Aliens at SIFF, Run Logan Run!

Beginning last night, and continuing tonight and Sunday, SIFF is holding a mini sci-fi film festival with five classics shown in sterling Blu-Ray on SIFF Cinema's excellent projection system. Tickets for the remaining three movies are $10.00. On Sunday, your ticket stub for the first screening gets you into the second screening at no additional charge.

Thursday's opening brought a double feature of the venerable Planet of the Apes from 1968 and Terry Gilliam's melancholy and weird 12 Monkeys. Tonight, beginning at 7:30 is Stanley Kubrick's mind-blowing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sunday's double feature begins at 3:30 p.m. with Nicolas Roeg's Man Who Fell to Earth, followed at Logan's Run at 6:00. 

It's hard to argue with SIFF's Blu-Ray choices on purely aesthetic grounds, because the majority of these films are standards in the category of sci-fi films. And, oddly enough, that's my objection to the first three films in the lineup. 

As most fans of science fiction films know, Apes, Monkeys, and 2001 are so ubiquitous that it seems redundant to be screening them at all. All three of these movies are, seemingly, in constant rotation on cable. Just two weeks ago, Fox Movie Channel did an all Apes weekend with all five films in the series (they did not, bless them, show the truly awful Tim Burton remake). Even with SIFF's wonderful screen and projection system, you still get a sense of been there, done that.

Apes and 2001, in which Kubrick postulates that aliens initiated and continue to control human evolution, have become sci-fi films for people who don't really like sci-fi films. 

12 Monkeys, like all Terry Gilliam's films, is a special case all its own. A strange, and strangely moving, time travel film, it also shows up frequently on Encore's multiple cable channels. It features another great performance by Bruce Willis (is there a more underrated actor out there? He is consistently good, and often, as in Unbreakable, Pulp Fiction, and Monkeys, inspired. SIFF please do a Willis film fest!), but just misses greatness with a slow-moving middle section and a confused and confusing ending. Interested movie lovers would be wise to check out Terry Gilliam's commentary on the Monkeys DVD where he, astonishingly, admits that he "lost the movie" halfway through. It feels that way when you are watching it.

If SIFF wanted to honor sci-fi and excite fans, why didn't they screen Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962), the film that 12 Monkeys is based on? In just 28 brief minutes, and using only still photos, Marker's film is simply stunning. It takes your breath away. It's available from Criterion along with Marker's bizarre travel log, Sans Soleil, surely one of the great unknown films of all time.

And just to show what a true sci-fi festival could be, head over to SIFF on Sunday for Logan's Run and Man Who Fell To Earth. These two films, both from 1976, are rarely shown and well worth a retrospective review. In the former, Michael York lives in a world where, to keep a delicate balance of resources, everyone over the age of 30 is executed. Naturally, on his 30th birthday, he runs. And he runs through some fantastic, state-of-the-art sets that give everyone a nice feel for sci-fi before Star Wars transformed the category the next year.

Nicolas Roeg's Man Who Fell to Earth answers the question: What kind of role can David Bowie play? As a dislocated alien, Bowie is brilliant. To really understand how good he really is, check out Keanu Reeves in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Reeves hits all the right alien moves, but misses the feeling, the oddness, by a mile. 

Here's hoping that SIFF screens another sci-fi film fest and this time brings the odd and weird along.