The Day the Earth Stood Still” provides the perfect contrast between Old and New Hollywood.

The 1951 original featured archaic effects and a storyline which played into our culture’s fear of atomic power.

The remake, starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, offers stellar effects and a message that’s vital more to Hollywood elites than Jim and Jane Sixpack.

Guess which one we’ll still be watching 50 years from now?

The spaceship in “Earth” lands not in Washington, D.C. this time but near The Big Apple. Connelly plays a scientist summoned by the government to help understand who, or what, might be inside.

Before she can so much as offer up a hypothesis, a creature emerges from the craft and is quickly shot by one of the soldiers encircling the landing site.

The alien survives and ends up looking a lot like Neo, or rather Reeves, once his outer shell is removed. His name is Klaatu, and he’s come to Earth to warn us … or worse, but that’s all that needs to be said about the film’s setup.

Klaatu may look like an ordinary human, but he can solve knotty math problems in second and coax vending machines to spit out food without inserting so much as a single coin.

Before Klaatu can complete his mission he spends some quality time with Connelly’s character and her stepson, blandly played by Jaden Smith (Will and Jada’s adorable son).

“Earth” isn’t easily dismissed as a wan remake. Reeves’ blank stare often works against him, but here it adds the right amount of mystery. Kathy Bates’ turn as the Secretary of Defense consists mostly of spouting military jibber jabber, but she grows enough during the film to begin offering valid solutions to the problems at hand.

And while Klaatu and his robot pal GORT come bearing a message Al Gore could support, the information comes in digestible doses, not delivered in hectoring speeches by the main characters.

But Connelly is an aloof presence here, desperately trying to bond with her stepson and save humanity and doing a poor job with the former. And the story’s added complexities crumble under the most cursory post-film dissection.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” tries to update, and improve upon, a sci-fi classic. But what it succeeds at is showing why the original gained its status in the first place.

(Photo: Klaatu’s (Keanu Reeves) mission on Earth is tied to the spheres that have also arrived on the planet. Photo credit: WETA)

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Call me Klaatu.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” may be 57 years old, but much of this sci-fi tale is as relevant now as when it first hit theaters.

This Friday (Dec. 12) marks the release of an “Earth” remake starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, making this the perfect time to re-release the original on DVD.

Just swallow hard as you watch the most primitive special effects imaginable. It’s worth the effort.

“Earth” begins with a massive spaceship landing on the D.C. Mall. Rumors of an alien invasion immediately begin, and the first creature to emerge from the spacecraft is shot by an overeager soldier.

It’s the kind of reception that confirms the alien’s worst suspicions about the human race.

The alien goes by Klaatu (Michael Rennie), and he’s come to Earth because humans have created weaponry that could threaten the lives of other creatures across the universe. And that just won’t stand.

Yes, it’s about living in the new atomic age – although the remake tackles a different global problem.

Before Klaatu can take action, he befriends a D.C. woman and her son (Patricia Neal, Billy Gray) who show him humanity isn’t as violent, or as misguided, as it appears to be.

Director Robert Wise (“The Sound of Music”) works around the crude special effects (Gort the robot who looks like a second-rate Halloween costume) to create a yarn that sails beyond its genre trappings. Rennie is perfect as Klaatu – he’s cooly handsome with an accent that hints at his otherworldly origins.

The script delivers on several fronts, scattering sharp chuckles throughout but keeping the enormity of Klaatu’s mission forever in mind. We’re also left with some thorny moral issues to wrestle over long after the film’s rewarding finale.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” comes as a two-disc set packed with extras, including archive interviews with Wise, a making-of featurette and teaser footage of the remake co-starring Jennifer Connelly.

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Another day, another movie about dirty cops. Ho hum.

“Street Kings,” the new-to-DVD police drama starring Keanu Reeves, gets its hands dirty with some pretty lax law enforcers. Reeves plays the king of the crooked cops, a detective who doesn’t mind planting evidence as long as it cleans up the streets. But who’s gonna tidy up his soul?

My Washington Times review dissects the film’s descent into incoherence. It’s a shame, since Reeves isn’t bad in this cop thriller, and the fine supporting cast (Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie and Chris Evans) also deserves better.

(Photo: Keanu Reeves takes the law into his own bloody hands in “Street Kings”)

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