About Time [2013]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (2 stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

About Time [2013] (written and directed by Richard Curtis) turns out to be IMHO a surprisingly flat romantic comedy even though it involves the generally sure fire "wouldn't it be nice..." device of having one or another character being able to "travel in time."  For "wouldn't it be nice..." to be able to go back to one or another moment in one's life to "fix" (unsay, undo, prevent...) something?  Yet in this film, the potentialities (for good and for ill) of this remarkable (and potentially remarkably practical) superpower remain surprisingly unexplored.

Tim (played by Domhnall Gleesen) is introduced to us as a deathly shy/awkward 21 year-old son of an upper-middle-class to modest-gentry family living at the family's manor house somewhere out at the far south-western edge of England in Cornwall (Incidentally, I've kinda wanted to visit Cornwall because of its remoteness.  The King Arthur legends took place in those "rather remote..." parts of England).  Returning to the story ... Tim's father (played actually remarkably well by Bill Nighy) had been a literature professor at some nondescript college somewhere in England had decided at 50 to retire to said family manor to spend his time with his family.  It was kind of a luxury but the family had some money and his father had clearly (and IMHO quite wisely) decided that chasing after a career (as a literature prof at a not particularly important college or university) wasn't going to give him happiness.

The story begins on the first New Years after Tim's 21st birthday.  New Years comes and passes.  And perhaps typical form Tim "blows it" by not kissing the smiling girl of his age who clearly had lined herself-up to stand right next to him as New Years was about to come, instead choosing to "shake her hand."  Tim realized almost immediately that he had done something stupidly wrong and that he had needlessly hurt this girl who may have been as little interested in him as he in her, but JUST WANTED TO BE KISSED on New Years.  But sigh ... such is the often quite painful life of a painfully awkward geek.

Well the next day and perhaps for motives completely unrelated to Tim's little failure at said party, Tim's father chooses to set Tim down in a backroom / study for a chat.  Thoughts of "Oh boy, what did I do now...?" could have been running through Tim's head at this point.  Yes, he did knock over some plates at the party.  Yes, he didn't kiss the girl.  Yes, he might have done any number of other socially awkward things the night before.  Or perhaps it was something else that he did.  BUT ... Tim's father takes the conversation in a completely different direction:

He tells him that "It's time."  "For what?"  "Time to tell you a family secret."  And the secret was ... that for whatever reason, "the men in the family have this gift of being able to travel back in time."  Here Tim reacts as most of us would react: "Dad, this is beginning of some really strange joke."  "But it's not."  "Even if this were possilbe, which it isn't..." "But it is ..." "How would one do it?"

Tim's father explains.  It's not as if they could go back to any time.  They couldn't go back to the time of the dinosaurs or to Julius Ceasar or whatever.  Neither could they go into future.  BUT they could go back to a particular moment in their lives.  "How?"  "Well go to a closed dark space, close the door, clench your fists and think of a time that you'd like to go back to ... and ... you'll be there."

Well, Tim has an obvious time to go back to test this out.  He goes into a wardrobe, closes the door, clenches his fists and wishes that he could go back to a few minutes before New Years the night before.  And boom, there he is.  He happily avoids running into the plates that he ran into before, goes to the place where he was standing that night before just before midnight (and watches the girl who had come up to stand so next time him the night before do the same now AND just as just as New Years had struck, HE KISSES HER.  She smiles a big smile, he smiles.  And it's done!  Tim goes back to the closet, closes the door, clenches his fists, thinks of the conversation that he's just had with his dad about all of this and ... boom ... he returns back to talk to his dad about this: "This is going to be a very complicated year, dad."  "It's going to be a very complicated life, son."

His dad shares with him a few points of advice ... not to use this ability for financial gain ("I've never known anyone who was truly happy with money.") not to use it for to put off decisions ("Look at ... <name of random uncle> ... who never amounted to anything") and life goes on.

Okay ... how would you use this ability?  That's obviously the central question of the film.  Tim uses this, of course for the sake of love.  And it does help him get the girl-friend and later wife, Mary (played by Rachel McAdams) eho he falls in love with.  But truth be told, her performance throughout the film is rather flat.  She too comes across as a rather anxious person.  So even though he does "win her" as it were, one gets the sense that after meeting 4 or 5 Marys (and "crashing and burning" 4 or 5 times) he probably would have found if not this Mary then someone very much like her anyway.

PERHAPS that is the point here, that Tim's sudden discovery that he had this ability of being able "to go back in time" was really unnecessary APART FROM PERHAPS giving him the confidence to try in the first place.   Anyway, much ensues ... but truth be told, I would have had far more fun (and yes _positive_ fun) with this ability than poor schlop Tim did.

Probably the best part of the movie involves Tim's relationship with his father as both he and his father realize that his father has to die (remember Tim's father's rather odd decision to leave work at 50 ... well ... you put the dots together as to why he made that rather counter-to-expectations decision ... ;-).

And so the film becomes an interesting reflection "about time."  How do we want to make use of the time that we all have.  I just wish that the film-makers took a bit more time to explore more of the possibilities of the film's premise.  It could have made the same point, but been, IMHO, "a lot more fun." ;-)


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Last Vegas [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (D-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Okay, the premise of Last Vegas [2013] (directed by Jon Turteltaub, screenplay by Dan Fogelman) seems like a the beginning of the a joke: So these four "old guys" (with or without the quotes) decide to go to Vegas ... but what actually results is IMHO actually a pretty good story about, yes, "growing old," but also about friendship and coming to terms with who one is, what one's received in life, and the decisions that one has made (and yes, is still making).  So I honestly have to say that I loved the film.

It also helps that the five leads in this film -- the four "old guys" and yes, the lounge singer that they meet along the way (still feels like the beginning of a joke ... ;-) -- are all also "old pros" AND THAT THEY CLEARLY LOVED THEIR PARTS AND BELIEVED IN THE FILM. 

So what's the film about?  It's about four guys who've truly been BFFs since growing up together in Brooklyn, NY (and eons before the world of texting brought us such acronyms as BFF ;-).  Indeed they called themselves the Flatbush Four, and for the most part they've stuck together through thick and thin.  But now they're over 70, and all of them are finding themselves in need of confronting the reality that ahead of them really lie their "sunset years."  So here they are ...

Archie (played by Morgan Freeman) who's found himself in life twice divorced and is now living "somewhere out in the suburbs" with a loving but overly protective son and his family after having suffered a TbtG relatively minor stroke some months back.  There's Sam (played by Kevin Kline) living with his wife of 35-40 years, retired out in Florida, and just having finished physical therapy after getting "a titanium knee replacement" (following the hip replacement he had last year ...).   There's Paddy (played by Robert DeNiro), widowed approaching a year, still living in Brooklyn still distraught over the loss of his wife who had been his high school sweetheart and the only woman he's ever loved, and REALLY, REALLY PISSED OFF that his and his wife's BEST FRIEND of the bunch, Billy (played by Michael Douglas), "couldn't find time to leave his beach house in Malibu" (Billy, never married, but had been the one who made it really, really big) "to come to Suzie's funeral much less GIVE THE EULOGY that Suzie had asked him give because ' he could always make everyone smile.'  Some friend, after all these years ..."

Well, the story really begins with 70 y.o. Billy adjusting his tie in the above-mentioned Malibu beach house, and asking his 31-ish model material girlfriend Lisa (played by Bre Blair) to "please hurry-up" because they were heading to another funeral, that of his business mentor where he was again going to give the Eulogy ... There Billy tells the assembled (sort of) bereaved that said mentor, now dead, had told him that "In life, you'll never grow old as long as you have a REALLY BIG ... ... Malibu beach house."  The people laugh, but looking down at the casket of his business mentor, now dead, the joke no longer seemed overly funny to 70 y.o. Billy.  And so he does something quite surprising (at a funeral, giving the Eulogy ...).  He proposes to his drop-dead gorgeous (did I already note above that she was 31-ish....) Lisa right then and there.  And she, perhaps she really does like older, and (perhaps) still vibrant men says ... (and perhaps SHE REALLY DOES ... in part ...) ... says ... YES!!!

And so it is.  With "not much time to waste ..." there's a quick wedding shower where 70 year old Billy has a rather awkward conversation with the 50-something "Father of the Bride..." ;-) and the wedding's set then for the following weekend.

It's then that Billy calls first Archie, then adds Sam to the call, telling them the news ... and the idea of throwing a Bachelor Party for Billy is conceived.  All three know that Paddy's still really pissed at Billy, but Billy himself tells the other two to do what they can to get Paddy to come because it really wouldn't be the same with out the whole "Flatbush Four" being present.

And so it is ... the story of an epic (and thankfully still PG-13) Bachelor Party is set in motion, one that when they run into above mentioned late-40 something / 50 something lounge singer Diana (played magnificently by Mary Steenburgen), she characterizes as "The First Bachelor Party that she's ever heard of that could be covered by Medicare." ;-) ;-)

Much ensues, and much of it is surprisingly good.  These are five people (both the characters and the actors playing them) who've "been around the block."  Even the problem between Billy and Paddy is multifaceted and its resolution is also surprisingly textured. 

Yes, its a 105 minute or so film (less than 2 hours).  Yes, it's also largely a comedy.  But it is surprisingly credible and poignant and ultimately a celebration of a set of friendships that has really lasted forever.

Honestly folks GREAT JOB!  Together with The Guilt Trip [2012] starring another "old pro" (Barbara Streisand) one could sell the two films as a boxed set!  And honestly though NO ONE really expects this film to be nominated for anything come awards season ... THE SCREEN-PLAY at minimum deserves a look! ;-)


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Free Birds [2013]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  ChicagoTribune (1 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
ChicagoTribune (R. Moore) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (K. McFarland) review

Free Birds [2013] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Jimmy Hayward along with Scott Mosier, story by David I. Stern and John J. Strauss) is an often cute, if honestly quite disorganized, children's animated feature sending-up the "First Thanksgiving" taking "the turkeys' point of view."  As such, the story runs like a cross between the second Addams' family feature, Addams' Family Values [1993], which sends-up the First Thanksgiving taking the Native Americans' point of view and the children's animated feature Chicken Run [2000] conflating/sending-up writer George Orwell's famous barn-yard fable Animal Farm [IMDb] and the WW II POW escape classic The Great Escape [1963].

The story here runs like this:  Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson) a free-thinking turkey if still "bird-brain" (he freely admits that "let's face it, we turkeys are not that bright ...") realizes early in life that Thanksgiving is "a turkey's worst nightmare."  Yet, when he tries to explain to the other turkeys on his farm that their farmer is NOT "their best friend," they look at him with a mixture of incomprehension ("hey, but he gives us, yum, _corn_...") and fear ("are you trying to be some kind of subversive ...").  And he himself sometimes wonders if he's some kind of a crackpot since only the occasional "wild-eyed crazy" turkey would go around telling the other turkeys that "the End is near..." ;-)

Well things change for Reggie when around Thanksgiving suddenly a whole entourage of black limo type cars come to the farm and out comes a really important looking man, the President of the United States (voiced by director Jimmy Hayward) with cameras rolling all around him as part of the "Annual Tradition" of "pardoning" a turkey before Thanksgiving (the rest would, of course, "get the axe.")

Well guess what turkey gets "pardoned?" ;-).  Reggie, of course.  Why Reggie?  Because the President's precocious and somewhat ADD challenged daughter (voiced by Kaitlyn Maher) finds him really, really cute.  So Reggie gets wisked away on the President's helicopter and flown then to the President's retreat at Camp David.

Now what's the life of a "pardoned turkey" at Camp David.  Well, it could have been kinda boring but Reggie makes the best of it.  He starts "ordering pizza" which he finds "way better than corn."  And he gets hooked on a Spanish language Telenovela about a little boy sooo down-on-his-luck/marginalized that he gets thrown out of a Tijuana orphanage before (somehow) growing-up and becoming the richest and most popular man in town.  How?  It's not clear, but what a story!  (Now why was this little and rather strange "Hispanic" bit added to this particular children's animated film?  Again, I have no idea, but perhaps a similarity is being drawn between the "wish fulfillment fantasies" present in some Spanish language Telenovelas and the "wish fulfillment fantasy" playing out here ... even turkeys winning respect and freedom.  But it's an odd/confusing addition potentially equating the plight of many poorer/more marginalized Hispanics today with turkeys.  And I've written before that I often do not like how Hollywood often portrays Hispanics in today's films [1] [2]).

Still, people in general don't fare well in this "turkey drama."  When the film moves on to "the first Thanksgiving" -- how? via a secret "time-machine" being developed by Camp David, the "time-machine'
s" avatar being named "Steve" (voiced by George Takei) -- the Pilgrim settlers are shown to be led by a rather self-serving (and rather well fed while the rest are hungry) Governor Bradford (voiced by Dan Fogler) and his rather sadistic hunter/enforcer Miles Standish (voiced by Colm Meaney).  And even the Native Americans are portrayed as rather dim-witted (they do nothing).  Their chief, Massassoit (voiced by Robert Beltran), has all of one line in the film. Observing _the turkeys_ lining-up to attack the Pilgrim settlement to free their comrades about to be beheaded/plucked/cooked and served for dinner, he tells his fellow warriors: "Those are some angry birds." ;-)

How then to get "turkeys off the menu"?  Reggie comes up with a rather creative (and contemporary solution ;-). 

Anyway, it's a generally happy/goofy story and yet chock full of landmines.  The idea itself was cool, but gosh, I do honestly think I could have come-up with a less problematic/offensive plot-trajectory than this.


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Ender's Game [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Adams) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Ender's Game [2013] (screenplay and directed by Gavin Hood based on the award winning sci-fi novel (wikipedia) by Orson Scott Card [IMDb]) is one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi films to come out in years or perhaps in decades.  Though action and even 3D special effects it has, these are decidedly beside the point.  (Note to Readers, as is almost always my preference, I saw the movie in 2D rather than 3 and the 2D worked just fine).  The film has far more in common in terms of style with Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek television series, famous/infamous for its spartan sets and lofty thematics/dialogue, than with far more visually oriented sci-fi films ranging from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] and James Cameron's Avatar [2009] where the visuals clearly enhanced and/or arguably _became_ the story or the more recent/flashy StarTrek remakes where the visuals appeared to even try to _mask the lack_ of a compelling story.  

The current film, Ender's Game [2013], is set about a century to century-and-a-half in the future.  We're told in an initial voice-over that 50 years previous the Earth had been suddenly attacked by an ant-like alien race called the Formics that had apparently sought to take the earth as its own.  In the desperate battle that ensued, we're told that tens of millions of people died UNTIL a lone pilot named Mazar Rackham (whose name that every school child around the world now knew) decided to crash his aircraft into the heart of the aliens' mother-ship.  His action not only destroyed the mother-ship, but also (to everyone's surprise) caused the entire alien fleet to stop functioning and simply "fall out of the sky."  Mazar Rackham's action proved a brilliant, "out of the box" and spectacularly effective stroke that saved humanity from destruction.  But ever since humanity has been trying to prepare itself for "Round 2" against this utterly foreign alien species.

How does one prepare to fight an "utterly alien/foreign species?"    That becomes the first "lofty question" posed by the story's scenario.   It seems imperative that the earth's military leaders become nimble, capable of "thinking outside the box" as well as decisive. 

Now who would be best capable of doing this?  The world's leaders become convinced ... children.  Why?  As Col. Graff (played magnificently in the film by Harrison Ford) who appears to head the Earth's chief (and necessarily combined) military academy explains: Children are best able to integrate complex and diverse data and respond to them in surprisingly effective ways.  

But what of the morality of _using_ children in this way (as child warriors)?  "What's going to be left of these [child warriors] afterwards (after the coming next war with the aliens)?" asks Col. Graff's assistant, the psychologist Maj. Gwen Anderson (played again magnificently by Viola Davis).  "What does it matter if there may be nothing left at all?" responds that Colonel in a way that every other Israeli would probably utterly understand.   But that's exactly it.  Almost all of us would be torn here.  Using children's natural capacity to integrate information in novel/effective ways "as they play" into a means to prepare and fight a war seems really, really evil.  On the other hand, the threat is so grave -- possible complete annihilation -- that almost _anything_ goes.

So then Col. Graff and Maj. Anderson along with the rest of the staff at humanity's combined military academy go about training their child warriors and more specifically choosing humanity's future commander for this impending war.  Their focus centers then on a particular child named Ender Wiggin (played by Asa Butterfield) who appears to have been enough of  "a bullied misfit" (bullied but not overly so) to have developed exactly the qualities that they are have been looking for in humanity's next military commander: Someone capable of responding creatively and effectively to threatening challenges.  Can he rise to the challenge?  That's the rest of the film ...

Interesting are Endor's own reflections in which he realizes that to defeat an enemy one has to come to understand him.  But as one comes to understand him, one also comes to love him. 

And that, of course, becomes the final question that the story raises: Does war, in fact, remain "the only way" to respond to a conflict?   Again, the film's repeatedly about "thinking outside the box" and it becomes quite an interesting and thought provoking tale.


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Enough Said [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna ) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Enough Said [2013] (written and directed by Nicole Holofcener) is a simple enough relationship dramedy of sorts. 

Eva (played by Julia Lewis-Dreyfus) is a 40-something divorced mother with a 18-year-old daughter, Ellen (played by Tracey Fairaway) who's getting ready go off to college at the end of the summer.  As such, the home's looking be pretty empty come the fall.  So reluctantly she gets talked into going to a party by a friend.  "Maybe you'll meet someone" is the premise.  "Ya right," but perhaps Eva's a little more vulnerable / a little more open to meeting new people this time than in the past.

So ... at said party she does actually meet two new people: First, she makes a new client. Eva's a massage therapist and she runs into a somewhat intimidating woman, but her age, named Marianne (played by Catherine Keener), a poet, who's interested in her services.  Second, she meets a guy, who's kind of a lug, though an amiable one, named Albert (played masterfully by the ever smiling, James Gandolfini, who's tragically died since the shooting of the film).   He too was divorced, and had a daughter about to head off to college.  So the two hit it off.

Now what would be the odds that Albert's ex would be Marianne?  And it takes some time for Eva to figure out that the "loser" that Mariane had been married to and complains about as Eva's massaging her is ... Albert, whose not-flawless but easy-going manner Eva's gotten to like.  And since Marianne and Albert are exes, neither initially knows that Eva is massaging and becoming chatty-friends with Marianne while she's also dating Albert.

This can't really end well ... and it doesn't.

The only thing is that to be honest I felt sorry for Eva because I could easily imagine myself having done the same thing as she did in the situation ... nothing and somehow hope for the best.

It would have been easier perhaps to break things off with Marianne.  But then a message therapist isn't exactly going to be throwing away good clients.  Done legitimately, it's actually quite hard work and one wouldn't want to easily throw away good, polite and grateful clients.  Then honestly, as Eva confides to a friend: if you knew someone who's dated someone that you're interest in, wouldn't you hear what they have to say... even if it is negative?

So there it is, and yes, Eva's budding relationship with Albert is more or less certainly doomed.  It's just a question of when / how the axe will fall.


However, here then the title of the film becomes interesting.  What if Marianne had bit her tongue and not talked so harshly about Albert?  Yes, she had no idea that Eva knew who he was much less that she was dating him.  But even then, what if she chose to not be so negative?  Okay, things didn't work out between Marianne and him.  She was clearly more intellectual and he more easy going.  But rather than hate one's ex (yes, even one's ex) why not just wish him/her the best?

We're all created and loved by the same God after all ...

So perhaps _way too much_ "was said" in this film and ironically it was Eva (and neither Marianne nor even Albert) who ended up being hurt.   Hmm. 


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All is Lost [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (A. Alikan) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

All is Lost [2013] (written and directed by J.C. Chandor) is a remarkable one man story about a lone yachtsman (played in the film by Robert Redford) that the script simply labels "Our Man" who finds himself in crisis at sea (as the opening credits tell us) "1500 miles from the Sumatra Straits" (somewhere in the Indian Ocean).

What's he doing out there?  We don't know.  In fact, learn next to nothing about the yachtsman during the whole course of the film.  In an opening voice-over, we hear him writing out what sounds like a generic letter of apology.  To whom is he writing this letter?  To unnamed loved ones?  To humanity in general?  To God?  Again we don't know.

As we hear him compose his short letter, we're also treated to an utterly generic view: gentle waves of a body of water extending out to infinity banging on "something metal."  What's this "something metal" floating out in a all-but-infinite body of water in the middle of nowhere?  Well, as we hear the yachtsman compose his letter, we're slowly given an ever improving view.  And as he finishes his rather short and very generic letter, we realize that the metal object that we've been observing, floating out in that all-but-infinite sea, is but one of those giant metal container boxes that container ships now carry that had apparently fallen from its ship one day (when?  we have no idea) and had been floating randomly on the sea ever since.

A credit on the screen then tells us that the story began "8 days earlier ..."

On that day, we're shown that at some random time during the day, the yachtsman is awaken (from either sleeping or napping ... we don't know) by a crash caused by the above described random metal container floating out at sea.

The random metal container, apparently containing gym-shoes, not only crashes into the boat, but punctures a hole in it.  It's not a huge hole.  It's eminently fixable.  And we see the yachtsman come to patch it up reasonably well with epoxy and some fiber-glass cloth.  But it did shake him up as perhaps nothing previously did, and the hole caused by the random-metal container that had been floating out at sea did cause some damage.  The yacht had at least temporarily taken in (unexpectedly) a fair amount of water, the result being that most of the yachtsman's electronics onboard had been fried.

So though he the yachtsman manages to patch-up his boat, he's now "sailing blind" or more correctly sailing "deaf" and "mute."  He's unable to communicate a distress-call to anybody via the radio and he can't receive any important information (mostly about weather...) either.   So he soon finds himself, out in the middle of nowhere, hit by a couple of very nasty storms (that perhaps previously he would have been able to avoid). The rest of the film, of course, unspools from there ... and of course the story goes largely downhill.

The question that the viewer inevitably starts to ask is whether (or not) the anonymous yachtsman is going to make it out alive.  On one hand, this is a "Hollywood movie" with the lead role being played by one of Hollywood's most beloved / talented actors.  On the other hand, the film's title is "All is Lost" ... So the viewer soon realizes that the story could really go either way.

It's also obvious that the story is intended to be taken as being about more than just "a lone yachtsman out at sea in a boat."  I'd say that the story a remarkably insightful allegory about aging:  For much of our lives "we're fine."  And like the yachtsman in the film, we may take this for granted, blissfully napping in our boat, perhaps even "drifting through life" until ... BOOM something happens and we're "not fine."   And that something may not be fatal.  Like the yachtsman, we may be able to "patch it up."  But it MAY rattle us, and may have other consequences that (cumulatively) set-us down a course toward our end.  And in the course of our dying, we're repeatedly forced to work with less-and-less, until ...

Great, thought provoking story ... definitely deserving Oscar consideration for acting, direction and screenplay.


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Rush [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (B. Kenigsberg) review

Rush [2013] (directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by Peter Morgan) is straight-up car-racing movie that doesn't involve any bank-robberies or shooting.  Instead it's about an epic rivalry between two very different 70s-era formula-one drivers the brash/playboy Englishman James Hunt (played in the film by Chris Hemsworth) and the relentless/methodical Austrian Niki Lauda (played in the film by Daniel Brühl).  Both were incidentally from upper/upper-middle class homes (Hunt was the son of a London stockbroker, Lauda the son of an Austrian banker) and both were effectively disowned by their families for choosing to waste their lives on frivolity.

Yes, it's clear from the film that formula-one racing required money.  Niki Lauda is shown as having impressed the Ferrari family enough to convince them, Austrian though he was..., to race for their team, while Hunt managed to convince a British racing consortium that he stood the best chance of beating Lauda having done so back in their formula-three "minor league" pasts.  But then, this is part of the formula-one mystique.  Its drivers and races (held in all sorts of exotic cities across the world) could be compared to the medieval jousting knights and tournaments of old.

So then this then is the set-up of the film: the high-rolling/partying Englishman Hunt chasing the more cerebral Lauda for the 1976 Formula One Gran-Prix championship.  Both of course have love interests.  Hunt enters the 1976 season married but not particularly faithful to an English supermodel named Suzy Miller (played in the film by Olivia Wilde).  And during the course of the season, Lauda marries his German speaking Italian girlfriend Marlene (played in the film by Alexandria Maria Lara) who he had met, quite accidentally apparently, at a Ferarri family party.   The love lives of the two racers do, in fact, play significant roles in how the racing season (and hence the film) plays out.

All in all, I found the film to be very exciting.  Yes, car racing is often characterized as simply "racing around in circles."  Yet, formula-one racing is, in fact, more than just that.  Each of the race courses is different and when one adds variations in climate / weather / road conditions, one's left in awe at the bravery (or angry at the arrogance/recklessness) of the drivers.   IMHO it makes for one heck of a film!


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The Fifth Estate [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (B. Kenigsberg) review

The Fifth Estate [2013] (directed by Bill Condon, screenplay by Josh Singer, based on the books Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website by Daniel Domscheit-Berg [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] and  WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh [IMDb] and Luke Harding [IMDb]), which enjoyed a special screening at the recent 49th Chicago International Film Festival  prior to its wide-release in the United States, is about one of the most controversial people of recent times, Julian Assange [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch], the founder of the (universal) whistle-blower site wikileaks.org.  It's a film that is IMHO paradoxically both fascinating and dated and ultimately could serve as a very good young adult discussion piece.

The film is dated because the continued revelations stemming from nouveau über-leaker (yup, I loved putting that word construction together ;-), former National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden, make it clear that neither Assange nor his website are now essential for deep dark government / corporate secrets to be exposed.  What are needed are people disturbed after coming into contact with something that they find profoundly wrong willing to be(come) whistle-blowers and a Free/Credible/Professional Press to report (after appropriate fact-checking...) the news brought to it by them.  Indeed, among the true heroes of the film, one would have to say, would have to be the staff at The Guardian (website) who always took Assange seriously and (as per the film) were always willing to extend a hand to help him (Whether he was willing to accept their advice/help becomes another matter and a plot-point in the film).
 
However be this as it may (that Assange and his website are and perhaps always were "unncessary" / "irrelevant"), thanks to his Samson-like will (perhaps mixed with some arrogance) the world has indeed been changed by him.  Both the People and the Press are awake, if only temporarily, as a result of him.  And that makes him then, IMHO, a fascinating person. 

Now who is this Julian Assange [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] (played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch), and where (what milieu) did he come from?  This is what this film is about.  Yes, it's gossipy (Australian, Assange is presented as having come from a hippy single-mother household and spent at least part of his childhood with her in some sort of a New Age-y cult called "The Family" ... Assange denies this).  To some extent the film is formulaic (Like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as presented in The Social Network [2010], Julian Assange, human rights activist that he may feel himself to be, is presented in the film as someone who relates far better to the virtual world of the Internet than to actual people).  And to a good extent the film's observations may once more be irrelevant (Why should one necessarily care if Julian Assange "may have trouble relating to people" if despite his flaws he made the world a better place (for all)?)  Still as gossipy or trite as the film may be characterized as being, we are all people and wish to understand the people who effect our world _as people_ as well.  So IMHO the film-makers' attempt to try to understand who Assange is and what makes him tick is ultimately legitimate.

In the film-makers' attempt to do so, they lean heavily on Daniel Berg [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] (played in the film by Daniel Brühl) Assange's (former?) friend and the author of one of the two books on which the film is based.  A German hacker / human rights activist, Berg is presented as being initially in awe of the Australian hacker and wikileaks founder who he meets in person for the first time at a hacker convention in Berlin (Indeed, Berg had been asked, presumably by Assange, to introduce him at a conference that Assange was to give at the convention).  It would also appear that Assange, presented in the film as a profoundly mistrustful-loner, was genuinely appreciative of both Berg's programming abilities (comparable to or at least "in the same league" as his own) and access (to the anarcho-hacker community in Berlin/Europe) and was at least initially appreciative of  Berg's friendship (Berg and his circle of friends were people who would have been able to understand both Assange's abilities and motivations). 

But Assange is presented in the film as a deeply contradictory figure: Though it's clear that he wants to defend human rights, he can't seem to relate well to people.  As such, his beloved creation Wikileaks is presented in the film as something of a virtual Potemkin village.  On one hand Assange talks of Wikileaks as "a movement" with "hundreds, thousands of volunteers."  But when Berg asks him about this in a very practical way (Why not share some of the verification work that Wikileaks has to do with some of those volunteers?) it becomes clear (AT LEAST IN THE FILM) that Wikileaks is basically JUST Assange and Berg.  Those "hundreds of volunteers" are generally just decoy electronic mailboxes and identities.

Now there is actually a logic to this: Volunteers themselves could become compromised, become sources of leaks, but ... what does it do to the credibility of a "movement" when honestly no one knows how large it actually is and one progressively discovers (perhaps even to one's dismay, as Berg apparently did) that "the movement" was essentially only the size of one or two people (him and Assange)?  Add then the obvious:  Berg's world is larger than simply Assange.  Berg has a girlfriend, another computer programmer named Anke (played by Alicia Vikander).  Assange is presented as having difficulty enough relating to Berg.  He's presented then as having no idea of how to relate to Anke, and then Anke is presented as someone who really comes to dislike him.  (Note here that as gossipy as this all may sound, Assange has famously (or infamously) been accused of criminal sexual misconduct in Sweden.  At least on some level, therefore, he's objectively had some trouble relating properly with women).

Now Assange is presented as having (had) other allies/sympathizers, notably at The Guardian (website).  Nick Davies (played by David Thewlis) of The Guardian is a significant character in the film in good part to remind us of this and of the fact that the second book on which this film is based was written by David Leigh [IMDb] and Luke Harding [IMDb]) of The Guardian.  But is Assange able to trust them?  Or is he just too closed in on himself to be able to trust anybody (even potential allies in some powerful quarters who could be / have been useful to him)?  That appears to be a question that the good folks at The Guardian ask about him.

The Fifth Estate [2013] becomes then the second (Hollywood) film of its sort -- the other being The Social Network [2010] about Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg -- in which a computer programming whiz who has arguably changed the world has been also portrayed as someone with deep problems with relating to others.  Is it fair?  Should it matter?   And is this characterization even particularly correct?  Zuckerberg, for instance, is married.  And Assange has been "relateable enough" to repeatedly call the film a pack of lies.

Anyway, IMHO the film would probably make for a very good "young adult" discussion piece about both the way news is presented (and at times "outed") in our world today and also about the ever increasingly important role that previously marginalized "geeks" are having in it.  

And without a doubt positively, film makes the anarcho-hacker milieu of Berlin's neon-lit internet cafes today supremely interesting.   As the film has Assange himself marvelling to Berg when he first arrives in Berlin, "Who would have guessed that the former heart of jackbooted Fascism would now be such a center of internet freedom."   Yes, indeed, who could have possibly guessed that after so much history (both as the center of Hitler's Germany and then at the very fault-line during the Cold War) it would today be unbelievably cool for a young person today to be able to say: "Ich bin ein Berliner." ;-) 

So in the end, good film folks, very good film!


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The Counselor [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Michael Phillips (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (1/2 Star)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago Tribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (D. Callahan) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Do you reject the glamor of evil?
-- Profession of Faith at the Baptismal Rite

About the most positive thing that could be said of the film, The Counselor [2013] (directed by Ridley Scott, screenplay by Cormac McCarthy) was that the wardrobe and makeup people outdid themselves in dressing-up the film's long-long-gone/sinister "power couple," the ever smiling/ever stoned Reiner (played by Javier Bardem) with a perfectly spiked "black sun" hairstyle (Honestly, how could one ever sleep in that, and how much time would it take to get it all groomed to such perfection each morning?) and his quite literally "tough as nails" girlfriend Malkina (played by Cameron Diaz).  I generally NEVER notice nails, but Malkina had PERFECTLY MANICURED "platinum" (or stainless steel ...) colored finger nails that INSTANTLY give one the impression that she was half-human/half-unbelievably-bad-news.  Then she had a LONG, LONG, MEANDERING "leopard style" tattoo that began at her neck and then flowed down her side, down to her a...).  Together the two raised a pair of "snow cheetahs" which they'd let loose each late-afternoon, to  run-down (and kill ...) jack-rabbits on the Texas prairie outside of El Paso where they lived, as they calmly sat drinking shaken flavored martinis and contemplated the sunset each day.  The Devil himself could not have been more exquisitely drawn.

Into their world entered a lawyer, known to us only as "The Counselor" (played by Michael Fassbender).  Already apparently wealthy, he apparently simply had a taste for more.  And so he enters into a fairly "high return" (hence also high risk ...) drug deal with said power couple.  Both Reiner and Reiner's middle-man Westray (played by Brad Pitt) who does Reiner's negotiations across the border with the (Mexican) drug lords warn (indeed try to _counsel_) "the Counselor" that he's getting into a world far more dangerous than his wildest imagination.  But "the Counselor," a dressed-for-success type-A personality lawyer won't take their counsel for caution and jumps right in.  Besides, he has a striking trophy-wife-to-be named Laura (played by Penélope Cruz) who he wants to impress with his prowess/success.

This can't possibly end well... and, of course, it doesn't.  It ends horribly, horribly badly and involves killings so grotesque that if not mirroring the _reality_ of the cross border City of Juarez today, would have no possible place on the screen / story-telling today.

Even then, honestly ... the prophet Isaiah offers good advice:

Hear, you who are far off,
what I have done;
you who are near,
acknowledge my might.

On Zion sinners are in dread,
trembling grips the impious;
“Who of us can live with the consuming fire?
Who of us can live with the everlasting flames?”

He who practices virtue and speaks honestly,
who spurns what is gained by oppression,
brushing his hands
free of contact with a bribe,
stopping his ears lest he hear of bloodshed,
closing his eyes lest he look on evil.
 
He shall dwell on the heights,
his stronghold shall be the rocky fastness,
his food and drink 
in steady supply.

-- Isaiah 33:13-16  (Morning Prayer Thursday, Week 1)

Yes, there is Evil in this world, but there certainly is no need to glory in it. Honestly, this film is not for the faint-hearted and of little conceivable value to anybody else.


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Walesa: Man of Hope (orig. Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
Filmweb.pl listing

Walesa: Man of Hope (orig. Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei) [2013] [IMDb] [FW]* (directed by Andrzej Wajda [IMDb] [FW]*, screenplay by Janusz Głowacki [IMDb] [FW]*) is a biopic from Poland about Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] the Nobel Peace Prize winning founder of Poland's Solidarity Trade Union (which played an instrumental role in bringing down Communism in the former Soviet Bloc). The film won Silver Hugo award recently (awarded to Robert Więckiewicz [IMDb] [FW]* for Best Actor for his performance in the film's title role) at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.  The film also open the upcoming 25th Polish Film Festival in America to be held between Nov 8-24, 2013 here in Chicago.

When writing about another recent biopic, the Hollywood-produced film Jobs [2013] about the legendary cofounder of Apple Computers, I've noted that such films about "great leaders" can be tricky.  They can be fawning works of adulation and/or they can be hatchet jobs.   The current film about Wałęsa made by Andrzej Wajda [IMDb] [FW]* an admitted friend seeks to portray him in folk hero hues that will certainly annoy many, many Westerners (okay many, many Western liberals...) already appalled by the rise and continued presence of the self-evidently contrived, forced winking, flaming saccharine spouting American folksilla Sarah Palin [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch].  Yet Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] was not Sarah Palin [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch], was he?  PLEASE ... say it isn't so?  There was much, much more "there" THERE in the Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] of the 1980s, right?  (I do believe that there was much more to Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] and that the film shows this to be so, BUT what a fascinating question to consider when viewing this film! ;-)

The film is built around the device of Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] (played in the film by Robert Więckiewicz [IMDb] [FW]*) being interviewed in the 1980s while Poland was still under the Communists by an Italian journalist (played by Maria Rosario Omaggio [IMDb] [FW]*).  The device is effective because it underlines the unexpected qualities of the man.  It's clear from her somewhat grandiose initial questions that the Italian journalist is (perhaps necessarily) far more accustomed to interviewing preening Italian celebrities or perhaps Italian politicians.  And here she's interviewing a very practical, "down-to-earth" to downright _earthy_ Polish trade-union-leader proudly wearing an Our Lady of Częstochowa lapel pin, who while admitting to an "authoritarian streak" himself (I love that, and respect him _and the screenwriter_ all the more to (having him) admitting to that ;-), HATES PRETENSE OR JARGON.   "Will this interview help me or hurt me?" he asks the journalist as they begin the interview.  "I suppose it depends on your answers to MY questions," the journalist answers, irritated that he's actually posed the first question ... and to her ;-).   Sizing her up then, he shrugs his shoulders as if to say "What the heck ;-)" and consents to proceed ;-).  Note here the obvious: The right-brewed faux populist Sarah Palin that we know would NEVER EVER CONSENT to an interview like this and in a manner like that. "What the heck?"  Take a chance?  Right.  Instead, she'd SAFELY SPEW on FoxNews about the "lame street media...."

Where then to start Wałęsa's story?  The film-makers decide that December 1970 would be a good place to begin.  Why then?   Well in December 1970 there was an (illegal) strike at Wałęsa's place of employment, the Gdansk (then V.I. Lenin...) shipyard.  He was on the strike committee.  Yet he and his wife Danuszka (played magnificently throughout the film by Agnieszka Grochowska [IMDb] [FW]*) are about to have their first child.  Danuszka's just gone into labor and Lech's heading out the door of their tiny apartment with her to go with her to the hospital when he receives word that the strike (that he's voted against) has begun.  What to do?  GIVEN HONESTLY ONLY A SPLIT SECOND'S AMOUNT OF TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT, he decides (1) to ask his neighbor (present) to go with his wife to the hospital, (2) take off his watch and wedding ring, placing them in the hand of his aghast wife ("Lechku, what THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?") telling her "I'm sorry, BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT ... ;-)" ("BUT ... I'M IN LABOR....") "And if I don't come back, please sell these (the ring and the watch)," and (3) runs out the door to head to the strike WHERE HE SPENDS HIS TIME TRYING TO CALM THE WORKERS DOWN AND KEEP THEM FROM GETTING KILLED.

Of course he gets arrested.  At the police station, he repeatedly asks if he could talk to his wife.  "I need to know if I have a son or daughter."  "Shut up, you'll find out in five years after we're done with you!" "But you idiot, I tried TO STOP THIS STRIKE." "You have ANY WITNESSES?"  "YES, YOUR OWN POLICE."  The police official checks out the story.  It turns out that several of the baton swinging police officers who had been SUPPORTED BY TANKS remember "a guy with a black mustache" who was trying to calm the workers down.  Surprised, the police official tells him, "Your wife and son are okay."  "I have a son!" Lech happily repeats.

There's still the matter of "signing a few papers" and he'd be allowed home.  What papers?  Well, release forms AND ... one stating that he'd be willing TO COOPERATE WITH THE AUTHORITIES if/when they make "occasional inquiries" about some of the workers in the shipyard.  HE DOESN'T WANT TO SIGN.  But he's told (1) "You've ALREADY COOPERATED WITH US in trying to calm down the workers today" and (2) "You're not going home unless you sign the paper."  NOT NECESSARILY TOTALLY OPPOSED TO CIVIL AUTHORITY (EVEN IF it was being run by the Communists at the time) and WANTING TO SEE HIS WIFE AND SON ... he signs the paper and is allowed to go home (and see his wife and newborn kid).

In this early sequence we see WHY WALESA WAS/IS DIFFERENT:  If at times PERHAPS he was/is "a hack" -- he free admits to the journalist his limited education, his distrust of intellectuals who he believed/believes "think too much," and to trusting/following "his gut" -- HE WAS NEVER A STOOGE.

The story then that followed was of one who was BRAVE, often VERY SMART ("I always had a quick sense of KNOWING EXACTLY HOW MUCH WE COULD ASK OF THE AUTHORITIES AND WHEN") and in the absolute _best sense_ of John Paul II's "acting person" theology FREE long before the Iron Curtain came down.  After being arrested in Gdansk by no less than the local Communist Party Secretary coming to his door (with a Kalishnikow carrying police escort ...) at the proverbial "3 AM" and flown then by Polish military helicopter "somewhere East" (HOW FAR "East" he initially CAN'T TELL) he's told by one of the Polish officials transporting him: "You know our friends 'out East' keep asking us why we shouldn't just dispose of you."  Without missing a beat, Lech replies: "If you kill me, you know you'll just make me a Saint."

So this is one heck of a movie about an authentic folk hero.  Yes, his "shoot from the hip" / "anti-intellectual" limits are obvious (and presented in the film as such).  But that is, of course, the WHOLE POINT OF (CATHOLIC/THEOLOGICAL) SOLIDARITY: We (all of us) have been created by God to complete each other (cf. Col 1:24, Rom 12:3-8, 1 Cor 12:12-26).  Great film folks, great film!


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 


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La Paz [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)   Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Cinenacional.com* listing

La Paz [2013] [IMDb] [CN]* (written and directed by Santiago Loza [IMDb] [CN]*) is a gentle, well acted, "personalist" film from Argentina about a troubled young man named Liso (played by Lisandro Rodríguez [IMDb] [CN]*) struggling with borderline mental illness.  The film played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.   (North) American viewers would probably find it interesting to compare the film's treatment of the subject matter to recent North American films like Take Shelter [2011], Perks of Being a Wall Flower [2012] and even Silver Linings Playbook [2012] that cover similar ground.

The current film begins with Liso, presumably in his early 20s (still of college age) being released from the hospital after an unspecified length of stay to his upper-middle class parents (played by Andrea Strenitz [IMDb] [CN]* and Ricardo Felix [IMDb] [CN]* respectively).   Liso's father is some sort of a factory manager, his mother manages their "appropriate to their class" home (presumably somewhere in an upper class neighborhood of  Buenos Aires) with a rather large garden and swimming pool.   They also have a Bolivian maid named Sonia (played by Fidelia Batallanos Michel [IMDb] [CN]*).    Liso also has a kindly grandmother (played by Beatriz Bernabé [IMDb] [CN]*) who lives in a flat in a more modest neighborhood on her own.  All in all, the family would not be out-of-place in Santa Monica or the Brentwood neighborhood of West L.A.

Liso's family is not evil, indeed, they're sympathetic.  But also it's clear that Liso's bout with schizophrenia has proven to be something beyond their comprehension or preparedness.  

With Lino on anti-schizophrenic medication, much of the movie is characteristically "flat."  After a while, Lino's father in particular just doesn't get it.  "Do you want to work?  Do you want to go back to school?  You used to have friends, you used to have novias (girlfriends).  Now you have nothing, do nothing.  It's not good to have no ambition, no plans..." and in an attempt to "animarlo" (animate him) he gives him some money to "divertirse" (have some fun).  Then he gives him a few more bills "in case she's expensive" ;-).  Yes, it's crude, yes it's rather stereotypical, but given Lino's extended pyschological "flatness" it's also sincere ;-).  So Lino goes and finds a prostitute (who's actually "putting herself through law school" that way ;-).  She assures him that he's (physically) fine.  But she's also confused about what's wrong with him, agreeing essentially with his dad that "it's not good to have no ambition..."  And of course Lino himself doesn't know what to do with his life.

The film's solution to Lino's problem finds itself in person of Sonia, the family's maid.  After many years of working for Lino's family, she decides that she needs to go home.  "But why would you want to go back to Bolivia?" asks Lino's incredulous mother.  "I miss it."  "What could you possibly miss?"  Getting someone angry at this point, Sonia responds, "Everything."

So eventually, she packs herself up and decides to return to the mountains of La Paz (Bolivia's capital).  And Lino, stuck _at sea level_ with no plans or hopes in Buenos Aires eventually decides to go with her and ... (mild spoiler alert, but it is the title of the film ...) ... there he finds "la paz" (peace).

It's a nice film about an upper middle class family in crisis and the need to perhaps let go of some things ... to find peace.


* Decent enough (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 


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Mothers [2012]

MPAA (UR)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Official website

Mothers [2012] (directed by Hui Jing Xu) is a truly remarkable documentary made by the non-profit Chinese documentary film institute CNEX (website, Aug, 2013 NYTimes article).  The film played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.

Filmed in a small, unremarkable town called Ma somewhere in Northern China, the film is about the actual ENFORCEMENT of China's "One Child" birth control policy in this small town. 

Basically sometime around the time of former Chairman Mao's birthday -- shown celebrated in the town at a (converted?) traditional Buddhist-style shrine where Mao is venerated like a God (I'm not kidding DIVINE LANGUAGE IS LAVISHLY USED in both song by children and oration by elders) -- the "village committee" is given the yearly task of sterilizing a prescribed quota of women.

'Cept there's a problem this year.  While not impossible to meet the quota, the members of the village committe note (I'M AMAZED THAT THE FILM MAKER HAD THE ACCESS THAT HE DID) that to fulfill it this year would require the actual sterilization of the vast majority of the town/region's "qualified" women (women with already one child and not yet sterilized).  

Generally, "qualified women" are given a choice.  They could either undergo the sterilization procedure OR _pay a fine_ and simply accept a prescribed "birth control ring" (a type of IUD) with the question of sterilization pushed back for another year. 

However, the "higher ups" apparently had enough of giving the local women choices.  SO THIS YEAR sterilization was going to be pushed in this town and its environs.

And so it goes ... The documentary film-maker accompanies the local "health official" bureaucrats as they visit (and later, increasingly _track down_) the women in question.  He taping the bureaucrats as they nonchalantly talk about their business (Again, I'M AMAZED THAT THE FILM-MAKER WAS GIVEN THIS KIND OF ACCESS / CANDOR).

The bureaucrats joke about their work: "Remember the time back in the 1980s and we were directed to perform all those abortions on women violating the quota.  Yes, the 'religious types' (it turns out that there's actually a SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF CHRISTIANS IN THIS TOWN, something that's shown repeatedly throughout the documentary) were all crying and getting upset as we performed them.  Sometimes the child would half-come-out with arms and legs squirming.  But we'd just pull them out and throw them into the pit just the same ..."

The documentary eventually focuses on the health official bureaucrats attempts to track-down a particularly hard woman to find.  Her name was Rong-Rong.  They go to her house.  She's not there.  They go to her aunt's house.  She's not there.  They go to her mother's house outside of town.  She's not there either.  Frustrated, they sit down over tea to talk to Rong-Rong's mother and ask her how many kids SHE'S (Rong-Rong's mother's) had.  She answers five.  "Five! That must have been a lot of work."  "Not really," she answers matter of factly,  "At least the kids weren't lonely and I have children now to take care of me."

And there it is ...

As hard as the local officials try to get their quota (and eventually they do) it's clear that nobody really believes in their project.  It's just what "the higher ups" ask that they do.  And if they fulfill their quota, the "higher ups" presumably would "be happy," something which would be important to ambitious or just spineless bureaucrats.

The documentary ends, noting that in 2011 the Chinese government has decided that beginning in 2015, the "one child policy" will officially become a "two child policy."  So all those women being sterilized were being sterilized to no end.  But "a quota" needed to be fulfilled ...


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Under the Rainbow (orig. Au bout du Conte) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG)  AC.fr* aggregate (critics 3.5/5 audience 3.0/5)  Fr. Dennis (3/4 Stars)  

IMDb listing
Alociné.fr listing

Under the Rainbow (orig. Au bout du Conte) [2013] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and cowritten by Agnès Jaoui [IMDb] [AC.fr]* along with Jean-Pierre Bacri [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a French romantic comedy of sorts (the French title translates roughly "After the fairy tale...") that played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.

The story centers around Laura (played by Agathe Bonitzer [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) a 24-year-old parisienne with divorced parents.  Her proper, upper-class "Legion de Honneur" father had dumped her mother for a seemingly younger, "far better looking wife."  His unsmiling second wife (unsmiling probably because she can't ...), Laura's "evil step mother," keeps herself young by undergoing a seemingly endless (though remarkably successful) line of cosmetic surgeries.  When it's revealed somewhere near the end of the film that she's "62" (when honestly NO ONE would think she could possibly be more than in her late 30s) one "understands."  In contrast, Laura's mother, a failed if sympathetic actress (played by Agnès Jaoui [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) lives in a shack "at the edge of town" ("at the edge of the forest...") and runs a children's after-school drama class, trying to get her 10 year old "princes" to "stay on script" and kiss the 10 year old "princesses" even as they whine that they'd really prefer to be frogs again (and the "princesses" agree ;-).

Anyway, Laura wonders if there's a prince still out there for her.  When at a party she spots a good-looking young man named Sandro (played by played by Anthur Dupont [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) dressed all in blue with somewhat unkempt but a full head of hair, under a GIANT STATUE OF AN ANGEL ABOVE HIM and seemingly EVEN POINTING AT HIM, she takes it for "a sign" ;-).  'Cept it turns out that he's kinda quiet, kinda clumsy, stutters (he's actually a brooding composer of sorts) and ... after tripping going down the stairs when leaving the party, it's he who leaves his own shoe at the ball.

But he seems to be "the one" at least for a while, until... one day, dressed smartly in a nice red coat and a nice red hat, on her way to her mother's house (at the edge of town/edge of the forest) ... Laura runs into a somewhat older man, all dressed in black and driving a big black sports-car.  He first offers to give her a lift and when she politely refuses he gives her directions.  The man's name, turns out to be Maxime Wolff (played by Benjamin Biolay [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) who Laura's mother tells her is a new neighbor down the street (Maxime of course meaning "very large", Wolff ... being, well, you get the picture ... ;-)

Good ole Maxime Wolff ends up being a music critic.  So Laura and Sandro run into him a few more times, and given that Sandro's kinda a klutz and Maxime is, if nothing else, really really confident ... well ...

Much still ensues ... and look, I'm not kidding ;-).   There are all kinds of subplots running through this story that are almost impossible to include in a coherent review of the film ;-)

Added up, it all makes for a very imaginative (and fun) story ... 'CEPT ... There's a part of the story that I found both needless and needlessly irritating.  It concerns one of the many "subplots" of the story:

One of the little girls who also goes to Laura's mother's after-school drama program becomes very religious.  Why?  Well her parents just got separated (ALL THE ADULTS IN THE FILM ARE DIVORCED OR SEPARATED) and this little girl ON HER OWN STARTS READING BIBLE STORIES and TELLS HER PARENTS THAT SHE WANTS TO RECEIVE FIRST COMMUNION.  Her atheist and divorcing parents don't know what to do.  Her father even goes into a tirade telling his future ex-wife: "I refuse to have to sit through a sermon of some priest spouting his personal morality on me."  Eventually, they go talk to the girl's teacher at school who tells them "it could just be a phase."  And they're "relieved" when sometime near the end of the film, the girl DOES change her mind and "now wants a pony."  The mother says, relieved: "See, she's just 'seeking' ..."

I found this EXTENDED SUBPLOT in the film REALLY UNNERVING.  Interestingly enough though, the French Catholic reviewer of the film (in the publication La Croix*) did not even mention the extended sequence in his review, instead focusing on the film's general blasé thematics reminding viewers that "life isn't a fairytale."  So if French people of faith are not going to be too offended by this (to me seemingly unnecessary) part of the film I'm not going to be overly offended as well.  Still, I found this particular subplot in the film REALLY, REALLY IRRITATING and as far as I could see utterly unnecessary.

Putting that aspect of the film aside, however, I did find the film _very creative_ and very _funny_.


* I've found that one can get decent enough (sense) translations of non-English webpages by viewing them in Google's Chrome browser. 


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