THE WIT AND WISDOM OF ALAN SHARP

NIGHT MOVES IS AS QUOTABLE AS ANY THRILLER YOU’D CARE TO NAME. HERE ARE A FEW OF ITS MOST MEMORABLE EXCHANGES

Harry is watching a football game on TV. Ellen, his wife, asks him, “Who’s winning?”

HARRY: Nobody. One side is just losing slower than the other.

PAULA: Where were you when Kennedy got shot? HARRY: Which Kennedy? PAULA: Any Kennedy.

ARLENE: Are you the kind of detective who, once you get on a case, nothing can get you off it? Bribes, beatings, the allure of a woman...

HARRY: That was true in the old days. Before we had a union.

PAULA: There’s a big demand for dolphins. Lots of people want ’em — you’d be surprised. People buy them for their swimming pools. They think it’s chic to have a dolphin for a pet. Like that craze for baby alligators in New York years back. When they got bored with ’em, they flushed them down the john. Now they got a sewage system swarming with blind, albino, shiteating alligators.

HARRY: I’m not too sure I believe that. PAULA: You’re not one of those ‘intent on the truth’ types, are you?

HARRY: Listen, Delly, I know it doesn’t make much sense when you’re 16. Don’t worry — when you get to 40… it isn’t any better.

Harry demonstrates a chess endgame to Paula — restaging a match played in 1921.

PAULA: Oh, that’s a beauty.

HARRY: Yeah, but he didn’t see it. He played something else and lost. He must have regretted it every day of his life. I know I would have. As a matter of fact, I do regret it and I wasn’t even born yet.

PAULA: That’s no excuse.

IT’S WATCH-THE-SKIES month as we turn our attention to recent hostile visitors from outer space.

Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, Save Yourselves! drops a Brooklyn couple out of an indie comedy-drama (Sunita Mani, John Reynolds) into an alien-invasion movie. Stressed by urban living, they take a week’s cabin break from being online… which means they miss the news that Earth has been invaded by Crittertribble types. They mistake the first specimen for a pouffe, but eventually twig that the literally gas-guzzling furballs are dangerous, fast and (bizarrely) hallucinogenic, which prompts them to assess their own uselessness in a changed world and at least try to adapt. Mani and Reynolds are refreshingly different from most movie survivalists, and the film has a wistful, humane approach that’s rather appealing.

Writer-director Steven Kostanski riffs on ’80s models in Psycho Goreman , which is like E.T. The Extra-terrestrial, but if Elliott were a mean little girl and E.T. the arch-villain of an unfolding cosmic saga. Tween Mimi (Nita-josee Hanna, in an incredibly out-there performance) is distracted from bullying her older brother Luke (Owen Myre, also good) when she gets hold of an alien artefact that gives her total control over galactic-level genocide monkey the Duke Of Nightmare. Other monsters show up — with incredible, imaginative, truly bizarre design — but the best joke is that the ongoing war between ruthless angels and demons never distracts Mimi from her playground obsessiveness, which extends to turning the boy she likes into a giant, slithering brain and consistently one-upping her downtrodden older brother.

Luke Sparke’s Id4-style Australian epic Occupation was obviously set up as a franchisefounder. Occupation: Rainfall offers plenty of action, including a George Lucas-style chase/ fight scene with alien steeds, flying tanks and zappy little drones. Between the explosions, it’s a bit of a plod, devolving into the sort of soap-opera alien-invasion antics TV series tend to get mired in when the recycled effects from the pilot have run out and hours have to be filled. Still, it has Jason Isaac voicing an alien called Steve who sports a false moustache and has a double act with Ken Jeong. Also from Australia, Sandra Sciberras’ Alien Parasite , aka The Dustwalker, doesn’t break new ground — but has a nicely desolate Outback look, interesting and mostly laid-back characterisations, and a rare trust in an audience figuring out exactly what’s going on. A meteor lands, a small town is cut off by a dust storm, townsfolk become alieninfected zombies, and a big CG monster scuttles around. Sheriff Jolene Anderson, her mulletted deputy Richard Davies, and geologist Cassandra Magrath try to get through the day without being forced to kill former friends and family members.

Think Americans (and Australians) get overly violent and paranoid when invaded by aliens and zombie hordes? That’s nothing compared to how Russians react. Egor Baranov’s big-budget The Blackout has the Russian military take on hordes of alien-enslaved semi-zombies (not to mention mind-controlled bears) when a long-in-theplanning alien attack wipes out all life everywhere on Earth except for a circle around Moscow. An enormous amount of weaponry gets used, from guided missiles to an axe, and a Nosferatu-look alien traitor (or is he?) recruits mutant psychics to assist in the defence of what’s left of the human race. It’s a broad-strokes, huge-scale action movie populated by characters made of three-ply cardboard with more tracer bullets and a higher body-count than Michael Bay’s entire filmography — but you have to appreciate the many wild ideas jammed in between the devastation.