Philadelphia Weekly

New Releases

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Directed by Scott Derrickson
D+
Reviewed by Sean Burns
Now playing

With his perpetually blank expression and general air of otherworldliness, Keanu Reeves was born to play an extraterrestrial. So it goes without saying that casting him as the sorrowful alien Klaatu in director Scott Derrickson's otherwise worthless remake of Robert Wise's 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still was a stroke of genius. Alas, Reeves is the only thing they got right.

Wise's film lingers in the memory as one of those jarringly sophisticated flying saucer flicks that were so common in the Eisenhower era, addressing serious national anxieties in broad, pulpy allegories.

Derrickson's remake dumbs down the material considerably, attempting to update the previous picture's atomic-age paranoia with an environmentalist bent--but all the new eco-messaging feels false, thanks mainly to the relentless product placement. (At one critical juncture, the film itself appears to pause for a McDonald's commercial.)

Keeping the bold strokes of the original, Reeves arrives on Earth with his gigantic robot sidekick, announcing that the human race has grown so violent and destructive, it must be annihilated for the sake of our planet. He gradually discovers we're not such terrible people after all and maybe we don't deserve extinction, thanks largely to a tedious drive through New Jersey with Jennifer Connelly and her bratty stepkid (Jaden Smith, Will's son). Connelly does that doe-eyed thing she always does, gazing into the lens with tears in her eyes and precious little personality.

As expected, a bunch of dim-bulb military types do their best to screw everything up. A bizarrely bewigged Kathy Bates barks orders as the Secretary of Defense, while Friday Night Lights' coach Kyle Chandler delivers an unexpectedly terrible performance as her wormy lackey.

Derrickson, who previously helmed the appalling Exorcism of Emily Rose, can't even get the giant robot right. This marvelous, imposing thing quickly dissolves into a mass of piss-poor CGI locusts, unimpressively swarming their way through Giants Stadium. Further dopey decisions include casting John Cleese in a serious role, burying the first film's immortal catch-phrase beneath deafening sound effects and sidelining Don Draper himself, the great John Hamm, in a throwaway part as an exposition eunuch.

But what's most telling is the tone. Wise's original was an alarming cautionary tale, full of menace and stern warnings. The remake, as befits our times, coddles the audience, assuring us that all this bad stuff will eventually work itself out. Hey, let's all go to McDonald's!

Doubt
Directed by John Patrick Shanley
B
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Dec. 19

After nabbing an Oscar for writing Moonstruck, playwright John Patrick Shanley signed one of those Faustian Hollywood bargains to direct a picture--complete with a blank-check budget and two of the world's biggest marquee names. The result was 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano, a flop that sent him back to Broadway.

But as with The Wizard of Oz and Vertigo, the original perception was dead wrong. Not only is Joe Versus the Volcano sui generis and just plain wonderful, it's the exact opposite of what one would expect from a playwright directing a film--an eye-popping, sensual and cinematic experience made by a diehard movie lover clearly stoked to be playing with a new set of toys.

After that, Doubt--Shanley's egregiously truant sophomore directing job--comes as a huge disappointment. Adapting the play that netted him a Pulitzer, Shanley doesn't completely reimagine the material for a different medium. He simply "opens it up," the typical route taken when plays are turned into films.

Doubt is a "parable" of a monstrous nun (Meryl Streep) at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who's trying to destroy a progressive-minded priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) with baseless accusations of "unhealthy" dealings with the school's lone black student. There are only four characters, but the action consists primarily of debates between the nun and priest, as well as dialogue with a younger nun who's caught in the middle.