The Whistleblower

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 ½ stars) Fr. Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0896872/
Rober Ebert’s Review -
http://www.rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110810/REVIEWS/110819995

The Whistleblower (directed and co-written by Larysa Kondracki, co-written by Eilis Kirwan) is about the true-story of Kathryn Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz) an American policer officer who finding herself in a personal crossroads in her life (divorce, job going nowhere), decided to take lucrative job ($100,000/year tax free) working for DynCorp, a private military contractor, which had been contracted by the United Nations to do peacekeeping work in Bosnia in the years following the genocidal war there. 

She finds herself in a wild-west, almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere where in a testosterone driven haze crimes against women were simply not taken seriously.  Indeed, to her (and progressively to the audience’s horror) it becomes clear that many of the male peacekeepers had become both accomplices and even perpetrators in some of the worst of these crimes. 

Specifically, Bolkovac discovers that a sex-trafficking network had sprung-up in Bosnia, whose primary clientele proved to be the contracted UN peacekeepers themselves.  In a particularly powerful scene operator of a Sarajevo women’s shelter tells Bolkovac of absurdity of the situation: “This is a country where half its men were killed in the war, what possible reason would there be to smuggle women into Bosnia from abroad?”  The pictures on the walls of a seedy club in the hills outside Sarajevo raided by Bolkovac and her group provide an answer – the men frequenting these clubs were almost all wearing UN t-shirts and uniforms.

The rest of the film becomes a real-life de facto thriller: With some protection from the UN equivalent of “internal affairs,” Madeleine Rees (played by Vanessa Redgrave) and Peter Ward (played by David Strathaim), Bolkovac sets out to try to shut down the trafficking ring.  But again, the clients in these places are arguably Bolkovac’s own co-workers. 

This all makes for a nightmare.  However, here Bolkovac’s American “cop on the street” and British BBC  “the truth is the truth” values do come through.  Those U.N. peacekeepers all had “immunity” and could not be prosecuted for what they did while serving in Bosnia.  But at least Bolkovac could document the cases and shame everyone via the BBC (and arguably through this film ...)

The movie ends up being an indictment of the ineffectualness / impotence of the U.N.  Even more so, it's an indictment of the entire “military contractor” model for staffing “peace keeping” or other “policing” operations.  In the past, “military contractors” were called _mercenaries_, and mercenaries didn’t have a good reputation.  Why?  Because mercenaries _aren’t_ in a mission “for peace, honor, justice.”  They’re in it, bottom line,  _for the money_.

Bolkovac herself took the job of working as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia through the contractor DynCorp in good part because of the money ($100,000 tax free/year).   The U.N. _is supposed to be_ an agency of “boy scouts.”  Instead, its services were being contracted out to modern-day mercenary groups which historically have had an ethic of “the dogs of war.”  Add to that the promise of _U.N. immunity_ ... and no wonder that these “contractors” in “U.N. blues” were soon dealing with essentially the Russian mob trafficking in young women from Russia, the Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe. 

This is a tough movie to watch, but hopefully it will help us to understand the need to make sure that _everyone_ is under _some_ jurisdiction and law.

ADDENDUM -

For more about this particular case and other famous whistle-blowers' stories made into film try:

BBC - Correspondent - June 14, 2002 - 'Boys will be Boys'

           Women's Hour - Aug 6, 2002 - UN Whistleblower

PRI The World - June 16, 2011 - The Whistleblower: Military contractors, human rights and sex trafficking

New York Times - July 28, 2011 - Exposing Injustices, the Real-Life Kind


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The Future

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

The Future (written, directed and co-staring Miranda July) is an excellent, simple independent film about an utterly average young adult couple Sophie (played by Miranda July) and Jason (played by Hamish Linklater) living somewhere in an utterly non-descript apartment somewhere in or around Los Angeles. 

At the beginning of the movie, the two had found a stray cat with a wounded front paw.  They took it to an animal shelter where a cast is put on the paw, but the are told by the animal shelter that rather than adopting it immediately and taking it home, they must leave the cat at the shelter for 30 days so that the paw would heal and that the animal shelter could treat the cat for other possible/probable diseases that it could be carrying. 

So for the first time in apparently a long time, the two Jason and Sophie have a goal: preparing their home for the coming of a pet cat 30 days hence.  This sends them off on a truly _remarkable_ set of reflections on the meaning of time, the future and consequences of one’s actions (in time).

I do not want to ruin these reflections who wishes to see the film, but I do want to give an example:

In the course of the month that follows, the two find themselves at a point of possibly breaking up (after 4 years of being together).  It’s in the middle of the night, a little after three in the morning.  Sophie, who can’t sleep, wakes Jason up telling him that she has something she has to tell him.  He quickly discerns from her tone and bodylanguage, what she’s going to say, and desperately wants to "stop time" before she says it.  So he does ... stop time.  He touches her head with his outstretched arm and stops her and the entire world in its tracks.  There’s just him on his knees with his outstretched hand, her frozen motionless on her knees facing him and the moon shining through the window into their apartment. 

After some time, the moon starts talking to Jason: “Your arm’s going to get tired.  Eventually you’re going to have to put it down.”  The moon is right.  Jason’s arm is getting tired, so he quickly switches his arms. “Okay, you bought yourself a little more time, but eventually both your arms are going to get tired and you're going to have to put them down.   Now according to the clock, it’s 3:14 AM, why do you want to stop time at this moment forever?”
    “Because if I put my arm down, I know what will happen at 3:15 AM.”
    “But maybe it won’t happen.”
    “But it will.”
So Jason keeps time “frozen” at that moment, 3:14 AM, on that day for a _long, long time_, because he simply can’t bear what is coming at 3:15.  There are about 5-6 other situations/reflections like this one in the film.

Appropriately rated, it's actually a "weak R" (fleeting back-side female nudity at one point).  Still the young couple is living together presumably without being married and cheating/possible adultery is contemplated/pursued.  More to the point, pre-teens wouldn't get this movie and a high schooler would probably get a bad example from the young adult couple's largely boring if unmarried living arrangement.  

But I would definitely recommend it TO YOUNG ADULTS and really to _any adult_ who’s ever loved a good story or parable, or who’s ever spent some time over the years _awake_ wondering, honestly, “what’s it all about?”

To close, I’d like to offer two other suggestions for reflection that I believe carry a similar sentiment as that expressed in the film.  The first is a song from my young adult years, Supertramp’s Logical Song.     The second is a famous Biblical story about Jacob, who fearing what will come at daybreak finds himself wrestling all night with an unknown stranger in the desert. At the end of the night, Jacob receives a new and (what turns out to be) very important name (Genesis 32).

And as an addendum, come Oscar season this winter, I'd like to see The Future along with another indie-film Another Earth, get consideration for "best original screenplay" nominations and perhaps (one or the other, but more so _this one_ than the other) consideration for "best picture."  Yes, I do believe that both films are that good.


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Our Idiot Brother

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (2 ½  stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637706/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv099.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110824/REVIEWS/110829993

Our Idiot Bother (directed by Jesse Peretz, written by David Schisgall and Yvgenia Peretz) is an adult family slacker comedy that presents something of a challenge to a blog like this.  About four adult children -- three sisters and their (“idiot”) brother – the four were clearly raised in the “church of self-actualization,” none of them has grown up to be particularly successful and none of them, except possibly their (“idiot”) brother, finds themselves particularly happy.  From a Catholic Church teaching perspective, all four have led more or less obviously dissolute lives, hence the CNS/USCCB’s more or less inevitable “O” (morally offensive) rating, signaling (in this case perhaps pleading) to viewers “_please_ don’t not end-up like this.” 

In thinking about this movie, and wondering how the heck to write a review about it to fit my blog, it occurred to me that many RCIA directors (catechists working with those who’d like to join the Catholic Church) or even those who’d like to join the Church, may appreciate this movie because it has been my experience that many of those who come wanting to join the Church come from backgrounds like the four siblings in this movie. 

What do I mean?  We live in a time of great freedom, but that freedom can be experienced as chaos and disappointment.   And I’ve certainly had the experience of people sincerely coming to RCIA with the request: “Please just give me 'the Rules.'  I grew-up in a home where there were _no rules_.  There was no dad (or my mom _made sure_ I’d never really know him or anyone from his family), and she herself was a mess.  There was a ‘new uncle’ in our house every couple of months while I still lived at home and ever since then I’ve been drifting ALL OVER THE PLACE.  So for the Love of God, PLEASE help me.”  And as slow as the RCIA process may seem at times, we try, and hopefully give people a Rock on which they can build (or re-build) their lives.

Indeed, a surprising/deceptive pitfall of “self actualization” is that we may actually _fail_ at _precisely_ what we wish to achieve in life.  So in modern speak (and in language actually used by one of the characters in the film) if we base our self esteem on succeeding in a particular aspect of life (or in traditional Biblical-speak where we may "make an idol” of that particular aspect of our lives) and then _fail_ in that aspect of life what then? 

And all four of the siblings in this movie find themselves staring at _failure_ in the aspects of their lives that they’ve chosen to make most important to them.  Miranda (played by Elizabeth Banks) placed her self-esteem in success at work (as a journalist for ‘Vanity Fair’), Liz (played by Emily Mortimer) in marriage and family, and Natalie (played by Zooey Deschandel) in being an “artsy lesbian.”  And all three of them failed.  Miranda finds herself being eaten alive in the dog-eat-dog competitiveness of life at the magazine.  Liz’ “independent film producer” husband (played by Steve Coogan) proves to be a real a-hole, and even ditsy/artsy Natalie screws-up at being a lesbian (yes, that proves possible) breaking the heart of her lover Cindy (played by Rashida Jones) who tearfully/angrily tells Natalie at one point "I can give you absolutely everything, EXCEPT ..."

Staring at failure in precisely the aspects of their lives that each chose to make most important, all three sisters come to “take comfort” in “at least” _looking down_ on their nice but simple mother Ilene (played by Shirley Knight) and their “idiot” brother Ned (played by Paul Rudd) a stoner “organic foods” producer who was just getting out of jail at the beginning of the movie after being busted at a Farmer’s Market by a _uniformed cop_ to whom he was flagrantly entrapped into selling a small amount of marijuana (yes, Ned was that trusting/stupid...). 

Much painful humor ensues (at the various characters’ expense...) as the audience is treated to possibly the most dysfunctional family presented in American film since the release of the film Little Miss Sunshine (2006). 

Is there value to such a movie?  I suppose yes.  But hopefully part of that value could be to come to appreciate that our value really _doesn’t come_ from the precariousness of “success” in this world (in whatever aspect we choose try to succeed in) or in “at least being better” (“smarter”, “more together”, etc) than “others” whose lives seem even more messed-up than ours, but we come to see our value comes from our being (_all_ of us) loved by God _despite_ our many, many painful screw-ups and disappointments.

In the rite that the Catholic Church uses for the blessing of homes and of families, the Gospel Reading used is the one in which Jesus talks of “building one’s house on rock” (Mt 7:24-27)  After the Reading, I always say that I can give the “shortest homily in the world” here by simply reiterating Jesus' plea to “build one’s life on Rock.”  I say that sure, it’s possible to live one’s life _without Jesus_.  The experience of the friends and families that surround us, tells us that this is true.  HOWEVER, it's _just so much easier_ to go through life with Jesus/God at our side.

In this movie, the _one thing_ that proves most important to Ned in the chaos of his life is his dog “Willy Nelson.”  And his surprisingly meanspirited/vindictive, organic farming ex-girlfriend Janet (played by Kathryn Hahn) tries to keep the dog away from him.

But as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “no one can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39).  No one.  So the rest, objects, people, pets, success or failure _in anything else_ doesn’t really for matter much after all.

And that's perhaps something to remember as one watches this film and watches each of the characters struggle with "screwing up" in exactly the areas of life that they hoped so much to succeed in.


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Colombiana

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L) Fr Dennis (2 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1657507

CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv100.htm

To begin my review of Colombiana (directed by Oliver Megaton, written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen), I would like to note that millions of good, church-going Hispanic families will probably object to this film.  And I believe that this objection _coming from them_ is _salutary_ and something that it behooves Hollywood to take notice of, since counting even the Protestant Hispanic families today a full half of Catholic families in the United States are Hispanic and Catholics make up 25-30% of the population.  This is certainly not a negligible market share in the United States.

And I make this initial point because I remember _well_ that at my assignment at a predominantly Caribbean Hispanic parish in Kissimmee, FL between 2000-2003, I got an earful from a fair number of families when I asked why is it seemed that as modern so many of the families were (flat screen TVs along with digital cable and all the Latino channels in the living room, a nice computer in a public area for the kids for school), almost _none_ of the families seemed to _ever_ go to the movies. 

The response that I got was said kindly but without the blinking of an eye: “Why should we go?  Almost none of the characters in the films ever look like us. And even when they do, they are almost always portrayed as bad people, drug dealers and prostitutes.  We go to Mass _precisely_ so that our kids don’t grow-up that way.  Their abuelas and tias are praying for them everyday so that they choose well in life.  So why should we expose them to such garbage?” 

Ever since that exchange (and also having spent a good amount of my time while stationed in Florida working with the young adults of my parish), I’ve been certainly paid attention to how both blacks and Hispanics are portrayed in films.  And those reading my blog will note that I’ve regularly brought-up questions of how people of different ethnicies/races are portrayed in my reviews and also noted the disconnect that Hollywood often has in their portrayal of various ethnicities and how members of those ethnicities actually live.  I’ve noted before, but feel that it is perhaps valuable to note here again that African Americans are the most Church-going group in the United States, and I do believe that one will simply _never_ understand Hispanics (and the _varieties_ of Hispanics) in the United States without understanding that _millions of them_ are at Mass/Church every Sunday and even during the week the primary social life for millions of Hispanics (men and women, young and old) is to be found in involvement in all kinds of prayer, rosary and charismatic groups meeting in countless homes and churches across the country.  Add other ethnicities like the Filipinos and Vietnamese and the same will be true there as well.  Faith/Church is _not_ a sideshow to any of these communities.

So what then to make of a movie named Colombiana featuring a young dark-skinned Latina named Cataleya (played by Zoe Saldana) portrayed once again as a perpetually scantily dressed, if resourceful, and certainly athletic heroine who exacts her revenge for the deaths of her parents (played by Jesse Borrego and Cynthia Addai-Robinson) by methodically killing, one by one, the drug-dealing Colombian (Latino) bad guys who killed them?  Is that not exactly the kind of movie that would repulse the Church going Hispanics that I referred to above?  Probably, and honestly laudably.  There is no reason for a young Hispanic child to see this movie.  Honestly, take them to Spy-Kids IV instead.

But there are other features of this movie that make it interesting or challenging to those outside the Hispanic community (including movie critics).

It should be noted that both the director and the two writers of this film were _also_ associated with the Liam Neeson revenge fantasy Taken as well as the violent Euro-criminal Transporter film series.  So this film simply sets a formula that the three have found successful in both East and West European settings to the world and intrigues of the Colombian drug wars.  [It is presented, as an aside, for instance, that the drug lord, Don Luis (played by Beto Benites) at the top of the cartel that Cataleya is trying to bring down, one assasination at a time, was being protected by the CIA presumably for his assistance in helping combat leftist guerrillas (FARC) in Colombia...]

One _can_ further say that Zoe Saldana’s Cataleya is basically a Latina version of Liam Neeson’s Brian Mills of Taken.  There are also similarities in Zoe Saldana’s character to the Nikita character in the La Femme Nikita movie and series and even to Catherine Zeta Jones’ character in the thriller Entrapment (in which Jones co-starred with Sean Connery).  There are even a few references to Xena the Warrior Princess, who Cataleya as a child (played by Amandla Stemberg) is portrayed as having looked-up to.  So Saldana comes to play a very sexy, slippery and capable assassin striking by the end of the film absolute dread into the heart of Marco (played by Jordi Mollá) the man most immediately responsible for the deaths of Cataleya’s parents  And if Catherine Zeta Jones can bend and wind her way through a maze of motion detecting laser beams in order to steal an object of great value, why shouldn’t Zoe Saldana be allowed to perform similar feats of acrobatics as she slithers her way through the ventilation ducts of a Los Angeles police station to assassinate one of her parents’ killers being held here?

So then why did so many critics choose not to review _this_ movie?  Why boycott this movie but not Neeson’s Taken which was equally violent?  In Taken, Neeson played a white, Anglo, male assassin wreaking vengeance on the abductors of his daughter in Paris.  In Colombiana, Saldana plays a dark-skinned Latina who grows-up to wreak vengeance on the Colombian drug-dealing killers of her parents.

I guess in the end, while I do understand the concerns of the Hispanic families about how Hispanics are portrayed in film, I don’t understand the inconsistency of the white reviewers who don’t seem to mind seeing films involving assassins who are white, played recently not just by Liam Neeson (Taken, Unknown), but also by George Clooney (The American), Jason Statham (The Mechanic, The Transporter movies) and Nicholas Cage (Bangkok Dangerous), and even movies involving assassins who are white and female (The Femme Nikita movies, series, the movie actually written by Luc Besson, the same writer as this movie) but set-aside this movie when the revenging assassin is "of a darker shade."

Bottom line, this movie is definitely _not for kids_.  On the other hand, I don’t see it as necessarily bad to have an occasional movie in which people of color are shown as kicking butt. Or else we should be consistent and reject all such movies and with _equal_ ferocity.

And even then, one ought to be careful, because even the Bible is often very violent.  I remember _to this day_ a challenge that I was given when I was in grad school when I was defending a non-violent St Francis approach to Christianity when a classmate of mine responded “Oh come on, the Book of Revelation is as ‘non-violent’ as a napalm strike.”  Symbolic as the Book of Revelation ought to be understood, that former classmate of mine had a point. 

And there may be times in our lives when we may have really been hurt, when, while understanding _certainly_ that “vengeance” belongs to Lord (it’s _not_ our job, but God’s), we may nevertheless appreciate the Psalmist’s cry: “Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a serpent stopping its ears ... O God, smash their teeth in their mouths, break the fangs of these lions, O Lord” (Psalm 58:5, 7).  So the temptation to violence, while something to be always (and _consistently_) opposed in Christianity, does not come to us without a context.  And if we oppose violence we ought to first appreciate the contexts in which the impulse arises and then oppose the impulse consistently.  Finally, when we find ourselves not doing so consistently, we ought to ask ourselves: why?


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The Interrupters

MPAA (Unrated) Roger Ebert (4 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319744/
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110810/REVIEWS/110819999

The Interrupters (directed by Steve James) is a documentary which follows a Chicago-based gang intervention group called Ceasefire and its interrupters, which began as a project of Epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, M.D. of the University of Illinois, Chicago.  Though he had spent much of his career combating infectious disease in East Africa, he came to see inner-city violence in terms of an infectious disease / public health model.  From this model came his approach of assembling a group “interrupters” composed of _former gang members_ who had all served serious time in prison for serious crimes, who would be specifically trained to intervene in situations of incipient gang or street violence to deescalate the situations and talk the people down from acting out their rage.  They would maintain a presence in neighborhoods at risk and establish rapport and friendships with youth at risk, etc.

The model is as yet not a silver bullet, but it does help.  It does have its element of controversy as it does use former convicts.  Nevertheless, these former convicted gang members do have _immediate street credibility_ with current gang members at risk of getting in trouble themselves and it offers these former convicted gang members an opportunity at redemption.

Indeed, the movie presents many examples of such redemption and reconciliation.  One particularly striking example was of a young man who had served several years in prison for the armed hold-up of beauty solon, came along with several members of “the Interrupters” back to the beauty salon that he had held-up at gun point to apologize to the owner.  He got an earful from her as she described to him in detail what it was like to be at the other end of his gun and not knowing whether she, her children, co-workers and patrons were going to live through the morning that he held-up her shop.  Still by the end of the encounter, she forgave him and thanked him for having the courage to come back.  And there several other such encounters in the film. 

Another example was of a man, now serving as an Interrupter who had served 14 years in jail for having killed another person in a gang shooting.  (Apparently he was a minor at the time in which he killed the other person).  He now spends his days helping to keep others from killing on the street.  In one segment of the documentary, the camera crew followed him on the anniversary of the day that he killed the other person as he performed various deeds of kindness for various random people that he met on that day.  He explained that he tries to do this each year on that day to partly expiate for his past sin. 

Yes, one could be left with the nagging question “Is that enough?”  And one _may_, in fact, (as I did) leave the film with the question of whether _the whole project_ of using former serious felons for such peaceable roles is completely right.  After all, these were former criminals, who yes, were now doing something definitely positive with their pasts.  Still, they did _hurt_ people (or even killed people) in the past.  STILL ALL RELIGION and ESPECIALLY Christianity and then ESPECIALLY Catholicism is PRECISELY ABOUT FORGIVENESS/REDEMPTION.

So if one feels _a little uneasy_ watching the film, and wondering if this is completely on the level, I _do_ believe that this would be somewhat natural.  On the other hand, bottom line, as CHRISTIANS and again as ESPECIALLY CATHOLICS we do believe _in the forgiveness of sins_ (Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed). And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church we are reminded (#983): There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive.  “There is no one, however wicked or guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provide his prepentance is honest” (Roman Catechism I,11,5). Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgivenss should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin (cf Mt. 18:21-22).  So watching this film and believing in both the possibility of redemption and even believing that the contributions of those who had previously “messed up” may, in fact, _be necessary_ to redeem or rebuild the world (or at least a neighborhood) to what it should be _becomes an act of faith_.

Finally, many viewers will be surprised (and perhaps, again, challenged) to see one of the main Interrupters followed in this movie to be a _young muslim woman_ named Amina.  Her father had been a notorious black gangster in Chicago.  She herself led a rather dissolute life when she was young as a party girl, ending up serving time for drug dealing.  But she changed.  She converted to Islam, married an Imam and is now spending her days talking young people down from violence (How's that an inversion of the image of Islam from that of Al Queda / Osama bin Laden?).  And as we watch her do it, most of us will understand why she is so successful: She sounds “just like one of us” (an American living in the inner city) and yet she also speaks out of experience of having made bad/violent choices in the past.  I commented after seeing the movie that as a result of this movie, Amina may become the most famous young muslim woman in America.  And given her peaceable example, I don’t think that this would be a bad thing.

Again, this movie challenges one _in all kinds of ways_ (often surprising) and us to be open to reconciliation and with everyone.

Finally, it appears that Steve James and the other makers of The Interrupters are not particularly interested widely available for theater release (though the critical acclaim that it has received, we'll be hearing about it come Oscars time).  Instead, the makers of the film are hoping to make the movie available for classroom and other small group discussion settings.

In that regard, parents should note that there isn't much graphic violence shown, though sometimes the language is definitely bad (of the street) and some of the stories told by the interrupters themselves of their former lives are at times somewhat lurid.  So the movie isn't for little kids (As often is the case with such films, they probably wouldn't understand it anyway).  However older preteens and certainly teenagers would certainly benefit from viewing the film and certainly in a classroom/discussion setting.


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Fright Night

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1438176/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv096.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110817/REVIEWS/110819985

Fright Night (directed by Craig Gillespie, screenplay by Marti Noxon, original story/1985 film by Tom Holland) does not aim to be a profound movie.  Instead it aims to be a “b-movie” for an American teenage audience.  And with that audience in mind it hits its mark reasonably well.  Interestingly, it did get an R-rating, even though there was no nudity in the film though plenty of sexual banter and some gore (enough to understand why the CNS/USCCB gave it a “O” (morally offensive) rating).

Still, a movie is generally more than any particular aspect of it, and this is often especially true of b-movies and even b-horror movies.  For instance, according to Steven King, an undisputed master of this genre, part of what makes a good horror movie is its _context_.  And in the case of this movie, the setup is _outstanding_:

The movie is set in a _completely artificial_, tiny (only a few blocks _square_) suburban subdivision on the outskirts of Las Vegas.  In fact as seen from a screen shot filmed from the air, once one gets out of the few square blocks of “suburbia” one’s _in complete desert_ for about a mile or so before reaching next _completely artificial_, (only a few blocks square) subdivision.  And so it goes...

Now Las Vegas has _long_ been famous _architecturally_ for epitomizing some of the crassest trends in American architecture over the last 50-60 years as attested to by the seminal book on postmodern architecture and design entitled Learning from Las Vegas.  This is because in Las Vegas “anything is possible” because truly _nothing_ was there before except for a bunch of dirt, tumble weeds and cactuses.  So if one wants to build a “vision of Paris,” “New York,” or even “Venice” (_gondolas_ and all, _in a desert_ ... ) it’s possible.  And if after a while, a hotel concept “no longer works,” one can famously demolish it and build something else in its stead. 

However, the people who work in a casino, say the Luxor (shaped liked the Great Pyramid at Giza) still have to live somewhere.  And people want to live “nice.”  So while desert it may be, mixed perhaps with nuclear fallout from the nearby Nevada Test Site, tumble weeds, rattle snakes, and secret bases (Area-51) and now others remote-control flying drones over Afghanistan, why not?  Let’s build a subdivision in the middle of this buzzing “middle of nowhere” that looks like suburban Ohio.  And so it is.

Now in recent years, with the housing crash, Nevada along with Florida and Arizona have been the hardest hit with foreclosures and “underwater mortgages.”  So this tiny, square subdivision in the desert outside of Las Vegas seems even “ghostlier” even more of a mirage than before.

Then of course, there’s Las Vegas’ “Sin City” reputation (certainly not lost on Stephen King in his American apocalypse, The Stand) along with its “city that never sleeps” reputation, and honestly, what a fit!  Can one think of _a better place_ to set a contemporary vampire movie in the U.S.A. than in Vegas?  Indeed, arguably it’s been the casinos and the banks that have been the “grim reapers” and “blood sucking vampires” of our time.  So this is then where Fright Night is set...

To the story: High school student Charlie Brewster (played by Anton Yelchin) somewhat embarrassed about his “nerdy” past, lives in said suburban subdivision at the edge of the desert outside Las Vegas with his mother, Jane Brewster (played by Toni Collette).  Jane is a real estate broker and in the opening scene she’s piling “For Sale” signs, each held-up with a rather large stake, into her car.  Jane expresses concern about their new neighbor, who’s been living in the house next door but never seems to be around.  All that one sees of him is a big dumpster on his drive way, which doesn’t look attractive and in Jane’s view only lowers real estate values on the street even further.

It’s the beginning of the school year.  Over the summer, Charlie apparently bought himself a used motorcycle but hasn’t figured out how to start it. His hot new girlfriend,  Amy (played by Imogen Poots) drives by with her Volkswagen convertible and a couple of her girlfriends and asks if he’d want a ride.  First, he tries to get his bike started.  Unable to do so, he feels embarrassed, Amy tells him “just get in ...” This also allows Charlie to not have to “skateboard’ his way to school with his former best friend and still nerd, Ed (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse).  There are other guys, Mark (played by Dave Franco) and Ben (played by Reid Ewing) who Charlie’s trying to suck-up to in trying to leave behind his “uncool” past.

It’s ever-nerd, Ed, who voices alarm that Charlie’s new, rarely seen (except when it’s dark...), neighbor may be a vampire.  Charlie, _really_ doesn’t want to “go there” but when Ed disappears, Charlie gets worried.  It turns out that Ed was right. And in a rather sad scene, neighbor Jerry (vampire, played by Colin Farrell), catches Ed spying on him and cornering him, tells him: “I know you’ve been spying on me.  Well, I’ve been spying on you as well.  You’ve been an outcast all your life.  So why don’t you join the other side, and live forever...” Despondant and uable to resist, Ed gets bitten, and there it is.  Now there appear to be at least two vampires, Jerry the neighbor, and now Ed, in the neighborhood unbeknownst to anyone ... yet.

Charlie starts to see things as Ed used to, and, like Ed, _nobody_ in the neighborhood believes him.  Charlie remembers, however, that Ed used to watch a late night television show on Vampires being broadcast out of Las Vegas by “Peter Vincent, Vampire Slayer” (played by David Tennant).  So Charlie goes to seek his help.

Much happens.  It turns out that neighbor Jerry the Vampire had spent his nights excavating a lair under his house and he proceeds to bite / “turn” a good number of Charlie’s friends and neighbors.  It’s up to Charlie to save both his mom and his girl.  Is he able to do it, save them all?  Well, see the film ;-).  And mom’s real estate signs with those stakes on the end do prove rather helpful in the end ... ;-)

Again, Fright Night is not a profound movie.  It does have its cheesiness, some of which the CNS/USCCB rightfully objects to.  But overall it's not a terrible film, and I do believe that the film makers did do a great job in setting the movie in a nameless "ghostly" suburban subdivision at the edge of Las Vegas.  After all, suburbanites are notoriously "transient" and we often no longer know who exactly our neighbors are or what secrets lurk in their basements. ;-)


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One Day

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 ½ Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1563738/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv094.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110817/REVIEWS/110819983

One Day (directed by Lone Scherfig, book and screenplay written by David Nicholls) is an intelligent young adult love story that’s part Brigit Jones' Diary, part Unbearable Lightness of Being and part St. Elmo’s Fire that I do hope is remembered come Oscar time this winter as I do believe it deserves at least consideration for a whole bunch of Academy Awards from Best Film/Director/Adapted Screenplay to Best Actor/Actress in Leading Roles and even Best Actor/Actress in Supporting Roles (the male leading character's parents).

The story begins on college graduation day, July 15, 1988 at the University of Edinburgh.  Emma (played by Anne Hatheway) and Dexter (played by Jim Sturgess) are part of a group celebrating.  As the group begins to break up, since neither seems to find themselves attached to anyone, Emma invites Dexter to come with her to her dorm room/flat.  When they arrive, Emma, not at all self-assured, quietly panics and excuses herself to the bathroom “to brush her teeth.”  In reality, she’s practically gasping for air.  She apparently stays in the bathroom long enough to both regain her own courage and too break the mood.  When she returns, she finds Dexter putting his clothes back on to leave.  She convinces him to stay, but they decide simply to cuddle.  In the course of the gentle but very cautious pillow-talk, Dex tells Emma that the day is St. Swithin's Day, a sort of random Saint’s Day that follows them, year after year, for the rest of film.  Indeed the rest of the movie is about what these two characters are up to on this particular day, July 15th, during the 20 years that follow.

The device is wonderful because it becomes clear fairly quickly that in 1988, college graduates though they may be, _neither_ is really ready for the other.  Emma is still growing into who she becomes, and Dex begins as something of a cad.  The phenomenon chronicled in this film, which has been the bane of both Catholic vocation directors and parents alike, is what has come to be called Emerging Adulthood.  Indeed both of Dex’s parents, Allison (played by Patricia Clarkson) and Steven (played by Ken Scott) were excellent in expressing, in different (if often pointed/poignant) ways their frustrations with Dex’s apparent laziness in growing-up. 

To the movie’s _credit_, the pitfalls of “not growing-up” or “taking one’s time to grow-up” are amply shown in the film:  Both life and tragedy go on for Dex’s parents as he meanders his way through his 20s.  At one point, Dex marries a girlfriend simply because he knocked her up.  A child, Jasmine (played by numerous child actresses during the course of the film) is born, but the marriage ends in divorce.  In the meantime, Emma gets involved with a man from her work who she does not really love ... but is available and around.  When Dex and Emma are finally ready for each other, the biological clock has ticked-away a good part of its course.  

The movie is _honest_ and _often very, very sad_ as we, the audience, see missed opportunity after missed opportunity.  But do we look at our own lives as critically and as closely? 

Parents: There is _some_ passing nudity, but obviously many references to premarital sexual activity.  For that reason alone, many parents would not find it suitable for kids or young teens.  But beyond that, I simply don’t think that someone below college age would find the movie very interesting at all.  However, for the college aged and above, I do believe that the movie would make for an excellent discussion piece among friends and (in a _good and heartfelt way_) _with one’s own parents_.


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