Shark Night

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (O) Fr. Dennis (0 stars, like other movies of this type, it _sort of_ “has a message,” but the message condemns itself)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1633356/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv104.htm

Shark Night (directed by David R. Ellis, cowritten by Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg) is a movie that can be read as a gigantic F-U to “red necks.”  Indeed one of  the buffoonish (when not bigoted) red neck characters goes by the name of Red (played by Joshua Leonard).  What to make of a movie that's so slanted/insulting to an entire group of people?  And what to make of the movie’s taking such pleasure in portraying violence (the videotaping of a whole slew of people at least appearing to be eaten by sharks?)

Well, it has long been noted that slasher movies are rarely kind to “country folk” especially its males.  One thinks of Deliverance (1972), the rape revenge fantasy I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).  

I’ve read an explanation of this phenomenon some years back, in a book by Carol Clover a professor of Film Studies, yes entitled, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Film (1993). (I had read this book while studying another aspect of these films -- that often the person who finally defeats "the monster" is a woman, usually the easily identifiable "good girl" (Virgin) in the movie.  Being from a Marian Order and in Catholicism, Mary (the Ultimate Good Girl) is portrayed as "crushing the head of the snake with [her] heal" (Gen 3:15) in the iconography of the Immaculate Conception and remembering these films from my teenage/young adult years, I found this phenomenon interesting and found it further interesting that someone had actually studied the "final girl" phenomenon, if not linking it in anyway to Mary/Catholicism).

Anyway the author, Carol Clover, noted that Americans, especially American city dwellers have always feared (and grudgingly respected) “the people of the land.” The original “people of the land” in the United States were the “red skins” (Native Americans) who white European-descended Americans so feared that they largely wiped them out.  Those “red skins” were replaced “red necks,” who “more civilized Americans,” living in cities, and with better educations _continue_ to fear, look down upon, but also depend on for survival.  For who raises the food that we eat?  Who slaughters the cows and chickens to bring meat to our tables?  Who fixes our cars when the break down, especially when they breakdown on a deserted road, far from home?  In recent years, frankly, who largely fights our wars?  (And finally who sends them there to fight, kill and die?)   

This fear, grudging respect and _certain_ dependence on the _quite literally marginalized_ country-dwelling Americans by richer, more educated, more connected, city-dwelling folks forms a good part of the sub-text of these stories, Shark Night being no exception.

The other sub-text to this particular story is certainly the polarization that exists in our political system, divided _in good part_, actually, between city and country.  For there are two groups in this movie that come to a clash: 

On the one hand, there is a group of “pampered” and (if their banter is to be believed) sexually promiscuous, but also multiracial/diverse, tolerant, fairly well educated college students represented here as coming from Louisiana’s Tulane University. In the movie, they go on a weekend trip to (finally) visit the (turns out palatial) country home of a classmate, Sara (played by Sara Paxton).  Since this movie is set in Louisiana, this palatial home turns out to be on an island in the bayou.  Note also that since Sara was going to college (to a _private_ university) this indicated also that although Sara’s family was also “from the country’, it had to be somewhat rich, represented by that palatial home, exaggerated perhaps, but in its exaggeration actually making the point.

On the other hand is a group of “red neck” males that Sara grew-up with (and _left behind_) centered around a _former boyfriend_ named Dennis (played by Chris Carmack), who didn’t have the opportunity or resources “to leave the swamp” like Sara did.

Notable are two “insights” in this movie: 

The first is that the richer, more diverse group appears capable if at least superficially (without having to experience the marginalization and hardships...) to appreciate the beauty of “simpler” country-living (smiling, drinking beer, enjoying the fresh air and general tranquility of the water...) and is even capable of reaching out and incorporating the marginalized “red-necks” from the other group “so long as they don’t get too crazy...” (The college students initially trust the country-dwelling rednecks, initiating conversations with them, sharing their beer with them ...) 

The second “insight” is that technology and the internet are reaching everywhere.  So “on their own” those “poor, dumb, red necks” had “come up with a sure-fire plan” to make a whole bunch of money on the internet – selling video of people, preferably young, good looking people _being eaten by sharks_.  (What a hoot! ....) Sure this is really, really _evil_ but given that “shark week” is so popular on cable television ... it ought to finally make them a boatload of money. 

And there you have it...  

The challenge proposed by this film to society (if “society” is willing to watch a movie this and then tries to figured out what it’s trying to say) is to _finally_ figure-out how to welcome/include/incorporate _everyone_ in itself including the marginalized people (“red necks”) of the country before these marginalized people do something so evil on their own trying to catch-up that it destroys (in this case, _literally consumes_) everyone.

Am I reading _way too much_ into this film?  Consider that the plot of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie was about a family that had worked at a slaughterhouse/meat processing plant for generations.  When the plant closed down, the family, which knew only how to slaughter cows (hammer to their foreheads) and cut them up (with chainsaws), started to do that to people.  The idea of these simple, if obviously deeply troubled/resentful, “red necks” in this movie of mounting cameras on sharks, “like the folks filming the penguins did in the March of the Penguins...” and then filming the sharks attacking people, is of the same class of boneheadedness.  And Shark Nigh is of the same (slasher) genre as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was. 

Can one recommend this movie to anyone?  Obviously not to kids.  Then just because a movie can be made, doesn’t mean that it should.  Whatever “message” expressed in this movie, could have _certainly_ been expressed in a less violent way.  Indeed, this movie is but _one notch_ below the boneheaded scheme of those “boneheaded red necks.” Shark Night presents “a simulation” of young people being chewed-up by sharks, not the real thing.  Wow, what a difference.  So yes, this is a movie that perhaps “has a message” but it’s a message that condemns itself.   


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Brighton Rock (2010)

MPAA (unrated) CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (2 ½ Stars) Fr Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233192/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv101.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110824/REVIEWS/110829996

Brighton Rock (screenplay written and directed by Rowan Joffe) is an update of the Graham Greene's 1938 novel by the same name.  A 1947 film version also by the same name with the screenplay having been co-written by Graham Greene had also been previously made.

The current version, sets the movie in 1964 when Brighton near the Cliffs of Dover and other coastal beach communities  in southeastern England had been rocked by nihilistic youth riots between rival gangs of Mods and Rockers, later immortalized in the British rock band, The Who’s, album/musical Quadrophenia.  To some extent, the timeless battle between good and evil, present in the hearts of the characters populating Graham Greene’s novel, now takes place in a town distracted and temporarily consumed by battles between two rival groups of young people arriving from other parts of England both of which could largely care less about questions of “good and evil” and whose divisions coalesced around simply rival Mod and Rocker visions of style.  That in itself becomes an interesting point of reflection.

Current viewers will probably come away appreciating that Graham Greene wrote at a time when the Catholic Church was certainly far more confident (and perhaps more respected) than it is today, and when it was considered possible, indeed _even probable_, that a “bad boy,” in this case in the person of petty but ruthless gangster Pinkie Brown (played by Sam Riley) could really be what he both appeared to be and even what he professed to be, that is, truly Evil.  Compare this to the contemporary Twilight series in which “bad boys” presented as vampires (traditionally _bloodsucking vampires_) are “re-imagined” as having been “misunderstood.”

Indeed, it might not be bad for any family in which their teenage daughter is dating a gang-banger or thug, to have her watch this film.

I say this because in this tale, thirty-one year old petty gangster Pinkie (the name more of a loser than a truly strong guy) begins to hit-on and eventually marries seventeen-year-old (a minor) Rose (played by Andrea Riseborough), a waitress in a Brighton coastal tea-house who otherwise would have just been at the beginning of her life.  He does so simply because he realizes that Rose _could_ have been a peripheral witness to a murder that he committed.  Early in the film while on a short break from her waitressing job and thus finding herself walking on Brighton’s pier, she had briefly talked to the man who Pinkie ended up murdering a few minutes later below the pier.  However, she talked to the victim long enough that she probably could have identified him and _perhaps_ could have added that he appeared to be rather agitated, fearful that something terrible might soon happen to him. 

Pinkie pursues his plan up to actually marrying Rose (civilly) with the sole purpose of _making sure_ that Rose _as his wife_ could by British law _never be compelled_ to testify against him.  His deceitful plan is all the more galling in that early in his pursuit of Rose, he notices by the medallion that she was wearing that she was “Roman” (Catholic) and so he plays-up his own Catholic upbringing to “disarm her” emotionally and get her to trust him. 

Ida (played by Helen Mirren), Rose’s middle-aged boss at the tea house and something of a woman of the world (who it is suggested may have even had an affair with the young hood that Pinkie had murdered) doesn’t buy any of Pinkie’s charms and tries to warn Rose to stay away from Pinkie but of course to no avail.

Rose marries Pinkie.  Since Rose is underage and couldn't do so without parental permission, Pinkie has to literally buy off Rose’s rather worthless dad, which he does in a terrible, gut-wrenching bartering session.  Where’s Rose’s Catholicism in all of this?  Well she’s in love ... and she simply can’t believe that Pinkie could be that Evil.

Indeed, Pinkie _even taunts her_ as they go to the judge to get married, telling her that they are (that _she is_) committing _a mortal sin_ by getting married before a judge.  (As all this drama plays out, there are gangs of smartly dressed Mods on motor-scooters and black-leather jacketed Rockers on motorcycles battling it out on the coastal drive in Brighton ...).   And she marries him anyway.

How would God resolve such a mess, punish the guilty and render mercy to the innocent?  That’s what the rest of the movie is about.

Parents, there is plenty of violence and harsh language throughout this film.  The consumation of Rose’s and Pinkie’s marriage is not dwelled upon, but enough is implied that one would imagine that the consumation was rather depraved.  So the film is definitely not for young kids.  But it may make a very good discussion piece for parents with older more troublesome teens where parents may have to play the role of Ida in this film to step-in and at least to plead: “Honey, this is _your life_ that you're playing with.  Don’t let someone no good for you screw it up for you.”


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Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert’s review



Don’t be Afraid of the Dark (directed by Troy Nixey, co-written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, based on the 1973 movie by the same name by John Newland and Nigel McKaend) is one of an IMHO surprising number of horror genre films that have been released in recent weeks.   Indeed, so large a number of such films has been released in these last four weeks – Final Destination 5, Fright Night, this one, Shark Night, Apollo 18 – that I asked the good people reading the IMBb website’s message boards, if they could tell me why this would be.  After all, this is the late summer, not a few weeks before Halloween.


The consensus from the IMDb readers seems to be that “the late summer” is an “off-season” in the movie business.  All the major summer block busters have been released (and the “Oscar Season” films are generally released late in the year, around December).  So this is actually a fairly good time to release pictures that one’s had “in the can” (in production) but has less confidence in.  The bigger complaint on the IMDb Horror genre board has been that these recent movies have been lackluster and have lacked originality.  Indeed, all of these movies except possibly Apollo 18 have been remakes or sequels, which is not a good sign.  Still there are only a limited number of story lines available to any genre.  So beginning with that limitation, the challenge to genre-film-makers is to add enough variation, originality or otherwise pizzaz to make their new film compelling.  One gets the sense that star Katie Holmes excluded, the makers of this film, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, were largely just going through the motions.

At its base, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark is a “haunted house” story.  A story teller then is faced then with the task of deciding what/who is going to "haunt" the house and give a plausible explanation as to why.  Finally, as it becomes clear to the characters in the story that “there are problems with the house,” the story teller is given the task of giving a plausible explanation as to why the characters just don’t leave.  Usually, the explanation offered is incredulity --“Honey, there are no such things as ghosts / monsters” -- or some financial reason – “Honey, we put so much money into this damn house” (Ametyville Horror) or “Honey, we came here so that I finish this ($%#!) book, and if I don’t finish it we’ll be broke” (The Shining). 

The makers of this film do take a decent stab at fulfilling these plot necessities.  Alex (played by Guy Pierce) a New England architect with an ex-wife in California buys an old Rhode Island mansion that had once belonged to a 19th century naturalist and painter of wildlife named Blackwood (played by Garry McDonald).  Blackwood is loosely based on the historical 19th century naturalist and wildlife painter John James Audobon, only much creepier. 

What makes Blackwood creepy?  Well, the naturalist paintings of wildlife back then were often rather creepy in themselves.  Remember this was _before photography_.  So wildlife painters were tasked with making photograph-like sketches/paintings of rather rare birds and other wildlife that were precise enough to be used for _scientific_ study.  That made for fairly stiff, rather lifeless drawings.  But at that time, the middle of the 19th century, this was the best available technology (a person with a sketch pad and some drawing pencils) available to communicate what one observed in the field.  Now add to this, the surprise/”horror” that Blackwood encountered when he discovered some really strange creatures living in the crevices under his Rhode Island home... We’re also told in the story that “no one really knew how Blackwood (and his young son) died.”  They just seemed to have disappeared...

So it is Blackwood’s mansion that architect Alex purchases for renovation, and because of the current housing/real estate crisis it’s extremely important for him to do an outstanding job in restoring the house in order to “make a name for himself in his profession,” and thus survive financially.  There are simply _not_ a lot of jobs for architects in the United States today.  And this then forms part of the “sub-text” of this story.

The other part of the “sub-text” comes from Alex’s personal life.  He is divorced.  His ex-wife lives in Southern California and needs him to take their 10 year old daughter Sally (played by Bailee Madison) “for a while.”  Alex has the mansion restoration job that he’s undertaken.  He also has a girlfriend, Kim (played by Katie Holmes), that he’s living-with, but since he’s been married/divorced once, he’s not particularly anxious to marry.  Kim herself was a child of divorce (or otherwise from a troubled home), so she’s not anxious to get married either.  But she is desperate _not_ to be “the evil stepmother” to Sally when Sally arrives dressed in a _needlessly heavy_ if still cute “pink winter coat” on a plane from “sunny Southern California” to “dreary New England in November” near the beginning of the film.  Poor little Sally has been uprooted from her home and forced to live in a cold dreary home with her father and his desperate-to-be-liked girlfriend who she hardly knows.  What a nightmare ...

So when Sally “hears voices” from little creatures saying that “they want to play with her ...” initially she _prefers them_ to happy-face balloon-carrying Kim.  The problem is that these little creatures turn out to be really ugly demon-like fairies who live in the crevices under the earth, who once let out demand human sacrifice. 

So problems ensue ...

The film plays out from there.  One can not but _like_ poor “desperately responsible / desperately trying to be liked” Kim.

But there are problems with this film, both technical and moral.  I happen to agree with Stephen King who writes in The Dance Macabre, his "how to" book on horror genre writing/film making, that unless one has a really well-crafted, credibly-looking monster, it’s probably not good put one on the screen.  Indeed, that’s why ghost stories often work so much better when they are told than when they are put on the screen.  I’ll leave it to the viewers to make their own determination if the fairies in this movie were worth putting on the screen.  (I personally was not particularly impressed). 

The second problem is the movie’s choice of explanation of why we don’t see these demonic fairies more often.  In the story, we are told that Pope Sylvester II had made a pact with the fairies near the turn of the first millenium (1000 AD) banishing them to the subterranean crevices but in turn leaving them alone.  However, if at any time they were set free, as apparently inadvertently by Blackwood (or his young son) when building his home in the 19th century, and apparently happens again during the home’s restorarion, the fairies could demand a human sacrifice before returning to their subterranean lairs.

Here the CNS/USCCB rightly asks why poor Pope Sylvester II had to be sucked into this tale.  It turns out that Pope Sylvester II was a remarkably progressive Pope at his time.  Concerned that Christiandom was being outclassed and buried by a far more intellectually advanced Islamic world, he openly called for and collected as much information and knowledge that was available to him and the Christian world of the time, bringing it all back to Rome.  His more conservative critics of the time, frightened by his willingness to collect knowledge even from the Islamic world and his willingness to be open to even occult/magical and pagan texts. (Let's face it, what else would have been available at the time? and how else could you go through what knowledge actually worked and what did not, except through first collecting what's available and then sifting through it and testing it afterward?)  As such, he was accused by his critics of “having made a pact with the Devil.”  But arguably through his openness to the knowledge existing at his time, he saved Christian Europe, bringing to Europe such innovations as Arabic numerals (without which modern mathematics would be simply impossible) and the Abacus (arguably the first counting machine).  Indeed, today’s computer nerds might find it interesting that Sylvester proved so adept at making rapid calculations using the Abacus that his critics used this as “proof” that he simply had to be "in league with the Devil" :-).  Could Pope Sylvester II become the "patron saint of computer nerds?" ;-)

Anyway, Pope Sylvester II was arguably a progressive Christian hero who saved Christian Europe, and here the film makers made him, once again, someone “in league with the Devil.”

I suppose positively, the movie allows (if utterly by accident) viewers to go back to their Church history books (or to google / wikipedia) and learn about this very interesting pope and about the time and challenges in which he lived.

Would I recommend this movie?  It’s okay, not great.  The R-rating is appropriate.  Some of the scenes really would certainly be very terrifying to young kids (I'm not kidding, the fairies are really, really ugly and occassionally they jump out at you). There’s that needless swipe on an utterly undeserving figure in the Catholic Church who had already been much maligned by misinformed/fearful/ignorant critics of his own time.  Finally, perhaps more than many other films, the movie does leave one to wonder whether many modern couples see any intentionality at all in their relationships.  Alex was married once and divorced.  Why?  We don’t know.  In the movie, he’s shacked-up with Kim and neither he nor she seems at all interested in formalizing their relationship with each other with marriage.  And again, we don’t really know why.

In the end, one’s left wondering whether our relationships today are simply unreflected-upon informal contracts of mutual convenience that we can walk away from when we find something better (or just get bored...).  And, yes, that does seem rather dreary and sad...


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Viva Riva!

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723120/
Roger Ebert -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110817/REVIEWS/110819986

Viva Riva! (written and directed by Djo Munga) is an African Academy Award Winning (best director) English-subtitled French language crime thriller which comes from the Congo and is a reminder to me of one of the joys of going to the movies.  For the price of admission or a rental (still on the order of eating at a fast food restaurant) one can be transported for two to three hours to a totally different time and place.   And with the world becoming ever more interconnected, the stories being told in these films are becoming more and more authentic.  For this is _not_ Hollywood or some colonial power going to Africa to tell a story.  This is an African (Congolese) writer/director using African actors to tell a gripping contemporary African tale with both characteristic African humor and style. (The Servite Friars to whom I belong have presences and native friars in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Swaziland and Uganda.  Additionally, the Servite Sisters are in various West African countries including Cameroon, Ghana, Togo and the Ivory Coast.  And since our Order has never been particularly large (never more than about 1000 friars world-wide, despite having been around since 1233 around the time of St. Francis), I've gotten to know a fair number of our African friars and other friars from around the Servite world.  And besides meeting at various international Servite gatherings and so forth, like a good part of the rest of the world, a good number of us are on Facebook ;-).  So I'm not kidding when I say that this movie has an authenticity to it that non-African productions about Africa generally do not have).

So then, what is this Congolese story about?  Riva (played by Patsha Bay) is a charismatic and resourceful late 20-something to early 30-something con-man native of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  For perpetually fuel-starved Kinshasa (on account of endemic political instability and civil war), Riva arrives with a truckload of barrels full of high-grade gasoline that he diverted (stole) and smuggled into the country from neighboring, oil producing Angola.  Instantly, Riva becomes the toast of the town, with everyone with some money from Kinshasa’s relatively well-to-do, to the authorities, to organized crime figures to even a local Catholic priest wanting get some fuel from him. 

At a nightclub on the first night after coming into Kinshasa with his truck full of gasoline, Riva spots a stunning young woman named Nora (played by Manie Malone).  Riva’s best friend and partner advises caution.  Afterall, a woman that attractive had to be attached to someone.  And he’s right, Nora is the current girlfriend of local organized crime kingpin Azor (played by Diplome Amerikindra), who doesn’t kindly to the handsome, younger and charismatic Riva hitting on her.  Even Nora initially tells Riva to give it a break, that she’s just not interested in some upstart.  So Riva and his best-friend head off and spend the night at a Kinshasa hotel/brothel run by “Mother Edo” (Nzita Tumba).

The next day, a rather angry Angolan organized crime figure named Cesar (played by Hoji Fortuna) appears with a posse of about five henchman at a border crossing seeking to enter into the DRC.  Cesar and his posse sequester the Commandant (played by Marlene Longange) at the border crossing, tell her that they have her sister in Angola and will kill her unless she helps them find Riva and the stolen shipment of gasoline. 

Much ensues.  Riva does manage to charm his way into Nora’s heart while keeping always a few steps ahead of jealous Azor.  A local Catholic priest takes pity on the woman Commandant and helps her escape Cesar and his henchmen, hiding her in a convent.  Then in the guise of a wronged, righteous and rather well armed nun, the Commandant then sets out to bring _all the evil doers_ in this tale to justice. 

So despite the relatively wild night clubs / brothels and some steamy sex (though always portrayed with some discretion), the story actually ends up playing out as something of a morality tale: 

During the course of the film, we get to meet Riva’s parents, and Riva’s parents are _not_ impressed with his new-found, ill-gotten money no matter how popular he had otherwise become.  And the Commandant turned-nun slowly exacts justice on the various evil doers of the story.  She herself, does not take-down many of them.  In most cases, the various king-pins and their henchmen shoot or otherwise kill each other.  But by the end, though wounded, she’s pretty much the only one left standing.  And Nora’s words, which she told Riva on the night in which she _did_ end-up in bed with him, that “money ends up killing everyone it touches” resonate loud and clear to all.

Yes, this is an R-rated tale, but it is truly well done.  And in the midst of the drinking and sex, guns and strobe lights there is a morality present and presented in a way that one would not necessarily have expected.  This is a movie that is worth seeing (by adults) and it does have a message worth hearing and taking to heart.


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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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