One Paragraph Movie Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still

Ninety-fourth film: The Day the Earth Stood Still, a 1951 science fiction cautionary tale with unspeakably awesome special effects and a terrifying, taciturn silver robot. Look, it’s not often you see a rotary cradle telephone in a UFO movie, but the hokey mid-century setting only adds to the extreme coolness of this thing. The space man Klaatu is a stone cold fox, his appeal only heightened by his uncanny understanding of earth customs, cosmic mathematics, and three-piece suits. The strong message is that aggression plus the use of nuclear weapons will result in the brisk punishment of Earth by other planets, primarily in the form of aggression and the use of nuclear weapons. I mean it sounds a lot better from a man with impossible cheekbones dressed in a glitter-thread suit, but there you are. Bloody good movie. Three and three quarter two-dollar space diamonds out of five.