The Immortals

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Times of India (2.5/5 Stars) AV Club/Onion (B-) Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1253864/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv140.htm
Times of India review -
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/movie-reviews/english/Immortals/moviereview/10677840.cms
The AV Club/Onion's review -
http://www.avclub.com/articles/immortals,65019/

The Immortals (directed by Tarsem Singh, written by Charley Parlapanides and Vlas Parlapanides) is in many senses a movie of the future.  The film continues the Hollywood trend to increasingly make movies in 3D.  It also relies heavily on computer generated imagery (CGI).  The screenplay borrowing heavily from the mythology of ancient Greece was written by two young Greeks and the director, Singh, as well as one of the stars, Frieda Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire [2008], Miral [2011], Rise of the Planet of the Apes [2011]), are up and coming stars from India.  Hence the critical reaction is not surprising.  Chicago's primary movie critics Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun Times) and Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) did not even review the film (both have longstanding aversions for CGI) and the CNS/USCCB gave the movie an "O" (morally offensive) rating (for both its violence and nudity/sexual situations).  Yet both the American youth oriented AV Club/Onion as well as the Times of India gave the movie "B-" or "above average" ratings. 

What's going on?  Well, more or less obviously we're seeing a generational split.  I do actually agree with the CNS/USCCB's criticism of the excessive violence in the film as well as with its criticism of the film's depiction of choices regarding sexuality.  Afterall, Oracles (usually consecrated virgins, who served as priestess-prophetesses in Ancient Greece, predicting the future and serving to give advice even to statesmen and kings) were very important in ancient (pagan) Greece.  The Oracle at Delphi was one of ancient Greece's most important (pagan) religious shrines/institutions for nearly 1000 years.  However, when the Oracle Phraeda (played by Frieda Pinto)  meets the muscular Theseus (Henry Cavill) in the film, it becomes more or less inevitable that her previous consecrated life (and societal function) was going to go by the wayside, thrown to the wind by Theseus' pecks and abs.  In Hollywood, sex does "conquer all" afterall... So I do think that the CNS/USCCB has a point in lamenting the easiness by which the Oracle gives up previous station and function in life to throw herself into the arms of the archtypical Greek hero with ripping muscles.

I also did not like the film's violence.  Parents should note that this film, The Immortals, is far more violent than this year's Marvel Comics inspired Thor (sanitized from ancient Nordic mythology) and surprisingly even more violent and bloody than the recent remake of Conan the Barbarian [2011] where such blood and gore would have been more expected.

Yet, I bring up the recent films Thor and Conan the Barbarian for another reason. It seems to me that Charley and Vlas Parlapanides approached the patrimony of Greek mythology in a similar way that Marvel Comics approached Norse Mythology in creating their character Thor and has continued to approach its other super-hero creations, and also in way similar to the approached used by Robert E. Howard to create the world for Conan.

So the world that Charley and Vlas Parlapanides created for their Theseus (as opposed to the Theseus of classical Greek Mythology) is something of a stew of various themes and images from the classical Greek Myth and their own adaptations: The Theseus of this movie is a hero-son of Zeus (played by Luke Evans) , instead of being the hero-son of Poseidon as per the classical myth though Poseidon (played by Kellan Lutz) does play a (smaller) role in the film.  As in the classical myth Theseus does defeat a Minotaur (a 1/2 man 1/2 bull monster of classical Greek mythology).

However,Theseus's greatest feat in this film is to be found in his defeating Hyperion (played by Mickey Rourke).  In classical Greek mythology, Hyperion was a Titan, that is one of a generation of older Gods overthrown by Zeus, Poseidon and the other Olympian Gods.  While Hyperion is portrayed as seeking to free the Titans from their imprisonment inside a mountain by Zeus, he is presented in the movie as the king of the Heracleans (a people believing itself to be descended from the Greek hero who we know as Hercules).  Now it is true that around the time in which this movie was to have been set, 1200 BC, a people known to us today as the Dorians really did understand themselves as descendants of the Hercules and did descend on Greece to destroy the then existing Mycenaean civilization.  Incidently, the Spartans came to be the most famous descendants of the Dorians while Theseus of the classical myth came to be the legendary founder of Sparta's great rival Athens (the goddess Athena too, played by Isabel Lucas, actually did play a somewhat peripheral role in this film as something of a protectress of Theseus).

All this is to say that the story playing out in this film is harkens to the time of the Dorian invasion of Greece as well as to mythological defeat of the Titans by Zeus and his generation of (Olympian Gods).  Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, Greeks themselves who probably grew-up on these stories, as well as the Marvel Comics and so forth, shuffled around the characters a bit, added an Oracle (a woman prophetess/priestess) for good measure and produced a fairly compelling if confusing tale. (Students _don't_ use this film as a strict guide to Greek mythology, because you may get its myths and characters all confused) 

But my greatest criticism of this film would be its truly gratuitous blood and gore.  I don't mind the CGI, and I did like the movie 300 [2006], on which this current movie heavily leans and where CGI was used really, really well.  I just don't believe that all the violence and gore, which as I wrote above exceeded even that of the recent remake of Conan the Barbarian [2011], was necessary to tell the story.  Indeed, it became needlessly distracting.

So a note of advice to the younger film-makers out there -- Go for it with the CGI.  300 [2006], Avatar [2009], Inception [2010] all point to an almost limitless future in using this technology for telling a story.  But do put limits on the blood/gore.  There really is no need for this, especially if the story is already compelling without it.


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J Edgar

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1616195/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv138.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111108/REVIEWS/111109973

J Edgar (Warner Bros. USA, directed by Clint Eastwood, screenplay by Dustin Lance Black) a bio pic about legendary (and/or infamous) U.S. FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover is destined to be remembered as one of 2011's best films, and earn a plethora of Oscar Nominations.  Let's count them: (1) in a field of 10 a certain nomination for Best Picture,  (2) a certain nomination and possible/probable award for Best Director (Clint Eastwood), (3) a possible nomination for Best Original Screen Play (Dustin Lance Black), (4) a certain nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Leonardo diCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover), a (5) certain nomination and probable award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Judy Dench, as J. Edgar Hoover's mother), (6) a possible second nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, J. Edgar Hoover's lifelong secretary), and (7) a possible a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover's lifelong confidante and possibly more).

Why would J. Edgar Hoover be simultaneously legendary and controversial (or even infamous)?   Well he was a very, very interesting/compelling and arguably dangerous persona in American history.  Consider simply that he was the founding director of the FBI in 1935 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and remained director of the FBI until his death in 1972 four years into the Richard M. Nixon Administration.  In Washington, D.C. almost no one lasts that long in a job (under 6 presidents -- FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon).  How did he do it?  In the kindest of language, he was the epitome indeed "poster child" of the entrenched bureaucrat that only blasting powder could remove.  In reality, as head of the U.S. federal government's premier police/domestic intelligence agency, it came down to him having files on absolutely everybody of consequence in the United States during his decades-long tenure.  No politician would dare to try to expel him without worrying that J. Edgar Hoover would take him down as well.  Indeed, the film noted the celebrated battles that J. Edgar Hoover had with Robert Kennedy, the President's brother and Attorney General during the JFK Administration, and during with the equally information craving/paranoid Richard Nixon Administration during the last years of Hoover's life.

So how could such a tenacious indeed ruthless bureaucrat come to be made?  Well Eastwood and Black suggest that a good part of the roots of his tenaciousness could be found in his upbringing.  His mother Annie Hoover (played in the movie by Judy Dench) had big plans for her son including "recapturing" their (lost in some way) WASPish family's "honor."  How the family had "lost" some of its previous honor was not clear, but J. Edgar Hoover (played by Leonardo diCaprio) seemed on a life-long mission to "recapture" it.  And most adults would know that such a "mission" would be a fool's errand.  How much "honor" had been "lost"? How much needed to be "recaptured?"  How much "honor" collected was enough?  No matter how many successes Hoover had -- and he had plenty of successes, he was instrumental in defeating (indeed destroying) the Red Scare in the United States after World War I, his new FBI was instrumental in defeating (again, indeed destroying) the unprecedented wave of criminality that existed in the early 1930s, his agency did largely keep the country safe from infiltration of Nazi spies during the 1930s/WWII and Communists afterwards -- it was never, ever enough.  So Hoover became a life-long publicity hound: He made cameo appearances in films.  He allowed himself to become a character in children's crime fighting comic books.  He even convinced himself that _he_ was the one who gunned-down the famed gangster Dillinger when he wasn't even in that part of the country when Dillinger was taken-down by the FBI in Chicago.

Another part of his story, only becoming more fodder for discussion in recent years (after his death) was that J. Edgar Hoover, who never married, was probably gay and for various reasons he surrounded himself with other probably gay/lesbian assistants, including his lifelong spinster personal secretary Helen Gandy (played by Naomi Watts) and FBI agent, life-long confidante and travel companion Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer).  About the latter, the film notes at the end of the film that Hoover had made Clyde Tolson the principal heir to his estate, including his house.  Additionally, Tolson received the ceremonial American flag at the end of his (state) funeral.  Finally, Tolson is buried only a few feet from J. Edgar Hoover's grave at Washington D.C.'s Congressional Cemetery.  That J. Edgar Hoover would be gay (and would surround himself with other gay/lesbian assistants) would actually make some sense at that time because there was no way to be openly gay.  So one way to "hide" was to bury oneself in one's work.  And that's exactly what Hoover and the others around him did. 

Finally, if Hoover was, in fact, repressed sexually this would help explain both his ruthlessness (his tendency to not be content with simply besting opponents but seeking to utterly destroy them) and his tendency to focus on the moral (sexual) failings of his perceived opponents even to the detriment of his agency's doing its job (of protecting the nation).  I mentioned above that the FBI had managed to keep the USA largely safe from infiltration by Nazi saboteurs during the Nazi era/World War II.  But this was largely by luck/accident.   In a celebrated incident not mentioned in the film, a number of would-be saboteurs were caught right on the beaches in New York and Florida by local cops by accident (though Hoover would later portray this as part of an FBI sponsored dragnet to keep potential Nazi spies in check).  What Hoover seemed to find far more interesting was keeping tabs on the personal lives (and failings) of the Roosevelts, in particular on the possibly lesbianism of FDR's wife Eleanor.

Similarly in certainly the most controversial scene in this film, J. Edgar Hoover is portrayed as being engrossed in listening to an audio surveillance tape of Martin Luther King, Jr having adulterous sex with a woman at the very moment that he received word that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.  Was this true?  Was J. Edgar Hoover doing exactly this when he got word of the JFK assassination?  Probably/almost certainly not, and I've complained about similar dramatic oversteps in the recent cable television series The Borgias (about the escapades of Pope Alexander VI and his family) and the film Anonymous (promoting the thesis that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him).  In the case of this film, however, I would argue that the flagrant dramatic license taken is probably the most justified because it does point to a truth:  J. Edgar Hoover really was fixated on (once again) destroying a possible adversary of the United States (Martin Luther King, Jr and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Hoover convinced himself was being infiltrated by Communists) and as a result the FBI (at minimum) completely dropped the ball with regard to Lee Harvey Oswald, a former defector to the Soviet Union (who subsequently returned, apparently with few/no questions asked) as a potential threat to the President or the nation. 

There are also various themes arising from the film that are certainly topical today.  One gets the sense that if Hoover lived today, he would have been a fan of the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which greatly expanded police/surveillance power, because Hoover seemed to be always in favor expanding the law enforcement powers of his FBI.  On the other hand, the film did portray quite well J. Edgar Hoover's early experiences in fighting radicalism (the anarchists of the early 20th century) and the almost quaint lack of coordination and lack federal law enforcement powers that most law enforcement officials take for granted today.  Finally, I do believe that the movie shows quite well the drawbacks of allowing someone to stay in his/her position for too long: J. Edgar Hoover was portrayed as someone who (perhaps necessarily) saw everything through the lens of his early experiences fighting those anarchists of the early 20th century.  So he utterly misunderstood the nature of Martin Luther King Jr's Gandhi inspired peaceful civil rights movement.

All in all, I do consider J. Edgar to be one best films of the year, not simply because of Leonardo DiCaprio and Judy Dench's outstanding performances or Clint Eastwood's (once again) outstanding direction, but above all in its offering of so much fodder for reflection both in this movie's study of this famously driven (repressed/paranoid/megalomaniacal?) man and in its survey of the times in which he lived and worked.  Adapting an old Chinese proverb to my purposes here: I do believe that for good or ill, if nothing else, J. Edgar Hoover was a very interesting man who lived in very interesting times.


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Tower Heist

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (2 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb Listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0471042/
CNS/USCCB Review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv136.htm
Roger Ebert's Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111102/REVIEWS/111109996

Tower Heist (Universal, directed by Brett Ratner, written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson story by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Ted Griffin) is a topical if not intended to be a particularly profound movie.  Indeed, it's basically a screwball comedy.  But with an ensemble cast with the likes of Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Judd Hirsch, Alan Alda and Matthew Broderick it largely delivers the laughs.

Set at a towering residential hotel modeled after the Trump Tower and located somewhere in Midtown Manhattan, the staff, led by Josh Kovacs (played by Ben Stiller) prides itself in its professionalism and courtesy toward its upper-class, at times super-upper-class residents.  The richest man in the tower, residing in the penthouse suite, is a financier Arthur Shaw (played by Alan Alda).  He seems brilliant, and the staff from Kovacs on down treats him with a mixture of awe and deference ... and he turns out to be a crook.

It's a shock to the tower staff, when a security cam is seen showing Shaw apparently entering the back of a laundry truck in the garage alongside two buff men. Indeed, Kovacs initially believes that Shaw is being kidnapped.  Instead, Shaw was trying to escape the FBI, who led by Special Agent Claire Denham (played by Téa Leoni) were arriving to arrest him for securities fraud.  Shaw doesn't get far before he is arrested.

However, the shock and disorientation continues when it is revealed that Shaw had apparently drained all the accounts he was responsible for in the preceding months, including to the surprise of the staff, their staff pension fund.  Josh, in fact, had decided to let Shaw manage the the Tower employees' pension fund a few years earlier because Shaw had promised that he could "easily triple its worth."  Now on account of this "sweetheart deal" between Shaw and Josh (and without the staff really knowing about it ... though up until the arrival of the FBI at the doors of the hotel, the staff implicitly trusted all their rich residents as being "good people") the staff was left with nothing.

This, of course, caused enormous trauma to the staff.  Lester (played by Stephen Henderson) the doorman for 29 years, "that's an awful lot of doors I've opened over those years ..." was about to retire.  But now he had nothing.  A few days after he realized that he had nothing left of his retirement savings, he tries walking in front of a subway train ...

The final straw for Josh came when he along with Manuel (played by Juan Carlos Hernandez) the head concierge go up to tell Shaw (out on $10 million bail, but under house arrest) what Lester had nearly done and Shaw appeared unmoved.

It was then, that Josh decides that "justice must be done" and that he and the other staff are going to figure out a way to "steal back" even from Shaw's penthouse the twenty million dollars that the staff lost through Shaw's malfeasance.  Much ensues ...

Since Manuel along with recent hire Enrique (played by Michael Peña), and recently evicted architect (due to bankrupcy) Mr. Fitzhugh (played by Matthew Broderick) persuade Josh that they alone would be incapable of pulling this off, Josh brings in a "consultant" named "Slide" (played by Eddie Murphy).  Josh and Slide had grown-up together in the same neighborhood, somewhere in Brooklyn and Slide was always a petty criminal.  So Josh asks him to help his staff steal back its money.

The heist the follows is convoluted and stupid -- but then it's a screwball comedy, when it's not being so painful.  The possy is composed of Josh, Manuel, Enrique, Slide and a hotel maid named Odessa (played by Gabourey Sidibe), the "daughter of the owner of the largest lock-smith business in Kingston Jamaica" as their "safe cracker."  Much again happens.  And when they inevitably get caught, one of the other maids, Miss Lovenko (played by Nina Arianda) who throughout the movie kept denying to Josh that she was studying for the N.Y. Bar Exam even as he kept assuring her that as long as she did all her work, it didn't matter to him, comes in to rescue them as their attorney (she did pass the Bar exam ... ;-).

The ending of the movie is actually more complex than this and I actually kinda like it.  And while this is not intended to be a particularly profound movie, as American comedies often do, the film packs a surprising punch.  So even as we smile and laugh as we watch the film, it's talking to us about a lot of pain and frankly about a lot of crime and a lot of betrayals.  To the movie's credit, the film repeatedly names the pain, the crimes and the betrayals even as it keeps us laughing ... and then resolves it all quite fairly.

So as "light" as this movie may initially seem, it actually says a lot more than one may initially think.  Again, the ending is better than one would expect.  Good job!


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Like Crazy

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review
Like Crazy (directed and co-written by Drake Doremus along with Ben York Jones) is an outstanding young adult love story that (in a field of ten) certainly deserves to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year, along with a whole host of other nominations including possibly best actor and actress in leading roles (I'm not sure they'd necessarily deserve to win but certainly ought to be considered for nominations).  Since Like Crazy is also by-far the best film that I certainly can recall where much of the cinematography was done using hand-held cameras, if it were up to me, even a best-cinematography nomination would be in order.  And tight as this picture is, with pretty much every shot and every scene had a purpose, a nomination for best-editing could be in order as well.  Obviously, I really liked this picture ;-).

Finally there's the movie's theme -- love and borders (and how Big Brother in the form of intrusive, ham-handed immigration law pushed by old, frightened, often racist, crows can brutally complicate and even destroy young lives) -- is something that I empathize with because I KNOW IT IS A LIVED REALITY FOR COUNTLESS YOUNG AMERICANS whose skin color and/or that of their sweethearts may be a few shades darker than the two eminently Anglo protagonists in the story (the non-American is even from England) but whose love and heart-ache is just as sincere.   

So then happens in the film?  Well, a student from England, Anna (played by Felicity Jones) studying journalism in Los Angeles meets an American student majoring in furniture design named Jacob (played by Anton Yelchin).  A hand held camera is perfectly used to express the jitteriness of their first encounters.  She makes the first move.  But soon they fall deeply in love.  As graduation comes, they have things planned out.  Her student visa is expiring, so she'll go back to England for the summer and apply for a work visa.  But on last the weekend trip that they take (to Catalina Island) before she leaves, she impractically (but in love) decides to stay the summer in the States anyway, return back to England for a family obligation at the end of the summer but come right back again "as a tourist" (because Brits and most Western Europeans don't even need to apply for tourist visas) and life would go on swimmingly or at least everything would "work out."

They spend the summer, as promised "largely in bed" (shown in a very lovely way by means of a rapid-fire montage of still shots showing them always in an embrace on said-bed in variously colored t-shirts and underwear).  At the end of the summer, Anna flies back for her family obligation, and flies right back as promised a few weeks later.  But ...

At the U.S. Customs at the airport after scanning her passport, the U.S. border official tells her that she violated the terms of her last (student) visa.  Anna tries to explain that she's coming now as a tourist and doesn't need a visa.  The U.S. border official tells her that it doesn't work that way. Since she violated the terms of her stay the last time, she has to return to her home country (even if it is the U.K.) and "resolve" this problem before being allowed to return to the United States.  And indeed, the U.S. border officials put her on a flight back to England and that is that.  Jacob, who arrived at the airport with a bunch of roses didn't even get see her, even though she was right there at LAX.  All he could do is follow her ordeal via cell phone and text messages as he tried very hard (and in vain) to figure-out what to do.

Much ensues afterward.  After all, theirs was not a casual fling.  They were truly in love.  Jacob flies to see her several times in England.  Anna's dad (played by Oliver Muirhead) gets her an immigration lawyer to hack her out of this mess.  During one of Jacob's visits, her dad, exasperated, asks out-loud, "Why don't you two just get married?  It'd get much easier then."  After some give and take over the next months, they do -- in England.  But when called to an interview at the U.S. Embassy a few months afterwards, they're told by the immigration official, that their having gotten married still wasn't enough, that the officials working out her previous visa violation still had to resolve that infraction before she could do anything.  How long would that take?   No one could say.  Years, perhaps.

Now Jacob now has a hand-made furniture business in Santa Monica.  Anna asks finally couldn't he just close it and go make furniture in London?  He answers truthfully (though there are other things going on as well) that it'd be complicated.  To close down a business (that he had struggled to build), sell everything and "start over in London" wouldn't be easy.   In the mean time, Anna having landed a job at a magazine in  London, now gets a serious promotion (mind you, the legal issues have gone now on for several years).  Both are young, attractive and running into other attractive people in their different parts of the world.

And just as their love, indeed their marriage, seems hopeless, Anna gets the call from her dad's immigration lawyer that her visa finally came through.  What would you do?

Millions of Americans, mostly young, but some middle aged and even with families are involved in cross-border relationships like this.  How awful it is for Government EVEN AFTER ESTABLISHING THAT THE RELATIONSHIP IS AUTHENTIC to stand in the middle and destroy young people's lives, and not just of the principal protagonists like those in this story but also of others around them.

This was truly a great story.  It's perhaps sad that it had to be told in the form of two alabaster skinned lovebirds who usually don't have endure this nightmare.  But if it helps express the damage being done by current U.S. immigration law to countless young people of browner complexions in this country, so be it.  It was one heck of a movie.

ADDENDUM:

Since the time when the first large wave of Catholic immigrants came to this country during the Irish Potato Famine, the Catholic Church in the United States has been always at least in part a "Church of Immigrants."  As such defending the rights and dignity of immigrants has been a perennial concern of the Catholic Church in the United States.  Through the USCCB's campaign Justice for Immigrants, the Catholic Church has kept this issue of alive in the United States even in the face of stiff and often very bigoted opposition which chooses to forget that the ancestors of virtually everyone in the United States arrived from somewhere else, penniless, as refugees or even as slaves in chains.  We also often choose to forget that the Holy Family itself had to live in Egypt as refugees for seven years (and we do not know if they "had their papers in order").  And we believe in a God who is the God of both the Living and the Dead, so God's love knows no borders.

Finally, the Servite Coalition for Justice to which I belong (I am a Friar Servant of Mary) recently prepared an "Immigration Rosary" offering reflections on the traditional Seven Sorrows of Mary in light of recent Immigrant Experience.

So this movie is a very good one.  I just wish the protagonists could have reflected the contemporary reality more fully by, frankly ... being cast a number of shades browner.


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The Rum Diary

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (2 1/2 Stars) Fr Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb Listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376136/
CNS/USCCB Review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv133.htm
Roger Ebert's Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111026/REVIEWS/111029989

The Rum Diary (screenplay written and directed by Bruce Robinson based on the fictionalized semi-autobiographical book by the same name by Hunter S. Thompson about Thompson's early years) would seem initially like a rather odd movie for a Catholic priest to be reviewing.  However, Hunter Thompson was a icon of the 1960s-70s.  He continues "living" today in the form of the character Uncle Duke in the Doonesbury comic strip.  Finally, for all his notorious drug use, most significantly mescaline and LSD (for which he and his wife paid personally through repeated miscarriages and finally an amicable but nevertheless divorce) he was never a hypocrite.  Indeed, he devoted his life to exposing and destroying "The Bastards" (powerful hypocrites).  He hated Nixon and all that he stood for, but in an interview after 9/11 (with all the flag-waving and the sending of other people's kids to war) he said he'd vote for him over Bush-Cheney.

The Rum Diary, like Thompson's book that inspired it, is a fictionalized account about how Hunter Thompson became who he became.  Kemp (played by Johnny Depp), the Thompson character in the movie arrives in Puerto Rico in 1960 after applying for a job at a local English language paper called the Star.  Morale at the paper is low.  So even though he arrives at his interview in dark sunglasses, clearly hung-over, Lotterman (played by Richard Jenkins) the editor in chief, hires him, saying "I wouldn't have paid to fly you out here if I wasn't already going to give you a job."  He then assigns him to do the daily horoscope column.

Why was moral low at the English-language Star in Puerto Rico?  Well, because Puerto Rico was and to a certain extent remains an American colony.  The only people who speaking English there are expatriates and the vast majority of them tourists.  So how does one write hard-hitting meaningful articles for a paper for whom 90% of its circulation would go to tourists hopping off cruise ships for a couple of hours or days?  Lotterman, indeed makes it clear to Kemp who was trying to get off "horoscope duty" that most of the readers of the Star didn't care about strikes or even about Puerto Rico, but simply wanted to know where the best deals and the best casinos were.  So no wonder that most of the writers at the Star had alcohol problems...

After racking up a bill for over 100 vanity bottles of rum from his hotel room "minibar," Lotterman orders Kemp to find a cheaper place to stay.  The paper's veteran photographer and possibly its only Puertorican native, Moburg (played by Giovanni Ribisi) invites him to stay at his flat noting that another perennially drunk reporter from the paper crashes there as well.  Very good.  Kemp arrives, and seeing that it's kinda spartan asks:
     "I thought you said you had a TV"
     "But I do.  The neighbor 'cross the alley has a TV, his wife can't hear, and I have a set of binoculars."
And so it goes.  Kemp and Moburg scour the island in Moburg's Fiat-500 for news even if Lotterman won't let them print it, catching a few cock-fights in between.

One time on "official business" covering an American convention at a seaside hotel, a bored Kemp runs into a similarly bored European girlfriend Chenalt (played by Amber Heard) of an expatriate American businessman named Sanderson (played by Aaron Eckhart).  When Sanderson meets Kemp as well, Sanderson tries to convince Kemp to help him promote another hotel project that he's involved in.

Much of course ensues, presenting some of the basic themes of Hunter Thompson's life:

First, it's clear that Sanderson and his expatriate clique don't give a damn about either Puerto Rico or its people. Sanderson becomes the archtypical "Bastard" that Kemp/Thompson spends the rest of his life fighting.

Second, Kemp/Thompson presents himself as something of an f-up.  When finally he gets the girl, Chenalt, their great moment of about-to-arrive intimacy is broken, (blown-up really.. ;-) by Moburg's and his perpetually drunk roommate with strangely neo-Nazi tendencies.  As Kemp and Chenalt are trying frantically to get out of each other's clothes, suddenly from the other room comes blaring the voice of an ecstatic Hitler from one of said-roomate's "Best of Hitler's Speaches" record albums ... It just didn't work out ;-)

Finally, Kemp/Thompson's initiation into his legendary (and yes, stupidly dangerous) drug use is presented as having happened during this time.  Again, Moburg and Kemp's perpetually drunk room-mate comes home, all excited, one evening saying "I just scored a drug so powerful that the FBI only gives it to Communists!"  With that kind of an introduction, Moburg and Kemp decide they have to try it...

So what to say about this movie and then about Hunter Thompson?  He was an interesting character.  His crusade against "The Bastards" was certainly laudable.  He did have a sense of humor captured quite well in the film.  BUT PLEASE KIDS DON'T DO THE DRUGS.  Thompson did fry his brains on them, and I personally know others who did even worse than he.

There's one person I personally knew whose brains got so scrambled that at age 25, that he lost all but his short term memory.  His wife of one year, eventually left him and returned him to his parents.  Why?  Would you want at 24-25 to stay forever with someone who a year into your marriage could no longer function as an adult and would remain in that condition until he died? 

So Hunter Thompson was a fun character to perhaps admire from a distance (and as I mentioned at the beginning of my review, apparently even he personally suffered for his drug use).  So please don't emulate his sins.  On the other hand with regard to his fighting "the Bastards," how could one disagree with that? ;-)


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In Time

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv135.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111026/REVIEWS/111029992

In Time (written and directed by Andrew Nichol) is, IMHO, is a sci-fi thriller that will probably find surprising if exaggerated resonance in the current Occupy Wall Street movement.

The premise of the film is that human beings in the future will be genetically engineered in such a way that normal aging would stop at their 25th birthday and they could live essentially forever (and with a body of a 25 year old) as long as they could purchase enough time to do so.  But if they run out of (purchased) time, the digital meter implanted in their forearms stops and they die, instantly.  So Life becomes something of a cruel game and Time becomes the only currency that matters.  And since the future remains Capitalist, a rich few come to have "all the time in the world" while most of the rest truly come to live "day to day" and the superfluous, those who can not justify their existence to get paid for it, die off quite rapidly.  It's basically eugenics without abortion or gas chambers.  Everybody gets to live to 25 but then ...

The movie begins with, 28 (25+3) year old Will Salas (played by Justin Timberlake) wishing his 50 (25+25) year old mother Rachel (played by Olivia Wilde) who still looks a striking 25, a happy birthday and promising her to take her out to dinner after work that day.  Will works in a factory in working-class Dayton.  His earnings each day depends entirely on market forces.  He put in a hard day's work being particularly productive, knocking off a particularly large amount nameless objects for which he gets paid for.  However, since everyone at the plant apparently did the same, the value of these nameless objects produced actually declined (because of an unexpected increase in supply) and so he ends up getting paid less than he expected.  Nevertheless, he accepts his time wage, and heads to meet his mother.

His mother, on the other hand, finds to her horror that the price of the bus fare to the place where she was to meet her son has gone up.  Finding that she doesn't have enough time on hand to pay the fare and has to run to the place where she was going to meet her son "before her time runs out."  Of course, it does run out, and she dies in Will's arms before he could transfer some of his newly earned time to her.  Will's enraged at the insanity of this treadmill system, but what can he do?

Well, he goes to a bar, and in the bar there's a rich man from a high class enclave called "New Greenwich" with a century of time on his arm.  Will tries to warn him, "you shouldn't be carrying that kind of time around in a place like this."  The rich man doesn't care.  Even though he's lived for over 100 years in luxury and could continue to live indefinitely, he's had enough.  The two become friends.  The next day, Will finds to his surprise the rich man transferred to him virtually all of that century that he was carrying and that the rich man had effectively committed suicide afterwards (allowing his clock to run out).

Will is grateful but finds himself almost immediately in trouble with the authorities.  "Timekeeper" (cop) Raymond Leon (played by Cillian Murphy) in particular makes it his mission to persecute Will because he can't believe that someone like Will would receive so much "free time" from a rich man as a gift.  Will, on the other hand, uses new time to purchase access to progressively more luxurious "time zones," finally arriving at the Monte Carlo like "New Greenwich" at the top of the time pyramid.  There he finds a populace living in lazy rich splendor in beach front luxury condos and casinos.  The also meets a young woman, Sylvia Weis (played by Amanda Seyfried) daughter of a particularly power magnate, Philippe Weis (played by Vincent Kartheiser).

Sylvia, who's known nothing but timeless luxury is swept-up by the bad-boy working-class charm of Will.  Together, the two Will and Sylvia then go on a string of "time bank" robberies to try to bring the system down.

In the course of the story, an older viewer will discern a number of characters from previous tales.  Timekeeper Raymond for instance comes across as a futuristic Javert from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.  He senses that the system he's sworn to uphold is unjust, but he is sworn to uphold it.  So he does so, going way above and beyond the call of normal duty to hunt down Will even though at least initially hasn't even broken the law (having simply received the gift of a lot of time from a tired rich man).  Except for his initial innocence,Will doesn't really fit the model of Jean Valjean.  However, he comes across as a "Clyde" character from the real-life Depression Era crime couple Bonnie and Clyde.  Sylvia is perhaps the story's Bonnie.  More disturbingly, however, Sylvia actually comes across as a Patty Hearst character, where Patty Hearst was the real-life grand-daughter of publishing magnate (and in his time unabashed promoter of unrestricted capitalism) William Randolph Hearst.  Patty had been kidnapped in the 1970s by a homegrown American left-wing terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army and after being held as a hostage for a number of months by the group, she actually joined the group on a number of bank robberies before being recaptured by the police.  She ended up serving some time in prison for her participation in the robberies.

So while In Time presents a very compelling portrait of truly savage "Darwinistic" capitalism it also evokes imagery that I do have to say is disturbing.  While I do sympathize greatly with the Occupy Wall Street movement -- I honestly don't know where young people in the United States will find work twenty years from now.  All kinds of jobs are disappearing and not just to outsourcing overseas but to automation -- I certainly would prefer that the movement go the direction of Martin Luther King Jr's Civil Rights Movement to the violently hopeless direction the S.L.A.  To put it in another way, I definitely agree with John Lennon here:

Revolution (Lyrics) (YouTube)

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world...

But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out ...

But if you want money for minds that hate,
All I can say is brother, you'll have to wait...

But if you go around carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow ... 


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Martha Marcy May Marlene

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

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Martha Marcy May Marlene (written and directed by Sean Dirken) is an independent film that's gotten a lot of well deserved buzz since the summer and may receive a Oscar nomination for both Elizabeth Olsen playing the title role of Martha / Marcy May as well as, in a field of ten, possibly a nomination for Best Picture.  Parents note that this is a dark picture with definitely adult themes/concerns.  A teen would probably not get it.  Still for families with children or sibblings who've been estranged or wayward or even had been part of a cult, this movie would be excellent.

The movie begins with Martha (played by Elizabeth Olsen) having just escaped a small cult residing on a farm in the Catskills Mountains of central New York.  Having ditched the farm (and successfully evaded other members of the cult running out to look for her) she comes into a small town from which she calls her older sister, Lucy (played by Sarah Paulson) who seems both surprised and generally happy to hear from her.  It's been two years since Martha has seemingly dropped off the face of the earth.  Lucy offers to pick her up and takes her then to the palacial cottage that Lucy and her husband, Ted (played by Hugh Dancy), have rented for a part of the summer.  The two have been apart so long that Martha doesn't know Ted, and Ted only from what Lucy had told him about her.

It has been said that a useful definition of "culture" is that it's like "the water through which a fish swims.  It's something that the fish takes for granted until it finds itself in another pond."  Having lived two years in a cult with very different communitarian values -- subsistance living, sharing of goods, indeed, sharing of bodies -- again, parents take note... -- Martha's a definite fish out of water in Lucy and Ted's clearly materialistic lifestyle, and even though she was picked-up penniless by Lucy and taken to live with her and Ted for a few weeks while she gets her bearings, Martha is certainly judgemental about how the two live.  Perhaps it'd be something akin to a Spartan suddenly finding oneself living in the seemingly palatial home of a "mere merchant" in Athens in classical Greece.

It takes a while for Lucy to figure out that Martha needed a lot more help than she initially thought.  Martha wasn't merely running away from "some boyfriend."  She was ecaping a whole (foreign) way of life. 

How did this all come about?  How did Martha find herself brought into a cult to begin with?  Through both  flashbacks and dialogue, the story is told.  

From dialogue we learn that Lucy and Martha had been largely raised by their mother.  Their father had apparently been abusive in some way (or in a number of ways) to either the girls or their mother. This was not clear but the result was that their mother had split with their father and they were mostly raised by her.  Now Lucy was already away in college when their mother fell ill and died.  Martha then was raised for the remaining of her teenage years by their aunt (Martha asks Lucy if their aunt was at her and Ted's wedding).  One gets the sense that as soon as she was old enough, Martha split from her aunt and went on her own.

From flashbacks, we see that it was a friend of Martha's, Zoe (played by Luisa Krause), who introduces her to the community living out on a farm in the Catskills and led by a charismatic and manipulative leader named Patrick (played by John Hawkes).  What does the cult believe in?  In simple subsistance living, sharing of goods, basically free/shared sex, and then the specialness of their leader. 

To its credit, the movie does show the attractive aspects of this lifestyle -- the members of the community did care for each other, everyone was given the opportunity to "find their place" in the community and the members of the community did share basically everything.  The women in particular, slept on mattresses strewn in one large room in the farm house.  Their clothes basically hung on one rack of dresses in a closet that they all shared from.  Everyone cooked together, ate together, worked the farm together.  And yes, they slept with each other (the men apparently had separate rooms) as they wished, together.  The one rule though was that the leader, Patrick, ruled over it all.

However, the creepiness of the "all powerful ruler" came to seep into just about every aspect of the others lives.  Zoe introduces Martha to Patrick as Martha.  He responds, "You look to me like a Marcy May," (RED FLAG) which becomes her name in the group (BIG RED FLAG).  After a period of getting accustomed to the place, initiation, at least of the women required having sex with Patrick (EVEN BIGGER RED FLAG).  Now it's clear in the film that most of the women would have actually given themselves willingly to the apparently kind, charismatic and "caring" Patrick anyway.  However, the women are ritually drugged (HUGE RED FLAG), without their knowing it (UNBELIEVABLY LARGE RED FLAG), for the encounter anyway (SUPER-DOOPER LARGE RED FLAG).

After Martha apparently had some difficulty "processing" this initiatory sexual encounter with Patrick complaining to Zoe "I don't remember any of it anyway," a somewhat miffed Patrick picks up a guitar during one of the community's relaxing "together times" and dedicates the song he was about to sing to Marcy May, and begins singing: "She's just a picture, I have hanging on my wall, nothing else, nothing more..."  (THERE JUST AIN'T A RED FLAG BIG ENOUGH). 

Seriously folks, if someone actually says that "you're nothing but an object hanging on his/her wall," DON'T WALK AWAY, RUN.  But alas, it took Martha some time longer to make the break.  Besides probably at the time, some of the other (more communitarian) aspects of her life there probably made her stay.

But the creepiness did not go away.  Some readers here may come to wonder.  With all that sex apparently going on at this place, would this produce pregnancies?  Apparently so.  But the only children being raised were Patrick's (were the other children being conceived being aborted?) and the only children being kept were boys (were Patrick's girls being killed, or, perhaps being put up for adoption?) 

None of this seemed to pursuade Martha to leave.  What appears to have done so was Martha's realization that the whole lifestyle, subsistence that it was, still depended on crime, stealing from neighbors.  And with repeated break-ins, come other bridges to cross... 

So Martha resolves to leave.  And she does so, sort of.  Can she really leave (psychicly, if certainly physically)?  And can her sister and her yuppie husband really come to understand what world she was coming from? 

Again, anyone with an estranged child or sibbling could perhaps benefit from reflecting on this movie, at least from a distance.  Certainly, not every estranged child/sibbling would necessarily have "joined a cult."  However, the dynamics could be actually quite similar.  Clearly there are aspects of the life that the estranged person has taken on that are attractive even fulfilling to that person.  One just hopes that the creepiness of other aspects of that lifestyle don't come to overwhelm the good/attractive aspects.  And ultimately no lifestyle can be truly good if other significant relations are excluded or if one is not free to leave.


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