The Shape of Water [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


The Shape of Water [2017] (directed, story and screenplay cowritten by Guillermo del Toro along with Vanessa Taylor), largely set in a top-secret American Cold War era lab in the 1950s needs to be understood in the context of Guillermo del Toro's similarly magical-realist and similarly visceral Pan's Labyrinth [2006].  If Pan was an clear, utterly unambiguous condemnation of Spain's Franco era, the current film is a similarly utterly unambiguous rejection of the "Make America Great Again" mythology of the current Trump Administration.   For most of us understand this past era of "American Greatness" to be the United States of the 1950s, and here the Mexican-born director insists, indeed DEMANDS, that Viewers take A LONG LOOK at that era and ask themselves honestly: What exactly made THAT ERA "great?"

For in this film, a remarkable and sentient "Frog Man" brought to this "top secret American lab" (from apparently "the Amazon") IN AN INDUSTRIAL WATER TANK AND IN _CHAINS_ was being "studied" (tortured!) by utterly and intellectually LAZY "military scientists" (played by Michael Stuhlbarg and Michael Shannon) shielded from any kind of scrutiny by multiple-layers of "classified secrecy."

The ONLY ONES besides these "military scientists" (and, interestingly "the Soviets") who knew that this creature even existed were the "serving staff" (cleaning ladies) that is "people who didn't matter" including African American Zelda Fuller (played by Octavia Spenser) and a deaf-mute woman named Elisa Esposito (played by Sally Hawkins).  And in the "logic of the Cold War" the ONLY THING that seemed to matter was to "protect" knowledge of discovery of this (being TORTURED) "frogman" from "The Soviets" (who of course knew all about it and were busy plotting ways TO SIMPLY KILL THE "FROG MAN" so as to deprive the Americans of "their prize").

Wow, what a "Great Era?"  And lest there be any doubt of the writer / director's intention to DRIVE A STAKE INTO THE HEART OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS "NOSTALGIC MEMORY" OF THAT ERA, there's a scene in a diner in which one of those torturing "military scientists," himself a tortured closeted gay man, tries to "pick-up" one of the serving hands at said diner, only to be horrifically rejected (the male-waiter responds _hysterically_ to the gay, tortured scientist's advance) BUT NOT BEFORE the waiter CHASES OUT A NICE. WELL-DRESSED AFRICAN AMERICAN MARRIED COUPLE THAT HAD THE AUDACITY OF WANTING TO SIT AT DINER'S COUNTER.  "All the seats are reserved," the waiter yells at them (the place except for the tortured gay, military scientist, getting-up the courage to hit-on said waiter, WAS EMPTY).  "Well, for when can we get a reservation?" the couple asks.  "I don't know, for you, I'd probably say ... never."

Joy.

Now, the film Mud Bound [2017], canvases similar ground and also, by the end, quite unforgettably.  I suppose the question that potential Viewers of the current film ought to ask themselves before attending it would be: Will the 1950s-era Sci-Fi-ish aesthetics of the current film be "distracting" to you?  Arguably, the film is a contempoary retelling of The Creature From the Black Lagoon [1954].  If the potential Viewer who wouldn't mind the somewhat corny aesthetics (and the hammer-over-the-head thematics), chances are that the potential Viewer would very much like the film.  If not, then ...

In any case, this is a well-thought-out and brilliantly executed "magical realist" / "scify-ish" fable.  It's not for everyone, but few could really accuse it of being "dumb."  And it's certainly one of the most compelling films of the year.

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The Road Movie [2016]

MPAA (UR would be R)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing

Los Angeles Times (R. Abele) review
New York Times (T. Bugbee) review
RogerEbert.com (V. Murthi) review


The Road Movie [2016] (directed by Dmitrii Kalashnikov) is a guilty pleasure of a movie (though also informative in its own way).  A documentary made entirely from Russian dashcam video clips, the film quite literally becomes a "window to a world" that most Viewers, certainly from the West, would not particularly know.  The "limits of the genre" (dashcam videos)  and subgenre (dashcam videos that generally younger youtube / "vkontakte" ... "OMG that really happened (to us)..." savy Russians" would find compelling) necessarily present a Russia of mayhem ("OMG, these people are crazy...") BUT also a Russia that most of us here would not know ("OMG, THERE IS a LOT OF SNOW in Russia" ;-) // "OMG, I didn't fully appreciate / realize that Russia today, like any other modern country, would have a lot of cars / roads even out in the countryside."  Honestly, these last two points, I did not really appreciate until seeing this film).

So I have to say that this movie, in as much as one could catch it at an "art-house cinema" somewhere in the West, or later, on DVD / streaming video on Amazon / Netflix , perhaps Vimeo, etc, is worth the trouble of seeing.  This is because Russia, as important a country that it is in the world, remains quite inaccessible.  The Russian movies that do make it to Western theaters are often limited in theme, generally ponderous Epics or perhaps like this one of a sullen, "Road Warrior" bent. 

There's of course a much larger Russian film industry than that which makes films portraying Russians as sad / depressed "Ana Karenina"-like victims or as "tough, even frightening people (Stalingrad survivors and children / grandchildren of Stalingrad survivors) who one would NOT want to mess with."  But those films -- including Russian comedies [1] [2], RomComs, Twilight Saga-like YA romances [1] [2], and tech-savy YA adventure stories -- are often hard to find... in the West.  For a couple of years, I tried offering an annual "Russian Film Tour" on my blog, offering Readers here an opportunity to see more of Russia than the scary and or depressed.  But this year, it proved hard to find subtitle files (even to machine translate into English) for such films. 

I FIND THIS UNFORTUNATE because while I do understand that Putin's Regime MAY FEEL that the West has fundamentally underestimated / dismissed Russia as "backward" and therefore MAY FEEL that "if we can't be LOVED, then let us at least be FEARED" (hence the Russian-end promotion into the West of their more PONDEROUS and often FEARSOME films). 

However, I do honestly believe that taking the other tack -- presenting Russians as REGULAR PEOPLE who LOVE, ARE FUNNY, PLAY VIDEO GAMES -- would be better for all concerned and, honestly, support the cause of World Peace.  For honestly, if Russians are portrayed simply as "stalkers of ghostly Tiger Tanks" or survivors of "a REAL (WW II-era) Hunger Games," then this just SCARES PEOPLE and makes them _less likely_ to want to interact with Russians in a positive way.  I think it'd be much better to encourage people to remember that Russians (like ALL PEOPLE) have ... MOMS who love them like our moms love us. 

Anyway, I quite enjoyed the current film, entirely composed of clips from Russian dashcam videos.  I just wish we could see MUCH MORE OF RUSSIA than just these quite limited clips.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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Maze Runner: The Death Cure [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. MacAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review

Note: This Review DOES CONTAIN SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS but only because, honestly, there's little way else to talk about the way this film / series ends and, perhaps, more importantly WHY it ends in the way that it does.  (It's actually quite interesting, IMHO ...)

Maze Runner: The Death Cure [2018] (directed by Wes Ball screenplay by T.S. Nowlin based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by James Dashner [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is the final cinematic installment of the dystopian teen-oriented Maze Runner [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] series, the previous cinematic installments The Maze Runner [2014] and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials [2015] having been released in years previous.

Die hard / devoted fans of the book series and even the previous movies will probably be happy that the see that this series was able to come to a cinematic conclusion even if it appears that with the Divergent series' flame-out (after the disappointing reviews / box office numbers of the third installment of that series, the fourth film in that series remains yet to be made) Hollywood is apparently becoming more skittish in green-lighting these special-effects heavy and thematically surprising ("teenage apocalypse...") projects.

It appears that with the completion of the Hunger Games cycle (and honestly, _that_ became a slog...), our teens (and indeed the world's teens) have "moved on."  Yes, the Marvel Comics based films continue to do well, but then THOSE FILMS TEND TO BE _HAPPIER_.

To the current franchise / story ...

In the second installment, we came to understand better _why_ the society portrayed in The Maze Runner would have resorted to putting seemingly _random_ teenagers into a bizarre "Maze" (to either figure-out how to get out of said maze, or ... eventually, in one way or another ... DIE): The society resorting to this was desperately messed-up, trying to fight-off a truly civilization threatening ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE (!) ;-).  I suppose if a civilization was truly facing a "Zombie Apocalypse," it would come up with ALL KINDS OF BIZARRE IDEAS as to "how to combat it" ... including putting _random teenagers_ INTO A GIANT MAZE in hopes that SOMEHOW _they_ would "come up with something that _could_ help." ;-)

Still, once one drops the Z-bomb ... where else can one really go?   So the first half of the current film could be described as Zombieland [2009] meets Mad Max: Fury Road [2015] with an extended desert car / train chase scene that ultimately ... doesn't make a whole lot of sense, BUT ... looks "really, really cool." ;-)

Then the second half of the film involves an extended Zombies (here called "Cranks") breaching the Walls of a still modern and previously "protected" city, perhaps recalling the final Ceaucescu / Stalingrad-ish climax of the Hunger Games [2015].  'Cept the battle here seemed to have no purpose except result in the inevitable deaths of some of the series' Evil-doers.

The "cure" for Zombie-ism, as far as I could see (so this MAY be a spoiler or MAY NOT be ... ;-) turns out to be about as random as the "Maze solution" that had been proposed by some of those evil doctors who die in that final battle.

So I suppose I can report that "all ends well" at the end here.  But honestly, most viewers will probably leave wondering: WHY (did it end well)?

But THAT may have been the film-makers' / story-tellers' POINT HERE:  Sometimes TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPEN, not just to people but even to entire civilizations, and ... then ... those terrible things ... JUST STOP and ... Life can go on again.

So is this a happy ending?  Maybe, sort of, but ... I certainly left wondering ... Why?  Why did ANY OF THE STORY TAKE PLACE?  How did the plague start and why did it apparently ... stop?  BUT AGAIN, that seems to be the point being made.  Sometimes ... we just don't know.

Bummer.  Maybe ;-).  But THANKFULLY ... it's all over ;-).


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Forever My Girl [2018]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (D+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Forever My Girl [2018] (written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Heidi McLaughlin [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is this year's entree for another January staple -- a Southern / Country set, generally 20-something oriented romantic drama.  In recent years, adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels tended to fill this slot [1] [2] [3] [4].  Since these films tend to be "chick flicks," notable / laudable here is that this year's entree was written, adapted and directed by women.  Regular Readers of my blog would ALSO be happy to learn that Christianity has a significant and positive presence in the story and that a key supporting figure in the story is a clergyman who has to struggle with (and rises to) the challenge of forgiving / reconciling with a (son) who had previously objectively disappointed him. 

The story begins with sweet, beautiful, small-town (one would guess, former "homecoming queen") Josie (played by Jessica Rothe) finding herself stood-up at what should have been a, HER, dream wedding.  WT ... unforgivable?   Exactly ...

What happened?  Well... that's a good part of the story.  Did someone like Josie DESERVE to have this "happen to her?"  ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT.  But there it is, IT HAPPENED.  What now?

Indeed, what about ... eight years later?  That's when the story recommences ... with ... us discovering that Josie's dirty no good rotten beau had become an incredibly popular Country Western star named Liam Page (played by Alex Roe).  EVERYBODY LOVED HIM.  EVERYBODY KNEW HIS SONGS.  STILL ... deep down, even he knew that he had radically disappointed EVERYONE who had been important to him before: yes Josie, but also his dad (the above mentioned Pastor played by John Benjamin Hickey) and his childhood/hometown friends. 

Indeed, it was when by sheer "luck" that he happened to be playing in New Orleans, near his home town, finding out while watching the local news that his old best friend, the one who would have been his best man, had died in a tragic accident.  He decides to go home (for the first time in eight years) for the funeral. 

When he arrives, he finds that in his own hometown, unlike just about everywhere else, his name is mud.  Nobody seems to care that she's a country superstar.  They just remember what he did to Josie, his dad, and really to all of his childhood friends. 

Somewhat surprised, he finds that he has to eat some crow ...  But how much crow?   The rest of the story about a modern-day Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11ff) follows ...

I confess, I loved the movie.  I'm already generally a sap for these kind of Southern small town stories, but I _ALSO_ LOVED THE UNAPOLOGETIC CHRISTIAN MESSAGING IN IT.

Yes, Liam had been a real D--K.   But did it _need_ to be "all over" for him?  To many in the "post Christian" faction of our country, it would be.  To many today it seems there is no Sin in this world, but also NO FORGIVENESS>

Here, this was a largely believing community.  It was absolutely clear as day to them that Liam had hurt an awful lot of people.  ON THE OTHER HAND ... if perhaps initially _clueless_, he made amends ... they were not going to hold grudges.

Fascinating and POSITIVE.  Excellent job!

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The Commuter [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K., Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


The Commuter [2018] (directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, screenplay by Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle), a Liam Neeson / "Taken" [1] [2] -like vehicle, is a "January movie" that, thankfully, delivers what most familiar with the genre would expect:

In the current version of this nightmare, Neeson plays lowly Michael MacCauley, once an NYPD cop (gotta get the needed skills from somewhere...), more recently a Westchester County (suburban) living "life insurance salesman" who commuted each day to work back to NYC.

Well on the random day during which the plot plays out, he, approaching sixty is summarily laid-off by a arrogant, bean-counting boss because (and what _every_ sixty-year-old American fears ...) ... he can.  MacCauley has a family, a son about to go to college, of course.  Don't matter.  At least the Ancient Greeks would leave one with a cup of hemlock tea to "contemplate one's options."

MacCauley stops by the old precinct to visit his former (and younger) partner (played by Patrick Wilson).  A little troubled / sad, he, of course, does not want to make the folks at precinct feel sorry for him.  He's assured that "life in the NYPD isn't what it used to be either" and "cheer-up, something may come up..."

Well ... something does...

Sitting down, to take his (last, for at least a while) daily commute home, a mysterious woman (played by Vera Farmiga) sits down next to him, and offers him a "simple job" that probably in a different state of mind, he might have had far more questions about: She asks him to, since he appeared to be "a regular commuter" to identify a person "who does not belong" and to surreptiously plant a small gps device on that person.  That's all.  Oh yes, and if he did so, he'd get $100,000, $25K of which was hidden in their car's bathroom, to prove to him that she was serious.  He says, "he'd think about it."  Stepping off the train, she tells him that he has 1 stop to think about it.  He takes that stop to go to the bathroom and finds the small package with $25K in $100s waiting for him.

Okay, now he's "in" but ... he hasn't even asked a most important question here: "Why would ANYONE pay a stranger to 'find someone' for $100K?"  This can't be good.  Of course, it isn't.  And, well ... anyone (or group) willing to hand someone $25K just to tease that person into doing something, is PROBABLY going to want (and be able to) to _insist_ that "the job get done" ...

The rest of the movie ensues ...

Dear Readers ... if the plot seems "a little far fetched" well ... OF COURSE IT IS ;-).  And yes, Liam Neeson has stepped into this role of "every man" yet ALSO "super man" over and over again.  But JUST LIKE A RECURRING NIGHTMARE ... the story works.

Sometimes, when we're _already quite down_ we get ourselves _sucked into nightmares_ even deeper than we dare imagine.  But then, we often find that we do have the skills to find / fight our way out...


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Phantom Thread [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Phantom Thread [2017] (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) though set presumably in the post-WW II late-1940s to early-1950s seems almost an allegory for our own times.  Indeed one _could_ imagine the film to be a strange (and strangely _sad_) retelling of the (one would have hoped _dated_) 18th Century "comedy" She Stoops to Conquer.

At center of the story is Reynolds Woodcock (played quite magnificently if irritatingly by Daniel Day-Lewis) an odd / repressed dress-designer to the English upper-crust of the time.  Perhaps today he would be out as gay, perhaps he'd simply remain "odd" (but rich / connected enough to be "accepted" as "odd").  Perhaps because he was gay (and, it being the late 1940s-1950s in Britain it was actually still illegal (!) to be gay), he _takes_ a vaguely East European (perhaps Jewish perhaps "merely Slavic") waitress (Alma, played again quite wonderfully by Vicky Krieps) he meets at a cliff-side restaurant near Dover as certainly his "muse" and perhaps as someone who'd appear around him enough to make it plausible that she'd be his lover. 

Wonderful.  A _certainly strange_ and possibly gay Anglo stringing along, no, practically _owning_ a young Slavic woman (she _should be so happy_ ...) seems almost an image of ... WELL GUESS ;-/.

The movie would be simply awful if good ole Alma was completely defenseless.  Instead, she "finds a way..." to make this seemingly dismally unequal relationship "work".

Sigh ... I hope this cultural nightmare that we're passing through (again...) will come to an end soon.


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All the Money in the World [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


All the Money in the World [2017] (directed by Ridley Scott, screenplay by David Scarpa based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by John Pearson [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) will probably be most remembered for the truly remarkable cinematic / technological feat in which director Ridley Scott and his editors _completely removed_ actor Kevin Spacey, who had been cast and played the role of J. Paul Getty [wikip] [IMDb] in the film (one of the film's principal figures) from the already finished (though yet unreleased) product, replacing him with Christopher Plummer.  It's seamless.  One would never guess that Christopher Plummer was not originally playing the role.

Okay then, how about the film?  Well, one could say that in this era of the super-rich (re)ascendant this is this year's addition to last year's Warren Beatty starring Howard Hughes biopic Rules Don't Apply [2016].   Indeed, in an initial voice-over has J. Paul Getty's grandson, J.P. Getty III (played in the film by Charlie Plummer) introducing us to his family's unimaginably wealthy life style he ends: "We walk in this world with you, but we're _not_ like you." 

By the tone of voice, it was clear that the character (again, then still late teenage J.P. Getty III) living then in Rome, Italy with his mother Jane Harris (played by Michelle Williams) did not mean this in a hostile or dismissive way.  Instead, he just meant this to be a statement of fact.  Why?  Well he explains sometime later: His grandfather, octogenarian J. Paul Getty was then "_not merely_ the richest man in the world.  Instead, he was _the richest man in the history of the world_."  Indeed, in a later scene, J. Paul Getty is shown showing his grandson ruins of one of the baths of ancient Rome and explaining that he truly believed that he himself was the reincarnation of one of the Roman Emperors.  Certainly no one outside of an Emperor could have possibly lived the life-style of the J. Paul Getty at the time. 

Well, but that kind of money did, in fact, make the members of the Getty family targets, and five minutes into the film, after explaining to us the Gettys' position in this world through his voice over, J.P. Getty III is kidnapped, right there, after flirting with some "little people" (a number or quite random Roman prostitutes) near the edge of Rome.  The rest of the story unfolds from there ...

Among that which unfolds is, of course, the whole question of what money can and can not buy.  Here was the richest man in history of the world, and _one_ of _his grandchildren_ was kidnapped.  And the reason why he was kidnapped was, of course, because he was "a Getty."  If he was just a random Joe, then there'd be no "benefit" to kidnapping him.  Then J. Paul Getty had other grandchildren.  If he paid ransom _for one grandchild_ would he put _the others_ indeed his whole family in further danger?  Then J.P. Getty III was actually a child of divorce.  His mother had actually divorced out of the family.  Was the kidnapping even legit?  Or was it some sort of a scam by either a "spoiled teenager" or "vindictive ex-daughter-in-law" to "get at his money."  Again, if the Gettys weren't _so insanely rich_ ... no one would care about them (or try to rip them off ...).

Anyway, it all makes for a quite interesting movie about "the difficulties of being super-rich" and perhaps like last year's Rules Don't Apply [2016] a "story for our times."


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Call Me by Your Name [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Call Me by Your Name [2017] (directed by Luca Guadagnino, screenplay by James Ivory based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by André Aciman [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a challenging movie for someone like me to review.  However, it ought to be far more challenging to most reviewers than it appears to be.

It's challenging to me because it's a sexually themed coming of age story and, well, I'm a Catholic priest.  It ought to be challenging to more reviewers than one like me because it's _also_ a love story between a seventeen year old minor and an adult (!).  Yet, not one of the three secular reviewers above seemed to have an issue with that.

It once fell to me to throw-out a band from the line-up of our Parish's music festival because one of its band-members turned out to be listed as a sex offender for having had the misfortune of picking-up a sixteen year old (girl) who was at a bar (with a fake id) where he had played some years back and had a gloriously _consensual_ (or "consensual") one-night stand with her.  She thought her encounter with the "worldly" musician was AWEsome, 'cept, of course, her parents were not amused ... I also know a Catholic priest who was de-frocked, his life effectively destroyed, as a result of meeting someone at 1980s-era gay party, that someone, having ended up being a minor.  In both cases, the first case involving a heterosexual encounter, in the other a homosexual one, the context was one in which one _could_ have thought that they had the right to assume that everyone present was "of age."  Yet in both cases, it became tragically clear (too late for the adults involved ...) that this was not the case.

As a result, I simply find it extremely stupid to fantasize about "wouldn't it be nice..." when it involves a "love story" between an adult and a minor...

Yet the film proves how one could manipulate an audience (and even critics) into being enchanted by something that ought to be appalling.  My favorite (and far safer) example of this was the film version of The English Patient [1996] which won all kinds of Oscars in its year.  I laughed out-loud hearing an otherwise quite traditionalist friend of mine wax eloquent about how much he loved the movie, telling him: "Do you realize that that the two main characters in the film consummated their flagrantly _adulterous relationship_ in head banging fashion _on Christmas Eve_ with a garrison of British troops lined-up in formation in the plaza below them singing _Silent Night_" ;-).  But there it is: Set a film in an exotic location be it in WW-II era Libya (The English Patient) or 1980s era Italy (the current film) and dress the characters in "clothes of the era" and ... you can have them do ANYTHING ...

Anyway, this is certainly a cinematically lovely film, but honestly a dangerous fantasy that could get all kinds of people in a world of trouble if acted upon.  And if there's any doubt here, let me just end mentioning two words: Kevin Spacey ...


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Pitch Perfect 3 [2017]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)


IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review

Pitch Perfect 3 [2017] (directed by Trish Sie story by / screenplay cowritten by Kay Cannon along with based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Mickey Rapkin [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]), the third installment of this "a capella" franchise probably won't win any awards for originality ... "the shark" here has been jumped long ago ... BUT all things considered, if you liked the first two films you'll probably like this one as well.  And certainly the theatre full of glee-ful teenage girls who made up the bulk of the audience at the show where I saw the film would agree.

The film begins with the now since graduated Barden U. Bellas "out in the real world" and working rather meaningless "entry level jobs," if that... One of the college grads was still working at a barista at a Starbucks-like establishment.  Another, was not working at all.  A third, found herself doing that thing that most recent college grads dream of doing, and perhaps even do, exactly _once_ ... telling her "uncomprehending boss" to ... before realizing, "Hey, wait ... I guess I don't have a job anymore..." ;-/.

Well, sigh ... coming together, as Alumni (OMG are we "old people" already? ;-) to a gig of Barden U's current "A Capella" team ... they decide that they'd _all_ really like to sing _one last time_ together.  Turns out that one of them has a connection, through her dad, for a gig with the USO ... and so they're soon off to Spain, Italy and France to "perform for the troops."  Much ensues ...

The most enjoyable thing that ensues, is that we the Viewers get to see these actresses / singers perform a string of remarkable / perfectly choreographed A Capella numbers, and that's honestly what most people seeing this film will come wanting to see.

Yes, there's "kinda a plot" that holds the story together, but that's honestly beside the point.  This film, like the others, is mostly about the joy of singing, and then singing with a group / among friends.

And yes, that's quite nice ... Good job Anne Kendrick, et al.  Good job ;-)


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The Post [2017]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)


IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

The Post [2017] (directed by Steven Spielberg screenplay by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer) is nominally about the challenges to the Press / Society that came with the 1971 leaking of The Pentagon Papers regarding a 30 year cover-up of official (U.S. military / government) opinion regarding the prospects for U.S. success in the War in Vietnam.  Yet, one would have to be utterly tone-death to not see the parallels (and on a multitude of levels, sometimes surprising) to our current situation as well.

First, the U.S. found itself in a War that appeared to have no real prospect of ending, victoriously anyway, anytime even remotely resembling "soon."  Today, we find ourselves in a similar war with Islamic Militants that has similarly dismal prospects of ending anytime "soon" (AND YET, we do understand in the current case that we truly have no other alternative other than slug it out.  In the case of Vietnam, there was the serious / legitimate question of whether the War there was worth it.  Yes, there had been the "Domino Theory" -- if Vietnam fell, so would a lot of other nearby nations as well.  Yet, that did not materialize even after Vietnam did indeed Fall in 1975.  Today, most public opinion is more-or-less certain that if Islamic Militants are allowed widespread safe haven ANYWHERE, that we can expect 9/11 style attacks to follow once more.  We really DON'T have a choice).

Second, the whole public debate during the Vietnam War, JUST LIKE CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL DEBATE IN THE U.S., was _tainted_ by fears of Soviet (now Russian) involvement.  This may be something that many _today_ may want to forget, but from the late-1960s through to the end of the Cold War there were LEGITIMATE fears of Soviet collusion with then THE LEFT in this country (and throughout the West) in influencing U.S. (and West European) public opinion.  Indeed, even the Watergate Break-In of the Democratic Party's National Headquarters (which eventully resulted in President Nixon's resignation) was at least IN PART driven by fears that the Communists / Cubans were somehow involved with the radically "peacenik" George McGovern campaign.   And for someone of my ethnic background, Czech, with parents who both fled Communist Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, it's simply _hard for me to believe_ that there would not have been _robust contacts_ (perhaps even simply through the Communist Party of the United States) between the Soviet bloc intelligence agencies and groups like Tom Hayden's Students for a Democratic Society, which led a good part of the anti-Vietnam War protests.  Indeed, I look at someone like former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and see someone for whom the current "colluding" hoopla would not be anything even remotely resembling his "first rodeo" in this sort of a thing.  The Soviets were seeking to influence public opinion in the West -- BACK THEN usually linking-up with THE LEFT -- throughout THE WHOLE OF THE COLD WAR. 

That all said, the Pentagon Papers did reveal something that American Public opinion needed to know -- that even the U.S. military and its government agencies did not believe that the War in Vietnam was winnable, and didn't believe so FOR DECADES.   That's what a Free Press is for: to ensure that secrets effecting millions of people's lives (how many American soldiers served in Vietnam?  And 55,000+ died there...) are available so that decisions effecting said lives could be made rationally and openly.  Yes, not every detail needed to be known, but the simple fact that even the Generals themselves did not believe the War to be winnable was important for the American public to know (and then plan for the consequences ... including the acceptance of millions of subsequent Vietnamese refugees...). 

Which then leads us back today.  It could be fairly said that _today_ we have a U.S. President more hostile to the institution of the Free Press than any since Richard Nixon, and arguably even more so.  That should worry us because if we are not given information on which to make rational judgments, then we can not effectively elect our leaders.  That's effectively Putin's line: that ALL PRESS, everywhere is basically a lie (so might as well just listen _to him_...).

So then, back in 1971, the Washington Post, under its first woman head, Katharine Graham [wikip] (played wonderfully by Meryl Streep) who was forced to take the job -- back then the Washington Post was a family business -- after her husband died (perhaps even of a suicide), risked arguably its future in printing the Pentagon Papers (jointly with the New York Times) rather than keep them unreleased.  In doing so, Katharine Graham risked lifelong friendships with some of the U.S. power elite including JFK / LBJ era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara [wikip] (played in the film by Bruce Greenwood) who had, in fact, commissioned the "Pentagon Paper" study that was being leaked.

Even the incestuous nature of "upper echelon" Washington D.C. is something that was worrisome then, and should remain worrisome _now_.  In this film, it was clear just how "everybody seemed to know each other" pretty much all their lives.  Graham's editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee [wikip] (played wonderfully in the film by Tom Hanks) had been a long-time friend of the Kennedy Family, especially JFK and his wife Jackie ...

Now in 2010, _long before_ the current Trump-Russian collusion "hoopla," the FBI broke-up an odd Russian spy-ring operating in the U.S. [1] [2].  Curious was that these were "deep cover agents" seeking to basically infiltrate "The Hamptons Circuit" (where the rich, Washington/Manhattan powerbrokers would "summer").  Why would Russian Intelligence (the FSB) want to do that?  Unless they were operating under the view that a good part of what makes the United States operate remains that incestuous "network" of interconnected power-brokers like those that existed back in the 1970s -- the Grahams, Bob McNamara, the Kennedys, Ben Bradlee, etc ...

Indeed, interestingly enough, Nixon, like Trump, felt that he was "outside" of this loop ...

Anyway, all this makes the current film, made by Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, all now "Hollywood royalty" with certainly at least "get in free cards" to stomping grounds of the Hampton Elite, all the more interesting ...

MUCH to think about / contemplate here ;-)


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The Greatest Showman [2017]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


The Greatest Showman [2017] (directed by Michael Gracey, story by and screenplay cowritten by Jenny Bicks along with Bill Condon) is a (let's be clear / kind...) "broad stroke" Broadway style musical tribute to P.T. Barnum [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the film by Hugh Jackman) founder, eventually, of the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Yet, to those who'd complain that this "Broadway Musical" was not rigorously historical ... well, let's be honest, that's _not_ what "musical theater" has ever been about.  Instead, in the tradition of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida or Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly, it's always been about grand, sweeping themes.  (I would _not_ want to write a term-paper on Evita Peron based _solely_ on Madonna's performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita [wikip] [Amzn] ;-) or for that matter base my understanding of Founding Father, the founding Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and arguably founder of the entire U.S. economic system, Alexander Hamilton _solely_ on the current rave (and rapping ;-) musical Hamilton [wikip] ;-).

And to get an idea of the "far reaches" of "what's possible" the realm of musical theater (if then a fair question could be asked, "why?" ;-), consider the "creation" of compatriots from my parents' country, the Czech Republic (where BOTH "Opera" AND "Ice Hockey" are King), where "enthusiasts" wrote an actual Madame Butterfly-esque TRIBUTE to the Czech ice hockey team's "Grand Gold Medal Victory" entitled Nagano [wikip article about the Olympics] [cs.wikip article about the subsequent Opera]* ;-)

To the film at hand ... ;-)

The story here portrays P.T. Barnum as someone who was born quite poor and consequently had a chip on his shoulder, trying in various ways to both _eliminate distinctions_ (explaining his affinity to the kinds of people he'd hire to work in his circus) and _rise up_ to the upper class that he felt had looked-down-upon and rejected him.

These two "projects" of building a truly egalitarian community where "all were for one and one for all" and his trying to "rise up to a higher station" did, of course, often clash with each other, notably when Barnum underwrote the American tour of a then famous European opera singer named Jenny Lind [wikip] (played in the film by Rebecca Ferguson).  Then, as I noted in a number of years ago, in my review of a bio-pic about J. Edgar Hoover, a personal project seeking to "restore honor" to one's family / name, is something of a fool's errand ... How much "honor" does one have to "restore" before it has been, indeed, restored?  It would seem that it's never enough ...

So P.T. Barnum is portrayed in this film as both a flawed and driven man, but also one who did, in fact, bring happiness to a lot of people, notably to the various people that he brought together to work in his circus.  These were often people, as one character in the story noted, whose "own mothers had been ashamed of (on account of their deformities)."

Overall, this is crowd pleasing film.  A number of reviewers (and biographers, in as much as P.T. Barnum has been the subject of biography) have noted that Barnum was not necessarily all that kind / altruistic to the various people who made up his circus acts.  Indeed, a strong case could be made that he exploited them.  Still ... where-else would these people go? and they also did stay.

So it all makes for ... a grand show ;-)


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Molly's Game [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


Molly's Game [2017] (directed and screen play by Aaron Sorkin based on the memoir [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Molly Bloom [wikip] [GR] [IMDb]) spins a certainly gripping if also somewhat "spoiled sport" sort of a tale of Molly Bloom [wikip] (played in the film by Jessica Chastain), a young adult, who grew up in Loveland, CO (on the Continental Divide, about 1 hour West of Denver), the daughter of a Colorado based psychologist (played in the film by Kevin Kostner) hence ever upper middle class, and whose life's direction took a radical turn as a result of a truly freak accident at the U.S. (freestyle) ski team trials for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games.  If not for a random pine branch shaving unsnapping the buckling of one of her boots to her skis on her second of three mogul runs, she probably would have made the Team, perhaps even won a Medal at the Games and would have then followed a quite different path than the one that she ended up taking.

Instead, in the aftermath of the (life's fortunes-changing) Accident, she "took a year off" between college (Colorado State) and law school (undetermined, but she had an LSAT score that could have gotten her into Harvard ...) and moved down to Los Angeles where she crashed (found a place) with some friends.

Young and quite attractive (in a town full of young and above-the-par attractive people) and certainly a product of her skiing days, _never a couch potato_, she scored a job as a cocktail waitress at a quite frequented club on the Sunset Strip.  There she got noticed by a patron of said club _for her smarts_ who hired her, nominally, to work as his administrative assistant at his quite random (front?) business by day, but more importantly as his assistant and de-facto book-keeper (she knew how to write and maintain a spread sheet ;-) at a weekly celebrity high-stakes poker game that he ran in the back of a somewhat seedier club but "down the street" from the one where she worked as a cocttail waitress.

Talkative, attractive and again _smart_, she proved a natural.  And when a couple of years later, her boss tried to cut her out of his business, she had already "learned the game," and made enough friends to WAVE HIM GOODBYE as she STEPPED-UP THE GAME moving it TO A SUITE IN A BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL, serving better food with better music, and appropriately enticing (but again _never stupid_ ... why waste your position for a one night stand, or worse, prostituting yourself when you can make easily as much, night after night, simply on tips for your smile/encouragement) serving help (from among her friends at the club where she had worked) and HONESTLY, MADE THIS GAME WORK for a LONG, LONG TIME.

Well, Vice (a nicer way to say Evil...) has a way of eventually catching-up to anyone, no matter how smart one is.  And so she eventually had to leave L.A. because of _one mistake_, but soon re-established herself in New York where for a while she ran an even BIGGER / BETTER / MORE EXCLUSIVE POKER GAME (now complete with smiling but as ever unreachable Playboy Models as her serving help) THAN IN L.A.

To borrow some, (freestyle) skiing terminology, she had "a good run."  Eventually, however, one could say _inevitably_ "the Game" came to attract, well ... the kind of folks, that "a game" like this, again, inevitably attracts.  Still, even if Molly had spent a good part of her twenties "dancing with" / "playing tag" with the Devil, she wasn't necessarily that.  Instead, she was just very, very smart, quite ambitious, and as a former freestyle (moguls) skier TRAINED TO TAKE (QUICK / CALCULATED) RISKS.

Eventually the Feds came crashing in (and honestly, she was so lucky ...).  She did manage to get a good Manhattan-based lawyer (played excellently by Idris Elba) to hack her out of her legal troubles and lived to write a book (and have a movie made) about ... her "please don't do this" life.

Still, the story is gripping and relateable to both the young and no longer so young alike (because _all_ of us were "young" at some point as well).  And as a cautionary tale it is not a bad one.

Here was a young person who had a very good life and came _really close_ to really messing it up (and even close to ending up dead ...).  The temptation of glamour, "outsmarting the world" entices / challenges us all ...


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Downsizing [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Downsizing [2017] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Alexander Payne along with Jim Taylor) is a silly movie based on a goofy premise _played completely straight_ that ultimately helps Viewers (re)-discover the surprising beauty/richness of their seemingly boring day-to-day lives.  Wow?  How could a goofy / silly movie do that?

Well about thirty years ago, another silly movie with a goofy premise, the Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan vehicle Joe vs the Volcano [1990] did a similar thing: There "Joe" (played by Tom Hanks) introduced to Viewers as an almost immobilized / hysterical hypochondriac was finally told by his doctor the news that he had always dreaded -- that in a year's time he was gonna die of a truly awful disease, that was all the more awful because it was utterly symptomless and neither he nor really anybody else had ever heard of it -- a "brain cloud."  Knowing now, for certain, that "he's gonna die" Joe finally felt liberated to spend that last year of his life doing what he'd always wanted to do -- to go sailing around the world (or as much of it as he could before he, well, ... died).  And while he went about doing that, he kept running into the same woman, in different incarnations (all played by Meg Ryan) until ... well ;-).  A stupid movie, with a goofy premise, that turned out to be remarkably profound ;-).

The current movie begins with the announcement of a scientific breakthrough: A group of Norwegian scientists have come up with a way of shrinking people to 5 inches tall.  WT...?  Why?  Well, the Norweigian scientists, led by the solemn / appropriately grim and _utterly sincere_ in his solemn grimness Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen (played by Rolf Lassgård) and his wife Anne-Helene Asbjørnsen (played by Ingjerd Egeberg) tout this as a _definitive_ solution for the world to climate change and over-population:  Imagine that every person who shrunk him/herself to 5" in size (or about 2.3% of their present weight and volume) would correspondingly use only a tiny fraction of the resources that they currently consume.

This amusing premise is then even more amusingly played _completely straight_ through the rest of the story:

Some years after the solemn Asbjørnsens announced their breakthrough, real estate developers in the U.S. are selling to the struggling middle class the ECONOMIC POSSIBILITIES of "Living Big" by "Going Small."  Middle class families finding it hard to buy homes at all in our dimensions, could come to live in McMansion-style _Doll Houses_ in new gated, indeed, domed, "Leisure Land" communities for well ... a few hundred bucks ;-).

And so it is, that Paul and Audrey Safranek (played by Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig) a random, struggling, and certainly not gonna go particularly anywhere late-30 early-40 something couple from Omaha, NE, decide that "going small" may be for them.  Actually they're largely talked-into-it by couple of old-high school friends (played by Jason Sudeikis and Maribeth Monroe) who made a splash at their last High School reunion by coming there "smalled" (everybody else came to the reunion, basically how they've always been / for years ... so that couple, Dave and Carol Johnson, really _stood out_ ;-)

When their latest mortgage application gets rejected, they head out to the Nevada based "Leisureland Estates" and ... Paul certainly's sold, Audrey ... less so.  She goes along with it, but just at the moment when they are separated to undergo their "smalling procedure" ... she backs out.  As a result, since Paul's now 5" tall and Audrey 5'5" at least ... the two divorce, with Audrey taking most of their assets.

Paul's then _reduced_ to working now in a Leisureland phonebank (on the phone no one can tell that you're only 5" tall ...), and presumably paid smaller-sized wages as well.  So ... gone are dreams of living in a McMansion-style doll house.  He now lives in an apartment... with an annoying / quite noisy / ever partying neighbor above him ;-)

It's now that the the diminished / down-trodden Paul encounters the two most compelling characters in the story.

First there's Dušan Mirković (played brilliantly by Christoff Waltz) that noisy / ever partying upstairs neighbor who's this ever-smiling 'cause he's ever scheming Serbian mobster-like figure, who's figured out all sorts of silly, basically illegal, but arguably harmless (except to one's pride) ways to "make a buck off of this 'smalling scam'" -- among the things he sells are fake small "authentic cuban cigars" to the rich folks of leisureland: "So what, really, if they're made by tiny, smalled, Albanian refugees.  They make a living, and I sell an image.  Everybody wins."  The same he does with wine and perfume, selling them presumably literally "a drop at a time." ;-)

And then there's one of Dušan's cleaning ladies: Ngoc Lan Tran (played inspiringly by Hong Chau) who had made news some years back when, as a jailed Vietnamese Dissident, she was "smalled against her will" and then along with 15 other "undesireables" deported inside a flat-screen television box, and discovered only when she reached the U.S. with the other 15 having already died "during the journey."  Having lost a leg during her ordeal, she nonetheless, ran that cleaning service giving jobs to otherwise other "down on their luck" "small people" and ran all sorts of other charitable efforts for other "small people" in even greater need.  And in a nice bow to the at least potentially transforming power of Christianity, it becomes clear that Ngoc Lan Tran was motivated to do all of this because of her Christian faith.

Well poor always basically invisible Paul, finds himself, despite himself, in the company of these lovely if eccentric characters: "I love you Paul, you're always so boring," says at one point the ever smiling, ever scheming Dušan as he gives him a big bear hug and kissed him on the top of his head.

And surprisingly, by the end of the film one's able to leave with some very interesting questions to ponder:  Does "size" matter?  "Big" or "small," the characters' personalities / capacities remained basically the same.  Does "technological progress" matter?  The same pitches, the same problems continue despite changes in our technological capabilities.  So what does, in the end, _matter_?  The film's actually quite clear in its opinion on that ;-).

A wonderfully initially "stupid" yet thought-provoking film ;-)


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Ferdinand [2017]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (V. Murthi) review

Ferdinand [2017] (directed by Carlos Saldanha, screenplay by Robert L. Baird, Tim Federle and Brad Copeland, screen story by Ron Burch, David Kidd and Don Rhymer, based on the beloved 1936 children's book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Munro Leaf [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb] and Robert Lawson [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) tells the Ferdinand (voiced quite excellently by former WWE wrestler John Cena), a bull who'd much rather "smell the flowers" than "butt heads" with other bulls, much less end up in the ring with a bull fighter.

Needless to say a "pacifist bull" was not exactly respected by the other bulls, but he does make a lifelong friend with a little girl named Nina (voiced as a child by Julia Scarpa Saldanha and as a young adult by Lily Day).  Still a "pacifist bull" / "different kind of bull" or not, Ferdinand was still a bull and, well, that resulted in repeated misunderstandings with humans who generally saw him as a simply a _huge_ (and dangerous) beast.  And try as he might, he repeatedly found himself in difficulty -- there's a priceless scene in the movie where he finds himself, a bull, "in a china shop."

Yes, the book is rather short, and the movie, being a movie is 80+ minutes long.   Yet, scenes like Ferdinand finding himself in (and for that matter, getting himself into) said china shop, lend themselves to incredibly endearing sequences.  So ... my best guide here is just simply listening to the kids in the theater ... and at the showing that I saw, it was _clear_ that the kids _loved_ watching this ENORMOUS bull trying _so hard_ to be careful when, as a bull, he really could not.

Hence, I honestly found this to be a fun / endearing movie to watch.  And there's no messaging in the film that would be harmful to kids.  The whole story is an exercise in empathy putting oneself into the shoes (err... hooves) of a bull, who despite his ENORMOUS size, just wants to play / "smell the roses" 

Great story / film!

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