FUNIDENTIFIED
The film begins promisingly, with an alien invasion. LYING VAGINAS
SKYLINE Starring Eric Balfour, Donald Faison and Scottie Thompson
Directed by Colin Strause and Greg Strause Written by Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell Universal
In a recent Ellemagazine interview, Jessica Alba im-
plied that actors don’t follow scripts; they just say what- ever they want, as long as it’s sort of in the ballpark. If this is true, it may explain what derailed Sky- line. Maybe the script started out full of nuance and wonder, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or at least rife with visceral thrills, like Cloverfield, and maybe Eric Balfour (pictured above), still drunk with power from his star- ring turn in Dinoshark, said, “To hell with that,” and just made everything up as he went along. Okay, so that’s probably not
what happened, but it’s a plausi- ble theory. Skyline isn’t just bad – it’s jaw-droppingly terrible. It’s so awful that its disastrous third act almost circles back around to good again in that, “You have got to see this shit, because you won’t believe me if I tell you” sort of way.
RM38 C I N E M A C A B R E
Then the story backtracks and recounts the fifteen hours leading up to the invasion – in what feels like real time. Skyline’s scribes take the vacuous, annoying fucks who are usually afforded about 45 seconds of screen time as Bitchy Girl #1 or Douchey Jerk #3, and build an entire movie around them. Jarrod (Balfour) has travelled to LA with his girlfriend to celebrate his buddy’s birthday. She’s pregnant, he doesn’t want it, no one cares, aliens invade, and everyone spends the next hour trying to avoid being sucked out windows or having their brains removed by fly- ing, tentacled vaginas from space. It’s telling that one of the main
characters is the owner of a visual effects house because eye candy is all Skyline has to offer. Beyond what you’ve seen in the trailer, though, even the FX are dull. Once you get past the amusing fact that the aliens look like giant, toothy lady tunnels with wiggly arms, Skyline has noth- ing going for it. The script and per- formances are a big step down from the average direct-to-DVD movie, and directors Colin and Greg Strause haven’t learned a damn thing since AVP: Requiem. The cheesy pleasures
of Skyline’s final scenes are diminished by the fact that you have to sit through the rest of the movie to get to them.
APRIL SNELLINGS
THE TROLL TRUTH
BEST WORST MOVIE Starring George Hardy, Michael Stephenson
and Claudio Fragasso Written and directed by Michael Stephenson Docurama Films
Troll 2may be the worst film ever made but at least
it gave rise to one of the best documentaries of the year. Produced and directed by Michael Stephenson (the child star of Troll 2, now 32), Best Worst Movie is exponentially more entertaining than the film it pays tribute to, thanks in large part to a cavalcade of real- life characters far more eccentric than any feeble work of fiction could concoct. After enjoying a spectacular festival run, Stephen-
son’s doc (see RM#100) recently landed on DVD with over an hour of bonus features. So if you have a yearning to see more of delightfully delusional director Claudio Fragasso pontificating on why his Troll 2 is an underappreciated masterpiece, look no further! Fra- gasso generously unpacks the deep “rites of pas- sage” symbolism in his green goblin epic and explains how he weaved together the filmic elements the way a master Italian chef concocts a minestrone. Or per- haps you’re curious about the enormous amount of time screenwriter Rossella Drudi spent studying and researching the habits and traditions of the American people before scribbling her vegetarian hobgoblin manifesto? Or how writing Troll 2 helped her thera- peutically deal with anorexia?
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