Transcendence [2014]

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

Transcendnce [2014] (directed by Wally Pfister, screenplay by Jack Paglen) is a sci-fi-ish thriller set in the near future that explores the possibility (and some of the ramifications) of uploading a human mind onto a computer, in effect, digitizing it, making it (at least the digitized copy) as portable (and malleable...) as a computer virus or a jpeg file.

The concept and possibilities/dangers therefore will be fascinating to many, and yet also probably further in the future than the film's "near future" setting.  Why?  At minimum, a _functioning_ digitized copy of a brain from nature could not reside in just _any_ computer.  There are questions of brain architecture that would have to be resolved/simulated that would make the architecture of a computer fit for containing such a functioning digitized copy of a brain very different from the common-place computer or smart phone of today.  Hence said digitized copy of a brain couldn't just "swim across the internet" at will and "parking itself in just any given computer" at will ... So in the "real world" it would probably be PRETTY EASY to find where the digitized mind of AI-guru Dr Will Caster (played in the film by Johnny Depp) was residing.  And once one knew where said computer containing the digitized mind of AI-guru Will Caster was located, I'd be pretty certain that EVEN TODAY the good folks at the NSA (or even "Anonymous") would find a way to hack and destroy it without resorting to the (MILD SPOILER ALERT) rather Apocalyptic ending that the current story culminates in.

Still, I do find the possibilities / potential dangers raised by the very concept of "digitizing a human brain" fascinating: (1) If one could make a functioning digital copy of someone's brain, one could (obviously) make digital clones.  Yet those digital clones, from the very moment that they were created would necessarily begin to diverge from themselves.  (2) Could some law enforcement entity in the future do some kind of "MRI scan" of a captured "terrorist suspect's" brain and then "extract information" from the digitized copy of that prisoner's brain? (virtual "enhanced interrogation" /  or even virtual torture?).  (3) Could a future employer do said "MRI-like scan" of a potential employee's brain to make a digital copy "to run simulations with" to see what that potential employee would be capable of?  Could the employer then not hire the potential employee but keep the digital copy of the potential employee's "on file just in case" ... or even (unethically) use that digital copy of the potential employee's brain to do the employer's work without paying the potential employer for its services? (virtual slavery?)

Above, I've "played jazz" with basic concept behind the film, but the story-line of the film itself is not bad:  After AI-guru Dr. Will Caster is shot (and more importantly poisoned by a toxin-laced bullet) by a radical anti-technology terrorist group, his desperate wife and colleague Dr. Evelyn Caster (played by Rebecca Hall) decides to try to upload the contents of Will's brain into their computer before he dies (They were AI specialists working on advanced computers that were trying to mimic mammalian brain processes).   The radical anti-technology terrorist group tries to stop her, but ... well you guessed it ... she succeeds.

'Cept ... is the digital copy of Will's mind, really Will?  That's what Will and Evelyn's best friend and also colleague Dr. Max Waters (played by Paul Bethany) asks.  And the rest of the movie is about answering that question ... even as Will's "digital mind" becomes "bigger and bigger and bigger" (more and more capable) ... and hence, scarier and scarier ...

Now obviously _at best_ the digital copy of Will's mind IS A COPY (a CLONE).  On the other hand, since the original Dr. Will Caster died shortly after his mind was "uploaded" to the computer, "digital Will" could be (at least at the beginning) a _pretty good facsimile_.  And if "digital Will" changed/grew/evolved afterwards, well ... don't we all (change/grow/evolve) during the course of our lives?

Then theologically (metaphysically) speaking, there could be a question of whether one really could transfer the mind (and arguably the soul) of a person from a biological substrate to a digital one.  Then if one could make out of the digital copy thousands of other copies, would the soul copy/multiply/individuate as well?  The CNS/USCCB reviewer reminds readers that certainly the traditional Catholic/Christian metaphysical answer would be a rather emphatic no.  On the other hand, the book / film Cloud Atlas [2012] suggests that the final bastion of human prejudice will be against artificial sentient beings.

My own concern would be that even if becomes possible to upload a person's mind onto a computer, WHAT ELSE WOULD THE "GOOD PEOPLE" OFFERING SUCH A SERVICE "BUNDLE" WITH THE PROCESS ... Would the "digital you" suddenly become "incompatible" with all "name that brand" competitor products/services?  Or on the other hand could the "digital you" suddenly find itself _craving_ "name that brand" allied products/services?   Would the "Good People" who uploaded and would be storing one's digitized mind become "part owners" of its contents (our memories) and therefore be able to "sell" them?  Could some NSA-like agency be able then to get a search warrant to "scan through" our digitized mind's memories stored somewhere by the "Good People" offering us this "service" of "parking" our "digitized minds" with them?

As I wrote in my review of the recent film Her [2013] that raises similar questions, we can be thankful that whether we were created by chance OR (as we Catholic/Christians believe) BY A NOW CLEARLY, TRULY SURPRISINGLY BENEVOLENT CREATOR we do apparently truly have Free Will.  There have been no "Name that Service Ads" appearing in front of our minds' eyes or in our dreams.  In contrast, it's hard to imagine an "electronic companion" created by some for-profit corporation that would not have some kind of "adware" bundled inside that "e-friend" or accompanying our new digitized "virtual minds."   And then honestly how much "bundled adware" or other "non/post-human functionality" could there be added to a digitized human mind before its previous "human soul" would be altered beyond recognition/destroyed.  A mechanized "transformer" being only capable of using "name that brand" products/services would definitely not be a human any more (but rather some kind of weird cyber-slave) even if it was driven by an initially human brain "uploaded" to make the mechanized thing run.

But wow!   What kind of thoughts / concerns this film raises!  Several reviewers (including some I list above) have compared this film to the Frankenstein story where the lead character, Dr Will Caster plays the roles of both "mad scientist" and his "monstrous creation."  It's funny, but this may be the first time I've ever thought this (I turned fifty late last year): I'm happy that I'll probably be dead before most of what's portrayed as playing out in this film comes to pass ;-)

But still honestly, what a discussion piece!


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Heaven is For Real [2014]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-1)  AARP (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 - 4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune/Variety (J. Chung) review
AARP-MfG (B. Newcott) review 
RE.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Heaven is For Real [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Randall Wallace along with Chris Parker, based on the book by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent) released just in time for Passover and the Christian celebrations Easter ends a remarkably respectful Lent this year by Hollywood, one which featured other Biblically themed films including Son of God [2014] and Noah [2014].

It's a hopeful (and true) story about a little boy named Colton Burpo (played by Conner Corum) who had a near death experience of Heaven after he nearly died.  Coming to after nearly dying, he surprised everyone, including his parents (played by Greg Kinnear and Kelly Reilly), with his straight-forward talking of things literally "not of this earth," things about both his family history and "things of God / the Christian faith" that AS A FOUR YEAR OLD he could not have known or easily made-up, things like Jesus' Stigmata (Colton was growing up in a Methodist household, Colton's dad being a Methodist minister) or Jesus' eye color (few to no one would have invented this detail, much less a four year old, much less the color that the four year old matter-of-factly mentioned it was -- neither "really weird" nor particularly expected).  So what happened?

It's a lovely and again hopeful story released as a film just in time for our (Christian) celebration of Jesus' Resurrection at Easter.

Do Catholics / Christians have to believe the contents of this film?  Of course not (one does not have to believe ANY "private revelation").  But it does support the basic message of the Jesus' Gospel, that "God is With Us" (Matt 1:23, Matt 28:20) through the whole of our lives and that even Death does not have he Final Word, the final Word remains with God, "the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." (Rev 22:12-13).

So in the midst of a very busy next few days (I'm writing this during Holy Week as we approach the beginning of the Triduum tomorrow) this would not be an entirely waste of time to see (but do go to the Liturgies first ;-)

But in any case Happy Holy Week and Happy Easter all!


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Elena [2012]

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

IMDb listing

Official website

BrCine.br (C. Nader) review*
O Fohla.br (M. Laob) review*

Elena [2012] (directed and cowritten by Petra Costa along with Carolina Ziskund) is a heart-rending documentary that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  It's about the young Brazilian director's older sister Elena who at 19 and an aspiring actress in New York had committed suicide some 20 years earlier. 

Why did Elena do it?  Isn't that ever the question?   Petra had been only seven at the time.  What she remembered of her older sister was what a seven year old would remember plus pictures, film clips, and even voice recordings of her, as Elena, self-conscious about her "bad" handwriting would often send audio cassette tapes in lieu of letters back home to her family.

It's clear that Elena had a depressive personality.  Artists of all types are also notoriously moody.  New York, the home of the United States' "serious artists" is arguably chock full of them.  Recent films about tortured artists in New York include Black Swan [2010] (for which Natalie Portman won an Oscar), A Late Quartet [2012] (which costarred the brilliant and tortured in life Philip Seymour Hoffman, who recently died of a drug overdose) and Frances Ha [2012] (which starred the ever-smiling even if her characters face sooo much failure and pain, Greta Gerwig).

Further, this is an IMHO quintessentially Brazilian story, where family history already carries with it a great deal of suffering/pain. Though born out in the provinces in "Mines Gerais" Elena and Petra's mother had already been in her youth an aspiring artist.  She then married dashing young man who had come back from studies in the United States a convinced Leftist and Che Guevara supporter.  Together they had joined the Brazilian Communist Party and IF NOT FOR HER MOTHER BEING PREGNANT WITH ELENA WOULD HAVE ALMOST CERTAINLY JOINED THE EMERGING "BRAZILIAN COMMUNIST INSURGENCY" OF THE 1960s FORMING ON THE BORDER WITH URUGUAY WHERE THEY WOULD HAVE ALMOST CERTAINLY BEEN KILLED.  Instead, the Communist leadership had convinced them "guerrilla warfare" was NOT good for a young couple with a child and convinced them that they could play "a different role" away from the fighting.  ALMOST ALL THEIR FRIENDS WHO JOINED THE BRAZILIAN COMMUNIST GUERRILLA FIGHTERS HAD BEEN KILLED OR EXECUTED IN THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING ELENA'S BIRTH.  The irony, of course, that Petra and her parents ALL owe their lives to ELENA who grew up to kill herself is again just heart-rending.

Then from what I've experienced of Brazilian families (my religious order, the Servites, has a significant presence in Brazil), distance especially for young women, from their families is REALLY, REALLY HARD.  So even though Elena initially went ENTHUSIASTICALLY to New York to study performance arts (acting and dance), and even made some connections -- she apparently reported back home that she met people like Francis Ford Copolla -- soon she found herself deathly homesick, quit everything and went home to Brazil.

So what did the family do?  Again, something IMHO quintessentially (if they have the means) Brazilian: both mom and younger daughter Petra accompanied Elena back to New York to LIVE THERE WITH HER TO SUPPORT HER so that she'd complete her studies.

Of course, Elena was a mess.  And despite a family that loved her and clearly wanted to support her, she spiraled inward and eventually took a bottle of pills and killed herself.

What could have been done?  Elena had apparently gone to get help.  She was on lithium in the months before she died.  This was apparently just before Prosac and similar anti-depressant drugs had come-out.  

She was above all a very sensitive person, an artist type in a family with both perhaps predispositions toward sadness/depression and then a family history (the friends around the parents who were all killed) with much to feel sadness / depression about.


So how does the director tell the story of Elena's life and her death.  Beautifully.  She interviews people who knew her as a friend and as a student.  She uses those audiotapes of her reports back home.  She uses old 8-mm and Super-8 movie clips of her when she was young and then performing at school in New York.  She also uses the metaphor of water (see the poster) showing Elena as simply feeling overwhelmed.

Does the film glorify her suicide?  It's a question to ask.  I'd say emphatically no.  If anything, the film so clearly expresses the sadness of the family that lost her, misses her and has experienced her suicide as a very big hole left by her in their lives.  They do go on, but they wonder why (she did it) and wish (for both her and their sake) that she was still with them.  No it's not a glorification of suicide at all.  The film just shows it to be a big, sad hole, for everyone it touched.



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

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Patagonia of Dreams (orig. Patagonia de los Sueños) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 - 4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Cinechile.cl listing*

Official website*

Cinechile.cl Interview (English) w. Director

Patagonia of Dreams (orig. Patagonia de los Sueños) [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* (directed and co-written by Jorge López Sotomayor [IMDb] [CCh]* along with Gerardo Cáceres [IMDb] [CCh]* based on the Diary of Chantal Rouquaud*) is a Chilean / Argentinian film that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  The film played at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival last year.

Set in Buenos Aires and Patagonia of the latter part of the 1800s, it would be fair to compare the film to the famous Hollywood Post-Colonial "Colonial epic" Out of Africa [1985] as the issues / conflicts present are remarkably similar:

(1) In each case a European couple or family already of some means sets out to another land (actually under the jurisdiction of another European/Western power) to make (or re-make) their fortune.

Out of Africa [1985] is based on the memoirs the Karen Denisen (played in that film by Meryl Streep) who at the beginning of her story married a Swedish (lesser) baron named Bror von Brixen.  She soon moved with her new husband to Kenya (then British East Africa) where they wished to (re)establish a name for themselves with a coffee plantation.

Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* is inspired by the diary of Chantal Rouquaud (played in the film by Juanita Ringeling [IMDb] [CCh]*) who at the beginning of the story was the 17 year old daughter of M. and Mde. Rouquard (played by Martín Neglia [IMDb] [CCh]* and Alessandra Guerzoni [IMDb] [CCh]*).  The family though "already-of-some-means" back in France had emigrated to Argentina some years earlier in hopes of "increasing their station" there.  At the beginning of the story, we learn that M. Rouquard has staked the family's fortunes on establishing a "fish processing" operation out in the coastal wilds of Argentina's southern Patagonia region, to the distress of the 17-year-old Chantal who had been looking forward being a young and sought-after "belle of the balls" back in B.A.

(2) In each case, arrival out "in the colonies" (Kenya / British East Africa for the Von Brixens), Patagonia for the Rouguauds was a shock.  In both cases, they found themselves among truly tiny communities of Europeans/Westerners (white people...) in lands that, naturally, had belonged other NATIVE populations. What were the white European colonists doing there?

That's a very good question noted Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* director present at the film's screening and part of the reason why he made the film (not in any way to "glorify" Chile / Argentina's expansion Southward into Patagonia during the late 1800s but rather to put it in a general context of other Western/European colonial expansions occurring at the time all across the globe.

What made the Rouquauds feel that they deserved to go down to Patagonia to start a fish processing enterprise on land nominally conceded to them by Argentina but had clearly been inhabited by others since time immemorial?  What made the Von Brixens feel that they deserved to leave their smaller possessions in southern Scandinavia and try luck with a coffee plantation on land nominally conceded to them by the British Colonial authority but was on land that was inhabited by native Kenyans since time immemorial?  For that matter, what made the artist Paul Gauguin feel that he could to leave everything (including his own wife and kids) in France and "reestablish himself" on the French colonial "possession" of Tahiti and spend the rest of his life painting half-naked native Tahitian women on land nominally controlled by France but in reality had belonged to the Tahitian Polynesian people since time immemorial?   What made countless Europeans from 1500 through to the end of World War II leave their native lands and "try their luck" with all kinds of commercial ventures big and small on "other peoples' lands" and requiring various levels of immorality (ranging from simply setting-up a Mission or trading post on land that was initially largely empty but certainly _never_ previously "theirs" to displacement/marginalization of the native populations to enslavement to genocide) to do so?

Yet, of course, I write my blog from CHICAGO, today a city of 2.5 million and a metropolitan area of 8-10 million which started as a simple trading post founded in the 1780s by Jean Baptiste du Sable of African (Haitian) and French descent who thought it a wise idea to set one up near the mouth of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan (about 100-200 meters from where the AMC River East-21 Movie Theater where I saw the current film stands today ;-).  A few miles upstream, the Chicago River comes within a mile of the Des Plaines River, which flows into the Illinois River and then into the Mississippi.  So Du Sable's trading post (and modern Chicago) fell on the crossroads of a shipping route that could extend from the North Atlantic (the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in Canada) down the St. Lawrence River across the chain of the Great Lakes and then by means of this geographic accident of the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers coming so close to each other all the way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.  Is North America a better place because Du Sable had the foresight to setup a trading post here in what subsequently became the metropolis of Chicago?   And while it is true that Native American tribes who used to live in the Chicago area were eventually forcibly removed / wiped-out (as a consequence of the Blackhawk War) that was not an inevitability but rather a subsequent choice by the American government that eventually took definitive hold of the region.  (The same could be said of the fate of the the native peoples of Patagonia on whose lands the Rauguauds initially set-up their still quite little fish processing facility.  It wasn't necessarily inevitable that the Argentinian government would unleash a campaign of genocide against the native peoples on their lands, or the Chilean government would marginalize the natives onto North American style reservations).    

(3) As in the case of the experience of the Von Brixens in Kenya (British East Africa) the experience of the Rauguauds in Patagonia was one where there was international tension in the air.  Not only was there the question of the morality of "coming from far away" to "establish themselves" on "other peoples' land", there was competition between "Great" or "Regional Powers" over the land.  In the case of the Von Brixens, the competition was between the British in what today is Kenya and the Germans whose East African possessions became today's Tanzania.  In the case of the Rauguauds, the tension was between Argentina and Chile, who both claimed large portions of Patagonia and even the British who had a colony on the Falkland Islands / Malvinas (over which there was the (in)famous 1982 War between Argentina and Britain).

(4) If there is a lot of subtext to both stories -- colonialism, the mistreatment of the native peoples as a consequence, international rivalry, even the role of women (as both Out of Africa [1985] and Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] were told an basis of recollections by (then) relatively young women of their experiences of "colonial life" that wasn't necessarily chosen ... both probably would have preferred initially to stay in their native lands if they had been given a choice, instead they had to obey the men in their lives and try "to make the best of things" when they go there -- both stories are ultimately about the individuals present in the stories.

In both cases, there scoundrels, and there were noble types. Both Out of Africa [1985]'s Karen Denisen von Brixen (played in that film by Meryl Streep) and Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] Chantal (played by Juanita Ringeling [IMDb] [CCh]*) matured as a result of their experiences in the colonies.  And both found their soul mates out there: Karen von Brixen found the dashing bush pilot Denys (played in the film by Robert Redford), while Chantal found the German born ethnographer/artist Thomas Ohlsen (played in the film by Ariel Canale [IMDb] [CCh]*) whose drawings of the Tehuelche people of Patagonia remain among the best records of their way of life in the early years of contact with the Europeans/the West.

All in all, North American and European viewers who like history would probably find this historical drama about the Rauguaud family's experience in Patagonia of the late 1800s fascinating and its viewing might inspire discussions about the nature, circumstances and legacy of the European/Western Colonial Era in general.  Again, what (besides simply "Manifest Destiny" arrogance) drove so many Europeans to seek both better lives and even fortunes all across the globe at that time? 


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

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Draft Day [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
AARP.org (B. Newcott) review
RE.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Draft Day [2014] (directed by Ivan Reitman, screenplay by Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph) is a "sports film" really "sports front office film" that a lot of middle-aged men are probably going to relate to. 

Sonny Weaver Jr (played by Kevin Costner) is the (fictionalized) GENERAL MANAGER of a PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM.  This would seem like the DREAM JOB for millions of "fantasy football" fanatics and other sports fans across the country and even across the world.  'CEPT (there's always a 'cept...) and here there are a whole bunch of 'cepts:

(1) He's the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, an NFL team that's been mediocre for decades,

(2) He's Sonny Weaver, JUNIOR, the son of the (fictionalized) LEGENDARY CLEVELAND BROWNS COACH, Sonny Weaver, SENIOR who as General Manager AT THE PLEADING OF HIS MOTHER (SENIOR'S WIFE) HE (JUNIOR) HAD TO "LET GO" the year before (because of a heart conditon).  It was probably a good call as dad died quietly at home only a few days before (presumably of a heart attack) but thankfully NOT before millions of viewers at an NFL Game.  YET MANY CLEVELAND SPORTS FANS ONLY REMEMBER THAT THIS "UNGRATEFUl, NOBODY SON" "FIRED" HIS OWN DAD THE SEASON BEFORE "FOR NO GOOD REASON..."

(3) The new coach Penn (played by Denis Leary) that he was given (presumably under pressure from the team's owner Anthony Molina (played by Frank Langella), who one gets the sense didn't particularly like Weaver, Sr EITHER, is a prima donna who was recently fired from Dallas (where he had won a Super Bowl... though with a team he had inherited rather than built-up himself).  But owner Molina seems to like Penn because "at least he makes a splash" something that the Venerable and VENERATED, "Old School, "X-s and O-s" Weaver, Senior hadn't done in years and owner Molina has his doubts that Weaver, Jr will ever do either.  Draft Day's coming up (the film's title) and Molina more-or-less makes it clear to Weaver, Jr that unless he "makes something happen", "makes a splash" that he'll be gone...

(4) Ma' (played by Ellen Burstyn), who after all convinced her son to fire her husband/his own dad (perhaps for dad's own good, but ...) continues to have a larger influence on Junior's life than perhaps she should... 

(5) In this pressure cooker, Weaver, Jr, divorced, adds _his own_ peccadillo by sleeping with one of his higher-ranked (but still...) subordinates, the team's lawyer (and responsible for keeping the team under its salary cap) Ali (played very nicely by Jennifer Gardner).  Near the beginning of the film, she informs him that she's/they're pregnant.  Now there is something genuine between them.  HE'd like to bring her out into the open (almost everybody knows that there's something between them anyway).  But this is an office romance.  Now ("Draft Day...") doesn't seem to be a good time.  BUT WHEN EXACTLY WILL IT EVER BE "a good time?"

So if you thought that your life was complicated ... ;-)

Okay, so it's "Draft Day" the day each year that the NFL teams go through the roster of eligible college athletes AND VERY PUBLICLY SELECT THEM TO THEIR TEAMS in the NFL. 

Cleveland's first round pick is #7.  The team has its sights on two players -- a linebacker Vontae Mack (played by Chadwick Boseman) who's a great player, will help build the defense "but won't make a splash," and Ray Jennings (played by Arian Foster) a running back from Florida State, who "plays with heart" whose dad played for Cleveland before, but who in recent weeks had gotten arrested for "assault and battery" in some sort of gang fight "back in the hood" back home. 

But then the Seattle Seahawks, who have the #1 pick, call with an offer that's hard to refuse, which would give Weaver/Cleveland the #1 pick and presumably a future star QB Bo Callahan (played by Josh Pence) from Wisconson.  But Cleveland already has a QB in Brian Drew (played by Tom Welling), who okay, hasn't necessarily performed to expectations (he's been injured) but Coach Penn likes him (and HATES ROOKIES...).  So what to do...?

And in fact, what would you do...?  And remember, in the pressure cooker of "Draft Day" ALL KINDS OF WHEELING AND DEALING, TRADES AND NEGOTIATIONS CAN TAKE PLACE ...

How can one "at the END OF THE DAY" end up FOR ONCE with "the team that one wants?"

Isn't that the question? ;-)


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Trip to Timbuktu (orig. Viaje a Tombuctú) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Official Website

Press articles*

Trip to Timbuktu (orig. Viaje a Tombuctú) [2013] (screenplay written and directed by Rossana Díaz Costa, an assistant professor of Communications Sciences at the University of Lima) is a Peruvian film telling the story of two young people Ana and Lucho, who grew-up, middle class, in Lima during the Guerrilla War in Peru of the 1980s-90s between the government and Shining Path and MRTA guerrillas.

The film was shot largely in the seaside Lima neighborhood where Ms Diaz Costa grew-up with most of the actors being her students as well as children from the neighborhood. The film played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival. 

The film serves as a very good reminder to viewers of the tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions of people across the planet growing-up in immediately recognizable middle class circumstances -- Both Ana's and Lucho's parents were educated.  Their fathers both worked in offices "downtown." And as both Ana/Lucho matured, they entered University.  However, neither family was "super rich" either: Ana's family did have one, older somewhat beat-up car.  Neither family had "servants." And Ana's grandparents (presumably Ana's father's parents) lived with them in their townhouse home throughout the whole of the story (which spanned Ana's childhood and into her 20s)  -- Yet their circumstances were also _different_ from the experience of most others growing up in such middle class circumstances.  In the case of Ana / Lucho, they grew-up in Peru during the very brutal insurgency war of the 1980s-90s. 

That insurgency did wear on everyone's lives: One simply had to travel everywhere, at all times, "with one's papers."  Curfews came to be imposed and even largely followed out of common sense.  No one in his/her right mind wanted to be "outside on their own" in the countryside or a neighborhood they did not know long after dark.  People learned the difference in sounds between harmless celebratory fireworks and gunshots, explosions and even artillery rounds (There's an excellent and very unnerving scene at the beginning of the film that drives this point home).  Electricity routinely went out across city and countryside depending on what substations and transmission facilities were attacked and when.  Lucho's father was wounded as a result of a car bomb explosion downtown one day...

Yet this is not a "The Communist insurgents were bad ..." sort of a film.  Ana, Lucho and their friends/families, all knew where they lived, where as Lucho put it: "Half the country is dirt poor..."

It's just that IT DIDN'T MATTER what anyone thought or did.  THE BOMBS WENT OFF EVERYDAY -- 1, 2, 5, 10 A DAY -- ANYWAY.  The authorities were AFRAID OF EVERYONE because in the middle of the insurgency EVERYONE FIT _SOME_ "PROFILE" whether being "a poor Communist peasant" or "a rich Communist hippie" or "a rich Communist elitist," or even "the (faux) naive wife/daughter of a rich Communist hippie or elitist" ... The only thing that kept one "safe" at a police/military checkpoint was keeping a smile, keeping one's hands up / visible and "having one's papers in order."  And being pulled out of a bus and "taken to the the station" for NOT "having one's papers in order" was a LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE for all.

In response to this constant pressure of truly "living in a war zone," what many Peruvians who had the means did (and many others who did not have the means at least imagined) was to leave Peru for destinations "far away" (hence the film's title ...)

So this is a pretty gut-wrenching film.   Yet it is quite soberly done, and could give millions of 30-40 year old Peruvians living across the world a way of explaining to their non-Peruvian friends (and their own children...) what it was like to live and grow-up in Peru in the 1980s-90s.

Honestly, an excellent film!


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

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Stoker of Delirium (orig. Fogonero del Delirium) [2011]

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

IMDb listing
FICG.mx listing

Official Site

Alejandro Colunga: Stoker of Delirium (orig. Alejandro Colunga: Fogonero del Delirium) [2011] (directed and cowritten by Gustavo Domínguez along with Jorge de la Cueva based on the original script of Dante Medina) is a feature length (90 min) documentary piece from Mexico that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

Commissioned originally by the University of Guadalajara and a Mexican National Fund for the Promotion of Fine Arts, it is about the life and art of Guadalajara native Alejandro Colunga one of Mexico's most influential and interesting contemporary artists. 

For those who like surrealist art, the documentary itself is a delight.  For example, Colunga's childhood is presented through surrealist imagery inspired by his own art, employing both animation and masked and costumed actors in the process. 

The result is magical, at times somewhat controversial, but certainly insightful, getting to the playful and iconoclastic spirit of the artist underneath the work.  Thus we see masked mariachis playing their instruments in a windswept graveyard following Colunga's father's death when the artist was young.

To most readers of my blog, the most controversial scene in the film for some would be that of the 6-8 year old Colunga's experience of the the Celebration of the Mass: The Virgin Mary and many of the Saints turn into trapeze artists and other carnival characters during the Consecration.  Offensive?  Could be.  But put yourselves back into the mind of a ten year old and in the scene the young Colunga _isn't_ portrayed as laughing at the Mass or the Angels and the Saints but rather IN AWE OF IT ALL.  (I myself remember being in AWE of all the images -- the Angels, the Saints, the images of Jesus struggling on his way to Calvary -- all about St. Procopius Church back in Chicago where we'd go to Czech Mass whenever my grandmother (who didn't speak a word of English) was with us.  Priest's and choir's voices would echo through the Church anyway, so I couldn't understand a word ... but there was _plenty_ to look at, all around.  So _honestly_ I can relate to the image in the film ...

Throughout the film, various family members of Colunga, friends, patrons as well as Colunga himself were interviewed to give insight to the various stages of his life.  (Interestingly, he studied architecture, mathematics and other more technical fields in his life before entering into the field of art which he claimed he "didn't study at all" ;-). He also spent a brief period in the 1960s as part of a Guadalajara rock band ;-) before returning back to painting and handicraft/sculpture. 

So who is he then?  One would certainly recognize him as a "great" thoughtful, iconoclastic/playful artist of today for whom Mexican folk-flavored surrealism would certainly be an _ideal_ form of expression. 

The film is certainly not for all, but for those who do love art, especially contemporary art and the freedom that it often expresses, this film will probably be for you. 

The film also serves the purpose of reminding viewers (and indeed the world) that Mexico does have truly rich tradition in art and one that did not simply begin and end with Diego Rivera and Frida and the "Muralists" of the 1920s-40s. There are some GREAT artists like Alejandro Colunga living and producing some very insightful and often quite funny / entertaining contemporary art right now.

In any case, I found this to be a great and fun film!


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The Eternal Night of the Twelve Moons (orig. La Eterna Noche de las Doce Lunas) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)   Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Indiewire listing

Official website

Gozamos.com (D. Delgado Pineda) review

The Eternal Night of the Twelve Moons (orig. La Eterna Noche de las Doce Lunas) [2013] (concept and directed by Priscilla Padilla) is a documentary that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

It follows Pili, a 12 year old adolescent girl from the Wayuu people of Northern Colombia, who as per ancient tradition upon having her first period is largely separated from her community (from the men and children anyway) for a period of twelve moons (twelve months, a year) so that she could be instructed by the women of the village (led by her grandmother) in spinning yarn, weaving, and other traditional tasks that would be useful to her in her adult life. 

It is clear throughout the film that the purpose of her separation is both to underline to the community the girl's transition into womanhoon and to give her time to master the skills that would be necessary for her to emerge after her period of seclusion into the community as a marriageable woman capable of fulfilling the tasks that would be expected of her as an adult member of the community.

Of course there is a certain sadness that accompanies this transition: After all, this is a twelve year-old who has to say good bye to her childhood friends, many of whom don't necessarily understand she's being taken away from them, and she herself may have trouble understanding this.  Further, she's instructed by her grandmother and the elder women in the village that a grown woman "does not laugh" especially with men/boys.

Yet it's also clear that a primary purpose of this custom of seclusion of young girls entering into adulthood is to underline their value and dignity, both to themselves and to the rest of the community (and especially to the men).

It seemed clear that the reason why the GRANDMOTHERS were leading the instruction here was that it had been felt by the community that the MOTHERS' GENERATION had been considered somewhat "lost."  Indeed, Pili's mother wasn't even in the village (but living/working somewhere outside of it ...) when Pili had her first period and began this rite, something that the grandmothers of the village reprimanded Pili's mother about when she did come to the village at some point during the year.  And when she comes to visit Pili in her hut, Pili does seem somewhat disappointed in her mother's previous distance/absence from the process and her life. 

Does this traditional maturation process work?  Do the men of the Wayuu community respect Pili more for going through this process?  The jury seems out here.  Yes, somewhere in the middle of the process an older Wayuu from another village comes inquiring to Pili's grandmother regarding Pili's marriageability after she emerged from the process.  He tells Pili's grandmother that he's there for his nephews, but one gets the sense that he might have been there in good part for himself...  He does however offer an apparently rather impressive "bride's price" which Pili's grandmother out-of-hand rejects but recounts to Pili afterwards with some pride that Pili is definitely going to come out of this process respected (and how better to quantify that "respect" than in terms of what she'll be able to "earn" in terms of a "bride's price"...).

Finally what does Pili think of it all?  Well, she goes through the process because her grandmother, her primary caregiver, wanted her to do so.  And it does seem that she's found it to have been of some value.  It does seem to give her some pride that she seems to be offered higher "bride's prices" than other girls (who didn't go through the process).  HOWEVER, she tells the documentarian at the end of the film that what she's learned above all in the process is that she doesn't want to get married yet but instead would like to "finish high school" and "become a career woman" ;-).

The grandmother and her other matriarchical friends always explained this ritual period of seclusion for the young girl as a means of increasing the girl's/emerging woman's respect in the community.  It would be fascinating if the documentarian were to follow the next several years of Pili's life to see how it all plays out: How will she be able to integrate the modern (finishing high school prior to getting married) with the traditional (now that she's marriagable)?  How will she continue to be respected in the years to come?

In any case, it's a fascinating film which offers viewers much to think about and discuss afterwards with regards to both appreciating the value of traditional customs and then applying them positively to current circumstances.


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For Love in the Caserio (orig. Por Amor en el Caserío) [2013]

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

IMDb listing

Official Website

NBC Latino article
NY Times article

ElNuevoDia.com interview*
Primerahora.com report*
PuenteAlDia.com report*

For Love in the Caserio (orig. Por Amor en el Caserío) [2013] (directed by Luis Enrique Rodríguez Ramos, screenplay by Antonio Morales based on his own stage-play by the same name), which played recently to large enthusiastic audiences at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival is a film that deserves to be seen, especially by those "in the industry" looking for "young Hispanic talent" in, honestly, any/all areas (acting, direction, writing, cinematography, sound, editing, music...) involved in the making of a movie.

The film is based on the stage-play by Antonio Morales which he wrote when he was a teenager living in the Caserio Project, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the second largest public housing project on U.S. territory anywhere.  In the 13 years since its initial production in 2001, the play has been staged over 500 times across Puerto Rico and has been seen by more than 50,000 people. 

Director Luis Enrique Rodríguez Ramos in this his first feature-length venture DOES NOT DISAPPOINT either.  His background is in advertising and music videos.  Hence he crafts here a WELL-PACED, WELL-EDITED, VISUALLY MEMORABLE PRODUCTION that "POPS."  I'm more-or-less positive that film-makers probably dread "cutting their teeth" working some years "in advertising," but I've seen it before (indeed, at this Festival a number of years back with a Brazilian film called Dia de Preto (Day of Black) [2011] made by a team of three, also first-time feature-length film-makers, whose "day jobs" were ALSO "in advertising" back in Rio...) the skills learned in producing EYE-POPPING 30 second television commercials will serve one well in making a WELL-TIMED, WELL-EDITED, ENGAGING, VISUALLY INTERESTING FILM (OF ANY LENGTH) AS WELL.

Then regarding the leads Anoushka Medina and Xavier Morales who play the lovebirds Crystal and Ángelo in this almost necessarily Romeo and Juliet-like story.  (ANY "teenage love story" set in a "gang infested neighborhood" is almost certainly going to fall back on "the Bard"), I'm glad to read that apparently the Mexico City based telenovela industry has already taken notice of Anoushka but it would not be a waste of time if film-makers or stage-play producers from Buenos Aires to Madrid to Hollywood, Miami and New York would take a look at her performance in this film as well.  The next Penelope Cruz?  Could be ;-). And regarding Xavier, he's almost certainly destined to play the current U.S. President Barrack Obama in _some_ Spanish-language production _somewhere_ in the years to come (Those who see the film will certainly know what I'm talking about as both his looks and even his demeanor fit our current President to a tee ;-).

What then of the story itself?  I've already mentioned that the film follows (loosely) the trajectory of Romeo and Juliet.  There's even an amusing balcony scene adapted _quite well_ to "The Projects."  The story involves two drug gangs.  Crystal's older brother leads one, Ángelo's cousin is in the other.  The rest of the cast is filled-out with friends, relatives and neighbors of both.

Interestingly enough, while there are mothers, Godmothers and aunts of the teens in the story, with the exception of a male director of a drama club to which Crystal belongs, there's not a single adult male in the story at all, let alone one who could serve as a positive role model.   So unlike in Romeo and Juliet where there were at least "patriarchs" of the Montagues and Capulets, in this film the leaders of both gangs were teens or young 20-somethings themselves with their mothers and tias (aunts) hating them for what they've chosen to do with their lives.

Does the story glorify gangs?  This is not an idle question for me as in my "day job" I've done three gang funerals over the years (all of them memorable, none of them "in a good way"...).  My answer here would be no.  The story does not glorify the gangs, as it's hard to imagine how anyone seeing the play or movie to feel that it ended in any way resembling "well."

WHAT I THINK WAS VERY WELL DONE HOWEVER IN THE SCRIPT/PRODUCTION was a point that is often missed in the reporting on gang tragedies: No matter how otherwise Evil or misguided a gangster may otherwise have become, THERE ARE ALWAYS (REAL/SERIOUS) PEOPLE WHO LOVE(D) THAT GANGSTER AND (REAL/SERIOUS) PEOPLE THAT THE GANGSTER LOVED AS WELL.  And I'm not talking here about "homeys" who are enablers / in the same boat as the gangster and don't necessarily deserve much sympathy/consideration, I'm talking about (serious) others: Crystal's gangster older brother, as utterly unsympathetic a character as he'd become still loved his little brother (and his little brother still loved/looked-up to him).  I've seen that with my own eyes.  I've also seen relatives sincerely weeping over the corpses of their dead (and up-until death) gang-banging children. 

As such the story offers much to all to think about and both the film and the stage play would probably be worth a look by youth ministers in specifically Latino (the film's in Spanish with English subtitles) gang-troubled neighborhoods both in the U.S. and beyond.  But returning to my original premise, the talent present in this film is really quite remarkable and deserves a look by those looking for Hispanic faces and voices across the film industry.


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

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Insurgents (orig. Insurgentes) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

Official website*

CinemasCine.net (S. Morales) review*
NoticiasDesdeBolivia review*

Insurgents (orig. Insurgentes) [2013] (written and directed by Jorge Sanjinés) is a Bolivian docudrama that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  Jumping backwards and forwards in time across centuries, it chronicles the battle of Bolivia's indigenous peoples (the majority) for dignity and respect in their own country up until the recent election of Evo Morales the first President of Bolivia to come from the country's indigenous (Aymara) population.

This intentionally non-linear  approach actually helps the viewer appreciate how attitudes and circumstances both change (and don't ...) across time.  For instance, near the beginning of the film there's a scene in which the idle rich of Bolivia of the colonial period discuss the then philosophical trends in Europe, with one noting that all the major philosophers of Europe have considered the indigenous populations the Americas to be less-than-human and that Immanuel Kant even declared them "destined for extinction."  Near the end of the film, the idle rich of Bolivia today, sit sipping drinks at a country club at a golf course, sharing notes on the relative virtues of German and Japanese engineering, the only difference being that their conversation is interrupted by the televised inaugural address of Evo Morales.  Presumably things will now be changing ...

Yet the centuries long struggle has not proven to be easy.  Whether by means of insurrection/war for independence -- indigenous leaders Túpac Kateri (played in the film by Froilán Paucara) and his wife Bartonina Sisa (played in the film by Mónica Bustillos) organized an army of indigenous peasants that laid a months long siege to Bolivia's capital La Paz decades before Bolivia won its independence (an independence of a "different kind" as its Declaration was not signed by a single person from the indigenous peoples) -- or by utterly peaceful means -- Santos Marka Tula (played in the film by Primitivo Gonzales) who was murdered for simply seeking to build schools in indigenous areas -- the cards were stacked against the indigenous peoples by the European descended Criolos who simply considered themselves racially superior to their indigenous neighbors.

Indeed, it was noted in the film that actually under Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish RESPECTED the concept of "community owned" indigenous lands.  AFTER "INDEPENDENCE" ownership of these communal lands was transferred over to INDIVIDUAL, usually already rich CRIOLO (white), owners.

This "land grabbing" in guise of "fighting for independence" is, of course, not unique to Bolivia.  Nor was white settler opposition to the construction of schools for indigenous communities.  What happened to the indigenous lands in Bolivia also happened to the lands of the Franciscan Missions in California following Mexico's independence.  Again, while the lands were run at the top by the Franciscan Friars, the lands of the Franciscan Missions in California were actually run communally with the indigenous peoples who lived there.  After Mexico won independence, these lands were stripped from the Franciscans (and the indigenous people who lived there) and handed over to already rich, usually European descended "white folk" from Mexico.  Then a good part of the first decades of my own religious order's, the Servites', mission in KwaZulu (Zululand) in South Africa was the building of then clandestine schools in opposition to the demands of the Apartheid government of the time, which wanted us there to "baptize" the Zulu people but certainly _not_ to educate them.  (So in defiance of the Apartheid regime we built our schools there clandestinely ...).
 In any case the injustices visited upon the indigenous MAJORITY of Bolivia over the centuries resulted in the recurrence of unrest and insurrections against the status quo up through to the election of Morales.

Will things improve?  Time will tell.  However, at least for this time, for the first time since the arrival of the Spaniards in the 1500s, an indigenous Aymara is actually the President of his own country.  And to most people that would be cause for celebration.

How then is the film?  ;-)  It's made in a docudrama format, hence with narration and actors dressed in period clothes dramatizing the various scenes described.  The sets, mostly outdoors, and costuming are of top quality.  Indeed, most viewers would certainly appreciate the beauty and color existent in the indigenous cultures of Bolivia and honestly come to lament the poverty caused to all involved by the ideology of racism that refused to allow the white Criolos to appreciate the cultural richness and beauty of the indigenous people with whom, like it or not, they shared their lives.

A beautiful and thought provoking film!


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

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Honeymoon (orig. Líbánky) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  iDnes (3 of 5 Stars)  Fr. Dennis-Zdenek (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD listing*
FDB.cz listing*

HollywoodReporter (B. van Hoeij) review

iDnes.cz (M. M. Spáčilová) review*
actualne.cz (J. Gregor) review*

Honeymoon (orig. Líbánky) [2013] [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]* (directed by Jan Hřebejk [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*, screenplay by Petr Jarchovský [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) is an award-winning/critically acclaimed Czech film that closed the 17th Annual European Union Film Festival held recently here at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

The film takes place in the context of a lovely wedding and reception of a quite well-to-do mid-thirty-something couple, Radim (played by Stanislav Majer [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) and Teresa (played by Aňa Geislerová [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*).  Since they're both in their thirties, we can expect that both would have their stories.  We learn early that Radim has a thirteen year-old son (played by Matěj Zikán [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) from a previous relationship.  We find out also that Teresa had been married before as well.  And as the lovely Church wedding ends -- viewers get to hear the famous passage from 1 Corinthians about love "Love is patient, love is kind, ... love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things ... love never fails.  In the end these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love and the greatest of these is Love." (1 Cor 13:1-13) proclaimed in Czech (w. English subtitles) -- we see that Teresa is sporting a small baby bump... so the couple already has had its share of "stories" big and small.

However, none of this compares to what follows at the reception: An odd late-twenties, early-thirty-something man, who eventually introduces himself as "Benda" (played by Jiří Černý [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) who the wedding party had already encountered hovering about the church at the time of the wedding, shows-up at the wedding reception and inserts, asserts himself quite confidently as if he naturally belongs there.  Who is he?  Well, when the bride tired of his presence (and seeing that no one was doing anything to get rid of him) asks him "Who are you?" he answers "Ask the groom."

Okay, the banal scenario of today would be that Benda would have had some sort of a (necessarily gay) relationship with Radim.  But that's not (really) the case here.  The story is far, far more complicated than that.  And by the end of the story, it makes sense that Aleš ("Benda's" real name) was there.

I'm not going to say more about this film because I do believe that this film is good enough to be picked up and shown in the "art house" circuit here in the U.S.  In her introductory remarks, the Czech Counsel General present at the screening of this film -- again the film closed the 17th Annual European Union Film Festival here in Chicago -- compared the works of the director Jan Hřebejk [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]* to Woody Allen both in terms of content and in terms of productivity (both produce thought provoking films on a year-in, year-out basis).  I think the comparison is very good.  No this is NOT a "funny film" BUT it is A LOT like Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors [1989] and especially Match Point [2005].   And I would also compare it to the excellent African-American film Repentance [2014] presently in the cinemas as well, as both films are about the need to come to terms with things, painful things that happened in the past.


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

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Captain America: The Winter Soldier [2014] (directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, story and concept by Ed Brubaker, based on the comic book by Joe Simon [IMDb] and  Jack Kirby [IMDb]) continues a fascinating reflection on "America Now and Then" through the character of Marvel Comics' Steve Rogers / "Captain America" (played by Chris Evans).

The story of Steve Rogers / "Captain America" was that he was a sickly American teenager desperate to be able to enroll in the Army to do his part to fight for the United States against the Nazis.  Like MANY younger American teens of that time, he LIED ABOUT HIS AGE (he was actually too young to serve).  Then even as he was really physically unfit to serve in the military, he tried SO HARD that it was difficult for those responsible for basic training to cut him.  His simultaneous enthusiasm and physical inability to deliver caught the eye of the Army brass and he recruited for a WW II-era American "secret weapons" program aimed at creating "super soldiers."  He entered the program, was injected with a "super soldier serum" and became (physically) a totally different man than he was before.

Steve Rogers / "Captain America" was then deployed to Europe to participate in all kinds of "secret missions" including a battle between United States aligned forces, which after the war comes to be called S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement and Logistic Division), basically a "Marvel CIA" and a Nazi aligned enemy force called HYDRA (why?  "cut off one head and two grows in its place") bent on world domination in one way or another and by any means necessary.

The battle between S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA is perfect for a comic book universe because it takes place almost entirely "in the shadows" and involves all kinds of super-heroes and super-villains all with super-powers.  This legendary battle in the shadows gains currency in the public imagination (in the collective subconscious...) BECAUSE both the United States and Nazi Germany REALLY DID HAVE "SECRET WEAPONS PROGRAMS." The United States had the Manhattan Project and Nazi Germany had rocketry, aeronautics, bio-weapons and really all kinds of borderline unbelievable "out of the box" projects (an excellent book on the matter of Germany's Wunderwaffen programs was British Aerospace journalist Nick Cook's book The Hunt For Zero Point about Nazi Germany's "anti-gravity," that is, I'm NOT kidding, flying saucer program).  Then after WW II the United States REALLY DID SECRETLY RECRUIT all kinds of former Nazi scientists and engineers to work for the U.S. under "Project Paperclip" (The Soviets were actually far less subtle.  Those Nazi scientists that they captured were simply deported back to the Soviet Union and compelled to work for the Communists).

SINCE SO MUCH OF THE ACTUAL STORY (Manhattan, Paperclip) was kept secret FOR DECADES, this secrecy offered a perfect setting for these kind of fantastic super-hero, super-villain, super-power, super-weapons stories.  Other recent treatments of this subject, often taking on the style of classic late-1940s film noir (with always "an unspeakable secret" at its heart) have included Steven Soderbergh's The Good German 2006] (about the U.S. recruitment of Nazi V-2 scientists and engineers after the war) and Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island [2010] (a fictionalized story inspired by an actual U.S. bioweapons research facility on Plum Island off the coast of Long Island, NY said to have housed former Nazi bio-weapons scientists brought into the U.S. via Project Paperclip after the war.  Among the conspiracies linked to that facility has been the origin of lyme disease as the first recorded outbreak of this tick-borne disease occurred in Lyme, CT across Long Island Sound from Plum Island, and the Nazis had apparently researched using ticks as "delivery devices" for diseases). 

Alright then, this shadowy world of "super-weapon" research becomes perfect fodder for super-hero / super-villain stories.  The coup-de-grace in the case of Steve Rogers / Captain America's back-story is that "after the War, he goes down in an airplane somewhere over the Arctic.  However, since he had been injected with that "super-soldier serum" he was no longer really human (rather super-human) and so he DOES NOT DIE.  Instead, he is merely _frozen_.  Decades later, the crash site of his plane is found and his body recovered and DEFROSTED whereupon he re-awakes IN OUR TIME.

So Steve Rogers / Captain America is conceived as a 1940s era Superhero who was "Frozen in Time" only to reawaken in OURS.  So much of the humor (and insight) involved in his story involves exploring the differences between "his time" (the 1940s) and ours (today).  We got a taste of this in the truly hilarious (and again, insightful...) dialogues in The Avengers [2012] between the boy-scoutish Steve Rogers / Captain America and the far more flamboyant (and sneakier) Tony Stark / Iron Man (played in the current Marvel adventures by Robert Downey Jr), Steve Rogers / Captain America epitomizing the American hero of the 1940s and Tony Stark / Iron Man epitomizing the American hero of today.

The current film Captain America: The Winter Soldier [2014] explores the well-known lament of our time, vis-a-vis the "simpler times" of The Greatest Generation: that "back in the day" we "KNEW who the enemy was," today "it's so much harder."

So, in this post-9/11 world into which the 1940s-era superhero Steve Rogers / Captain America had been thawed, S.H.I.E.L.D. (again sort of a "Superhero CIA / NSA") comes up with a weapons system involving (1) a computer program called INSIGHT which monitoring EVERY ELECTRONIC TRANSACTION/COMMUNICATION of EVERYONE on the planet (hmm... wonder what Eric Snowden would have to add about this story ... ;-)) comes to be able to determine with some accuracy WHO COULD BECOME an ENEMY OF PEACE / ORDER IN THE WORLD and (2) a fleet of TERRIFYING AIRBORNE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS which could project S.H.I.E.L.D.'s power ANYWHERE, the idea being that between the computer program and this awesome fleet of Stark Industries designed "airborne aircraft carriers" S.H.I.E.L.D. could eliminate ALL THE WORLD'S POTENTIAL ENEMIES (20 million of them) in a single WORLD-WIDE preemptive strike and then pick-off new potential enemies (based on their internet history) as they are flagged / discerned.

Wow!  But who exactly controls S.H.I.E.L.D.? Well that's the rest of the story ... ;-)  In past episodes, we had been introduced to Nick Fury (played ever to the hilt by Samuel L. Jackson) who appeared to be a very hands-on head of S.H.I.E.L.D.  But actually, as in the case of the CIA, there's a "civilian commander" here named Alexander Pierce (played in exquisite Washington "who is he?" / "walks between the rain drops" power-broker fashion by Robert Redford).

Anyway, the boy-scoutish Steve Rogers / Captain America is immediately wary of this scheme to simply "take down" potential enemies of Peace.  Yet 'man of the world' Nick Fury tells him that "After New York" (after 9/11? or after the New York "space invasion" story of The Avengers [2012]) there's no room for error.  We must eliminate our enemies before they have a chance to hurt us."

But of course, things start to go wrong, when suddenly Nick Fury himself becomes the target of a heavy-handed/insistent assassination plot.  Who was behind it?  Steve Rogers / Captain America, the Russian born S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanova / Black Widow (played exquisitely as ever by Scarlett Johansson) and Sam Wilson / Falcon (played by Anthony Mackie) conceived here as a "Special Air Services" / Afghan War Vet, spend the rest of the film trying to figure it out.

Perhaps the first clue to problem is that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Washington D.C. area headquarters appears to be located RIGHT ACROSS THE RIVER from the infamous Watergate Hotel ... Again how much more "complicated" things are today than they were "back in the days" of WW II when "we knew who our enemies were ..."

My only complaint here is that the level of even "just glass-breaking" (PG-13 level) violence is SO LARGE that it's hard to imagine how ANYBODY living in the Marvel Movies' universe would NOT BE TRAUMATIZED.  These enormous airborne aircraft carriers presumably with crews of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people CRASH AND BURN ALL OVER THE WASHINGTON D.C. AREA ... At minimum, think of the casualties among the pilots/sailors.  Then that the crashing of these enormous craft would not cause "casualties on the ground" would seems preposterous.  So a definite level of "suspension of disbelief" is needed to watch the film.  Of course, the film is about SUPER-HEROES, with SUPER-POWERS to begin with ... so "suspension of disbelief" comes with the territory.  Yet, I really do think that the level of "glass crashing violence" is so great that if this were to really happen, we'd ALL BE BASKET CASES by the end.  Think of the trauma that 9/11 caused and that was "just two buildings ..."

But there it is.  The violence portrayed in the film is certainly gratuitous.  On the other hand, the film is about a fictionalized world inhabited by super-heroes and super-villains, all with super-powers.  So we should probably keep it in stride.  In any case, the film seems to be reflective of the societal concern that "things are not as simple today as they used to be."

Bottom line, this is a very good "Marvel Comics" / "Superhero" film even if there's an awful lot of "glass breaking" and other PG-13 level ("bloodless") destruction. 

Then, after all this who's "the Winter Soldier" from the film's title?  Well ... the answer lies in part with Steve Rogers / Captain America's back-story ... and beyond that, I'm not going to tell you ;-)


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