Iron Sky (2012)

“Iron Sky” has the greatest story pitch ever: Nazis from the dark side of the moon attack Earth using flying saucers. How crazy cool is that? Much of this Finnish-German-Austrian B-flick -– special effects, political satire aimed at American bravado and U.N. incompetence -- is hilarious fun, but there’s so much more that falls flat like a bad sci-fi version of “Springtime for Hitler” from “Producers.” Put bluntly, the trailer is better than the movie, the latter fumbled by flat acting and ugly stereotypes, as in all black youth pack Glocks. The gravest error: Great actor Udo Kier (“Suspiria”) plays the Fuhrer II, does nothing but die halfway in, replaced by a C-grade henchman. Why!?! The lead characters are a Nazi schoolmarm with clue zero; a black astronaut turned white by drugs; and a Sarah Palin clone as president who decorates the Oval Office with dead polar bears. Palin jokes were funny in 2009. Never funny: A Nazi scientist made to look like Einstein, a Jew who fled Hitler’s grip. “Sky” thinks its guns are as big as Tarantino’s “Basterds” and “Django” history remixes, but these barrels fire blanks. So much promise wasted. C+

The Perfect Host (2011)

“The Perfect Host” is a home-invasion flick – I have seen several recently, why I don’t know - - that flips the genre rules with pitch-black comedy galore, before a third-act switcheroo stumbles hard and fast. We open on a guy (Clayne Crawford) who’s just used a silly Hunter S. Thompson disguise to rob a L.A. bank, only to get robbed by a young woman at a drug store. The flummoxed guy then decides to crash a nearby house, taking a hostage. He choices an artsy-fartsy home owned by a waif of a man (David Hyde Pierce of “Frasier”) who starts out prissy weak and then evolves ape shit crazy. Oops. I won’t say more, except to repeat that the ending tanks with a character reveal that thuds like a bad game of telephone. Pearce lets loose with a twisted grin, purposefully playing off the Niles we all love. If writer/ director Nick Tomnay’s Sundance hit ended 20 minutes sooner, it could have been perfectly fun. B-