in her screenplay which delivers a plot that is entirely predictable and overly sentimental, dialogue that is unwitty and mediocre and characters that mostly come across as two dimensional stereotypes, virtually no insight being given into the true long lasting effects of bullying. Additionally, she makes it very hard to figure out who, if anyone, we are supposed to be rooting for, Marni’s actions coming across as so mean as to almost draw our sympathises towards Joanna while Joanna’s apparently nice nature seems so completely fake (this could be partly due to Yustman’s performance though) that it is hard to believe that she has actually changed. Many of these flaws could be forgivable if the film at least delivered in the laughs department but sadly, aside from a few twitters (referring to both a particular scene and the humour in general) and a few amusing comic set pieces (all in the slapstick vein of comedy rather than anything more sophisticated), this is a film that really fails to bring on the funny, the film sometimes proving almost as embarrassing to watch as it is for the characters to experience and scenes that take on a musical tone featuring some of the most criminally bad singing outside of The X Factor. Fickman’s direction doesn’t exactly do much to change the fortunes of the film either with even the comic potential that is Jelline’s script not being exploited and an overly saccharine style making this far too sugary for anyone looking for any decent exploration of the themes present herein. Also, while the film seems to be trying to appeal to the older generation as well as the younger one, particularly with regard to its casting, the humour is so blatantly targeted at younger viewers as to not provide much for older viewers to actually enjoy. Fickman does nothing to steer the film away from the realm of the obvious – even the musical score is so completely familiar – and the result is a film that proves to be charmless. Sure, there is some enjoyment to be had in seeing Jamie Lee Curtis square off against Sigourney Weaver but everything that is done with it falls into the been there done that category and is not enough to make this truly worth your time. So, while not unwatchable, You Again is one film that you may not want to see again if you even see it once, which I would recommend you to do.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)