THE 5TH WAVE (2016)

I have a weakness for alien invasion stories and having recently finished reading Robert McCammon's awesome alien invasion novel "The Border" I was in the mood for a good alien invasion movie, so I sat down to watch THE 5TH WAVE and...I'm still in the mood for a good alien invasion movie.

Told in possibly the blandest way possible, THE 5TH WAVE is the bland story of a bland teenage girl who is living a bland life when some bland aliens invade and then not much happens.  She gives a brief narration about the first four "waves" ("waves" are ways that the aliens tried to wipe out humanity: lack of electricity, tidal waves, sickness, aliens looking like humans), but it's covered so quickly that it has zero emotional impact.  So the main chick ends up in a refugee camp with her family.  Her dad is killed and her little brother is taken away by soldiers.  She now has to walk to the military base to rescue her brother.  How exciting.

Boring aliens, children trained as soldiers, earthquakes chasing people, a tough female soldier wearing 40lbs. of eye make-up, piss-poor dialogue, soldiers creeping around at night with bright LED lights on their helmets, an open-ended ending that was a total disappointment, slow pace, PG-rated violence, Liev Schreiber's talents wasted, zero nudity, zero blood.  Honestly, I can't see why anybody over the age of 15 would ever want to watch this movie more than once.  It's not a bad movie, but it's just so soulless and unoriginal that it's pretty much nothing.  The alien mothership did look cool though...for the entire 45 seconds that it was in the screen.  Skip it.

SIGNS OF LIFE (1968)

"Now that I can talk, what shall I say?"

During WWII a wounded German paratrooper, Stroszek, after being released from the hospital, is reassigned to light-duty on the small Greek island of Kos.  There's only 60 soldiers on the island and he along with two other soldiers and his wife are stationed to guard a small fort.  With nothing to do, the four quietly idle away their days.  For a normal person this would be a cake job, but the empty time is too much for Stroszek and he slowly starts to go insane.

This is very simple story and in a lot of directors hands it would end up a boring disaster, but somehow the young Werner Herzog turns this (his first feature length film) into an absolutely beautiful movie.  So much so that when I finished it, I watched it all over again!  It's hard to put my finger on it, but the entire film is simply hypnotic.  The slow pace, the almost documentary-like filming style, the performances that Werner pulled out of the cast of mostly unknown or non-actors, the beautiful b&w photography, the odd sounds and maybe most importantly the gorgeous music by Stavros Xarhakos.  His music was the thing that really propelled the film from being just "above average" to "great".

SIGNS OF LIFE is not for all audiences, but if you are willing to give it a chance I think that you will walk away a better person.

Werner Herzog in the background.