Odds and Ends

The Bounty

The Bounty tells the story of H.M.S. BOUNTY, Captain Bligh, and the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian.  It features a delightful, Vangelis synth score, magnificent overacting by a young Mel Gibson, and a glacial pace.  If that sounds like your cup of coconut water, have at it.

Ricki and the Flash

Ricki and the Flash tells the story of an aging would-be rock star in a San Fernando Valley cover band, the ex-husband and children she left behind to pursue her dreams, and the year when the chickens come home to roost.  It’s solid material, anchored by a powerhouse Meryl Streep performance, some subtle work from Kevin Kline, and even a solid turn by Rick Springfield in a supporting role as Ricki’s lead guitarist and love interest.

This is the kind of character study that depends utterly on its star, and it will surprise no one to find that Ms. Streep is entirely up to the task.  She makes us want to watch her even when we don’t like her, and want to watch her even more as or perceptions begin to change.  Truly, this actress Can Do No Wrong.

The Salvation

Hey, do you like Westerns?  Do you like Mads Mikkelsen and Jonathan Pryce?  Me too, but I’m sorry to report that not even Mssrs. Mikkelsen & Pryce can save this Western.

The Salvation is your basic revenge tale, with Mikkelsen going after the thugs who do away with a couple of barely sketched out characters named, I think, “Wife” and “Son.”  Things spin out of control, there’s a showdown, blah blah blah.  The movie looks cheap, the villain lacks complexity, and the whole thing is a drag.  If you’re really in the mood for a Western, go watch Open Range again, instead.

Let Me In

Let The Right One In is a brilliant, Swedish take on the modern vampire story.  Let Me In, the American remake starring Chloe Grace Moretz, lacks the beauty and subtlety of the original and exchanges it for ugliness and plodding literalism.  Stay outside.

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a triumph of storytelling and technical filmmaking.  It’s beautiful, engaging, age-appropriately scary, and entirely convincing.  We loved it.

Chef

Funny and kind, Chef is a feel-good movie that sent me home with a smile on my face.

In the film, John Favreau plays a workaholic chef. He's divorced. He doesn't spend enough time with his son. He works for a restaurateur who's a businessman first and an epicurean second. He's miserable. When he loses his job and must start anew with a dilapidated food truck, things seem about as bad as they can get.

And then he remembers how much he loves cooking good food for people who appreciate it. Oh, and he bonds with his son, finds happiness, and so forth (That last sentence isn't a spoiler unless you've never been to the movies before.).

Think of Chef as cinematic comfort food, the motion picture equivalent of a grilled-cheese sandwich. Now, a grilled-cheese sandwich can be Velveeta on Wonder Bread hot off the Foreman Grill, or it can be a carefully chosen mix of cheeses on fresh-baked bread and grilled -just so- on a hot skittle with hand-drawn butter. Chef is the latter. It's genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny not just in its acting, but in its composition and editing. It boasts characters of depth and heart, people you'd be happy to call your friends. It photographs food and the process of its preparation with delight. It's just a joy, and it's putting a smile on my face even now, as I write about it days later.

See Chef and be happy.

Iron Man 2

IRON MAN 2 is a great, great movie.  That is, if you love reading Popular Mechanics.  Because if there’s one thing IRON MAN 2 delights in showing us, it’s long sequences of guys welding.  And dragging cables.  And doing, y’know, Metal Shop stuff.

Me, I don’t read Popular Mechanics.  I never took Metal Shop.  Long stretches of IRON MAN 2 bored me out of my mind. 

That’s not to say that Robert Downey, Jr. isn’t fantastic in what will become his signature role.  Or that Scarlett Johansson (as a superduperspy) doesn’t look great in a catsuit.  It doesn’t even mean that stuff doesn’t blow up real good.  It just means that I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about Iron Man’s big fight with his best friend (a role demanding far less gravitas than The Great Don Cheadle brought to bear).  I didn’t care about the Big Villain’s boring revenge story.  And I certainly didn’t care about the intricacies of corporate reorganization.

By the time the Big Villain, who wasn’t nearly as interesting as the Little Villain, unleashed his evil plan, I’d grown so worn out with pseudo-physics, quasi-engineering bull$#!^ that I could only marvel that this film failed to learn the basic lesson of the Star Wars prequels.  To wit, fighting robots are dull.  Their destruction carries no emotional heft, because they’re things.  You might as well have given me twenty minutes of Iron Man unplugging refrigerators.

For all that, however, IRON MAN 2 does offer something to make it worth seeing.  It’s not on the posters and it’s not in the ads, however: it’s a secret weapon named Sam Rockwell, upon whom I now formally grant Can Do No Wrong status.  Rockwell plays the Little Villain, the CEO of Stark Corporation’s primary competitor in the weapons business.  His name is Justin Hammer, and he’s a weasely, sniveling wannabe Tony Stark who absolutely steals every second he’s on screen.  Let me say that again:  Sam Rockwell (CDNW) steals the screen from Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and The Great Don Cheadle.  I didn’t think anyone could upstage any of these actors; but Rockwell’s Justin Hammer is so deliciously slimy, so wily yet such a doofus, that he runs away with this movie.  After GALAXY QUEST, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, CHOKE, MOON, and now IRON MAN 2, I can safely assert that Sam Rockwell has arrived.  This actor, truly, can do no wrong.

So, yeah, IRON MAN 2 has a whole lot working against it.  But its bright spot is very, very bright.  If they make another film in this series, I hope they call it JUSTIN HAMMER.

Rudy

What’s not to love about RUDY? It speaks to powerful American archetypes and values, it’s competently plotted and paced, and it sells its characters every step of the way.

RUDY’s one of those movies I’ve long felt that I should see, but I couldn’t quite muster the will. I imagined it would be treacly and pandering, and I don’t particularly care about either the University of Notre Dame or its football program. When I finally dug in and gave it a go, RUDY hooked me from the moment an authority figure told the scrappy hero what he couldn’t do – what ambitions were beyond realization for a youngster of his means and talents. I strongly identify with that situation, and I was right there with Rudy as he put his thumb in the eye of The Man through a combination of hard work and perseverance. I suspect that the movie resonates with a wider audience because RUDY’s story is the classic American story, that of the underdog who succeeds against all odds.

The nature of that success helps sell the movie. RUDY doesn’t face an obstacle, go through a handy montage, and quickly triumph over his opponents while winning the girl. He fails again and again and again, questioning himself and the value of his goal, but he keeps at it like a terrier at a rat. His triumph isn’t the sudden victory of the naturally talented or magically transformed; it’s the triumph of hard work over natural talent, of tenacity over nearly everything. It speaks to us because we can so readily identify with Rudy. How many of us are super-geniuses or fantastically gifted athletes? How many of us have gotten where we are through our willingness to work a little harder, study a little more, run a little farther than the next guy?

The story moves along briskly. Rudy dreams of playing football for Notre Dame, but he’s told that he isn’t college material and he believes it. Four years after high school, he’s stuck working in a steel mill until he realizes that if he doesn’t get to work on his dream, it will never happen. He heads to South Bend and tries to enroll at Notre Dame. He’s rejected and settles for the local junior college, where he does absolutely everything he can think of to get in to Notre Dame. After multiple rejections, he asks his priest, “Is there anything more I can do?” The answer is no – he’s doing everything he can and it doesn’t seem to be good enough. Nevertheless, he perseveres and finally gets accepted. Next stop: the football team, where he barely makes the practice squad. Will he ever get to suit up and take the field, even though he’s smaller than the other guys? The answer is obvious, but that doesn’t keep us from coming along on every step of the journey, rooting for the underdog Rudy as he overcomes the myriad challenges and scores the little victories that add up to success.

Sean Astin, as the titular character, does fine work here. He’s hopeful and determined, and we feel for him in his failures and successes. He’s backed by a solid cast which includes Ned Beatty as a millworker father, John Favreau as his tutor, and Charles Dutton as the groundskeeper who acts as a sort of surrogate father for Rudy, giving him a pat on the back or a kick in the ass, as required.

I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy RUDY. I saw it for cultural awareness. What a pleasure, then, that its combination of message, structure, and performance worked so well. RUDY is a real treat.

Zathura: A Space Adventure

I flat-out loved ZATHURA.

ZATHURA is basically a remake of JUMANJI, this time with a Space Mountain (as opposed to Jungle Cruise) flavor. I didn't much care for JUMANJI, feeling that the earlier film's sense of danger outweighed its sense of fun. ZATHURA, on the other hand, gets the mix just right, putting its characters in real danger while flipping the audience a wink and letting us know everything's going to be ok.

Jon Favreau, the movie's director, made a wise choice in minimizing his use of CGI in favor of practical effects. When the house in which the film takes place rocks, rolls, get harpooned, and generally suffers, it's a genuine house up on a gimbal that takes all that punishment. The use of practical effects gives them film a solidity and reality that all the "touchdown" shots in the world can't match. Additionally, that reliance on practical magic makes the computer magic all the more breathtaking when Favreau does pull out all the stops.

Part coming of age story, part Boys' Own Adventure, ZATHURA kept three generations of my family spellbound for a good hour and a half. What more could you ask for?