Culture Shock 09.25.14: Scarlett Johansson is a different black widow

It's Cold War paranoia distilled into one feverish scene: Actor Kevin McCarthy running through the streets — stopping traffic, banging on windows, yelling at anyone who will listen, as well as those who won't.

"They're not human! They're here already! You're next!"

But no one ever listens, not until it's too late. And it's always too late.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956) appeared at the height of the Red Scare, with aliens as stand-ins for communist infiltrators. But the fear of being subverted and replaced by outsiders is universal. Few political issues ignite passions like immigration does, because immigration strikes at things more primal than mere pocketbook concerns. People fear waking up to find they're suddenly in a culture not their own. Every new ethnic restaurant becomes a beachhead for the "invasion."

No wonder "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has spawned three remakes so far: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978), "Body Snatchers" (1993) and "The Invasion" (2007). And that's not counting thematically similar movies, such as 1994's "The Puppet Masters," based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel, or 1998's "The Faculty."

With "Under the Skin," now on Blu-ray and DVD, director Jonathan Glazer ("Sexy Beast") flips the invasion narrative on its head, telling it from the invader's viewpoint.

The invader is question is Scarlett Johansson, taking time out from playing the Marvel franchise's Black Widow, but still acting out the black widow role by luring unwary young men to their doom.

She's the spearhead of what seems to be an alien invasion, although we're never entirely sure. "Under the Skin" is not exactly upfront about its intentions, rather like what you'd expect of a stealth operation.

Johansson's femme fatale tools around Scotland in a minivan, giving her as unthreatening a cover as one can imagine. She goes from the streets of Glasgow to the cloud-covered, picture postcard Highlands, pretending to be lost and asking young, lonely-seeming men for directions. She strikes up conversations, flatters her would-be rescuers, and so it goes. How many red-blooded, heterosexual males can resist an invitation from a woman who looks like Scarlett Johansson?

Back at her place, these men enter a world that can appropriately be called alien. Then they disappear, never to be seen again — not as themselves, anyway. As the title implies, it's what's under the skin that counts.

McCarthy's voice echoes across the decades: "They're here already! You're next!"

Soon enough, Johansson is back on the road, looking for the next lonely guy.

Without leaving her front seat, Scarlett has a good view of humanity: people walking, people in traffic, men, women, children, families. She sees people living, loving and laughing. She sees us at our best and our worst. One wonders what she was told to expect, if anything.

Are we people to her or cattle? Or are we as much a mystery to her as she is to us?

Glazer makes "Under the Skin" deliberately disorienting, aided and abetted by the menacing drone of Mica Levi's ambient score. When Johansson's alien crosses into our world or her victims cross into hers, there is a sense that they've crossed barriers not meant to be breached.

Neither side is hospitable to inhabitants of the other.

It's not an optimistic assessment, whether you think of it in terms of immigrants getting along with natives, men getting along with women, or simply people getting along with one another.

Glazer entrusts his film to Johansson, and she rewards him with a performance that's subtle and beguiling. This is Johansson at her best.

Her performance is as enigmatic as the movie. We're not sure what "Under the Skin" is all about. As in life, we're left to make up our own meaning.

Scarlett Johansson’s debut CD is a dud

This has been a depressing couple of weeks. Scarlett Johansson has broken my heart twice.
First came word that she is engaged to “Van Wilder” star Ryan Reynolds, making her even more unattainable than she was before.

It doesn’t help that I’ll always think of Reynolds as Billy, the clueless hanger-on who mostly annoyed the older teens on the Nickelodeon soap opera “Fifteen.” (Now you know my guilty-pleasure viewing back when I was in college.)

Now comes the release of her first — and, with any luck, last — album, a collection of Tom Waits covers titled “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” And while it isn’t an embarrassment on the order of Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” or Don Johnson’s “Heartbeat,” it pretty much confirms my theory that singers have an easier time becoming actors than actors have becoming singers. (For the record, I dispute the notion that Jennifer Lopez is either.)

The compact disc arrived in stores Tuesday, but anyone who has already heard streaming audio of it online knows the bad news.

It isn’t that Johansson can’t sing, although she can’t. Waits isn’t exactly known for his vocal range, either. A music critic once colorfully described Waits’ voice as “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” So, Johansson’s breathy delivery — she sounds like she’s been downing bottles of cheap scotch and smoking menthols since she was 7 — should be up to the task.

It’s that everything around her sounds worse than she does. Either this is the most overproduced Tom Waits album in history or it’s the most underproduced pop album. In any case, the end result sounds like Johansson singing karaoke in that bar in “Lost in Translation.” That’s fine for a movie role, but terrible for an actual album you expect people to buy.

Wired.com Listening Post blogger Eliot Van Buskirk compares Johansson’s effort to the Cocteau Twins. Yeah, I could see that. If, of course, the Cocteau Twins recorded all of their albums while doped up on Valium. If there is one word that sums up “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” that word is “lazy.”

The blame rests squarely with the album’s producer, TV on the Radio’s David Sitek, who lays on the syrup so think that even Johansson’s backing musicians get stuck. Seriously, I’m not sure any producer has ruined an album like this since Phil Spector got his hands on “Let It Be” or David Bowie took the edge off The Stooges’ “Raw Power.”

Speaking of Bowie, he shows up on “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” too, although his backing vocals at least don’t make matters worse.

Ultimately, Sitek’s approach fails to live up to the material because the combination of Johansson’s voice and Waits’ jaded, jazzy lyrics should work. If Ben Folds can make William Shatner sound good, then anything is possible.

If there is any saving grace to “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” it’s that no song is so campy that it’ll end up on a Dr. Demento compilation CD. And with any luck, Johansson had gotten the singing bug out of her system so she can go back to doing what she is good at — making movies.

Speaking of which, Johansson is starring in yet another Woody Allen movie, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. It’s scheduled to open in late summer, and it better be worth the wait.

I don’t think I can take Scarlett breaking my heart again.