Warning from Space

Some benign alien visitors decide to visit Earth in their star-shaped craft. Needless to say, their arrival above causes a degree of panic, so one of them decides to take a leap of faith and try to communicate directly - assuming the form of a nightclub singer. Her mission - well, that is to warn mankind of an impending collision with a meteor that will wipe us all out. It now falls to "Dr. Matsuda" (Isa Yamagata) to develop a weapon that might destroy it, and save humanity. This is actually quite a decently paced story. It is the effects - especially the aliens who look like small children in starfish costumes - that rather detract from that. Indeed, they raise way to many smiles far too often for any deeper, more meaningful aspects of the story to generate or sustain any traction. The acting is petty terrible, too.... Watchable, though - it does have an underlying moral that bears some examination.

Lately I find I have a special place in my heart for the Japanese disaster movie of days gone by. They are so much fun, and their filmmakers throw everything but the kitchen sink in, both so that there's something to please everybody and because they're frankly just so chock-full of bizarre yet interesting ideas. It seems like it would have been a great time to make movies there! I enjoyed this a lot, though many aspects weren't understandable to me, like why as the meteor got ever closer to Earth it got so incredibly hot. I can understand, since the Moon influences tides through its gravitational pulls, why there could have been flooding, but the impact on temperature...I suppose it's simply one of those aspects of watching pre-manned space flight science-fiction films in which you have to approach simply with fun and acceptance, and turn off your disbelief, to simply enjoy the ride. I have no problem with that approach for these films. Cool ideas I really liked were the way one of the aliens altered its appearance so that the warning would be listened to, so that both worlds could be saved, and the concept that when a world crisis occurs, different countries and cultures--and various planets, for that matter--can sit down and work things out together, that all is not lost for civilization and its discontents in 2016. It's thoughts like that that help me sleep at night. This would make a great double bill with 'Melancholia'.