Frequency

FREQUENCY is not a great movie, but it has a great core and two central performances that sell it.

Here’s the setup: through the magic of sunspots and HAM radio, NYPD detective John Sullivan finds himself able to communicate with his father, NYFD firefighter Frank Sullivan. Where John’s sitting, it’s 1999. Where Frank’s sitting, it’s 1969. Frank doesn’t believe that it’s his son on the other end of that radio transmission. But when John tells his father all about the fire he’ll fight the next day, and about how he’ll die in it unless he goes against his instinct and zigs when he’d normally zag, Frank’s intrigued. The next day, of course, the son’s prophecies come true and the father believes.

OK, and this is where the movie gets me. Frank comes home, kisses his wife (who tells him she heard he had a close call), and goes upstairs to look in the now 7-yr-old son who, 30 years in the future, will save his life by warning him yesterday. Dennis Quaid, who plays Frank, looks at the sleeping child with an expression that captures everything I feel when I look in on my boys, then adds appreciation and respect for the man this boy will grow up to become. He goes downstairs, contacts his son on the magic radio, and tells him he loves him. “I love you, too, pop.” Then, in the 1969 timeline, the boy comes downstairs, half asleep. Quaid tells him to get dressed: tonight, together, they’re going to master the challenge of riding that bike once and for all.

Waterworks, I’m tellin’ ya. Waterworks. I get choked up even writing about it. Yeah, there’s this whole plot about a serial killer (and really, what ‘90s movie didn’t work a serial killer in there somewhere) and the unexpected consequences of messing with the timeline and chasing and shooting and all that stuff. There’s also a lot of time travel hokum that’s basically just asking the audience to believe in magic and go with it. But the core of FREQUENCY, the love between a father and his son and a boy and his dad, resonates so powerfully with me that I overlook the weaknesses and spend all my time locked into the performances of Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel. What man doesn’t want to be the father Dennis Quaid is in this movie? What man doesn’t want to have the father Dennis Quaid is in this movie? What man doesn’t want his son to grow up to be the kind of guy Jim Caviezel is in this movie?

This picture works, and it speaks to me in a deep and powerful way. Whenever I need to test to make sure the plumbing still works, I need only to spin this one up to make the water flow. FREQUENCY may not be a great movie, but it hits its mark.

The Mist

THE MIST wrung me out. This is a scary, exciting, depressing, and fulfilling movie that did not get the love it deserved.

The film, based on a Stephen King novella from _Skeleton Crew_, is a variation on one of King’s favorite themes: a group of people are trapped in an extraordinary, possibly supernatural, situation. The rules of civilization bend and snap, and we’re witnesses to our own best and worst selves.

Sure, there are monsters and gore effects and all that sort of thing, but THE MIST is really Lord of the Flies in a supermarket. While some folks may be put off by the film’s religious and political positions, it isn’t the positions themselves that matter so much as where the picture goes with them. THE MIST has a bleak view of humanity, it seems, but it also believes in the potential for nobility. I enjoyed its exploration of those ideas as much as I did the visceral fear, adventure, and desolation it had on offer; for I knew that those emotions were emotions in a box, feelings I could sample for a while, then put away. But what I can’t put away are some of the ideas of THE MIST, particularly the one about the fragility of civilization and the human compact. I don’t agree with its position, because I consistently see people at their best when things are at their worst, but the film does offer rich food for thought, nonetheless.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Y’know what I liked about the FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER? Its sense of fun. This film takes plenty of time for gags, and this lightness works toward creating a pleasant, rather innocuous entry in the series.

The Silver Surfer, who actually looks more like a mercury surfer, is an extraterrestrial being who, um, surfs around the galaxy preparing life-bearing planets for consumption at the hands of another, larger extraterrestrial being. When he shows up on Earth, its up to the Fantastic Four, with a combination of help and interference from old nemeses Victor von Doom and some U.S. Army general with Canadian jump wings and jurisdiction in London and Siberia. (Aside: Andre Braugher plays the general. Whenever I see him, I recall the top-notch Iago he played in a production of Othello opposite Avery Brooks. Suffice it to say that Iago is a more interesting character than the stock “military guy as imagined by people who’ve never been in the military” he’s stuck with here.)

That’s a fine setup for a superhero movie, but what makes F2S2 a pleasant time at the movies is the interaction between the members of the Fantastic Four. These people care about one another, and I enjoyed their interactions as they tried to both save the world and lift one another up.

Is F2S2 a particularly good movie? Not really, and I’d skip right by it if I ran across it on a hotel TV. But it’s fine and, if your kids want to watch it, it won’t kill you to sit down and watch it with them. Tepid praise, but praise nonetheless.