The ever-busy John Cusack stars in Martian Child, opening wide this weekend. Based on an award-winning novel by legendary sci-fi author and Star Trek scribe David Gerrold (who also executive-produced the film and had final approval on the script, ensuring that, if nothing else, it’ll be loyal to its source), the film focuses on an older man — Cusack, essentially playing a straight version of Gerrold himself — who, battling his own personal demons, adopts a disturbed young boy who thinks he’s from Mars. It’s not your typical science-fiction scenario, but it’s one that echoes a number of other films in the genre that play on the ambiguity, or at least strangeness and charm, of the idea of an alien among us. As with many other types of genre films, science fiction is often at its most successful when it eschews the gimmicks, special effects, and labyrinthine plots and focuses instead on drama, revelation and humanity, even if the human is very possibly an alien. Here’s a fiver of films to get you in the mood for Martian Child.
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