Gloria [2013]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CineChile.cl listing*

ChicagoTribune (B. Sharkey) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

Gloria [2013] [IMDb] [CCh.cl]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Sebastián Lelio [Wkp-EN] [Wkp-ES]* [IMDb] [CCh.cl]* along with Gonzalo Maza [IMDb] [CCh.cl]*) is a remarkable film that I would recommend TO ADULTS belonging to various groups and for various reasons.  The film's R rating FOR THEME and then for occasional, if very honestly portrayed middle-aged / beyond middle-aged sexuality is definitely appropriate.

FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would recommend the film to MIDDLE-AGED HISPANICS.  Many, many of you will see yourselves and/or your friends in this film.

NEXT, I would recommend this film to all ADULTS "of a certain age" everywhere, perhaps especially from the United States and/or parts of Western Europe.   This is because the film comes from Santiago, Chile (South America) and yet many American and even Western European viewers will probably find 50 something year old Gloria (played magnificently by Paulina Garcia [IMDb] [CCh.cl]*) both IMMEDIATELY RELATABLE  and (PERHAPS) UTTERLY SURPRISING:

She and all her family and friends are (obviously...) CHILEAN, living educated middle-to-professional class existences in Chile, generally "happy as pie," though at least one or two of Gloria's friends make passing reference to the dark days of dictatorship, in Chile's case, that of the Pinochet years.  In Spain where a cousin of mine married a Spaniard and has lived there happily ever since, the reference would have been to Franco.  In the Czech Republic where my family is originally from the references would have been to the Communist Era.  In Belfast, Ireland where I've met people again basically "just like Gloria" back in the 1990s (and hence their 'dark days' were not yet over) the reference would have been to 'the Troubles.'  Thanks to the Servites, I've also gotten a chance to meet a fair number of young people attending our parishes in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Mexico City, Mexico who come from families and and living lives very much similar to those portrayed in this film.   Finally, having seen (and reviewed here) over the past years, some excellent recent films coming from Russia, Egypt and Iran (Elena (orig. Елена) [2011], Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (aka Women of Cairo) [2009] and A Separation [2011] / Meeting Leila (orig. Ashnaee ba Leila) [2011], I have no doubt that similar circles of "Gloria and her friends/relatives" live there and lament these days of Putin, the apparent slide back to military dictatorship in Egypt, and the excessive indeed pervasive "paternalism" of the Islamic regime in Iran.  I would add this film to the others and remind readers here that one of the great joys of "going to the movies" (and especially to periodic film festivals or to see foreign films) is that for the price of admission (and a few hours of time spent) one CAN TRAVEL ALL OVER THE WORLD and find that there are a lot people AGAIN FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD who are actually "just like us" (or close enough so that it doesn't make all that much difference anymore ;-).

FINALLY, I would recommend the film to the introspective, metaphysical lot because how the world relates to Gloria in good part is how WE often relate to others and even to God.

To the film then ... We meet Gloria (played by Paulina Garcia [IMDb] [CCh.cl]*), early 50 something, divorced now for some 12-13 years, at a Santiago "singles gathering."  She's "spruced up" on the off-chance that she may actually meet somebody.  But she's been there before, knows already that she's probably _not_ going to meet anyone who catches her eye.  "So why do you go?" asks one of the men, her age, again someone who's both been 'around the block a few times,' and, as a result, like Gloria, already a 'bit worn by the years.'   "To dance." she replies.  "Alone?" "Yes, at times."  He asks her to dance.  She accepts.  To neither one's surprise, no real sparks are ignited between them.

BUT ... Out there on the dance floor, THIS TIME, she does catch the eye of ANOTHER SOMEWHAT OLDER (so that would make him in his early 60s) and somewhat distinguished gentleman who Gloria/we come to know is named Rodolfo (played by Sergio Hernández [IMDb] [CCh.cl]*) and even if in a regular sports coat and tie (like the other men at the soiree) still looks somewhat more "distinguished" than the rest because he was a former naval officer (That he was in the Chilean Navy rather than Army proves rather important in a later scene when questioned lightly but pointedly by one of Gloria's friends at a different soiree because of the politics/history of the Pinochet years.  MY GUESS is that the Navy wasn't as directly involved in the repression during those years as the Army ...).  Anyway, both come to strike each other as interesting and thus after some flirtation, and some dancing ... they end up (PARENTS TAKE NOTE ... this is an R rated movie) spending the night together.

Now much could be said at this point about that.  The first thing that one could say about the love-making scene and others that do follow is that these scenes feel ABSOLUTELY "REAL."  This is a 50+ year old woman and a 60+ year old man, who we learn sometime later had "lost a lot of weight" in the last year-and-a-half after having undertaken gastrointestinal surgery.  So their love-making is not exactly of the "stud athlete" / "supermodel" quality.  It's very, very honest, with all kinds of lumps where there wouldn't have been lumps when they were younger.

The next question that one could ask: Well, regardless of them being 50 or 60 years old, what are they having sex for outside of marriage?  Well probably _in some part_ "for pleasure," but my guess is that it would be for more than just that.  My guess is that it'd be primarily for the same reason that MOST PEOPLE would enter into a sexual relationship before marriage (or in the aftermath of a failed marriage before getting married again) that is, for validation (that there is someone or more problematically that there are _someones_ who find them exciting/attractive enough to go to bed with).

Now is that what the Church teaches that sex ought to be about?  Of course not.  Especially when one starts to talk of multiple partners, one does ever increase the chance that _normally_ children would be created (and be largely unwanted) by such sexual activity.  So yes, sleeping with someone outside of marriage (EVEN AMONG "old/middle aged people") is a SIN.  That said, it's also _generally_ about _more_ than just "getting high."  That doesn't "not make it a sin."  But it should make it more understandable than dismissing such behavior as being simply "hedonistic" or even outright evil. 

And it's absolutely clear that Gloria _is searching_.  Beyond entering into this complicated on again, off again relationship with Rodolfo (who we find has some issues in his former family), she tries bungi-jumping, yoga (her 20-something daughter is a yoga instructor), "laugh therapy" and even truly "getting high" (when some marijuana actually ends up (mistakenly) on her doorstep.

Now I would suspect that a fair number of the readers of my blog would find much of her behavior described above problematic to sinful/offensive.  But what's fascinating is that we're really given a "God's Eye" view of her life.  THE PEOPLE IN HER LIFE (or who should be in her life) GENERALLY DON'T SEE HER DOING ANY OF THIS because THEY GENERALLY DON'T SEE HER AT ALL.  She lives alone.  The drugs that show up on her doorstep belong actually to the guy who lives the floor above her, who she _never sees_ (but hears a lot, because he does a lot of screaming).  Gloria's kids including her yoga instructor daughter and (some kind of) engineer son, are "nice enough people" but THEY JUST SEE HER AS _OLD_ (as one WITHOUT a LIFE OF CONSEQUENCE).

So HONESTLY, the ONLY LIFE OF MEANING that Gloria has ... is with this on-again, off-again Rodolfo, the circle of friends that she occasionally meets with AND _POSSIBLY_ WITH GOD, who LIKE US VIEWERS, would/could be watching her life and PERHAPS be INTERESTED in her BUT ALSO LIKE US _unable_ to do more (unable to give her encouragement, give her a hug, etc).  

Now we can't do more because we're watching her very human, very sympathetic life played out on a screen.  But God wouldn't be able to enter into her life for a different reason ... she doesn't seem to talk to God.  She lives her life perhaps sympathetically but ... as if God does not exist.

Interestingly enough, Gloria's children live very much the same way in relationship to her ... as if she doesn't really exist either.  And yet she does ...

Interesting huh? ;-)

In any case, this is a quite lovely and interesting movie about a 50+ year old woman who most people would probably not even notice if we met her on the street one day.


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

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The Lego Movie [2014]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  ChicagoTribune (4 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

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

The Lego Movie [2014] (screenplay and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) is probably one of the most surprising and original (largely) children's oriented animated movies made by Hollywood in a long, long time, this even as one could be tempted to dismiss it out of hand as a gigantic full-length feature advertisement for Lego-products.

Yet, if the film is to be understood/dismissed as an "ad," it'd be a strange one because the film's epic battle is precisely about what one would imagine has been the central (and never really resolved) "dilemma" faced by Lego's marketing gurus: Are Legos to be understood as fundamentally "block sets for kids" out of which said kids would be free to build just about _anything_ (even often "stupid things" that would only make sense to them) OR precisely because Legos could be used to BUILD ANYTHING should Lego design and market "building sets" for (older) enthusiasts out of which they could build truly marvelously complicated projects ranging from temples to skyscrapers to starships to tropical islands with volcanoes to bats, dragons and dolphins to formula one race cars, to WHATEVER Lego's designers would be asked (by their marketing people) to design?   In other words, who actually gets to be creative?  Kids (little people) or "Lego Corp" itself?                   

The story's central protagonist is Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt) who's a "regular yellow skinned" Lego figure (a construction worker) living in a city built entirely out of Legos called "Bricksburg."  And he's basically happy.  He has a home, he has a job, he's learned to fit in.  He watches "Bricksburg's favorite television program" called "Where are my pants?" (about a similarly yellow skinned lego figure, who, for some reason had been designed without pants... and who spends the show asking repeatedly, but with apparently sufficiently varied tonal variations to "keep things interesting" the obvious: "Where're my pants?" to viewers' everlasting amusement).  Emmet even enjoys going to "an over-priced" Lego Starbuck-style coffee shop and smiles as he pays $37 for a cup of Lego coffee).   Indeed, he HAPPILY sings Bricksville's cotton-candy-like national anthem: "Everything is AWESOME" (Honestly folks, when you hear this jingle, you won't be able to get it out of your heads ... it's like "lyrical heroin" ;-).

But Emmet's not bad, evil or stupid.  He's basically like a kid, joyfully embracing the happy (if perhaps limited by his experience) wonders around him.

Yet all's _not_ AWESOME in "Bricksburg" ... Even as Emmett lives in a happy seemingly limitless wonderland (if built out of some very basic and hence very limited "building blocks") there's "a force" afoot that would like to FREEZE things in place so that they would forever remain the way they are.

The prophet Vitruvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman) rails against this tide of conformity spreading across the land personified by President, er Lord Business (voied by Will Farrell) prophesying that out of the "yellow complected" residents of Bricksburg rise "a Special" who will find the "Piece of Resistance" that will bring an end to this scurge that freezes things in its tracks.

Well, completely by accident Emmet runs into this potent "Piece of Resistance" that oddly "sticks to him" henceforth.

Now all kinds of far more interesting, original and potent denizens of "Bricksburg" -- from the hip Wildstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks) whose yellow-skinned lego-character wears a plastic multicolored wig, to Legoland superheroes like Lego-Batman (Wildstyle's cool if somewhat arrogant "boyfriend" voiced by Will Arnett), Lego-Wonderwoman (voiced by Cobie Smulders), Lego-Han Solo (voiced by Keith Furguson) and Lego-Superman (voiced by Channing Tatum) to even Lego-Shaq (voiced by former NBA star Shaquille O'Neill) to even a super-cute Lego-unikitty (a kitten with a unicorn horn voiced Alison Brie) -- scratch their heads, wondering what's so "special" about Emmett Brickowski who seems SO AVERAGE and his IDEAS SO BORING.

Yet, Emmett does prove to be "special" by being so UTTERLY "UNDER THE RADAR" that Lord Business, his chief of security Lego-Cop (voiced by Liam Neeson) and their army of Lego-Drones COMPLETELY IGNORE HIM and his only (and arguably REALLY STUPID) "invention": a LEGO-"double decker couch" ("Really?  What's the point?  And who gets to sit on top and who on the bottom?" asks the far cooler but kind of an a-hole Lego-Batman).  BUT SAID DOUBLE DECKER COUCH "SAVES" THEM ALL because while these characters sit on that "stupid double decker couch," ALL THE LEGO-FIENDS SEEM TO IGNORE THEM. 

And thus, after many "out of the box" adventures, the "really average / quite boring" yet "special" precisely because he's so seemingly "average" Emmett is able to _save_ his world.  And that "piece of resistance" that he just randomly ran into, and since simply "stuck to him," proves key.

The final third of the film morphs arguably into an interesting metaphysical conflict: After all, Emmett (and the rest of his Lego-companions) ARE ALL MADE OF OUT LEGOS.  So who's actually animating all those Legos? ;-).  Well we find out.  And we come to understand a little more about the "central conflict" of the story, and why some of the Lego-characters in the story seemed really "kinda limited/boring" (and yet surprisingly creative in their own way) while there seems to be ONE character who seemed to want to FREEZE EVERYTHING (PERFECTLY) IN PLACE. 

 It's all surprisingly BRILLIANT, THOUGHT-PROVOKING and IMHO, REALLY, REALLY FUNNY :-). Over the years, there haven't been many films that I'd want to see (MANY TIMES?) OVER AGAIN.  This is honestly one of them.  It's SURPRISINGLY ... "AWESOME" ;-) ;-)


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The Monuments Men [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

The Monuments Men [2014] (starring, directed and screenplay cowritten by George Clooney along with Grant Heslov, based on the book by Robert M. Edsel [IMDb] and Bret Witter [IMDb]) is a reasonably well made, _intentionally lighter_ than it could have been, film about a group of people (largely "egg-headed" architects / art historians) who most would not necessarily immediately consider "heroes" who did, in fact, do much to _save the world_ as we know it during World War II.

And my guess is that EVERYONE associated with this film understood how tough the calls being made were: Landing on the beaches of Normandy ONE MONTH AFTER THE INVASION... (some beach obstacles still present both as a reminder to the arriving soldiers back then and for viewers here for cinematic effect), Col. Frank Stokes (played by George Clooney) has a tough time convincing a(n actually) lower-ranking field commander of the validity of his "Monuments Men's" mission.  The captain tells the colonel: "Look, you're telling me to save a (1000 year old) church (in the approaching town).  But if the Nazis decide to use its bell tower (as a sniper's nest), we're going to blow it up.  Understand?"  We all do ...

BUT as Frank Stokes explained to President Roosevelt in the months before this field encounter in Normandy: "Mr President, (God willing) in the coming months our troops are going to be liberating Florence, Italy and Paris, France, and who's going to assure the world that when we do, Michaelangelo's David is still going to be standing and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is still going to be smiling?"  And _most of us_ can understand the stakes involved here as well... WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS WAR WW II WAS ...

And so it was, despite being a unit of OLD, mostly OUT-OF-SHAPE, "EGG HEADS" (played among others by Bill Murray and John Goodman at their character actor best) with FDR's reluctant and Churchill's presumed blessings, this multinational unit of architects / art historians was sent out to Europe to try to bring some semblance of order and decency to a "gun fight in a china shop."

AND IT WASN'T EASY.  The Nazis were first out to plunder occupied Europe and then out LARGELY "to burn it all" (while squirreling away bits and pieces of Art for themselves and to help finance their escapes).  And the Soviets marching on Nazi Germany from the East had their own agenda: Having lost 20+ million people in this conflict, they felt that they had the "moral right" to simply CART AWAY EVERYTHING THAT THEY COULD as "Reparations."  Finally, AND IMHO MOST INTERESTINGLY, THE FRENCH, weren't necessarily all that trustful of the Americans / Brits either.  Parisian curator Claire Simone (played by Cate Blanchett) initially did not trust American James Granger (played by Matt Damon) who prior to being recruited for this unit had worked as a curator for New York's own Metropolitan Museum of Art: "Oh, you're here SIMPLY to 'save our art' and NOT to take it back to YOUR 'MET'" she said in a disbelieving French puff. 

AND yet the crime, indeed CRIMES, was/were SO LARGE. 

This film will frustrate purists, who'd perhaps wish that the film was _more eggheady_ (that is MORE like a documentary).  But there's the book for that.  Instead, George Clooney, et al, seemed _to choose_ to make a _lighter film_ that acknowledged that on a superficial level most viewers really "wouldn't care" about the sacrifices made by this unit -- and two of its members, Brit Donald Jeffries (played by Hugh Bonneville) and Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (played by Jean Dujardin), did DIE in the war -- BUT ON THE OTHER HAND MOST VIEWERS WOULD ALSO APPRECIATE THE LOSS TO THE WORLD IF THE ONLY "Mona Lisa" image that we would have today would be the caricature drawn of it by SIMPSONS' creator Matt Groenig.  IT IS GOOD THAT THE REAL THING STILL EXISTS.  And this film celebrates the folks -- of the Bridge on the River Kwai [1957] / "Greatest Generation" -- who helped keep it so.


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Labor Day [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

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

Labor Day [2013] (screenplay and directed by Jason Reitman, based on the novel by Joyce Maynard [IMDb]) is a lazy / sappy, "don't really try this at home" romance for (my guess is) 30-something and above women.  Throughout the film, I kept thinking of The Bridges of Madison County [1995] another lazy / sappy romance directed at (again my guess ...) the same basic target audience.

That said, those who've read my blog would know that I don't necessarily find "sap" to be a bad thing (in a movie anyway ...).  But picking up a wounded, indeed, still bleeding, escaped convict (even if played in appropriately studly / sweat-covered muscle, yet also circumspect / gentleman-like fashion by Josh Brolin) on a lazy late summer afternoon somewhere in the New Hampshire countryside is almost certainly not a particularly wise thing to do. 

But then, this is a story (and stories do often have a "wouldn't it be nice..." quality to them).  So what the heck ...

Henry (voiced as an adult by Tobie Maguire, played as a 12-year old by Gattlin Griffith) recounts the story of how one lazy Labor Day weekend (just before school is supposed to start again), he and his worn-down by life, basket-case mom, Adele (played actually IMHO remarkably well by Kate Winslet) encountered said escaped convict named Frank (played again in appropriately studly yet circumspect fashion by Josh Brolin) in a super-market in their small New Hampshire hometown.

Now why was Henry's mom, Adele, a basket case?  Well she was left a number of years back by her somewhat a-holish husband / Henry's dad, Gerald (played by Clarke Gregg) for his (as they always are) younger, also divorced with her own son, 1980s-era big haired/big-glassed secretary who wasn't necessarily outright "evil" but didn't mind that (after her own home/marriage was smashed) was able to "win" (by smashing the home/marriage of Adele).  Ah, the "games" of the early decades of "no fault divorce ..." back here in the States.

Of course, the situation was actually a bit more complicated than that, as we learn later in the story.  Adele had already become worn-down by life and a basket-case BEFORE Gerald left her.  And Gerald (as well as his big-glassed/big-haired second wife) weren't completely a-holes either.

Nevertheless, we learn that Adele's life had really been quite awful until this encounter with the still bleeding, wounded, escaped convict, in the random supermarket somewhere in their small town in rural New Hampshire.  And so ... "what's she got to lose?"  (AGAIN, PLEASE FOLKS, DON'T DO THIS IN REAL LIFE...)

It turns out (in the story) that 'scaped-con Frank "wasn't that bad of a guy."  He too "had a story."  And for the sake of the film ... it's probably worth buying this (BUT AGAIN, PLEASE DON'T DO THIS AT HOME ... AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HE'S "DONE HIS TIME"...).

Anyway, much eminently circumspect (mostly off-screen) but "sweaty muscled" romance ensues...

Again, this is a LAZY, "WOULDN'T IT BE NICE" ROMANCE ...

Would it be a "good idea" to take home a still bleeding escaped convict with your 12 year old kid?  Most would PROBABLY say "no."  BUT THEN THIS IS A MOVIE. 

And what approaching middle-aged woman, worn down by life, feeling worthless and abandoned, would not want to hear a buff, sweaty t-shirted man, who hasn't been with a woman for a LONG, LONG TIME tell her: "I'd gladly serve another 20 years for 3 more days with you?" (Oh, Iah dew declare, let mah heart stop palpahtaytin dear Sir ... ;-)


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2 Autumns 3 Winters (orig. 2 Automnes 3 Hivers) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing
Allociné.fr listing*

LeParisien (H. Lizé) review*
Critikat (C. Graminiès) review*
Libération (J. Gester) review*
LaCroix (S. Betbeder) review*

2 Autumns 3 Winters (orig. 2 Automnes 3 Hivers) [2013] [IMDb] [AC.Fr]* (written and directed by  Sébastien Betbeder [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) is a very uncomplicated French "indie" comedy that played recently at the Gene Siskel Film Center here in Chicago.  The film's about four very, very average young Parisians, made in the style of "reality TV."  Hence we get to hear and see the film's very, very average main protagonists -- Arman (played by Vincent Macaigne [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*), Amélie (played by Maud Wyler [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*), Benjamin (played by Bastien Bouillon [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) and Katia (played by Audrey Bastien [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*)-- sharing (often in interview format, after the fact...) with excruciating seriousness their exact thoughts and feelings (as they remember them) at various "key" points in this very, very, very mundane story.

IMHO it works, it's funny and serves to prove that "an unexamined life" need not be an altogether bad thing ;-).

My favorite character in the film is Benjamin's "New Agey" sister Lucie (played by Pauline Etienne [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) who's so into herself that she won't even pick-up the (cell)phone to call her brother.  Instead, she tries to communicate with him "telepathically."  So every so often, she's pictured fading into (and out of ...)  Benjamin's consciousness (the connection's _rarely_ particularly good...) with a message that's generally _not_ particularly important ;-).

Probably the most irritating plot point in the film (though it _could_ actually be intentional) is that Amélie at one point shares with viewers (but not with Arman ...) that she's pregnant (with his child) and after not altogether a great deal of reflection (but that which she does, she shares with the viewers...) goes and gets an abortion. 

When Arman eventually finds out (from Amélie, though after the fact...), despite his being quite aware that he's not exactly a "genetic masterpiece," he appears quite hurt.  So the two "break-up."

One wonders then ... will there be a sequel? ;-)


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

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A Touch of Sin (orig. Tian zhu ding) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
AsianWiki listing

NPR (M. Jenkins) review
CCTV (Zh. Rui) article

ChinaFile (Asia Society) extensive video discussion / program w. director

ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. McCreadie) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

A Touch of Sin (orig. Tian zhu ding) [2013] (written and directed by Zhangke Jia [IMDb] one of China's best known contemporary film-makers) is provocative and often quite violent film that if not for it having been made in China by a Chinese film-maker (basically ignoring that country's censors) and serving-up a absolutely scathing indictment of corruption and money-worshipping excess among many of that country's petty elites today, many American and Western viewers would, with eyes-rolling, dismiss the film as a Charles Bronson [IMDb] / Death Wish [IMDb] style "revenge flick."

It's of course more complicated than that.  The makers of the various American 70s+ era vigilante justice films (think of not just the Charles Bronson" [IMDb] / Death Wish [IMDb] films but also those featuring Clint Eastwood [IMDb] as "Dirty Harry" [IMDb] to say nothing of most of Quentin Tarantino's [IMDb] early films) would all say that they were heavily influenced by the Bruce Lee [IMDb] and other "martial arts films" coming out of Hong Kong at the time.  Those stories, in turn, didn't come out of nowhere.  Instead, they come out of a surprisingly long (Dynasty-to-Dynasty...) Chinese storytelling tradition of wuxia (martial arts) and youxia ("wandering force") heroes who rise-up "out of the masses" to challenge wicked overlords and restore justice to the land.  

So film-maker Zhangke Jia [IMDb] strung together four vignettes based on actual events widely reported-on and commented-on by users of China's "Weibo" (Twitter-like) social networking site in which wuxia or youxia like heroes "rose up" out of Chinese society TODAY to challenge local injustices that "cried out to heaven."

These included the story of a former miner named Dahai (played by Wu Jiang) who went on a killing spree in a sleepy provincial town after being humiliated for complaining after the town's mayor sold-off the town's publicly owned mine to a private firm and then the mayor used the public moneys gained from the sale to buy himself and his wife a private jet (so that they could more easily travel to Hong Kong and other wealthier parts out "south east.")

The second vignette told the story of a young man Zhao San (played by Boaquiang Wang) returning on his motorbike to his hometown somewhere presumably near the recently built Three Gorges Dam for the occasion of his mother's 70th birthday.  After the party, his mother reprimands him as he's supposedly traveling about, working "odd jobs" and to send money "back home" (to her).  But he's not exactly sending back a "steady income."  Well there's a reason for that ... he's not holding back on her, but ...

Another vignette involved a young woman named Xiao Yu (played in the film by the director's own wife Tao Zhao) who while herself a flawed person (introduced to viewers as the girlfriend of a traveling businessman and one who worked as a receptionist at a seamy hotel "sauna" rest-stop in another provincial town between two major cities, one inland and the other along China's thriving south-east coast) found herself bullied two extortionists who wanted to "buy her."  "Gentlemen, proceed indoors, we're a sauna, you can have ANY WOMAN you want here, but I'm just a receptionist."  But they wanted HER.  One of them took out a big wad of bills AND BEGAN HITTING HER WITH IT saying that he could "buy anything" and that he wanted to BUY HER.  Well, good old Xiao pulled a knife out of her handbag, the same knife that her businessman lover couldn't take on the train with him when he went off on his way that afternoon and ...

The final vignette involves a young, good-looking man named Xiao Hui (played by Lanshan Luo) who lives and works in the glamorous "south east" of China, BUT ... he finds himself better-looking than competent.  In his struggle to find a job that he's both GOOD AT and PROUD OF, he becomes friends with a young similarly attractive _buddhist_ prostitute.  Yup, she plays the games (dressing-up at times as a tight plunging-necklined, micro-mini skirted, stiletto heeled jack-booted "Red Guard" for visiting Hong Kong/Singaporey businessmen) and partly enjoys them (she's got a pink-"skinned" iPad).  But she also does truly "random acts of kindness" (saves gold fish ...).  Why?  She tells Xiao Hui, "I have to do a lot of good deeds to stand a chance in my next life ..."  Xiao Hui helps her "liberate" said gold fish from the hotel / night-club where they work, but it all seems hopeless to him ...

So this then is the image of China that Zhangke Jia [IMDb] presents in his film, one that is both NEW and OH SO CORRUPT in the TIMELESS, OLD-FASHIONED WAY.  And interestingly enough he suggests that ALL THE SAGES from YES EVEN MARY AND JESUS, to the BUDDHA, to the CHINESE SAGES OF OLD, to MAO ZEDONG (there are pointed references to ALL OF THEM) would be APPALLED by the money-worshiping SOUL-LESSNESS of much of CHINA TODAY.

But then, should one be surprised?  It's all, like it's always been: "touched by Sin ..." An interesting, thought-provoking if often quite violent film ...


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The Invisible Woman [2013]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

The Invisible Woman [2013] (directed by Ralph Fiennes, screenplay by Abi Morgan, based on the book by Clarie Tomalin [IMDb]) tells the story of the 13 year affair of the super-star 19th Century (Victorian-Era ...)  English author Charles Dickens (played in the film by Ralph Fiennes) and Ellen (Nelly) Ternan (played in the film by Felicity Jones).    Charles Dickens was 45 and Ellen (Nelly) Ternan was 18 (only a few months older than Dicken's oldest daughter) when they met.  Dickens left his wife Catherine (played in the film by Joanna Scanlan) and their many children over her.  And apparently though "Nelly" was the first person mentioned in Dicken's will after his death, he was able to keep her (largely) a secret until then.

Not that this was always easy... the two apparently had a child (in France ...) who died young (and was buried under a false last name ...) AND the two were traveling together on a train that derailed and Dickens had to pretend that the two weren't "traveling together" then... One gets the sense that a lot of women would probably like to throw things at the screen at points in the story like those.

But then, that's the story's point: No matter how one slices it, affairs are ugly.  One wishes that Catherine could have taken Dickens to the cleaners (as she would today) in a divorce proceeding and that even Ellen would have been able to say: "Sorry Charlie, but no matter what even my ma' (played in the film by Kristen Scott Thomas) may say (she arguably pressured her own daughter into the affair suggesting that Dickens would probably be very good to her) ... YOU'RE OLD ... and I'd much rather just hang out with / go to the beach occasionally with some of your older sons and daughters."   

Still, Charles Dickens did write a lot about the struggles of every day and lower class people of his time, and this story helps one get a window into how Dickens was able to know as much as he did about their lives and difficulties.  Sigh.


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That Awkward Moment [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (Not Applicable)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (K. MacFarland) review

That Awkward Moment [2014] (written and directed by Tom Gormican) is one of those films that I simply could not bring myself to see.  Yet its premise -- after one of the three leads, Micky (played by Michael B. Jordon), is dumped by his wife, he and the other two leads (played by Zac Efron and Miles Teller) decide that they are not going to get involved with women anymore.  Sure, they'll sleep with them, just not get "emotionally involved" anymore, "bros before hoes" they say -- does deserve some comment here.

Now yes, it would certainly suck being dumped, betrayed and all.  And one would certainly understand not wanting to get invested rapidly with someone new.  BUT WHY THEN SLEEP WITH PEOPLE ONE DOESN'T WANT TO GET INVOLVED WITH?  DOES ONE NOT CARE THAT ONE MAY CREATE A CHILD WITH SAID PERSON THAT ONE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT?  To make this approach "work" requires EXACTLY the "contraceptive mentality" that the Catholic Church has been lamenting in our time one where a child ceases to be seen as a Gift (from GOD) but rather as a Curse.

TALK ABOUT AN "AWKWARD MOMENT" ("Molly/Earnie, now don't take this the wrong way, but I never liked your mom/dad.  Sure he/she was hot, I think (you know I used to get drunk a lot back then...) but I don't know where he/she is or what he/she does. I know nothing about her/him and I don't really want to.  But, hey, you may have your dad's/mom's eyes.") OR WORSE (a trip to an abortion mill).  

It brings to mind one of the "Confessions from Hell" scenarios that I as a Priest sometimes play out in my head:

"Father, I'd like to confess the sin of Abortion, or this may really be Infanticide, Father.  Honestly, you be the judge.  You see, I'm a journalist who writes reviews for a 'Players website' (if you know what I mean...) in our town.  Now, I don't normally get involved with anyone anymore.  I mean Father, I've seen it all.  Trust, me, I've seen it all.  But you know last year, I was at this club and this stripper, I mean she was fine.  She was really, really fine.  And again, I don't normally get involved.  But with this one, I really had to get it on.  And we hit it off just fine... 

"Now, Father, I thought had a vasectomy (in fact, as I'm talking to you, I'm SERIOUSLY thinking of filing a complaint against that doctor who said he gave me one a few years back...) and she told me that she had her tubes tied.  And in our lines of work Father, we're careful.  Between the two of us, we must have been using, SIMULTANEOUSLY, 45 different methods of Birth Control.  I mean, I myself, never wear LESS than THREE CONDOMS and between the two of us, we had like the Berlin Wall, the Korean DMZ, MINE FIELDS FATHER of contraception lined up there between us.  BUT SHE GOT PREGNANT.  I don't know how.  It had to be a Miracle.

"At first, I thought it had to be a hysterical pregnancy of some sort.  But the kid had a heart beat.  And it just kept BEATING AND BEATING AND BEATING.  And then the kid just kept KICKING in there.  I mean Father, it was like IT KNEW that it was in trouble in there and was just trying to get the hell out of there ...

"But neither one of us wanting a kid, we decided to end it.

"But this then brings up another problem, Father.  Both of us are TERRIBLE PROCRASTINATORS.  I mean we kept putting it off, putting it off.  I mean that's why I 'write' for that 'Players' Website' ... If I could meet a deadline, I'd be working for the Times...  Anyway, she finally calls, and gets an appointment.  I finally get around to depositing my checks into the ATM.

"And so there I was, getting my $300 bucks out of the ATM, and she calls out to me THAT HER WATER BROKE.  So now I'M IN A PANIC.  I take the wrong turn, then another.  By the time we get to the abortion clinic, the kid's head is already almost completely out of her.  But the attendants, they were really professional.  They threw her into a wheel chair and raced her inside.  The doctor then asked the nurse to run over and get the axe next to the fire extinguisher down the hall and with one maybe two swings, they put the kid down....

"... SOOO for these Sins and all the Sins of my past life, I'm heartily sorry Father and ask for Penance and Absolution..."

Yup, "just hooking up" is NOT EXACTLY GOD'S PLAN ... ;-)


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Gimme Shelter [2013]

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

IMDb listing

CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
EWTN interview with Director Ron Krauss / Kathy DiFiore
National Catholic Register (D.M. Cooper-O'Boyle) review
National Catholic Reporter (R. Pacatte) review

ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Gimme Shelter [2013] (written and directed by Ron Krauss) is an extremely well-written and well-acted film "based on true events" about a 15-year old teenager named Agnes/Apple (played magnificently by Vanessa Hudgens) who runs away from her drug addicted mother (played again magnificently by Rosario Dawson) in search of her suburbanite father Tom Fitzpatrick (played with appropriate initial cluelessness by Brendan Fraser) who she had never met.

When she arrives at his home (all she has is an old envelope and an address) the housekeeper calls the police on her.  Fortunately, as the police are cuffing her, Tom arrives with Joanne, his wife (played again quite credibly by Stephanie Szostak) and two small kids.  With a pierced nose and a pierced lip and a "hairstyle" looking just like it was (cut short by her own hand looking in a mirror -- we saw her cutting her hair in the film's initial scene) Agnes/Apple looks utterly out-of-place out there in some upscale New Jersey suburb outside of the New York where she had been born and had lived all her life previously.  But she protests her innocence and her reason for being there (and she has the envelope with her ...).  So mild-mannered Tom and confused (and perhaps even a bit angry) but well-mannered Joanne eventually tell the police that "It's okay" that they'll "handle things from here."  And they take her -- along with their two other kids, who had watched the whole incident with mouths gaping wide open from their parents' car -- into their stately upscale suburban home, large enough to require the housekeeper who had initially called the cops.

What now?  Well ... while unclear, it would seem that Tom had some now urgent autobiographical details about his life to tell his rather blindsided wife, either that or "Well you know how I told you when we first met that ... well ..." Either way, that conversation that takes place off screen must not have been easy.  And even if Joanne would have wanted to beat her husband senseless with a shovel now, they still had a scared 15-year-old in their house now, who except for the biographical detail that she was Tom's daughter, they knew absolutely nothing about.

What to do?  Well, dinner was awkward.  Thankfully, Tom and Joanne dismiss their younger children from the table when they begin to ask childish, inappropriate questions of "Apple" (which they find to be an "odd" name) as one _could_ expect young children confronted with a situation _way outside_ their previous (and necessarily limited) range of experience.  Hearing her tale of abuse and having been passed on from one foster home to another, Tom and Joanne decide to let her spend the night.

The next morning Agnes/Apple has another surprise.  She throws up (one gets the sense that she herself didn't know that she was pregnant).  Well, keeping her composure, Joanne takes Apple to a clinic (while Tom heads off to his Wall Street job) where it's confirmed.

The next day, it's Tom's task to sit down with Agnes/Apple to tell her what he and Joanne have decided to do with her.  Joanne had drawn the line -- "I'm not going to have a 15 year old that I do not know have a child in my house." -- Tom tells Apple that Joanne has made an appointment for her at the clinic for an abortion, that she'll even go with her, to hold her hand through it all, but that simply "this page must be turned" before ALL their lives "return to normal."  Agnes, a cauldron of so many levels of anger that one honestly would have trouble listing them all here, responds, "Oh yes, 'turn the page,' just like YOU 'turned the page' ON ME."  Still what's she gonna do?  She reluctantly goes with Joanne to the abortion clinic to "make this go away."

But ... of course, she finds THAT SHE SIMPLY CAN'T GO THROUGH WITH IT.  She's SOOO ANGRY at SOOO MANY PEOPLE.  And yet she HAS A PHOTO of the ONLY UTTERLY INNOCENT PERSON IN THE ENTIRE SITUATION (an ultrasound of her unborn baby).  And so she can't do it.  She runs out and away from the abortion clinic.  To where?  She doesn't have a clue ... BUT AWAY.  (Joanne, pointedly DOESN'T go out to "LOOK FOR HER...").

Wandering in a stew of confusion, Agnes/Apple, she gets stopped by a would be pimp, and with some gumption, she actually STEALS HIS CAR.  But she's a 15 year old "from the hood" so she CAN'T DRIVE.  Some 15-20 seconds into her getaway, she SMASHES the car into something ... and wakes-up HANDCUFFED to a hospital bed somewhere in presumably Newark, New Jersey.

It's actually HERE that her story BEGINS TO CHANGE for the better.  The first person she sees when she wakes up is a kindly EXPLICITLY CATHOLIC CHAPLAIN Fr. Frank McCarthy (played dead-on by James Earl Jones) who SLOWLY, over several days, is able to calm her down.  And he gets her into a home for unwed mothers run by Kathy DiFiore (played in the film again, dead-on precision, by Ann Dowd).

The rest of the film still follows and there are a lot of loose-ends that still need to be resolved, the main among them are that Agnes/Apple is 15-years-old and has parents.  One may be struggling with drug addiction and the other may have been completely absent and still generally clueless.  But despite that, they still have rights over her.  So there's still a lot here that needs to play out.

My ONLY, ONLY, ONLY CRITICISM of this otherwise EXTREMELY WELL WRITTEN AND WELL ACTED FILM is that the actual Agnes/Apple on which the film was based was WHITE, while AS GOOD AS Hudgens' and Dawson's performances were in the film, they are both people of color (while suburban Tom and his wife are white) resulting in the film playing itself out in a direction that reinforces stereotypes that would not have been present if the film-makers had just stayed with the original story where EVERYONE in the story was white.

That aside, I agree COMPLETELY with the critics that have written that if there was ANY DOUBT that Vanessa Hudgens could act, she proves here that she can.  And it was a gutsy decision on her part to play in a self-evidently pro-Life film.  Good job Vanessa!


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Generation War (orig. Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (1 1/2 Stars)  Slant (2 Stars) AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

DerSpiegel* (C. Buss) review  coverage
DieStern* coverage
FrankfurterAllgemeineZeitung* coverage
SudDeutscheZeitung* (K. Vahland) review  coverage

ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
AVClub (B. Kenigsberg) review
Slant (S. MacFarlande) review
 
Generation War (orig. Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter) [2013]  (directed by Philipp Kadelbrach, screenplay by Stefan Kolditz) originally a critically/audience acclaimed three part German miniseries about five young Berliners (three men, two women, four of them German, one Jewish) becoming who they became during the height of World War II (1941-1945) and playing now in the United States as a two part (4 1/2 hours in total) German language/English subtitled movie to decidedly mixed (and IMHO even partly hysterical) reviews will probably be "deflating" to a lot of Americans / Westerners.

And that is because, STRIKINGLY, NOT A SINGLE SECOND OF THIS FILM TAKES PLACE "IN THE WEST."  There are references fighting in North Africa and Sicily.  There's passing reference to the Normandy Invasion.  Except for odd visual references to the Western Allies Bombing Campaign (taped windows, and then post-War imagery of rubble strewn streets) there's no reference to that either.  There's no reference to the "London Blitz," "Battle of the Bulge" or "Patton's 3rd Army" or other treasured Anglo-American memories.  Instead, the ENTIRE STORY is about the brutality of the War and Occupation IN THE EAST.

Again, many Westerners may honestly be "confused" by this. However, Coventry/London Blitz notwithstanding, World War II BECAME A CRIME "OUT EAST."  It began with the invasion and enslavement of Poland and then escalated rapidly to new, utterly unheard of levels during Operation Barbarosa (the Nazi code-name for the Invasion of the Soviet Union) with the S.S. "Einsatzgruppen" following, rounding up and shooting Jews and ended, of course, with the Jewish Death Camps ALL OF WHICH WERE AGAIN "OUT EAST."  AND while the Western Allies' Bombing Campaign certainly HELPED DEFEAT NAZI GERMANY, and NORMANDY especially certainly HELPED DEFEAT NAZI GERMANY, NAZI GERMANY WAS, IN FACT, GROUND DOWN, BEATEN, AND INDEED, BLUDGEONED TO DEATH in the FOUR YEAR LONG EXTENDED STREET-TO-STREET, HOUSE-TO-HOUSE, FIELD-TO-FIELD, TREE-TO-TREE, SEWER-TO-SEWER BRAWL that the Germans themselves came to call "RATTENKRIEG" (RAT WAR) that was the WAR "OUT EAST."  This is not to take away the heroics of our own veterans from the West.  But it is go give the Russians (and the Poles) their due.  

So yes, this may be a tough film series for a Westerner to see.  The execution of a random/insignificant if patriotic low-ranking captured Soviet Communist Commissar near the front is given emotionally equal billing to the rounding-up and execution of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen behind it, as is the summary execution of captured partisans and the public hanging of Polish civilians in reprisal for tiny, arguably "fly swatting," but doggedly persistent Polish Home Army raids against the German occupiers.

And the Polish Home Army partisans are NOT portrayed in simply "heroic" hues either, but also with their own demons.  The commander of one such unit asks disbelievingly the lead-Jewish character in the story, who after many twists and turns finds himself at the Polish Home Army's mercy out in the Polish countryside: "So you're BOTH a GERMAN and a JEW?" as if willing to accept him as a partner-in-arms if he was one or the other, but not both.  That he was BOTH was simply "a bridge too far" for him.  And yet he DOESN'T kill him, turn him in, etc.  What he does do, is (TELLINGLY...) _WALK AWAY_ FROM HIM ... but ... NOT without leaving him with a revolver and fully loaded clip to defend himself with.  THIS KIND OF INSIGHTFUL IF OFTEN _PAINFUL TO WATCH_ AMBIGUITY CHARACTERIZES THE WHOLE FILM.


So then, what is the story arc?

Five young Berliners -- Wilhelm and Friedhelm Winter (played by Volker Bruch and Tom Schilling), brothers, Greta (played by Katharina Schüttler), Greta's friend Charlotte (played by Miriam Stein) and Greta's beau Viktor Goldstein (played by Ludwig Trepte), Jewish -- get together, after hours, in back of the pub where Greta works.  Wilhelm, already a veteran of the Polish and French campaigns and his younger brother Friedhelm, new, have been called-up to head East in preparation for what everyone in Berlin expects to be the coming invasion of the Soviet Union.  Charlotte arrives with news that she's been accepted to serve as a nurse in the coming campaign as well.  "Bohemian" in style (if not nationality), Greta isn't particularly interested in the politics of it all, but just wants to throw her friends a "good party" before they leave.  She pulls out a swing record or two, and they have a good time... until some neighbor complains about the noise.

The local police respond to the call, ask as a matter of course for everyone's IDs.  Now Viktor's Jewish and it's against the law for him, as a Jew, to be out  "after curfew" but they seem more distracted/upset by "the music." So before they get to Victor, they write Greta a ticket, confiscate her record and tell her to appear some days later at whatever random Berlin court it would be to respond to this petty citation.

So in the days following, brave/proven Wilhelm and his less enthusiastic and no doubt trying "cut out his own identity" Friedhelm as well as wide-eyed Charlotte all "go off to war."  Viktor returns to his parents' board-up and repeatedly vandalized (since at least Krystalnacht now 2+ years back) neighborhood tailor shop.  And Greta, some days later, "puts on a nice dress..." and heads off to the random court / police station to deal with the above mentioned citation.

At the police station, she's given a lecture on her "degenerate taste in music by an utterly unimportant (if not that he was Gestapo...) low-to-lower-middle-rank official who tells her that "as a matter of course on this matter" the police has made inquiries about her AND (1) that her "degenerate tendencies" don't seem to end with poorly chosen taste in music (that is, that he knows about her interest in a certain Jewish young man ...) and (2) that it appears that she's known around the neighborhood as having a certain talent in singing.  He asks her if that's true.  She tells him that yes, she can hold a note reasonably well.  He asks her if she'd be interested, perhaps, in pursuing a career in singing.  She responds, "sure, what do you have in mind?"  He tells her that he has "some connections" and it "could all be arranged."  The ugly little matter involving a ticket for owning record or two of un-Aryan music (and hanging out with a non-Aryan and more precisely JEWISH beau) was then "set aside' and ... for the price of sleeping with a not-particularly significant but potentially troublesome low-to-lower-middle-ranking Gestapo official ... she got the chance of perhaps cutting a record or two.  Of course her Jewish sort-of boyfriend Viktor wasn't altogether pleased.  But then, he should have been "grateful" (!) because ... by sleeping with the low-to-lower-middle-ranking Gestapo official she was actually "protecting him."  Dictatorships always make for rather complicated sexual politics ...

In the meantime, the other three are ... AT WAR.  And while War is going quite well actually through the summer and into the beginning of Fall of 1941,  THIS War is already proving to be, as it had been already billed, "unlike any other":

Several months into the war, the brave, previously proven Leutnant Wilhelm finds himself confronted with the above mentioned "ugly task" of executing a captured Soviet (Communist) Commissar.  They capture him in a battle over a random grain silo somewhere in steppe leading toward Moscow.  His underlings ask him: "So do we execute the Commissar?"  Not wanting to do it, he tells them instead: "Nah, he might have intelligence that may prove useful to us." So they take him along with the 2-3 others that they captured back to company HQ.  Some time later, the company commander comes to Leutnant Wilhelm telling him, "Yes he's certainly a fanatic. He was telling our interrogators that we'll NEVER defeat the 'Great Soviet Army,' blah, blah, blah... In any case, we've extracted all that we could out of him.  So you can kill him now" (!), the message being that he really should have killed him at the grain silo.  That Wilhelm did not was, perhaps, somewhat of a waste of time.  But, "all could be rectified" now, if he just took him out to the woods now ... and ... put a bullet in his head.  The company commander reminds Wilhelm: "The Soviet Union didn't sign the Geneva Conventions.  As a political commissar, he's a dangerous fanatic.  We're fighting an ideological war.  We have standing orders to execute captured political officers of the Soviet Army.  So now just get up, take the prisoner out back a ways -- we don't want our own troops to get 'too jumpy'  -- and ... finish the task at hand."  So ... brave, previously proven Leutnant Wilhelm takes his prisoner out back into the woods.  At some point, he asks his prisoner to kneel.  He pulls out his luger, cocks it, ... shoots his prisoner dead in the head ... and YES SHAKEN ... returns to camp.

When he returns to camp, he has other things to deal with: He has to reprimand his younger brother Friedhelm for "never ever volunteering for anything."  This comes up again with the other soldiers in the unit with Friedhelm responding to them sarcastically, "But guys I'm doing you all a huge favor by never volunteering for anything.  Think of how much faster you'll ALL get your 'iron crosses' by being allowed to be so brave." WELL, that kind of attitude results in what would probably happen IN ANY ARMY UNIT ANYWHERE ... eventually the members of his own unit BEAT THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF HIM for ENDANGERING THEIR OWN LIVES by NOT carrying his load.  LESSON LEARNED ... a few scenes later, he's summarily shooting lined-up captured partisans with the rest of them... even as he ALSO walks in on the remains of an Einsatzgruppen massacre of Jews (the blood of the victims was still seeping out from the soil pressing down on the recently killed / buried bodies).  AND HE KNOWS VERY WELL WHAT HAD JUST HAPPENED THERE.

Meanwhile back in Berlin, Greta wasn't completely an opportunist.  She tries to get her low-to-lower-middle-ranking Gestapo lover to help her beau Viktor get out of the country.  He plays along.  Gets him a "passport" and papers to "go to Marsailles" (and "from there to where-ever").  'Cept whether the papers were EVER legit, he has Viktor arrested before he ever gets to the train station, and after getting a chance to have him beaten up, has him put on a very different train ... heading East ... That's how Viktor gets to Poland ... and it was very, very clear where he was being sent.

Then Charlotte has her own increasingly horrifying adventures and morally damning episodes as a field nurse: "We're here to treat ONLY our own people ..." and yet, even in the "best of times" even the German army needs help from the locals.  Now who's willing to help (collaborate) and ... why?  And can one really trust ANYBODY in the "occupied lands"?

This then is the set-up to the story... which continues then for about 3 1/2 hours more (through 3 1/2 more years -- from the rest of 1941 to the summer of 1945).

I found the film to be doggedly the "greyest of grey" in its portrayals of almost all of the major characters.  None of them were saints but also, with the exception of the Gestapo guy, none of them had horns.

I do know that many Americans and Westerners will be challenged by the film.  But I do honestly believe that it's worth seeing.



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

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Ride Along [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

TheSource (JP Tarpav) review

CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

BET articles
Ebony articles
Essence articles
TheSource articles
 
Ride Along [2014] (directed by Tim Story, screenplay by Greg Coolidge, Jason Mantzoukas, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, story by Greg Coolidge) is an African-American cop/buddy comedy/romcom that like most romcoms of our time, would almost certainly not altogether please the good preachers of the African American community or people of faith of any color.  Indeed, "romcoms" are generally among the most morally problematic genres of cinema or stagecraft today even if they are so "with a smile."

So "what's the problem" here?  Well, the central couple in the story -- Ben Barber (played by Kevin Hart) and Angela Payton (played by Tika Sumpter) -- ARE LIVING TOGETHER without being married.  "So? Why should that make a difference?" one may ask.  But the question could be reversed: Why ARE they LIVING TOGETHER WITHOUT BEING MARRIED?  What's the fear?  What's the problem?  And what's the plan if as a consequence of their living (and sleeping) together they produce a child together?

And it should be noted here folks that there is actually ONE recent romcom, Jumping the Broom [2011] about a couple that's preparing for marriage that ISN'T already living/sleeping together prior to marriage.  YES, EVEN IN HOLLYWOOD SUCH A STORY "IS POSSIBLE" and IT DOESN'T SURPRISE ME _AT ALL_ THAT _THAT MOVIE_ COMES FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, a community of _churchgoing folks_ after all.

But let's return to the story at hand... ;-).  THERE IS, INDEED, "A PROBLEM" between BEN and ANGELA: There seems to be a question of Ben's worthiness of marrying Angela.  SHE actually seems to be the most "okay" with her choice of Ben as her partner/future husband.  But BEN HIMSELF, working as a security guard at a local high school, doesn't seem to feel worthy of her.  And Angela's brother, James Payton (played by Ice Cube) a hard-nosed Atlanta Police Officer definitely doesn't think that the softer, more fun-loving Ben is worthy of her.

Trying to prove his worth to both Angela (who doesn't need to be convinced) and her brother James (who does), Ben applies to the Atlanta Police Academy and ... gets in.

James, so tough that he can't seem to work with ANYBODY even in his own department, is still not convinced that Ben will make the grade.  And so, he offers to take Ben along with him on a "RIDE ALONG" to show him what awaits him on the "mean streets" of Atlanta.  The rest of the movie follows ...

Since this is a romcom afterall, "all ends well" ... Ben proves himself to his future step-brother James (and James learns a bit about humility and valuing teamwork as well).

All in all, it's not a bad romcom, it just _begins_ (from the get-go ...) with a premise that's definitely problematic from the Christian point of view, where one either decides to get married or one break-ups in search for someone else who one will marry.

"Trial marriages" are in the end for the dishonest and/or for cowards.


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I, Frankenstein [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  RE.com (1 Star)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing

ChicagoTribune/Variety (A. Barker) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

I, Frankenstein [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Stewart Beattie along with Kevin Grevioux [IMDb] and inspired as much by Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein as by the Underworld films that Kevin Grevioux has previously been involved with) surprised me.

Okay, the aesthetics of the film were relentlessly dark and gloomy, and much of the story felt like a Underworld retread substituting Lycans and Vampires for Angels (er Gargoyles) and Demons.  BUT, perhaps because of my field (I'm a Catholic priest after all, and I was a chemist before that) I found the film's concept surprisingly interesting ;-).

The central pivot on which the current story turned was for me fascinating: The mad-scientist Victor Frankenstein (played oh so briefly in the film by Aden Young before being killed by his own creation), reanimated a stitched-up corpse (played here by Aaron Eckhart).  In doing so, this arrogant human scientist accidentally created a "soul-less being."

Well, this "soul-less" being becomes a "person of interest" to ... Demons who've been LOOKING FOR AGES for SOME "vessels" to enter into, POSSESS, and then to use to DESTROY HUMANITY (God's Creation) with. 

So soon after Frankenstein is created, these Demons start hovering around him.  This brings into the mix an Order of Angels.  To humans they appear to be only stone "Gargoyles" standing watch along the edges of Medieval Christian Cathedrals.  But at night, when the Demons themselves are active, they "fly off" the churches to do battle with said Demons while humans are largely asleep / unawares.  We're told that this Order of Angel/Gargoyles was sent by St. Michael the Archangel to protect humanity from the Demons.

Well the Angel/Gargoyles see the interest that the Demons have in this new "soulless creature" and see the risk that this creature (and others like him) would pose to humanity should he (and others like him) come to be possessed by the Demons.  Some of the Angels/Gargoyles, indeed, want to destroy this man-made "abomination" but the "Queen" (or more properly Leader) of this Order of Angels named Leonore (played by Miranda Otto) protects him saying that even if he wasn't created directly by God, God must have a purpose in his creation/existence. (Note here that that in the traditional Catholic conception, the title "Queen of the Angels" belongs to Mary).  Leonore then gives the new reanimated, but (still?) soul-less, creature the evocative name "Adam."

But this "Adam" feels really alone.  Apparently "soul-less," rejected/feared by humans, coveted by Demons, mistrusted by Angels, and yet -- after having had more than 5,000 Volts put into him by his mad-human "Crator" to reanimate him -- apparently no longer able to die ... "Adam" (Frankenstein) spends the next two hundred years (from Mary Shelley/Victor Frankenstein's time to our own) trudging alone, hiding in "the northern mountains" (the Alps or Scandinavia?) in darkness, cold and driving snow.

Finally, he can no longer stand his solitude and descends to what looks like a dark, rainy, modern-day, yet "gothic" city ... perhaps a stylized Paris or perhaps Geneva, Switzerland.  There he finds all the characters that he's spent 200 years avoiding -- arrogant yet clueless humans, covetous-to-rapacious and certainly driven Demons as well as conflicted and somewhat depressed Angels (they feel that they're slowly losing their fight with the Demons, who seem to continue to fight with a seemingly unending reserve of energy, even as both sides have been at this battle "for Ages.")

He also finds that there is a central Demon named Naberius (played by Bill Nighy) who's quite energetically encouraging a modern-day "electro-neurologist" named Terra (played by Yvonne Strahovski) to pursue her research in reanimating corpses (of animals) with electricity.  She herself doesn't see the need to rush: "But we're only working with mice and rabbits now.  It'll be a very long time before we get to humans and it may never work."  But Naberius pushes her harder and harder.  Why?  Because he knows, of course, that "it'll work"  Why?  Because he knows "it worked at least once before ..."  And then, once it does work, "he has plans ..."

So into this mix returns "Adam" Frankenstein, who soon after returning to Civilization after wandering ALONE for 200 years in the Wilderness, wonders if it was a good idea.  Nothing has changed.  In the City, HE HAS TROUBLE TRUSTING ANYONE.  Yet, in the wilderness, he was ALL ALONE. 

What to do?  The rest of the movie follows ... Again, an interesting/surprising concept, huh? ;-)


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