Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I'm a big fan of author David Gerrold. I think he's written some classic books and some great TV over the years. This is one of his most personal books, and I'm curious to see the film, especially in the middle of one of John Cusack's busiest years in a while.

Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here.

John Cusack has had an interesting year. He began with one of the more impressive Stephen King adaptations in quite a while with 1408, and later this year, you'll see him give one of the most devastating performances of his career in GRACE IS GONE. His latest opening this week is MARTIAN CHILD, an odd bird of a film about an odd bird of a child (Bobby Coleman) living with a man (Cusack) who remembers all too clearly what it was like to grow up the weirdo in school. This is a gentle and mostly quiet film (the boy, named Dennis, rarely speaks above a whisper, and most adults who come into contact with him do the same).

Cusack plays David, a successful science-fiction writer and two-year widower, who decides to throw caution to the wind and take a friend's (Sophie Okonedo) offer seriously to adopt an orphaned child. David's sister (Joan Cusack), a mother of two of her own boys, thinks he's nuts. His sister-in-law (Amanda Peet) thinks it's exactly what David needs to pull him back into the world of caring about people again. And in Dennis, David sees a lot of himself…to a point. You see, Dennis thinks he's a creature from Mars sent to Earth for a time to collect specimens, document life on our planet (with a Polaroid camera) and conduct harmless experiments using items stolen from other people. He seems afraid of the sun (he wears SPF 45 sunblock and sunglasses all the time); he wears a homemade weight belt because he is convinced that Earth's gravity is not enough to hold him down; and he sometimes talks in another language. The film does toy with the idea that Dennis is actually telling the truth.

Director Menno Meyjes (who also directed Cusack in 2002's underrated MAX) takes material that could have gone very wrong in other hands and transforms it into a sweet testament to the power of being as weird and imaginative as you can if it somehow helps you get through tough times. I'm not sure I agree with that theory, but he makes a convincing argument. Often draped in his ever-present black trenchcoat, Cusack pulls off the father-in-training routine without delving into cutesy or overly sentimental garbage. Not to say that MARTIAN CHILD doesn't have its share of heartfelt moments, but it earns most of them honestly, without falling back on tired heartstring-tugging tricks. Only in the film's final scenes does the emotion seem somewhat forced and unconvincing. Young Coleman stole my heart early on with his moving portrayal of a fragile and fractured kid, who is coping with life the only way he knows how. He's so utterly convinced he's a Martian that some small part of you hopes it's true. The innocence of MARTIAN CHILD is its most winning quality, and while there's not much to this work, that didn't stop me from caring about these people and their attempts to strike a happy balance between reality and coping mechanism.

Capone