Catching Up

I've been clobbered at work, so I've been putting blogging on that back burner.  That said, here are a few things I've seen over last several weeks.

Big

It’s funny how time changes one’s perspective.  The first time I saw Big, I was 20.  I sympathized with the Tom Hanks (CDNW) character.  The last time, I was 47.  I sympathized with his mother, traumatized over the loss of her missing son.  And so it goes.

Deadpool

Deadpool won me over in the opening credits, when it named the writers as “The Real Heroes” and the director as “Some Overpaid Jerk.”  The film irreverently kept the laughs coming for 89 more minutes after that, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Spectre

It has been a month or so since I saw Spectre.  I barely remember it.

Ex Machina

Ex Machina is one of the best films of its year.  It does everything good science fiction should do, and it provides rich fodder for conversation.  I want to see it again.

Zootopia

I laughed all the way through Zootopia.  Then again, I’m an easy laugh.  Thing is, my kids loved it, too.  So I’m calling it a winner.

Enough Said

Enough Said is a charming romantic comedy anchored by two engaging leads.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus turns in excellent work as the protagonist, and James Gandolfini makes for a surprisingly effective love interest.  Add to this a supporting cast that includes Toni Collette (CDNW) and Katherine Keener, and you get 90 or so minutes with interesting, complex people whom you’re happy to meet.

Louis-Dreyfus plays a remarkably affluent massage therapist, driving from appointment to appointment in her immaculate little Prius and living in the kind of nice little rancher that’s dotted across Los Angeles and Orange counties, and that goes for roughly $600k as of January, 2016.  Gandolfini plays a remarkably affluent archivist, working in a reconditioned warehouse, driving an Audi, and living in another roughly $600k home.  Keener’s a poet who somehow lives in a million dollar mission-style place in Santa Monica, and Collette’s a therapist who actually lives in the kind of home a therapist to the wealthy could conceivably afford.

But enough about the fact that everyone in this movie, apart from Collette, should be living in dumpy apartments in Torrance.  This is a fantasy – a fantasy in which working people get to live like rich people, and that’s ok.  More importantly, this is a romantic comedy, and both Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini do fine jobs selling both the romance and the comedy.  They play adults – a little damaged, trying to get along – who find one another.  Complications ensue, as they must, and they’re played with just the right touch.  Consequently, Enough Said delivers just what one could want from such a film.  I smiled; I got a little choked up; I didn’t want it to end.  Really, what more could one want?

About Time

About Time is a romantic comedy that poses the question, “Could you find love if you had unlimited do-overs?”  Here’s the setup: Domhnall Gleeson is an insecure young Briton who learns that he has the ability to travel backward in his own timeline and relive any moment.  Say the wrong thing at a dinner party?  No problem.  Go back and try again.  Twist your knee skiing?  No problem.  Go back and take a different rout next time.  And away we go.

It’s a fine setup for a romantic comedy.  As with any endeavor, however, it’s all in the execution.  And it’s in the execution thatAbout Time stumbles in two key areas:  it fails to give us a reason to fall in love with its leading romantic couple, and it actually focuses on the wrong couple 

Let me explain:  for a romantic comedy to work, the audience must fall in love with the couple at its center.  That’s a tall order – it can’t be easy to craft characters who appeal to (potentially) millions of people.  Still, About Time doesn’t give us much to fall in love with.  The protagonist (Gleeson) isn’t a particularly interesting figure.  He has interesting parents, an interesting sister, and an interesting roommate, but he’s just … some guy.  A well-meaning guy, sure, but there isn’t anything about him that particularly captures the imagination.  The object of Gleeson’s affections, played by Rachel McAdams, is little more than an object.  The film doesn’t work to give me the sense that she’s anything greater than your Mk 1, Mod 0 Dream Girl.  She spends the film being manipulated by a Gleeson character with the ability to manage their every moment.  She has no agency of her own, and the film expects me, as the viewer experiencing the film through the eyes of the male protagonist, to fall in love with her simply because she looks like Rachel McAdams and she seems nice. Buddy, that’s not going to do it.

Gleeson’s parents, however – that’s a different story.  The couple, Bill Nighy & Lindsay Duncan, are delightful.  Yes, Nighy also has the ability to travel backward in his timeline and get the little things right, but one gets the sense that he does so more to savor his time with his family than say and do the right things to keep his wife happy.  Lindsay Duncan, for her part, is a mature, together woman who knows how to make things happen.  These are interesting people, played by fine actors, and I wanted to spend more time with them.

Alas.  We don’t always get what we want.  Perhaps someone can give About Time a do-over.

Boyhood

Boyhood is absolutely remarkable.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

The film follows a boy named Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane.  We meet him at Age 6, the younger of two children in a working-class household headed by single mom Patricia Arquette.  His father (Ethan Hawke) is a dreamer and a flake, but not a bad guy.  And, over the next 12 years, Mason grows up.

That’s it.  He doesn’t solve crimes, or save the planet, or anything like that.  He just … grows up.  This film’s magic lies in its close, sympathetic observance of that process.  He and his older sister deal with their parents’ loves, with moves and schools and teachers and other kids, with sibling rivalry and love and puberty and bullies and beer and joy and all the rest.  There’s beauty in this kind of close observation, in watching Mason and his family navigate the river of life.  It evokes such tenderness, both for our own children and the children we used to be.

While much has been made of the fact that Boyhood took 12 years to film, giving us the real-time maturation of its actors, this film is much more than a “gimmick movie.” Writer/Director Richard Linklater created a story for those actors into which they could grow, and he gave them to us in a way that makes us feel that they’re a part of our family.  So in watching Boyhood, I felt that I was watching my own sons, that I was watching my own, younger self.  I felt that I was watching a testimony of the human (or, at least, the young American male) experience.

It was unique, and fascinating, and touching.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

Maps to the Stars

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” – T.R. Roosevelt

David Cronenberg is a great director.  From essential experiments like  Videodrome and Naked Lunch to mature and gripping crowd pleasers like The Fly, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, the man has created a filmography that constitutes a must-see list for those who engage with film as an art form as serious as it is entertaining.  In short, David Cronenberg isn’t just cranking ‘em out and cashing checks.

So Maps to the Stars doesn’t quite work.  So it’s a bit too elliptical at some points, too on-the-nose at others.  So it’s 111 minutes spent with terrible people doing mean things to one another, with no audience-identification characters and no hint of levity to season the mix.  So it’s a miserable way to spend a couple of hours.

I’d still rather watch it than Ted 2.  Cronenberg’s daring a mighty thing with Maps to the Stars, tackling a tough story peopled with difficult characters and trying to make something of it.  Even if he doesn’t quite pull it off, I’d rather watch one of Cronenberg’s misses than many other filmmakers’ hits. 

Kung Fu Panda 3

Kung Fu Panda was a gorgeous, funny, exciting action-adventure.  Kung Fu Panda 3 is a not-so-gorgeous, reasonably funny action-adventure.

I recall Kung Fu Panda as featuring a bright, vibrant color palette that seemed to make every frame a work of art.  Either it was a fault with my theater’s projection, or Kung Fu Panda 3 used a more muted palette, one that looked nice but didn’t dazzle in the way the first film had.

Palette choices aside, the film felt more like a remake of than a sequel to the original.  Both feature old foes, back from a time in (a) prison, or (b) the afterlife.  Both feature training montages, a climactic battle, and a victory founded in the principle of finding one’s true self.  Both have the power to entertain children, but I found myself growing restless during the second act of the latter entry, making a non-imperative trip to the restroom and taking the time to inspect the “coming attractions” posters on my way to and from.

Still, my kids rolled out of the theater energized, and they happily discussed the film over sundaes afterward.  And hey, if they’re happy, I’m happy.  I just don’t know that I’m going to be in a rush to see Kung Fu Panda 4.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  -- I Corinthians, 13:11

I was 9 or 10 when Star Wars came out.  Like everyone else I knew at that age, I saw the movie multiple times, wore the t-shirt, had the lunchbox, etc.  

But, hey, I grew out of it.  I didn't make a point of showing the movies to my kids, though I did make the 'Clone Wars' cartoons available and even TiVo'd the first few episodes of 'Star Wars: Rebels.'  Star Wars was just another property in the entertainment marketplace.

Walking out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, then, I was a happy guy.  The movie offered an enjoyable time in the theater with my wife and kids.  It featured a more interesting and entertaining villain's arc than all three prequels put together.  It had lightsaber duels, space-fighters, yet another exploding Death Star, and even a nu-Yoda there at the end.  I didn't expect The Force Awakens to change my life, so I was happy simply to enjoy a derivative, yet entertaining, science fantasy / space opera.

Did it capture my imagination for more than a few minutes after leaving the theater?  No, but that's ok.  I'm a man now.  My children liked, and that's who Stars Wars has always been for, all along.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I loved The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  This is a fun, frothy movie with fast cars, stunning Mediterranean locations, beautiful people, and loads of stunts; and it’s all served up with an early-60’s lounge-cool vibe that’s just plain irresistible.

Here’s the setup: there are leftover Nazis, and they’re hiding out in Italy.  They’re about to get their hands on a nuclear weapon.  The CIA and KGB put their top agents on the case, forcing them to work together.  In other words, it’s a movie about a couple of ubermenschen who team up to fight Nazis off the Amalfi Coast. 

Now, if that isn’t the setup for a good time at the movies, I don’t know what is.  Ubermenschen Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer make for great spies, and Alicia Vikander more than holds her own as a spy in training.  The movie looks great, the music bops along wonderfully, and everyone seems to be having a great time.  What more could you ask for?

Kingsman: Secret Service; Creed; The Judge

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Andrew Ting said it best: Kingsman: The Secret Service is an amusing spy romp with an undertone of unsettling nastiness.  I’m still not sure whether that works for me or not.

Creed

Creed made me lose track of time.  Creed made me cry.  Creed didn’t move me in quite the same way as did the superlative Rocky Balboa, but you can’t blame a good movie for not being a great movie.  I’m ready for Creed II.

The Judge

There’s a scene in The Judge in which protagonist Robert Downey, Jr. tries to make an uncomfortable confession.  “This is going to be rough,” he says to himself.

This one line encapsulates my problem with the film.  At this point, I’ve already been watching for over an hour.  I know what he needs to confess, I know to whom he needs to confess it, and I can guess at the very serious consequences this confession will entail.  And yet, The Judge thinks I’m an idiot so it tells me that yes, this confession will be rough. 

This is just one of many ways The Judge thinks I’m an idiot.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it underlines the film with a score designed to inform me, in very clear terms, when to laugh and when to weep.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it’s compelled to show me, again and again, how unimaginably idyllic Indiana really is.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it expects me to believe that absolutely everyone in its protagonist’s life has been stuck in time, like mosquitos in amber, since the day Downey moved away some thirty years before.  [Interlude]Look.  I come from an idyllic small town.  My wife comes from an idyllic small town.  We each moved away from our respective idyllic small towns roughly thirty years ago.  When we return for the occasional visit, we may run into one or two people who remember us and are happy to see us.  But nobody’s accusing us of having run out, of having turned our backs on our roots.  We’re just nice people who moved away to another idyllic town.  Those old friends are happy to see us and chew the fat for a bit, but they’ve moved on.  That’s how life goes. [/Interlude]  It thinks I’m an idiot because it photographs its heroes in the golden light of hagiography, its villains in the harsh blues of villainy.  Basically, it thinks I’m an idiot.

All of which leads me to inquire: what kind of an idiot reads a script that’s basically My CousinVinny with all the jokes torn out and replaced with heavy handed family dynamics, “coming home”
mythology, and uncomfortable incest subplots, and thinks, “Bingo?”

I’m not sure, but I am sure that I’ll be very careful about investing the time to see said idiots’ next film.  I know they didn’t mean to crash the car, but that doesn’t mean I need to be in a hurry to climb back in.

Calvary

Calvary is rough going.

The film begins with an Irish priest (Brendan Gleeson) sitting in confessional.  He’s listening to a man recount his tale of having been raped by a priest at the age of seven.  Then he hears the man say that since the rapist is long dead, the man will take the life of one good priest in a week’s time.  Brendan Gleeson is the good priest.

One could go a lot of places with a story like this.  It could be a pre-murder mystery.  It could be a meditation on faith.  It could be a thriller.  This film’s approach, however, is right there in the title: Calvary.  This is The Passion of the Christ, with the scorn of an Irish village and the sting of cruel words taking the place of the scorn of Jerusalem and the sting of the lash.

You see, this is an Ireland reeling from financial meltdown and revelations of years of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy.  The people of our priest’s little town have not only lost faith, they’ve turned actively hostile to faith, actively hostile to the church, actively hostile to our priest.

And in the middle of it all, walking his own road to Calvary, our priest struggles to maintain his own dignity, his own faith, his own love.  He’s miserable.

On one level then, we can view Calvary as an exercise in making Brendan Gleeson unhappy.  On another, however, we can see it as a story of the very toughest part of Christianity: the imperative to actively love people who may actively hate you.  As such, Calvary has much to offer the devout viewer.

But that viewer is going to have to work for it.  This is not a film for the faint of heart or faith.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Without an extended sequence in the Hunger Games Arena, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is merely half of a dystopian revolutionary thriller. 

That said, it’s a *good* half of a dystopian revolutionary thriller, thanks to its cast.

I’ve been on the Jennifer Lawrence train since Winter’s Bone.  While I still haven’t quite forgiven her for Silver Linings Playbook, there’s no denying that she’s a movie star through and through: whenever she’s onscreen, she’s the most interesting thing onscreen.  Surround her with supporting players like Rachel McAdams (having a wonderful time), Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Jeffrey Wright, Julianne Moore, and the late (and legitimately great) Philip Seymour Hoffman, and you have a cast that could elevate a soap commercial to the realm of high art.


And elevate they do, for while this is only half of a story, they fill it full of interesting moments.  I look forward to viewing the other half and seeing how the whole thing hangs together.

Army of Darkness

Attention S-Mart Shoppers:

I doubt it’s possible to love movies without loving Army of Darkness.  This movie has everything: knights, wizards, skeletons, a princess in distress, and a hero with a chainsaw who isn’t afraid to belt out a lusty “Gimme some sugar, baby!” when he has a damsel in his arms.

The film represents the culmination of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series.  The first, a reasonably straightforward horror movie about college kids in a remote cabin, is respectably scary.  Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, mixes horror with comedy, as when its protagonist amputates his own (possessed) hand atop a stack of books that features A Farewell to Arms.  Army of Darkness goes for full slapstick, with scenes paying comic homage to films as diverse as Return of the Jedi, The Seven Samurai, The Three Stooges, The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, Gulliver's Travels, and The Day The Earth Stood Still.  It’s goofy, it’s silly, and it’s an all-around good time at the movies.

That’s if you’re an adult.

Last Halloween, I saw Army of Darkness with my pre-teen boy and his friends.  They found it much better than a “good time at the movies.”  In fact, the movie had them howling with laughter, frequently rewinding to re-view parts they’d missed because they’d been laughing so hard.  Somehow, this film’s combination of slapstick and horror resonated in a way I hadn’t expected, turning Army of Darkness from a beloved amusement (for me) to an instant Halloween classic (for them).

And y’know what?  Laughter is catching.  The more they laughed, the more I laughed with them.  And when I laughed at the gags specifically directed to the older members of the audience (there’s a whole Chuck Conners in ‘The Rifleman’ thing going on), they cracked up just because they were in the zone.

So this was the Halloween in which I learned to love Army of Darkness even more.  I didn't think that was possible.  Hail to the king, baby!

3 Recent Screenings

Alive Inside

Alive Inside is a documentary about Dan Cohen, a nursing home volunteer who discovered exposing seniors with dementia to the music of their youth can relight their memories and personalities.

Here’s the deal:  when we’re growing and our brains are still in supersponge mode (a period that lasts roughly from birth through our mid-20s), the music of our youth gets encoded deep in our brains – way back near the stem.  If dementia sets in, that’s the last part to go.  Thus, it’s possible to light up the brain once more by triggering those musical memories.

This isn’t to imply that iPods cure dementia.  It appeared that patients slipped back into their hazes some time after the music stopped.  Nevertheless, while the music played, these people were themselves again in a fundamental way.

That’s a thing of beauty.

Fury

Fury is a by-the-numbers WWII picture, just like they used to make.  Brad Pitt is the grizzled, fatherly first sergeant.  Jon Bernthal is the hick; Shia LeBeouf the preacher; Michael Peña the alcoholic, and Logan Lerman the New Guy.

They hit many of the same beats as the dogfaces from the great Lee Marvin film The Big Red One, and the film doesn’t have much to offer in the way of surprises.  But if you like war movies, you’re sure to like this one.  It touches all the bases.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

Rude, crude, and mildly amusing, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is the perfect movie to fold laundry by.

The Story of Adele H

Francoise Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H chronicles the descent into madness of Adele Hugo, daughter Les Miserables author Victor Hugo.  While exiled to the (British) island of Guernsey, Adele fell in love with a seducer named Albert Pinson, a lieutenant in the British Army.  When Pinson’s regiment transferred to Nova Scotia, Adele followed.  When it transferred to Barbados, Adele followed.  She simply refused to believe that the man she’d fallen for had not, in fact, fallen for her.  She broke with reality and wound up in a madhouse.  So, kids, there’s your night out at the movies.

Isabelle Adjani, as Adele, is a fine actress who performs creditably in the title role.  Her very casting, however, struck me as a misstep that created a barrier to my suspension of disbelief.  You see, Adjani ranks among the most beautiful women of her generation – not “interesting beautiful,” but “Greco-Roman statue beautiful.”  I simply could not imagine any young man, particularly one so saddled with debt as Pinson was at the time, passing on the opportunity to marry a woman both so beautiful and so wealthy as Adele Hugo.  I particularly couldn’t imagine an ambitious young British Army officer of the 19^th Century refusing such an opportunity.  Ms. Hugo’s beauty, wealth, and connections would have made a star of her husband at a time when a man could climb the promotion ladder simply by purchasing higher-ranking commissions and being generally regarded as a “good fellow.”  Even knowing that The Story of Adele H was based on the historical record, I think I may have had an easier time of becoming lost in the narrative had its protagonist been somehow more average.

Still, this is an engrossing film.  Though its pacing feels anything but brisk, Adjani is so watchable (and so well-photographed) that we can’t turn away from her descent from romantic to obsessive to lunatic.  The Story of Adele H is one worth seeing.

SMOSH: The Movie

SMOSH, for those of you without children, is the YouTube channel of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla.  The duo specializes in adolescent humor, cheap gags, and song parodies.  They’re hammy, they’re crude, and my older boys love them.  My boys aren’t alone: Ian and Anthony have parleyed SMOSH from a couple of YouTube videos into a multimillion dollar empire with a Spanish language affiliate, record deal, and their own movie.  Regardless, this was a movie I decidedly did not want to see.  However, my older kids begged me and I do like to style myself a marginally good father, so I sat down with one either side and locked myself in for a tedious 84 minutes.

I am surprised and delighted to report that, while juvenile, crude, and hammy, SMOSH: The Movie is actually funny.  The film establishes parental goodwill in the very first frame, when it announces itself as an Alex Winter (Bill of Bill &Ted’s Excellent Adventure) film.  [I like Alex Winter.  I want good things for him.  I’m happy he landed the gig.]  It then proceeds into the laziest story imaginable, when our YouTube stars find themselves actually stuck inside YouTube, flitting from video to video on their quest to find and erase the one clip that so humiliated (Ian?  Anthony?  I get them mixed up.) that he can never find true love.

Just when I started thinking about all the chores I could have been doing, however, the gags started rolling in.  And they kept rolling in, one after another.  This is the kind of movie that, while aggressively stupid, is so intent on making you laugh that it just keeps throwing stuff at you until something sticks and you catch yourself chuckling.  Then, once it has broken down your resistance, it throws more silly gags at you until, despite yourself, you find yourself laughing out loud, then laughing again.

Look, don’t get me wrong: this movie still feels like something recorded for nothing in somebody’s living room.  Ian and Anthony are bad actors, they’re surrounded by bad actors (with the notable exception of a beloved supported player from Bill and Ted, whom it’s a pleasure to see onscreen), and the entire affair comes across as B-level stuff.  However, Ian and Anthony are bad actors who are willing to do just about anything for a laugh. 

And y’know what?  That’s good enough for me.  I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’ll actually queue up Smosh 2.  And I’ll do it with a smile.